Category: MLB

Dodgers top prospect Josue De Paula has become major league stretch-run contributor over the last week and a half. But that followed a wonderful season in Double-A Tulsa, and on Monday he was named Texas League MVP.

De Paula with the Drillers hit .303/.401/.547 with a 145 wRC+, 27 home runs, 37 doubles, 106 runs scored, 104 RBI, and 31 stolen bases in 124 games. He set career highs across the board, including more than doubling his previous marks for home runs (previous high of 12) and extra-base hits (66, up from 30).

He led the league in runs scored, RBI, hits, doubles, and was in top five in the league in OPS, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, batting average, home runs, stolen bases, total bases (274), and extra-base hits.

JOSUE DE PAULA BLASTS A WALK-OFF 3-RUN HOME RUN! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/FN50YJHxvn

— Tulsa Drillers (@TulsaDrillers) August 19, 2026

Also on Monday, Baseball America named De Paula as the Dodgers minor league player of the year.

De Paula hasn’t stopped producing since getting his first call-up to the majors, reaching base 18 times in 38 trips to the plate with his 10 walks more than doubling his four strikeouts, hitting .286/.474/.500 with three doubles and a home run in his first 10 games in the majors.

The Dodgers were loaded with outfield prospects this year, and the entire Texas League All-Star outfield were Tulsa Drillers, with Zyhir Hope — traded on August 2 to the Detroit Tigers in the Tarik Skubal deal — and Mike Sirota joining De Paula. Other Tulsa All-Stars were infielder Jake Gelof at designated hitter plus relief pitcher Nick Robertson.

Eric Wedge was named Texas League manager of the year, the fifth Tulsa Drillers manager to capture the award, and the first since Tim Ireland in 2002 when Tulsa was a Texas Rangers affiliate. This honor comes 19 years after Wedge won American League manager of the year with Cleveland in 2007.

So far a Dodgers minor leaguer has won Most Valuable Player at all three full-season levels, with De Paula joining High-A Great Lakes outfielder Charles Davalan in the Midwest League and Class-A first baseman Ontario Easton Shelton in the California League. Whenever the Triple-A awards are announced, James Tibbs III has a good shotat winning Pacific Coast League MVP.

The Cubs haven’t yet said anything about the frightening injury to third baseman Alex Bregman during Sunday’s game in Cincinnati. I’ll spare you more photos, you’ve probably seen enough of Bregman’s swollen left eye.

We do have this update from ESPN’s Jeff Passan:

Chicago Cubs star Alex Bregman suffered multiple facial fractures after being struck by a foul ball while standing in the on-deck circle Sunday, sources tell ESPN. Bregman will not undergo surgery and is hopeful to return in the postseason.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) September 21, 2026

So… at this point what we have is “hopeful.” What that post also says is that Bregman likely will not return for the six games remaining in the regular season.

Could he be ready to play a week from tomorrow when the Cubs will (presumably) be opening a Wild Card Series… somewhere, either at Wrigley Field or on the road? I suppose that depends on how quickly the swelling around his eye goes down and how he feels.

Will they place Bregman on the injured list? If the Cubs do that, he’d be out for the Wild Card Series. My feeling is that they won’t, hoping that he could play by then and that they can manage a roster a player short for the next six games.

It seems likely that Pedro Ramirez will play third base, mostly, with Matt Shaw possibly taking a game or two there. The Cubs also have Gabriel Arias to back up all three infield positions.

If the Cubs do decide to IL Bregman, I suppose they’d call up James Triantos, who can play third base, though most of his experience this year is at second base.

As always, we await developments.

All eyes have been on Robert Suarez, one of the Braves’ prized offseason additions, as he rehabs and recovers from an elbow ailment that has cost him the last three months of the season.

Following his first rehab appearance with the Gwinnett Stripers on Sunday — which was Gwinnett’s final game of the season — it was a bit unclear what the next steps would be as he continues ramping up with hopes of pitching in the postseason.

On Monday afternoon, Alex Anthopoulos went on 680 The Fan Radio and was asked about Suarez. While Alex did not guarantee anything, he said it was “highly likely” that Suarez would be activated to the active roster “relatively soon,” perhaps on Wednesday or Thursday.

Alex also mentioned that Suarez, who is currently on the 60-day IL, will need a roster spot opened for his return. My guess would be Owen Murphy, who does not seem very likely to be in the Braves’ postseason mix and has options. But we will see.

Regardless, the healthy return of Suarez would be a major development for the Braves as they make final preparations for the postseason. We will see how he looks whenever he gets his name called in a few days.

The 10 most important Red Sox players for the postseason, ranked originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The Boston Red Sox have officially clinched a postseason berth, completing one of the most improbable turnarounds in MLB history.

But the real test begins next week. After falling to the New York Yankees in last year’s Wild Card Series, Boston is looking to make a deeper October run this time around, and it looks like the Yankees will once again stand in the way.

It’s been a total team effort for Boston all season long, but the playoffs are where stars emerge and the margin for error becomes razor thin. While nearly everyone on the postseason roster will play a role, we’ve narrowed it down to the 10 players who could have the biggest impact on how far this team goes.

Here are the 10 most important — not necessarily the best — Red Sox players for the 2026 playoffs:

1. Payton Tolle, SP

What a difference a year makes. Last year, Tolle experienced growing pains in his first MLB stint and pitched just 1/3 of an inning in the Wild Card Series at Yankee Stadium. This time, he’s coming off an exceptional rookie campaign with a chance to start Game 1 in the Bronx.

Tolle will enter the postseason with momentum on his side. The 23-year-old tallied 12 strikeouts while allowing just one run in six innings against Baltimore. He followed that up with six shutout innings against Kansas City, including an immaculate inning to begin the game.

If Tolle continues to perform at this level, he’ll give the Red Sox another frontline starter who can match up against other teams’ aces. He’s the pitcher with the greatest opportunity to change the trajectory of this postseason roster.

If the Red Sox make a deep postseason run, it’ll be because their rookie left-hander delivered each time he took the mound on the big stage.

2. Sonny Gray, SP

We’re sticking with pitching, because pitching is what propelled this Red Sox club to a postseason berth in the first place.

If Tolle is No. 1, it would be silly not to put Gray right behind him at No. 2. The 36-year-old veteran stabilized the rotation in the wake of Garrett Crochet’s injury. He was signed to be the No. 3 starter behind Crochet and Ranger Suarez, but he performed like an ace with a 17-5 record and a 2.82 ERA in 28 starts.

Now, Boston will lean on Gray and his big-game experience to lead the staff in October. Even if he doesn’t start Game 1 of the Wild Card Series, Gray will play a huge role in any postseason success.

3. Roman Anthony, LF/DH

The top position player on our list is the 22-year-old many expected to anchor Boston’s lineup and produce an MVP-caliber season in 2026. Instead, Anthony spent most of the year on the injured list and has largely struggled in the 50 games he’s been healthy. We know what the former No. 1 prospect is capable of, however, and he’ll significantly raise the Red Sox’ ceiling if he plays up to his potential in the postseason.

The Red Sox will lean heavily on their pitching staff throughout the playoffs, but Anthony is the X-factor in the lineup. This is a completely different club when he gets hot.

All it will take is a signature postseason moment for Red Sox fans to forget about the disappointing start to Anthony’s young career.

4. Ranger Suarez, SP

OK, back to pitching. A big reason the Red Sox signed Suarez to a five-year, $130 million contract in free agency is that he has a stellar postseason track record. The 31-year-old boasts a 1.48 ERA across 11 playoff appearances (eight starts) with the Philadelphia Phillies.

The only reason he isn’t higher on this list is we project him to be the No. 3 starter, which means we won’t even see him if the Sox get swept out of the Wild Card Series. If Boston advances, another strong postseason from Suarez will be critical for their World Series chances.

5. Wilyer Abreu, RF

Abreu is one of Boston’s best all-around players, but he’s a streaky hitter. The Red Sox’ mediocre offense can’t afford for him to go cold in the postseason, so he’s an incredibly important piece if they hope to make a deep run.

When he’s hot, Abreu’s bat is elite. He leads the American League with 36 doubles along with 24 homers in 151 games.

As important as his bat will be, Abreu’s Gold Glove defense in right field will also be a difference-maker. Postseason games can come down to one defensive miscue, and Abreu has earned a reputation as one of the best defensive right fielders in baseball.

