Category: MLB

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.

LOS ANGELES — Emmet Sheehan continued his late-season hot streak with another strong outing on Sunday against the San Francisco Giants, with nine strikeouts in 5 1/3 innings, allowing only a single and a walk.

“I’ve loved the version of Emmet we’ve seen the last three outings,” manager Dave Roberts said Sunday. “He’s been fantastic.”

Sheehan in three starts over the last two weeks since rejoining the Dodgers has allowed only one run in 17 innings, with 24 strikeouts against only three walks. It came after spending most of August in Triple-A.

“I don’t know if I proved anything to myself,” Sheehan said. “It was more just getting a couple of things right, and I’m in a much better spot now.”

Sheehan was in the Dodgers rotation from opening day through August 2, when he allowed three home runs and five runs in a loss to the Boston Red Sox. Twenty starts into the season, Sheehan wasn’t getting results (5.29 ERA, belying his 4.00 xERA), and was having issues holding his velocity throughout his starts. He was optioned to Oklahoma City the next day.

That time in the minors was productive for Sheehan. After a planned shortened outing in which he allowed two runs in 2/3 of an inning, Sheehan struck out 24 over three starts with one run allowed in 17 1/3 innings. That earned him a Pacific Coast League pitcher of the week award and pitcher of the month honors for August.

“My confidence stayed the same the whole time. I knew the coaches down there were going to help me, and I was going to get right,” Sheehan said. “I took that approach going into it. I wasn’t helping the team here, so I needed that a little bit. I feel like in a good spot.”

“We’ve seen confidence. When you’re essentially fighting for your life, to create an opportunity for yourself, that’s what I see. There’s urgency,” Roberts said. “I like the way he’s trusting his stuff, he’s in a good spot physically, and the performance has been fantastic.”

One tweak Sheehan made was throwing his curveball more. In his last three outings with the Dodgers, he threw the curve 21.9 percent of the time, up from his 12.3 percent over the course of the season.

“It’s something, Connor [McGuiness, assistant pitching coach], Mark [Prior, pitching coach], and I and the coaches down at Triple-A have been working on a lot is expanding the front-to-back game with the fastball and the curveball,” Sheehan said. “Some guys ended up throughout the season sitting more mid-speed, slider, changeup on me. I think having that change of speeds has been really important.

On Sunday against San Francisco, Sheehan induced 15 of his 18 swinging strikes on his fastball and curveball and finished off five of his nine strikeouts with those two pitches.

Sheehan’s first 26 outings this year were starts, but on Sunday he followed an opener, at the very least getting him oriented about his possible relief role in the postseason. After three solid months in the rotation last season, Sheehan pitched in relief in October, with mixed results (8.59 ERA, 13 hits and five walks in 7 1/3 innings). He allowed runs in each of his four appearances, though rebounded with 2 2/3 scoreless innings in extras in the marathon Game 3, when got three outs with two strikeouts in a scoreless outing in the seventh and eighth innings of Game 7.

“The routine of everything can be a little hard to adjust to, so having that experience helps a lot. Getting back into that, I know what I need to do to be ready to go in the game,” Sheehan said. “Execution was off in the first couple, but then I felt better as it went on.”

Sheehan returned Sunday when Tarik Skubal went on the bereavement list, and the plan is for Sheehan to be optioned back to Triple-A, perhaps as early as Tuesday when Roki Sasaki is likely activated from the injured list straight into a high-leverage relief role.

Roberts on Sunday said the plan is for Sheehan to start on Saturday in the Triple-A championship game, provided Oklahoma City beats Las Vegas in the best-of-3 PCL championship starting Tuesday. But after that, Sheehan will almost certainly be on the playoff roster. Most likely he’ll be in a relief role, but that might depend on how Blake Snell progresses over the next two weeks from his left groin tightness.

“After [Sheehan] makes that last start, we’ll evaluate where we are as a staff,” Roberts said.

“Whatever role they want me to do going forward, I’m ready to do it,” Sheehan said. “It was nice to get that experience coming out of the pen.”

Lefthanded pitcher MacKenzie Gore will start the series opener against the New York Mets on Tuesday, September 21, 2026, the team announced today.

I wrote at length earlier today about the Rangers’ final six regular season games this week, much of which was predicated on the assumption (or hope, perhaps would be the better word) that Nathan Eovaldi would start on Tuesday, as well as, potentially, in Game 162 in Minnesota on Sunday. This apparently will not be happening.