If Abreu can give the Red Sox consistent at-bats and quality defense, he can quietly become one of the most impactful players on the roster over an entire series.

6. Willson Contreras, 1B

We’ve got the Venezuelan sluggers back-to-back. Contreras has been the Red Sox’ most consistent bat all season, and he’ll be leaned on heavily in the heart of the lineup throughout the playoffs.

Unlike most of Boston’s lineup, Contreras will enter the Wild Card Series with plenty of postseason experience. He won a World Series with the 2016 Chicago Cubs and has 30 playoff games under his belt in total.

With a team-high 27 homers, Contreras will be counted on to supply the Red Sox lineup with power throughout their playoff run. If he goes cold, there will be even more pressure on guys like Anthony, Abreu, and the player who’s next up on our list to get runs on the board.

7. Adley Rutschman, C

Rutschman will need to step it up offensively, but his importance goes beyond his bat because of his position. One could argue the role he plays behind the plate is even more crucial.

As Boston’s starting catcher, Rutschman will be responsible for managing the pitching staff through almost every postseason game, meaning he’ll be involved on almost every pitch thrown. There’s also a significant downgrade at catcher if he goes down with an injury, with only Connor Wong and Mickey Gasper as his potential backups.

For the Red Sox to make it far, Rutschman has to be more than just a productive hitter; he must also work seamlessly with the rotation and bullpen while living up to his reputation as one of the best defensive backstops in the league.

8. Aroldis Chapman, CP

Having a closer who can slam the door shut gives clubs a huge advantage come postseason time. The Red Sox are fortunate to have arguably the best of the bunch.

While Chapman wasn’t otherworldly in 2026 like he was in 2025, he still was elite with a 1.95 ERA in 52 appearances. He’ll look to limit free passes after watching his walk rate jump from 2.2 to 4.1 BB/9 over last year. If he does that, Boston can effectively shorten games by having him available for the ninth inning. He can also single-handedly lose games, automatically making him one of the club’s most important players for the postseason.

9. Garrett Whitlock, RP

Boston’s bullpen is perhaps its biggest strength heading into the postseason, and that’s because of the Whitlock/Chapman combo at the back end. Whitlock has been an elite set-up man with a 1.75 ERA and 0.877 WHIP across 53 appearances this season.

Starters typically have shorter outings in the playoffs, so we could see the Red Sox turn to Whitlock early and often throughout October if they advance past the Wild Card Series. He’s the reliever Boston will count on to mow down the heart of an opposing lineup in a high-leverage situation. That could be the difference between a win and a loss, and that’s why Whitlock makes the top 10 over some other very important players.

10. Ceddanne Rafaela, CF

Rafaela rounds out our top 10 most important Red Sox players for the postseason, but don’t let his ranking fool you. With elite defense in center field and a bat that made a significant leap this season, he can be considered another X-factor for this club in the playoffs.

If Boston makes a deep run, there’s a good chance we’ll get at least one signature Rafaela moment. The 26-year-old has a knack for coming up big in the clutch, whether it’s with a timely extra-base hit or a mind-blowing catch in center field.

Rafaela’s glaring absence during his time on the injured list with a quad injury has highlighted his importance to this club. If he’s back to full strength in time for the playoffs, that’ll give the Red Sox a major boost.

Honorable mentions: 3B Caleb Durbin, SS Trevor Story, LF/DH Jarren Duran, RP Erik Miller, RP Tyron Guerrero, P Brayan Bello and P Jake Bennett.

They didn’t crack the top 10, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have huge roles in October.

Durbin completely changes the outlook of the offense when he’s hitting. He’s also been an elite defensive third baseman all season long.

Story has been one of Boston’s best hitters since returning from the injured list. There’s no guarantee that’ll carry over into the playoffs, but he’ll at least have to be adequate defensively as the team’s starting shortstop.

Duran had a 2026 to forget, and with Anthony in left field and Mickey Gasper likely at DH, he’ll probably spend a fair amount of time on the bench. Still, he’s the type of player who can change a game with one swing, and his speed is a huge factor.

Miller and Guerrero will have major roles at the back end of the bullpen. Bello (if he makes the roster) and Bennett will be leaned on as bulk relievers. Miller has struggled lately, Guerrero is returning from injury, Bello is unproven in the playoffs, and we haven’t seen Bennett come out of the ‘pen.

Blade Tidwell leaves start early in Giants' game vs. Twins with apparent injury originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

A familiar scene unfolded in the fourth inning of the Giants’ game against the Minnesota Twins on Monday night at Oracle Park.

With the Giants leading 4-1, right-hander Blade Tidwell, who had tossed 3 1/3 frames of one-run ball, threw a sweeper for a ball to Ryan Jeffers and immediately signaled to the dugout that something was wrong. Moments later he walked off the mound with a trainer, and Tristan Beck replaced him.

Blade Tidwell came out of the game with a trainer after appearing to suffer an injury pic.twitter.com/UcRkHUOQsq

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) September 22, 2026

Tidwell’s exit marked the third time in less than a month that a Giants starting pitcher has left a game early due to injury — Carson Whisenhunt sustained a torn UCL on Aug. 24 and underwent Tommy John surgery, and Adrian Houser suffered a right forearm strain the very next day but avoided surgery.

And on July 20, Trevor McDonald left the game after warming up in the fifth inning with an injury that ended up requiring Tommy John surgery, too.

The Giants have suffered a myriad of injuries during a 2026 MLB season that has gone wrong in just about every way imaginable. Earlier Monday, the team placed Jung Hoo Lee on the 10-day IL and Bryce Eldridge on the seven-day concussion list as well.

San Francisco certainly is hoping for the best despite how things looked for Tidwell, who was coming off a stellar start against the St. Louis Cardinals last week as he makes his case for a rotation spot next season.

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We’re nearly there folks. The Yankees have just seven games left in the regular season, with only the thinnest of hopes at the division title left. The Rays will eliminate the Yankees from AL East contention with a combinationwin and a Yankees loss, and with the four-game set between the two about to kick off in the middle of this week that means that New York would essentially have to run the table from here to steal away the division crown. Their most recent outing in Arizona was a letdown as they lost two of three and had some self-inflicted wounds that prevented them from taking the middle game, but truth be told the Yankees have played well overall, owning one of the best records post-Deadline of any American League team — the only problem is the Rays have been a hair better than them through that same stretch, preventing them from gaining any ground whatsoever.

The good news is that the Yankees’ lead over Boston is as secure as the Rays’ lead over them, with a 5.5 game advantage plus the tiebreaker entering the final week of play. That all but assures that they’ll be playing the Wild Card Round at Yankee Stadium, but their fate is still largely up in the air for how far they can go. Aaron Judge’s immediate future is a question mark after he strained his calf trying to get involved without rehab games down the stretch, Ryan Weathers won’t be getting into any of these last regular season games, and Clarke Schmidt was unavailable for precautionary measures over the weekend. What are the Yankees going to do with Judge, and would it be safer to just shut him down? Can they make it far without him if they do or if he misses a significant amount of October? And can they survive the gauntlet run against Boston and Tampa regardless of who is available? If you have questions like these, or anything else on your mind, send ‘em in for a chance to be featured in our Yankees mailbag.

Answers will run on Friday afternoon. All questions received by the night of September 24th will be considered. You can leave your submissions in the comment section below or by e-mail to pinstripealleyblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

The Mariners are not the worst team in baseball anymore.

That hasn’t always been obvious these last few months. The Mariners have been terrible in the second half of the season. They’ve confirmed a losing record for the first time since 2021 and are all but eliminated from contention. In fact, they’ve been so bad one could fairly argue they were underdogs going into their recent series against the lowly A’s and Angels — they lost all three series. I even went so far as to say they were a push against the Rockies over the weekend. And that wound up being a fair assessment. They won the series but walked away with an even run differential at 10 runs scored and allowed.

Still, I have to give credit where it’s due. The series did move the Mariners ahead of the Rockies by WAR since the All-Star break. They are now merely the second worst team in the majors in the second half:

Team	Batters	Pitchers	Total
COL	2.6	1.7	4.3
SEA	5.8	0.6	6.4
ATH	3.4	3.3	6.7
CIN	3.3	4.0	7.3
SFG	3.0	4.4	7.4

Now, all of my league-worst doomsaying generally comes down to these WAR leaderboards. If we look at actual wins and losses, the Mariners are more like the sixth worst team in the majors in the second half, and not all that notable in a historic context. There’s reasons for this discrepancy, and WAR isn’t always the best at capturing the nuance in team-level performance in small (going on medium) samples.

But I think it’s worth understanding just how bad the Mariners look from this “true talent” perspective. This isn’t just a normal slump that every team goes through at some point in the season. This is the worst the Mariners have played in a half season this century:

Year	Half	Batters	Pitchers	Total
2026	2nd	5.8	0.6	6.4
2008	2nd	6.1	0.4	6.5
2010	2nd	6.7	-.01	6.6
2011	2nd	4.4	3.6	8.0
2019	2nd	5.2	3.3	8.5

The 2026 team is right there with the 2008 and 2010 teams by WAR in the second half. Again, both those teams lost far more games in either half, but it’s notable that the 2026 squad is comparable.

Now, “half” seasons are a misnomer. The split you see at FanGraphs or Baseball Reference simply denotes where the All-Star break divided the season in two, rather than equal 81-game stretches. For instance, the Mariners played 74 games in the second half of 2010, while they’ll only play 65 games in the second half of this year. In other words, on a rate basis, the Mariners aren’t nearly as bad in this second half as they were in those years.

Let’s account for this. I found every team’s half-season WAR and found the percentile and z-score within each half season. This way, we kind of sidestep the sample size question and think of these figures as relative to the rest of the league and half season. From that view, this is somewhere between the second and fourth worst stretch of baseball the Mariners have played this century.

Year	Half	WAR	Rank	Z-Score
2010	2	6.6	30	-1.81
2008	2	6.5	29	-1.71
2026	2	6.4	29	-1.45
2015	1	10.5	29	-1.43
2005	1	11.1	27	-1.36
2008	1	10.8	28	-1.32
2011	2	8.0	27	-1.25
2012	1	12.1	26	-1.05
2021	1	11.8	24	-0.97
2010	1	12.5	25	-0.90

What makes 2026 weird, of course, is the Mariners were actually pretty good in the first half. Sure, they were disappointing in many ways, but they ultimately ranked seventh in WAR and had a decent run differential. It wouldn’t have been surprising to see them surge in the second half, or at least maintain a frustrating relationship to .500. That would have been a totally normal shape for the season to take.

Instead, we got this:

Again, the Mariners are second worst team by WAR in the second half of 2026, behind only the Rockies. I looked into how rare it is for a team to collapse like this. In terms of raw WAR, the Mariners 16-WAR drop between halves is the ninth largest this century. That figure contains a few teams, like the 2018 Astros, who went from “best ever” to merely elite. If we instead look at change in z-score, the Mariners collapse is the sixth largest this century. And if we look at percentile change — i.e., the drop from seventh to 29th — the collapse is the third largest. We don’t see something like this every year:

Team	Year	1st Half WAR	2nd Half WAR	Raw ∆	Pct ∆	Z ∆
OAK	2008	23.0	6.1	-16.9	-0.80	-2.52
TEX	2000	18.3	2.9	-15.4	-0.55	-2.48
BAL	2005	23.1	8.1	-15.0	-0.79	-2.37
BOS	2012	21.3	5.4	-15.9	-0.66	-2.31
BOS	2006	20.7	8.9	-11.8	-0.66	-2.25
SEA	2026	23.0	6.4	-16.6	-0.76	-2.10
LAD	2010	22.5	8.1	-14.4	-0.65	-2.08
CIN	2014	21.0	6.7	-14.3	-0.72	-1.99
TBR	2009	29.4	18.1	-11.3	-0.31	-1.98
OAK	2014	27.2	12.2	-15.0	-0.59	-1.95

That’s to say, no matter how you cut it, 2026 represents both 1) some of the worst baseball the Mariners have played this century, and 2) one of the largest collapses in true talent we’ve seen from any team this century.

The reason isn’t complicated. The Mariners have been dreadful — truly dreadful — on the mound. They have a total of 0.6 WAR from their pitching staff in the second half, which ranks last by nearly a full win. Their starters have posted 1.7 WAR (29th) and their relievers have posted -1.1 (obviously 30th). August was arguably the worst pitching month in team history, and the Mariners have never been outscored by more runs.

Of course, the reason the Mariners were competitive in the first half is because their rotation was the very best in the majors by WAR. And while the bullpen was always somewhat shaky, they could avoid their worst options by getting seven innings a night from their starters. They were a top five pitching group overall in the first half. It doesn’t matter how you sort it, this is far and away the largest pitching collapse this century. We’ve never seen such excellence followed by such… whatever you want to call it.

Team	Year	1st Half WAR	2nd Half WAR	Raw ∆	Pct ∆	Z ∆
SEA	2026	13.4	0.6	-12.8	-0.89	-3.42
BOS	2024	13.4	1.6	-11.8	-0.89	-3.08
OAK	2015	11.7	1.2	-10.5	-0.76	-2.89
OAK	2008	12.8	2.1	-10.7	-0.69	-2.58
SEA	2011	13.9	3.6	-10.3	-0.76	-2.51

It’s hard to know exactly how much to blame the pitching, because the Mariners on defense are easily the worst fielding group in the majors in the second half. They were in the first half, too, but they’ve somehow gotten even worse. Since the All-Star break, they are in last by Fielding Run Value at catcher, third base, and shortstop. They are next to last at second base. The only position they’ve gotten positive value from is first base.

The Mariners lineup hasn’t even been that bad. They currently rank ninth by batting runs in the second half, with a broadly acceptable 103 wRC+. But for a team that largely punted defense to maximize offense, that’s not quite enough to reach even the median. The Mariners position players rank 18th in the second half by WAR, essentially unchanged from the first half.

I’ll leave you with a final plot: 

This shows second half WAR (by z-score) on the x axis and next season WAR on the y axis. The Mariners second half WAR in 2026 is represented by the red line. 

We can see a somewhat linear relationship between the points, meaning second half performance is generally indicative of next year performance. We can also see it’s rare for a team to play as bad as the Mariners have in the second half and then go on to be good, much less great, the next year. This is why the depth of the Mariners recent failure is concerning. What we’ve seen is not just bad baseball but a symptom of a bad baseball team. And it’s not easy to go from a bad baseball team to a good baseball team in an offseason.

That said, a bounce back is not without precedence. The only team this century to go from a bottom five team in the second half to a top five team the next year is the Red Sox. They did it twice, once from 2006 to 2007, and once from 2012 to 2013. They won the World Series both years.

It was a very scary moment during Sunday’s game against the Reds when Michael Busch hit a foul ball that Alex Bregman was unable to avoid as he warmed up on deck. Al already summarized what we know from the injury (and there likely won’t be another update until tomorrow due to today’s off day), but an uneasy question remains.

With six games remaining in the regular season and the Cubs one game from clinching a berth in the Wild Card round, today we need to take a closer look at what the Cubs offense and defense might look like if they are without their star third baseman for any length of time.

Even writing that sucks, a lot. After some early season struggles at the plate, Bregman is currently the second best hitter on the Cubs and it’s not particularly close. As I detailed less than a week ago, he’s been the second best hitter in all of baseball since the All Star Game, behind likely National League MVP, Pete Crow-Armstrong. Those numbers have shifted slightly since last week, with Fernando Tatis Jr. inching ahead of Bregman via fWAR in the last few games, but it’s still a potentially huge loss for any team.

It may be an even bigger loss for the 2026 Cubs than it would be for other teams in the Postseason hunt. The Cubs competitive edge is built almost entirely on elite offense and defense. You can see how the Cubs rank in a number of categories below:

Category	Rank
Offense	1st
Defense	1st
Pitching	29th
Starting Pitching	26th
Relief Pitching	28th

It’s old news at this point, but the reason the Cubs are where they are in the standings is their bats and their gloves. The pitching has been questionable at the best moments and that success is built on the ability of the Cubs defenders to turn weak contact into outs while outscoring their opponents. The former is what allows them to win games where they are giving up way more runs than they should.