Gore will be making his American League leading 33rd start of the season on Tuesday, the most of any Ranger pitcher since Lance Lynn made 33 starts in 2019. If Gore does in fact start Sunday’s season finale in Minnesota, that would give him 34 starts, the most for any Ranger since C.J. Wilson in 2011.

Gore last pitched on September 16 against the Boston Red Sox, so the Rangers are keeping the current rotation order for now, though a decision will have to be made in regards to who steps in for Cal Quantrill, whose spot in the rotation would have come due, if the current order continues, on Friday, when the Rangers begin their series in Minnesota. If Eovaldi is taking Quantrill’s rotation spot, and the rest of the rotation stays the same, he would pitch Friday in Minnesota, with Jacob deGrom going Saturday and, it would appear, Gore on Sunday. The current order would also have Cody Bradford pitching Wednesday and Kumar Rocker on Thursday in Arlington against the Mets, but no Rangers announcements for those games have been made.

Gore has a disappointing 4.67 ERA in 165.2 innings this year, though he has a 4.07 xERA and a 3.89 FIP. He departed his last start, last Wednesday against Boston, after four innings due to shoulder and back spasms, but reported after the game that he felt it was not something that would be an issue for him going forward.

Well friends, there it is. The San Francisco Giants entered the weekend with just one of their seven Minor League Baseball affiliates in action. And now that number is zero.

And so begins the final Minor League roundup of the season, as there are no more games until the sun disappears and returns again … no, not tomorrow, but spring.

Here’s what happened on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

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News

Just one small piece of news: Outfielder Bo Davidson (No. 4 CPL) may have ended the year with an extended stint in AAA, but he still did enough in the 1st half of the season to be named an All-Star in the AA Eastern League. Very well deserved!

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AAA Sacramento (79-68)

Friday: Sacramento River Cats lost to the Reno Aces 6-4 [box score]
Saturday: Sacramento River Cats lost to the Reno Aces 7-4 [box score]
Sunday: Sacramento River Cats lost to the Reno Aces 4-1 [box score]

It was a great season for the Giants Minor League affiliates, and that certainly includes Sacramento. But the struggles of the Major League roster have certainly had a trickle-down effect, as San Francisco repeatedly pulled talent from the River Cats, who then had to sap talent from elsewhere. And so it’s not really a surprise that both Sacramento and AA Richmond ended the season on serious skids, which included the River Cats losing all 3 games of their final weekend. So it goes. Sometimes the best things end poorly!

Fittingly, there weren’t a lot of performances to highlight. But right fielder/left fielder Bo Davidson (No. 4 CPL) ended what possibly could be his final Minor League season on a high note, as he did a little bit of everything. The lefty went 6-10 over the weekend, smashed a double, drew 2 walks, was hit by a pitch, stole a base, registered 2 outfield assists, and struck out 3 times.

Bo keeps things going with an RBI double 💪 pic.twitter.com/popdNkrEjM

— Sacramento River Cats (@RiverCats) September 19, 2026

With that, Davidson ends his debut AAA stint with a glistening .923 OPS and a 138 wRC+ over 52 games (despite a slow start following a midseason promotion). Perhaps most impressively, he struck out just 18.8% of the time in Sacramento.

Now comes a question that could be answered in the next few hours: will Davidson get to make his MLB debut this year? The beat reporters have suggested that, had he not fouled a ball off his foot resulting in a contusion, Davidson would have been called up last week, instead of Scott Bandura. Instead, he stayed in AAA, got healthy, finished the season with a bang … and now there are still 6 games left on the MLB schedule. Perhaps it depends on whether Jung Hoo Lee, who left Sunday’s game after fouling a ball off a tender region, is going to be placed on the IL or not.

Unfortunately, ending the season on a high note could not be said for another player who is in consideration for a late-season MLB debut: LHP Joe Whitman (No. 26 CPL). Whitman getting the call to the bigs seems less likely than Davidson, but if the Giants have already made the decision to roster him ahead of the Rule 5 Draft, they could give him a cup of coffee, especially since Logan Webb has been shut down.

Whitman ended the season on an absolute tear, but unfortunately the final data point was a poor one: the 2023 comp-round pick started on Saturday and, while he did make it through 5.1 innings, it was far from a notable performance, as he gave up a whopping 10 hits, which included a home run and 2 doubles.