Bregman isn’t just a team leader. He isn’t merely the big free agent signing who has set the tone for the Cubs. He’s their second-best hitter since the All-Star break, and their third best hitter during the 2026 season (behind Seiya Suzuki). He’s their fourth best defender this season (behind PCA, Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner). So let’s just stipulate up front that if the Cubs need to replace Bregman it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to replicate that production. Below are select stats for all of the Cubs who have at least 180 plate appearances in 2026:

Name	G	PA	HR	R	RBI	SB	BB%	K%	ISO	BABIP	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	xwOBA	wRC+	BsR	Off	Def	WAR
Pete Crow-Armstrong	156	702	45	118	107	38	11.11%	25.93%	.298	.326	.280	.371	.578	.402	.377	157	7.3	55.9	23.8	10.4
Dansby Swanson	121	466	19	81	67	17	10.52%	22.96%	.193	.247	.220	.303	.412	.314	.308	98	4.6	3.7	16.2	3.6
Nico Hoerner	153	666	8	62	71	22	6.31%	8.41%	.090	.277	.265	.317	.355	.299	.322	89	3.9	-5.2	9.2	2.6
Alex Bregman	153	693	26	89	89	3	10.82%	14.57%	.190	.273	.262	.352	.452	.352	.323	124	0.1	19.9	8.2	5.2
Miguel Amaya	80	243	6	35	26	0	9.47%	26.34%	.137	.309	.234	.339	.371	.321	.291	103	-1.3	-0.3	4.6	1.2
Carson Kelly	117	413	10	57	58	0	9.69%	15.98%	.122	.298	.264	.344	.386	.327	.315	107	-2.6	1.1	4.0	1.9
Seiya Suzuki	138	611	25	93	85	3	12.77%	24.39%	.204	.325	.267	.365	.470	.364	.339	132	-3.3	20.2	1.2	4.2
Ian Happ	150	612	24	87	67	4	12.91%	29.90%	.197	.289	.221	.331	.418	.330	.316	109	-1.7	5.2	1.0	2.7
Pedro Ramírez	75	245	6	36	32	7	7.76%	17.55%	.153	.303	.266	.324	.419	.322	.287	104	1.0	2.1	0.0	1.0
Matt Shaw	73	188	5	25	24	4	10.64%	17.55%	.181	.266	.238	.330	.419	.329	.300	109	-0.4	1.6	-0.7	0.7
Michael Busch	154	685	20	76	77	3	12.99%	23.21%	.157	.292	.239	.350	.396	.334	.333	112	-3.4	6.4	-6.6	2.2
Michael Conforto	108	295	15	32	44	1	11.53%	26.78%	.237	.288	.245	.339	.482	.352	.335	124	-0.5	8.0	-7.9	1.0

The most obvious solution is a combination of Pedro Ramírez and Matt Shaw filling in at third base. In limited sample sizes, Ramírez has hit .350/.409/.575 with a wRC+ of 172 in 44 plate appearances against left-handed pitching. Shaw has hit .273/.367/.468 with a wRC+ of 132 against lefties. The results have not been as good against righties for either hitter. Ramírez is slashing .247/.305/.385 with a wRC+ of 89 in 201 plate appearances against righties while Shaw is slashing .205/.295/.373 with a wRC+ of 86 in 97 plate appearances against righties.

Neither is in the same category of defender as Bregman, who should compete for his second Gold Glove this season. You can see the OAA leaderboard from Statcast below:

It’s definitely not ideal, but winning baseball seasons always have a curveball or two. Here’s hoping the Cubs receive good news on Bregman after more tests are run and he’s able to rejoin the team quickly. In the meantime, it’s quite the opportunity for a couple of the Cubs young infielders to make their mark on a Cubs Postseason run. If he can’t play himself, I imagine no one will be cheering for Pedro and Shaw more than Bregman.

After a promising start to the season (remember when the Rockies went 13-14 in April?), the Rockies are one loss away from their fifth straight 100-plus-loss season. That’s largely due to a 7-25 skid since Aug. 17.

With Colorado (57-99) hosting the Arizona Diamondbacks (82-74) in its home finale Tuesday through Thursday, it’s hard to tune in with much optimism or interest right now. However, whether you plan on going to 20th and Blake to catch one last game or you’ll be tuning into Rockies.TV or KOA radio, here are some individual milestones and bright spots to look for in the final action at Coors Field in 2026.

Bark at the Park

With temperatures projected to be in the low 80s and high 70s, it’s a perfect time to bring out the dogs to Coors Field! Both Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s games will feature canines of all shapes and sizes participating in the pre-game parade for the annual Bark at the Park games. Regardless of what’s happening on the field, it’s aways fun to see the Simba Cam and how Ryan Spilborghs will interact with the dogs and fans in the stands.

K-Free’s final start as a Rockie at Coors?

131 Games over 10 seasons.

687 innings pitched.

Through the ups and downs, Kyle Freeland has been there for the Rockies. In those 131 games at Coors Field, which include 128 starts, Freeland has gone 40-40 with a 4.97 ERA and 538 strikeouts.

When he takes the mound on Tuesday against the Diamondbacks, it’s possible that it could be his last start as a Rockie at Coors Field. While Freeland, 33, has certainly had his share of struggles this year and in his career, this season he’s recorded four quality starts, including the first complete game in his career — an 8-1 win over Kansas City in the Mile High City on Aug. 2.

This season marks the end of Freeland’s five-year, $64.5 million deal. His future is unknown, and he could certainly be re-signed to stay with his hometown team. The majority of the Purple Row community believes that will be the case. Either way, it’s worth noting the history that might happen on Tuesday.

McCarthy’s triples and on-base streak

One of the most fun and exciting additions to the 2026 Rockies has been Jake McCarthy. Not only has he stepped up to be a great leadoff hitter, but his speed and ability to come up with clutch hits have made the Rockies a bigger threat at the plate.

The first thing to watch with McCarthy is to see if he can continue his on-base streak through the final homestand. McCarthy has currently reached base 22 games in a row, which is a career high for the former Diamondback. What a way to show the team that traded him what they are missing by stretching that to 25 games?

McCarthy hit a triple on Sunday against Seattle to extend his 22-game streak.

The 13th three-bagger of the year is currently the second-most in MLB behind Arizona’s Corbin Carroll, who has 16. McCarthy’s 13 triples are one shy of tying Charlie Blackmon (2017) for the second-most in a single season and only two behind Dexter Fowler’s single-season franchise best 15 in 2010. Nine of McCarthy’s triples have come at home this season. In an even deeper dive, McCarthy’s six triples during his 22-game on-base streak make him the third Rockie with six or more triples in a 22-game span in franchise history, joining Fowler (2011 and 2012) and Juan Uribe (2001).

The final thing to watch is McCarthy’s batting average. Entering the Arizona series, McCarthy is batting .297, which ranks No. 8 in MLB and No. 6 in the National League. Maybe McCarthy can take advantage of the spacious outfield at Coors Field by adding a triple or two and increasing his batting average.

Rumfield’s 24-game streak, AVG and OBP

Perhaps it’s fitting that during the same season that Todd Helton’s statue was unveiled at 20th and Blake, the Rockies seem to have found their first baseman of the future. Rumfield has proved to be the hitter the Rockies needed as a tough out who always finds a way to get on base.

Rumfield drew his 71st walk of the season to extend his on-base streak to 24 games on Sunday. On Saturday, Rumfield went 2-for-4 with an RBI and one run scored to help the Rockies beat Seattle 5-3.

GO TJ GO! pic.twitter.com/QNq5DWyfTO

— Colorado Rockies (@Rockies) September 20, 2026

Rumfield’s 24 games is the longest active streak in the Majors. It is also the longest on-base streak by a Rockie since Tyler Freeman’s 25-game streak, June 13-July 12, 2025.

Going into Tuesday, Rumfield is batting .300./.392/.451 with 71 walks and 85 strikeouts. His batting average is No. 7 in MLB and No. 5 in the National League, while his OBP is third-best in MLB and second in the National League behind Milwaukee’s Jake Bauers (.397). His numbers put him into tiers with veteran All-Stars like Jordan Alvarez and Luis Arraez, which is all the more impressive considering he’s a rookie. If he can finish hitting above .300, it will be the first time for a Rockie since Nolan Arenado (.315) and Trevor Story (.314) did it in 2019.

Then take McCarthy and Rumfield together. They are the first pair of Rockies to have an active on-base streak of at least 20 games at the same time since Charlie Blackmon (22g) and Elehuris Montero (26g) in 2023.

Goodman reaching the 40-HR milestone

Last season, Goodman had an outstanding year with 31 homers, 91 RBIs and hitting .278/.323/.520 in his first All-Star campaign. This season, he returned to the All-Star Game and enters the final homestand hitting .245/.312/.528 with 39 homers and 82 RBIs.

It would be so fitting for Goodman to hit his 40th home run at Coors Field to close out 2026. If he can hit the 40-HR milestone, whether it’s at home or in the final series of 2026 at the Chicago White Sox, Goodman will become the first Rockie to hit 40 homers since Arenado hit 41 in 2019.

It might be a long shot for Goodman to hit his 40th at Coors Field since only 16 of his 39 have come at home. But anything could happen, especially considering No. 39 came on Sunday vs. the Mariners, even though it was his first Coors Field homer since Aug. 1 vs. Kansas City.

39 for Hunter! pic.twitter.com/tEMxLCC8Jv

— Colorado Rockies (@Rockies) September 20, 2026

Final thoughts

Despite the Rockies going out with a whimper instead of a bang, the end of a season can be a bittersweet feeling as it’s never fun when baseball is over. With 100 losses seeming unavoidable, at least there are some smaller, individual things to watch for.

What are you excited about in the final three games at Coors this season? Anything you’re hoping to see? Let us know in the comments!

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Officials with Fifth Third Bank and the Detroit Tigers held a press conference on Monday afternoon to announce a new name for Comerica Park. Back on February 2, Fifth Third Bancorp completed its merger with Comerica Incorporated. The latter’s absorption into Fifth Third immediately prompted the question about future naming rights for the Detroit Tigers’ ballpark. That question was answered today, as starting in 2027, Comerica Park will be re-named Fifth Third Park.

In a sense, this keeps things in the family. The Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens play at Fifth Third Field. From 2000-2021, the Tigers’ High-A affiliate, the West Michigan Whitecaps, played at Fifth Third Ballpark in Comstock Park, Michigan, until it was re-named LMCU Ballpark.

We could’ve hoped for something like Tigers Stadium at Fifth Third Park, or Mike Ilitch Field at Fifth Third Park, but instead it’s the most basic name possible. We’ll get used to it, but “Fifth Third” just doesn’t roll off the tongue. It sounds more like an exercise for people trying to cure a lisp, but here we are. Fans tend to find their own way to a nickname, but we’ll see if anyone comes up with a slightly more workable option.

In other news, first baseman and former prospect Jace Jung reportedly has a locker in the Tigers clubhouse as of today. It looks like he’ll get to join the team for the final week of the season, earning a bit of a thank you check after being stuck in Triple-A all year. He’s on the 40-man roster anyway, so perhaps he’ll just take Troy Melton’s active roster spot for the final week after Melton left Sunday night’s game in Chicago with tightness in his right forearm.

Jace Jung has a locker at Comerica Park.

— Evan Woodbery (@evanwoodbery) September 21, 2026

Comerica Park has 25 years of memories in it through Tigers baseball and various concerts people have attended over the year, as well as via the buildup of the surrounding entertainment district. This is a new chapter, but as some Olde English guy once wrote, “what’s in a name?” Ultimately, all that matters is how the Detroit Tigers play in Fifth Third Park.

In the 2019 MLB Draft, CJ Abrams was one of the most highly touted prospects. MLB Pipeline ranked him as the 4th overall prospect in that draft. However, he was not seen as being a monster power hitter. Pipeline actually expected him to be a 10 to 15 home run hitter whose speed and contact skills carried his profile.

After being taken 6th overall by the Padres and being traded to the Nationals in the Juan Soto trade, Abrams is now a much more powerful hitter. That slim, wiry kid who was projected to have 40 grade power is now a grown man with a 30 home run season under his belt.

Even now when you see Abrams, he does not look like your typical 30 home run bat. He has filled out, but he is not an overly physical player. Abrams is still quite lean and his exit velocities do not jump off the page. However, he has still found a way to hit 31 home runs even while slumping down the stretch.

I know he's struggled lately but Abrams having 31 homers is pretty nuts given his prospect profile and what we saw from him for most of his career. Does not look like your typical slugger but he hits bombs https://t.co/cf0KCHB6Tl

— federalbaseball (@federalbaseball) September 20, 2026

A big reason why Abrams is able to hit so many home runs is his pull heavy approach. This season he is pulling the ball in the air at a 24.7% clip, which is a career high and well above league average. His swing is geared to do damage to the pull side, which leads to him out slugging his exit velocities.

It is always fun to see a player succeed in a way that scouts did not expect. People throughout the industry knew that CJ Abrams would be a good player from a young age. However, he is doing it in a slightly different way. 

As Abrams got closer to the big leagues, scouts became more bullish on his power upside. Baseball America said that Abrams could develop into a 20 home run bat and Pipeline stated that he had at least average power. Those projections seemed right on the money until this season. Abrams hit 18, 20 and 19 homers from 2023 to 2025.

However, he has reached a different level this season. With 31 homers, no shortstop has hit more long balls than Abrams. He has become a power bat that is a force to be reckoned with. If he can find a way to finish seasons more effectively, Abrams can become a 35 to 40 home run bat in the future.

No primary shortstops in MLB have more home runs than CJ Abrams (31) 👽 pic.twitter.com/7VrjVTZ7eL

— Just Baseball (@JustBB_Media) September 20, 2026

He has been around a long time now, so it is easy to forget that CJ Abrams is still just 25 years old. Even though he has faded late in seasons, Abrams has been on an upward trajectory and this was his best year yet.

The question now is what comes next for Abrams. He just had a career year, but is getting closer to free agency. Abrams only has two more years of team control left. Do the Nationals trade him, extend him or do they want to build around him and let these next two years play out? We will get the answer to this question in the offseason.

All I know is that 30/30 players do not grow on trees. In fact, Abrams is only the second National to ever accomplish that. Alfonso Soriano is the only other, and that happened 20 years ago now. Abrams is a special player, and it will take a special haul to get him out of DC.

CJ Abrams is the 3rd player in Nationals/Expos franchise history to have a 30-HR/30-SB season, joining Alfonso Soriano (2006) and Vladimir Guerrero (2001 & 2002)! pic.twitter.com/RiJ0ieUFsb

— MLB (@MLB) September 19, 2026

With the recent extension of Cade Cavalli, there could be at least some chance of extending Abrams. He is not a Boras client, which makes things easier. However, it has been reported that there has not been a lot of movement on that front yet. It will be fascinating to see what happens this offseason.

Regardless of that, it is cool to see players morph into something we did not see coming. CJ Abrams was expected to be a great player, but not a big time power hitter. He has flipped the script and has become one of the best power hitting middle infielders in the game. Seeing that growth and development is one of my favorite parts of being a baseball fan. You can think you know it all, but the game will always throw surprises your way.

The bad news in the world of the Cincinnati Reds this weekend was that TJ Friedl was mercifully designated for assignment. That’s good news if you focus solely on the ghastly production he put forward during the 2026 season, but it’s bad news in the sense that Friedl both provided years of yeomen’s work in CF and atop the order and that the Reds, seemingly, weren’t prepared for him to fall right off a cliff like that.

He was still their regular leadoff hitter up until May 12th, after all. The Reds chose to pay him nearly $4 million for this season for a reason.

While Friedl’s eventual departure will take a chunk of past-production out of Cincinnati’s outfield quiver, it’s worth pointing out just how bad Cincinnati’s outfield has been even with Friedl’s good years. Just last year, for instance, collective RF production by the Reds graded out to just a 56 wRC+, far and away the worst among all RF groups in the sport (with Detroit’s 69 second worst). The 79 wRC+ put up by the entirety of the outfield (Friedl included) was similarly dead last among all 30 teams.

The Reds are not devoid of semi-talented options out there as we look towards 2027, however. JJ Bleday has brought a reasonably solid bit of lefty power to LF, something that should dovetail nicely with Spencer Steer when the latter is healthy again next spring. In center, Dane Myers has brought a decent-ish floor to the position with solid defense and an ability to hit left-handed pitching reasonably well, but leaning on him against righties still seems an outlandish ask. There have even been flashes of true brilliance from the young Hector Rodriguez, though his splits suggest that he, too, should likely only be used on one side of a platoon.