Hits happen, and, on the bright side, Whitman did a great job throwing strikes, as 67 of his 88 pitches went for strikes, and he issued just 1 walk. But he wasn’t missing bats, as he not only gave up 10 knocks, but registered just 2 strikeouts on the day, and ultimately gave up 5 runs (though just 3 were earned).

It was still a very successful season for Whitman, especially given how mediocre his 2025 campaign was. The Kent State alum, who turned 25 last week, began the year repeating AA, and was arguably the top pitcher in the Eastern League, where he posted a 3.22 ERA and a 2.37 FIP in 10 starts, with 11.6 strikeouts and just 2.3 walks per 9 innings. Things were, understandably, a bit tougher when he made it to the Pacific Coast League, where he finished with a 3.74 ERA and a 4.73 FIP in 22 games (14 starts), but only had 7.4 strikeouts per 9 innings (though he also only had 2.5 walks).

He’ll need to work on those strikeouts, but there’s some fairly promising stuff in there, especially for a AAA newbie: of the 89 PCL pitchers with at least 50 innings this year, Whitman was 11th in ERA, 16th in FIP, and 8th in walks per 9. Now he just needs to learn how to throw pitchers that aren’t so hittable: complementing the low strikeout rate was a very-high .279 batting average against.

Other than Davidson and Whitman and their respective MLB watches, there wasn’t a lot going on over the weekend. A pair of hitters capped feel-good years with home runs, as designated hitter Eddys Leonard and catcher Fernando Gonzalez both hit the ball over the fence (the former a 3-run shot on Saturday; the latter a solo blast on Sunday).

Leonard otherwise had a tough weekend, hitting 2-12 with 4 strikeouts, but it will be a year to remember for the 25-year old righty. 5 years after getting rostered by the Los Angeles Dodgers as a Rule 5 protection (and a few years after using up his Minor League options), Leonard finally got a chance to make his MLB debut in August. He has since been outrighted, but after post an .812 OPS and a 113 wRC+, while playing in both the infield and the outfield, he should have no shortage of Minor League opportunities to choose from next year.

As for Gonzalez, a 24-year old taken in the 20th round of the 2024 draft, he had a very mild-mannered year with Low-A San Jose, where he posted a .661 OPS and a 79 wRC+ in 42 games. But with the Giants having roster crunches throughout the Minors, the Georgia Bulldog was sent to AAA for emergency depth to end the year.

Gonzalez, who didn’t play Friday or Saturday, but went 1-2 with a hit by pitch and a strikeout on Sunday, made the most of his time in AAA, posting a .918 OPS and a 148 wRC+ in 10 games, while doing an impressive job behind the dish for someone with exactly 0 games in High-A or AA. That will earn him some fans in the organization.

Third baseman Parks Harber (No. 17 CPL), who had a very impressive year but ended the season in quite a slump, had another tough go of it over the weekend, hitting just 1-12 with a walk, a stolen base, a strikeout, and an error. The righty slugger, who turns 25 this week, had a delayed start to the season after suffering an injury during a (very impressive) Spring Training showing, but still destroyed AA pitchers to the tune of an .879 OPS and a 131 wRC+ in 66 games. After getting promoted to Sacramento, he laid waste to the PCL for a while, before hitting a wall as the season neared an end. Check out his Sacramento splits:

First 32 games:40-128, 5 home runs, 0 triples, 8 doubles, 18 walks, 33 strikeouts
Next 22 games: 15-87, 1 home run, 1 triple, 1 double, 11 walks, 26 strikeouts

That slump brought him down to just a .739 OPS and a 98 wRC+ in his debut AAA stint, and the question becomes: did he struggle because he ran out of steam, because he ran out of luck, or because the league made some adjustments and now he needs to make counter-adjustments? Either way, those struggles don’t dim his star, and honestly, if you predicted that Harber leads the Giants in left field starts next year, I wouldn’t call you dumb!

Whitman was the only pure starting pitcher over the weekend. On Friday the River Cats used an opener, as MLB LHP Sam Hentges made his lone rehab appearance before a staggering bit of roster mismanagement (he was activated to the MLB squad for a game that he was not available to pitch in). Hentges struck out 2 batters in a perfect inning before giving way to RHP Darien Smith, who struggled in a bulk innings role, giving up 6 hits, 2 home runs, 2 walks, and 4 runs total in 3 innings, with 2 strikeouts. Smith, who had a 3.93 ERA but a 5.39 FIP across 15 games in AAA, AA, and the Complex League, lost much of the year to injury, but is headed to the desert for the Arizona Fall League.