Sprinkle in the return of Blake Dunn and the potential that Carlos Jorge can take a step forward after his first cup of coffee and there are bodies to take breaths out on the grass next year. On any given day you wouldn’t be shocked to see any of them actually get a hit off big league pitching, swipe a bag, or make a catch that prompted you innately to stand up and applaud. Deserving big leaguers most all of them, with only the talented prospects yet to show enough to be considered ‘actual major leaguers’ in terms of their quality.

What the Reds don’t seemingly have, though, is a single one of those guys who looks the part of both an everyday player and a player on whom you can give a middle-of-the-order role to right now. Only Steer – who should really just be an infielder and who is coming off a season-ending wrist injury – fits the bill of ‘everyday regular’ by even Cincinnati’s standards, and he’s been worth a grand total of 0.9 bWAR in 952 PA since the start of the 2025 season. Hell, Steer will turn 30 in 2027 and will be making something akin to ~$6 million via his second trip through arbitration this winter, and if anything he fits the Friedl profile of ‘a guy the Reds should have traded before he hits 30 and his production craters.’

So, like in most other corners of the baseball world that exist, the Cincinnati Reds find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Frugal to their core, they have to figure out a way to revamp an entire outfield while also knowing full well they have an existing stock of outfielders in-house who’d probably warrant a collective C- grade, at best, if judged by their front office peers.

What’s sad, though, is despite being this deep into a second consecutive botched rebuild, Cincinnati’s ownership and front office seem to have zero urgency in making a thorough revamp happen. They are going to sit on their hands and let this group have another year to show that maybe, just maybe, one of the group will stick as a found-money success story, since actually putting in the time, money, and effort to bring in proven players is simply too much to ask from these guys.

Moving on from Friedl should just be the start. Instead, they’re going to turn him into the fall guy by their inactivity beyond that.

Before the 2026 season started, the Braves were projected to be good. Per FanGraphs, their central estimate Steamer-plus-ZiPS blend projection saw them in a virtual tie for the NL East crown with the Mets at 90 wins, with division odds of 36 percent, top-two-in-NL record odds of 29 percent, and overall playoff odds of 79 percent. The projected record was top three; the playoff odds were top four.

As I start writing this on September 21, the day after the Braves clinched the NL East with a sweep of the Astros, it’s hard to say that things didn’t work out as expected. The Braves have 92 wins, good for fourth in MLB — whatever extra wins they collect this week are gravy, as the Braves have little chance of overtaking the Dodgers for a top-two NL record and corresponding bye, and they probably won’t try in favor of getting guys rest and lining up their rotation for the first round of the postseason. In at least this way, things went according to plan: the Braves were projected to be good, they were good, and they ended up basically where they were expected to. Hooray, the system works, at least this time. (Not in 2025, but the less we can say about that cursed season, the better… perhaps 2025 was the debt repaid for 2018.)

This turn of events should be satisfying. Or, failing that, at least mollifying. For all the hand-wringing from 2024-on: the core is aging and no longer good; the team can’t supplement its roster with quality players, especially in the rotation; the team can’t manage player health well enough to complete; and so on and so forth ad nauseam like a giant Battery Power Atlanta Braves Game Thread and Discussion made manifest into a marquee crawl blazoning from the inside of fans’ eyelids… yes, for all that hand-wringing, here came the 2026 Braves, clinching with a week to go, while the Mets went full Mets (again, and earlier this time) and the Phillies look like a much more apt target for the same sort of hand-wringing.

Are you satisfied? If so, this post isn’t for you. This post is for me, someone who spent a huge chunk of the offseason thinking about how this roster shaped up, and then pulled an update together every two weeks that told a… different… story. A weird story. Not weird like 2018, where a young roster led by a budding superstar played well enough on both sides of the ball to roll through five of the season’s six months en route to a 90-win season. Weird a different way.

I considered burying the lede, but I won’t, and chances are, you’ve seen this written before. The Braves have the fourth-most wins through the point where win collection was relevant for them. Yet, they rank 21st in position player fWAR and ninth in pitching fWAR. Are they getting horrendously unlucky with offensive outputs? Not really — they rank 14th in xwOBA (and that’s not park-adjusted; they play in a favorable-ish home park for offense). There’s a bunch of stuff going on, but it all makes the the story of the 2026 Braves complicated. And weird. I’m emphasizing weird, because that’s the vaguest, most-broad way of talking about it.

Baseball is great because it’s weird. It’s an affair that lends itself to identifying, collecting, and analyzing insanely minute data slices. You’d think with that level of granularity, we’d have come up with a Unifying Theory of Baseball, and in some ways, we have. The thing is, that theory only works in general, and not in every single case. That tension between “we know how this works at this point” and “oh crap it didn’t work right here” is, at least for me, the most delectable part of the whole affair. Experiencing baseball is standing chest-deep in a river of both expectations and occurrences as they unceasingly rush past you. It’s amazing. I won’t forget the 2026 Braves, who are like a bizarrely-shaped log in that same river, cartwheeling end-on-end and occasionally smacking everyone in the face.

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Let’s talk briefly about WAR. fWAR, the FanGraphs WAR formulation, to be specific. (This is not the place for a castigation of bWAR, the Baseball-Reference flavor, but we can make a space for that elsewhere.) Here’s a not-secret that you may not be aware of if you made it this far, but don’t know how (f)WAR works.

WAR has no idea whether a run scored (or didn’t), and therefore has no care for whether anyone scored more (or fewer) runs than anyone else at any time ever.

WAR has a tough job, and I won’t get into everything it does pretty well here, but the idea is that in order to meet all of its functions and responsibilities, WAR has little use for context. A bloop single can be a walkoff that wins a game. A bloop single can be a garbage time nothingburger. A bloop single could be a key part of a rally that is rendered irrelevant by a bullpen meltdown later. To WAR, they’re all just bloop singles.

So then, you may not find it noteworthy, but I find it mind-spinningly remarkable, that this is true: from 2021-2026, somewhere between 80-90 percent of the difference in team record (and generally closer to 90 percent) can be explained by difference in team (f)WAR. If you made a chart, it would look like this:

(Hey, what’s with the stuff in the bottom left corner? That’s 2020. WAR even worked this well in 2020.)

See the coefficient on that best-fit line formula? It’s basically one, i.e., one more WAR-win means one more actual win. This is also remarkably consistent — if doing individual years, that slope coefficient is somewhere outside of 0.9 to 1.1 in just five of the 25 years assessed (excluding the pandemic season), and just one since 2010 (2025). (And it’s not like it’s far off of 0.9 or 1.1 where it does happen.)

Another thing remarkable about this diagonal corndog of a graph? fWAR was, maybe at some point, focused entirely on the nuts and bolts of outs and non-outs, but it has deviated. One huge thing that stands out in my mind has to do with fielding: by switching from UZR to Statcast/OAA for defense, positioning is no longer accounted for in fWAR. A team with elite defenders in the wrong place gets more WAR even if they don’t get more outs; a team with lollygagging glovemen that has pristine-ish positioning would probably have awful defensive metrics but a very low BABIP-against (that wouldn’t factor into WAR). Yet, fWAR perseveres. (It wasn’t that big a change, but I do think it’s one that needs to be acknowledged — it makes WAR better at comparing players but worse at being summed and giving you a team-level understanding.)

So, the system works. Does it work for the Braves?

Pretty much, yes. There were three outlier-ish seasons where the Braves did something akin to what they are doing in 2026, but most of the rest are right on the line. In 2002, the Braves had 88 WAR-wins but romped to a 101-win season. In 2019, it was 86 WAR-wins and a 97-win season. 2026? Even without the full year in the books, it’s 79 WAR-wins and 92 wins.

The 2026 Braves have a real chance of having sub-.500 WAR-wins, while winning the division and winning 92-plus games. Since I’ve been watching them (2001-onward, hence the time horizon here), the Braves have had eight seasons with sub-.500 WAR-wins (excluding 2020); the only season, other than what might transpire in 2026, was that doomed 2011 campaign where the team finished with 80 WAR-wins but 89 go-nowhere wins. That season sucked at the end, but maybe it was… the universe setting things to rights in a compressed period?

Anyway, enough examples, here’s a table.

I could stop here, but let’s go deeper.

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In addition to team WAR, which is the sum of WAR accrued by all players playing for that team, FanGraphs also computes and maintains BaseRuns. The idea behind BaseRuns is that linear weights (the things that assign value to a double versus a homer versus an out) don’t cover enough edge cases when adding a bunch of players performing on the same team together, so it exists as a team-oriented measure of run scoring and run prevention, done mostly by just taking all the individual events that a team is involved in and converting them into runs-per-PA on both the hitting and pitching-plus-defense side. It’s basically like run differential, except if you decomposed run differential to be “the stuff that leads to runs” instead of “actual runs scored that we are just going to tally.” For more, see here — ten years old, but still useful, I think.

The 2026 Braves are not suuuuper weird when it comes to BaseRuns. This season, they have the tenth-best BaseRuns-based offense, the seventh-best BaseRuns-based run prevention, and the ninth-best BaseRuns proxy record overall. (A funny thing about BaseRuns in 2026: the Pirates are fifth in MLB, the Tigers are seventh, and the Braves are barely ahead of the Marlins.) The Braves’ current BaseRuns record is 85-71, seven wins behind their actual pace. The Reds, Phillies, and Rays are all at +9 over BaseRuns; there are three teams (Angels, Tigers, Giants) at -11 or worse relative to BaseRuns. It’s been kind of a wild year for BaseRuns, to be honest.

Both BaseRuns and WAR are sort of based on the same premises. There are key differences, of course — adjustments for the non-linear weights-ness of it all offensively, and the run prevention side really just uses “what did your team allow in terms of outcomes” rather than joining together position player defensive value for balls in play and walks/plunkings/strikeouts/homers (i.e., FIP) on the pitching end. Not surprisingly, there is very little difference between BaseRuns and WAR-wins — probably because BaseRuns is largely only meant to differentiate in edge cases.

Where things get weird is that the Braves are pretty good by BaseRuns, and very mediocre by team fWAR. This is the franchise’s second-largest fWAR-versus-BaseRuns gap, after 2010 (86 by WAR-wins, 93 by BaseRuns, and 91 actual wins).

Worth noting that the Tigers (78 WAR-wins, 86 BaseRuns wins, 73 wins) and the Giants (69 WAR-wins, 77 BaseRuns wins, 64 wins) are also in Weird City. Especially the Tigers, who… I don’t even know what’s going on there. Woof, man. Honorable mention to the Rangers in the opposite direction: 82 WAR-wins, 75 BaseRuns wins, 78 actual wins.

Among the time periods examined (2001-2026 for WAR-wins versus actual wins, 2001-2025 for WAR-wins versus BaseRuns wins), the Braves are:

• Seventh in magnitude of outperforming their WAR-wins in terms of actual wins, literally a 99th percentile happenstance; and
• 20th in terms of WAR-wins lower than BaseRuns, a 97th percentile outcome (or, 54th in overall magnitude of disparity between the two, a 93rd percentile outcome).

Having seven more wins than your BaseRuns record isn’t weird. But having six fewer WAR-wins than your BaseRuns record? Yeah, that doesn’t happen all that often. Add it to the weird pile.

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Of course, what this all comes down to is the players. The players play, accumulate WAR, and thereby also inform BaseRuns (mostly doing the same thing in both cases). Whether the team wins or loses a given game isn’t super-related to WAR or BaseRuns because sequencing and the like comes into account.

Wait a minute… sequencing. Maybe this is all about sequencing. We’re on to something, a bit. The Braves do have the league’s fourth-highest clutch score offensively, suggesting that they hit a lot better in higher leverage than lower leverage. They have the exact same ranking on the pitching end, too. The actual splits aren’t very exciting, though. For hitting, they rank:

• 21st in batting outputs and 11th in batting outputs in low leverage;
• 19th and 18th, respectively, in medium leverage; and
• Tenth and ninth, respectively, in high leverage.

They’re unlucky in low leverage and pretty good (and not unlucky in the same way) in high leverage.

For pitching, they rank:

• 18th in FIP and 13th in xFIP in low leverage;
• 11th and 10th, respectively, in medium leverage; and
• Eighth and 17th, respectively, in high leverage.

The secret to the Braves’ success? It’s apparently not giving up homers in high leverage. That’ll do it. Why are the Braves weird like they are? Because their HR/FB in high leverage is 7.3 percent, while their HR/FB in medium leverage is 11.9 percent. That’s not the whole story, but imagine how this team looks if they give up eight more homers (I counted, that’s the difference in the HR/FB in high leverage) in high leverage. Sure, maybe they don’t then lose all of those games, or maybe they did lose some where they avoided a homer in high leverage but… eight falls right into that BaseRuns/WAR-wins/actual wins differential range. It’s not everything, but it’s something.

Three cheers for not giving up as many homers in high leverage en route to a division title!

By the way, here’s a list of Braves with 20 innings pitched and an FIP- of ten or more points lower than their xFIP-: Chris Sale, Didier Fuentes, Dylan Lee, Robert Suarez, Victor Mederos. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

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Okay, I was going to talk about players but got derailed. Here’s my final bit of “this team is weird” pelting. I’m going to give you three things in the table below:

1. Each position player projected to get 200-plus PAs in 2026, each starter projected to throw at least 67 innings, and each reliever projected to throw at least 22 innings;
2. Their projected playing time and WAR; and,
3. Their actual playing time and fWAR.

How do you think this is going to look like before you scroll down?

Honestly, good lord, what is even happening here. The Braves basically lost a full season of playing time among these projected guys (Ha-Seong Kim, Sean Murphy, and Ronald Acuña Jr.) — but moreso than that, this group of 11 was supposed to contribute above-average, 2.9 WAR-per-600 PAs play. Instead, they contributed… 1.9 WAR-per-600 PAs play.

Austin Riley is/was a nightmare basically all season, minus a few brief glimmers of something that wasn’t awful. Acuña has been awesome lately, but let’s not forget that even if you leave some xwOBA underperformance aside, his current .368 mark is tied for his second-lowest ever, and the run environment is better this year than in the other two years where he didn’t perform up to his lefty standards. Kim’s season was one of the biggest disasters we’ve seen from this franchise, closer to B.J. Upton than anything else — even if he too managed to kinda-sorta salvage it with some huge hits down the stretch. Murphy is either not fully healthy or not fully jiving with trying not to swing out of his shoes. Dominic Smith was supposed to be terrible and somehow ended up even worse in nearly 100 more PAs than anticipated.

Were there any big wins? Mauricio Dubon. That’s really it.

Did anyone else save the position players? Nope. These guys account for 16 of the team’s 16.8 position player fWAR, and 88 percent of their PAs. No player not projected to play a big role actually stepped in and “won” a big role. The best bench performance the Braves got was Eli White’s 0.6 fWAR in 144 PAs as a result of massive xwOBA overperformance, and they traded him to make roster room at the Trade Deadline anyway.

Pitchers, this almost feels like a typed-out version of a Lewis Black routine. (Do people even get this reference anymore?)

Yeah, Chris Sale is awesome. But… Spencer Strider? Terrible and barely pitched. Reynaldo Lopez? Not good, and barely pitched. Oh, Bryce Elder pitched a lot… and due to homers, somehow produced less on a rate basis than modest expectations. Spencer Schwellenbach? Let’s not even go there.

The good news for the pitching is that Sale was so freakin’ good that these guys didn’t really miss a beat, other than availability. They were projected to pitch at a rate of around 3.2 WAR per 200 innings, and they ended up at 3.0 WAR… except that they ended up pitching about two-thirds of the innings they were supposed to, collectively. Who filled the gap? Well, Martin Perez came in and played savior, with a funny 74/105/111 (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) line. Thanks, guy! We all know about Tyler Mahle, and he’s been huge. Still, that leaves about 50 innings unaccounted for, and, well, the guys the Braves tried in those innings pretty much got obliterated.

Aaand, that leads us to this, where we applaud Dylan Lee and Didier Fuentes for A) being awesome, but also B) not allowing homers, which basically gave extra weight to their already-fantastic pitching.

Yes, the Braves fell short of about 100 innings in terms of projected “bullpen regulars,” but not having Joel Payamps around was addition by subtraction. Throw in Robert Suarez being great before getting hurt along with the Iglesias and Lee show, a nice showing from the other Dylan (Dodd), and the fact that Victor Mederos is apparently the key emblem of this team (87/71/110, you can hahaha that all the way to the bank), and I guess the point is that wherever things went terribly, it wasn’t in the bullpen.

Wanna add these together?

Consider that the team’s actual WAR from all sources, not just these prognosticated-to-be-key-contributors names is 32.6, so we’re not missing much (Tyler Mahle, Martin Perez, and mostly negative fWAR otherwise). Nearly every position player was worse! Chris Sale (and Tyler Mahle’s two months), awesome! Bullpen, awesome! The team still fell well short of what it was expected to do… but also, absolutely didn’t.

We’ve come full circle. This team is weird. Will the weirdness continue? I have no idea. Either way, I don’t think I’ll ever forget these guys. But, I will request that in 2027, they be a little less weird… and just win the normal way: by crushing the other team on both sides of the ball.

(Oh, and we haven’t even gotten into the whole Antoan Richardson mess, the challenging passivity, the way that almost no good team has had a month as bad as the Braves had in June… and it keeps going. But I was over 3,000 words. We can cover those later, when things calm down.)

Astros fans, your team is running on empty.

The problem is the pedal is already to the floor, the finish line is approaching, and there may not be anything left in the tank.

Once again, the Astros dug themselves a massive early-season hole. Once again, they somehow fought their way out of it and made September baseball matter.

But that comeback came at a price. Now we’re seeing it. The pitching staff looks exhausted.

The rotation spent much of the season battling injuries, inconsistency and an inability to consistently pitch deep into games. That forced the bullpen to carry an enormous workload just to keep the Astros’ season alive.

For months, those relievers answered the call. They covered innings. They protected leads. They compensated for short starts and helped drag this team back into contention.

But eventually, the bill comes due. It’s coming due now.

Ángel De Los Santos, AJ Blubaugh and Bryan King are among the pitchers who provided important innings and stretches of excellent baseball for this team. But at some point, arms get tired. Guys hit a wall. And when that happens in September, there’s no offseason reset button you can push to get them back to where they were in May, June or July.

The Astros needed their bullpen to survive the first five months. Now they desperately need that same bullpen to save their season. There may simply not be enough left in the tank.

How Did the Astros Get Here?

If you’re looking for where to place blame, start with roster construction. The Astros entered the season with an obvious imbalance. They had a surplus of infielders and a shortage of legitimate major league outfielders. It wasn’t a hidden problem.

It wasn’t something that suddenly appeared because of injuries. Everyone could see it. Yet somehow, an entire season has nearly passed and the problem was never adequately solved.

Waiver claims weren’t going to fix it. Reclamation projects weren’t going to fix it. The desperation moves at the trade deadline weren’t guaranteed to fix something that should have been addressed months earlier.

That brings us back to former general manager Dana Brown. Brown deserves criticism because he was the general manager and roster construction was part of his responsibility. But there’s an important question we may never be able to completely answer:

How much authority did Dana Brown actually have?

How many decisions were his, and how many were influenced or directed by owner Jim Crane and others within the organization? Brown is gone now, but the organizational structure remains. That’s why simply blaming the former general manager doesn’t solve everything.

Joe Espada Isn’t the Biggest Problem

I’ve criticized Joe Espada when I thought criticism was warranted. He has shortcomings. Every manager does. But considering the roster he’s been handed and the obstacles this team has faced, I believe Espada has done a better-than-average job getting the Astros back to the brink of another postseason appearance.

Think about everything he’s navigated. An early-season hole. An inconsistent rotation. A bullpen that was forced to absorb a massive workload. Injuries throughout the roster. An outfield that has been a problem virtually all season.

And yet the Astros continued winning enough games to matter in September.

If this team ultimately falls short of the postseason, Espada will inevitably receive some of the blame. That’s part of being the manager. But he shouldn’t be at the front of the line.

The bigger questions should be directed toward the people who constructed the roster and the system that produced it. That means Brown, and it also means Crane.

What Happens Next?

This is where the Astros could be approaching a fascinating—and potentially uncomfortable—offseason. The organization needs a new general manager. If Crane also decides to move on from Espada, it could need a new manager.

But here’s the question: How attractive are those jobs?

The Astros have been one of baseball’s premier organizations for nearly a decade. They’ve won championships, reached World Series, dominated their division and established a winning culture that most franchises would love to replicate.

That should make Houston an extremely desirable destination.

But prospective candidates are also going to want to understand exactly how the organization operates. How much authority will the next general manager actually have?

Who makes the final call on personnel decisions?

How much influence does ownership have on roster construction?

How much control does the manager have over his lineup and in-game decisions compared with the front office and analytics department?

Those aren’t insignificant questions.

Dusty Baker publicly expressed frustration at times with aspects of modern organizational decision-making during his tenure. More recently, there have been questions and reports surrounding how much influence the front office and analytics staff have over lineup construction.

Whether every rumor is accurate or not, perception matters when you’re trying to attract the best baseball people available. If candidates believe they’re going to be held accountable for decisions they don’t completely control, that’s something Crane will have to address.

The Players Deserved Better

This might be the most frustrating part of all. I feel for the players in that clubhouse. They’ve battled through injuries. They’ve overcome a terrible start. They’ve watched teammates go down and roles change. They’ve dealt with a revolving door in the outfield and a pitching staff that has been asked to absorb far too much. And they still found a way to matter.

They kept fighting. They kept winning. They kept themselves alive deep into September.

If I’m a veteran leader in that clubhouse—whether it’s Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa or another established voice—I’d want answers from ownership after the season.

Not excuses. Answers.

What is the plan?

Who’s making the baseball decisions?

How is this roster going to be constructed differently?

What is ownership prepared to do to give this clubhouse the support it needs to compete for another championship?

Because these players have spent an entire season fighting to overcome deficiencies that shouldn’t have existed for this long.

This Offseason Has to Be About More Than Changing Names

Maybe the Astros still find a way. Maybe there’s one more run left in them. Maybe this battered pitching staff finds another gear, the offense gets hot and Houston somehow reaches October again. Considering everything we’ve watched from this franchise over the years, I wouldn’t completely count them out until they’re officially eliminated.

But regardless of how this season ends, Crane has some difficult questions to answer. Replacing Dana Brown alone won’t fix the Astros. Replacing Joe Espada won’t automatically fix them either.

If Houston truly wants to remain one of baseball’s elite organizations, the Astros need to examine the entire structure of their baseball operation—from roster construction to analytics to the relationship between the manager, general manager and ownership.

Because right now, the Astros aren’t just fighting their opponents. They’re fighting exhaustion. They’re fighting roster deficiencies. They’re fighting the consequences of problems that were visible months ago and never adequately addressed. This team has spent the entire season digging itself out of another hole.

The question isn’t only whether the Astros have enough left to reach the playoffs. It’s whether the organization understands why they were forced to dig out of that hole in the first place.

And until that question is answered, changing the names on the office doors may not change much at all.

Spencer Jones is finally gaining some momentum at the plate and earning his spot on the postseason roster after making some needed adjustments. Who does he have to thank, you might ask?

Aaron Judge’s hitting coach, perhaps.

Jones, whose height and build are very similar to the Yankees captain, first met with Judge’s hitting coach, Richard Schenk, during the offseason to make adjustments to his stance. Although he may still struggle with frequent strikeouts, Jones is making a lot of positive progress that has helped him earn his place on this team.

The 25-year-old outfielder is hitting a .279 average with a .343 on-base percentage and .475 slugging percentage in September. Among Yankees, his .819 OPS and 130 wRC+ for the month are topped only by Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger, helping boost a Bombers lineup that sagged in August. After dealing with a sore left foot that kept him sidelined on Saturday, Jones returned to the lineup prepared to make some noise and launched a 448-foot homer off Corbin Burnes during the series finale against the Diamondbacks.

Back-to-Back Baby Bombs 😤

A 448 ft. BOMB from Spencer Jones 💣 pic.twitter.com/2vEi2sHLVQ

— YES Network (@YESNetwork) September 20, 2026

With Grisham still recovering from a right hamstring strain, Jones will be a valuable asset in the outfield—be it in center or right—who adds some depth to the lineup as well. It’s also worth noting that Aaron Judge, who joined the IL on Friday with a right calf strain, will likely be sidelined for the beginning of the playoff run. As long as Jones can focus on developing his swing through these critical postseason at-bats, he has the potential to help the Yankees go far.

Beginning tomorrow afternoon, the Yankees will face the Rays in a critical four-game series that will ultimately determine the division and could even serve as a playoff preview. If he can stay consistent with his offensive production, Jones might just be the secret the Pinstripes need to seize the American League.