And on Sunday, LHP Seth Lonsway started but pitched sparingly, tossing 2 perfect innings with 2 strikeouts. Lonsway didn’t have a notable season in the Minors, as the soon-to-turn 28-year old posted just a 5.11 ERA and a 6.24 FIP in 24 AAA games, with only 5.8 strikeouts per 9 innings. But it was still a year to remember, as he made his MLB debut. Unfortunately, Lonsway will almost certainly be a roster casualty this offseason, though the Giants will likely be able to outright him and keep him in Sacramento next year as a depth option.

For the 2nd year in a row, RHP Tyler Vogel got moved up to AAA for the final week of the season. After posting a 3.35 ERA and a 4.63 FIP in AA this year, Vogel made a lone appearance for Sacramento on Saturday and gave up a hit, a walk, and a run in an inning of work, with 1 strikeout.

Nice season-ending outings for RHPs Braxton Roxby, Will Bednar (No. 24 CPL), and R.J. Dabovich, as well as LHP Nick Zwack. All 4 have a whole bunch of talent in their arms, and we’ll see if they can work their way into the bullpen plans next year (though Dabovich is entering Minor League free agency).

Thanks for reading all the Minor League recaps this year, everyone!

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Home run tracker

18 — Eddys Leonard — [AAA]
4 — Fernando Gonzalez — [1 in AAA; 2 in Low-A; 1 in ACL]

It’s not remotely the right time to start talking about offseason movement, but there is movement afoot. Two of Craig Breslow’s assistant GMs, Mike Groopman and Taylor Smith, have already conducted preliminary interviews for the big chair in Sacramento after the A’s fired Dave Forst back in August. (Sean McAdam, MassLive)

Here in Boston, though, we’re unlikely to see a search for a new boss in a while. Craig Breslow earned himself quite a bit of rope this season, thanks to a decisive move that paid off big time in firing Alex Cora. “I believed in the players that we had, and I felt it was really important that we acted definitively and decisively when we did, so that we could create an environment around the players that was supportive, that would allow them to thrive, and they responded,” he said. “And, while there may have been some people that questioned what this group was capable of, I think they answered.” (Peter Abraham, Boston Globe)

And here’ s a look at some of the key moments of the season that got this team where it is today. Remember the ninth inning comeback against the Mets that came after that long-delayed flight? How about Caleb Durbin’s home run off Cam Schlittler? (Tim Healey, Boston Globe)

But, strangely enough, when it came time to clinch the playoffs, it wasn’t a Red Sox player who did the dirty work, though it was a Red Sox legacy player. “And the man with the game-winning three-run homer that would, in the end, send both the Braves and the Red Sox to the postseason? Well, baseball is quite sentimental, and it also has a sense of humor, so, obviously, it was Mike Yastrzemski.“ (Shanthi Sepe-Chepuru, MLB.com)

But the fact that the Sox clinched on a loss didn’t dampen the celebration. “There was a lot of beer!” said Payton Tolle. “It was a slobberknocker.” (Rob Bradford, WEEI)

But before the slobberknocker could get slobbin’, Chad Tracy addressed his team to sum up the season that was. “I want to express gratitude for everyone in the room,” he said. “I’m so grateful for you guys, for our staff, for everybody. You stared impossible in the face. The position we were in, you beat it back and said, ‘The hell with that, we’re going to the playoffs.’ And you did.” (Jen McCaffrey, The Athletic)

So the Sox are in the dance. But for how long? That’s anyone’s guess, but Red Sox fans are apparently more optimistic than the fans of any other American league team. (Stephen J. Nesbitt, The Athletic)

Paul Skenes believes he has the answer to his velocity dip this season.

The Pirates star has not shown his usual prowess this season, and part of it, he thinks, is due to his participation in the World Baseball Classic in March, as he told Colin Beazley of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“There are a lot of other factors, so I don’t want to put everything on that,” Skenes explained. “But I feel like that was kind of the root of it a little bit. It definitely affected the year. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m the only one.”

Skenes pitched a total of 8 ⅓ innings in two tournament starts for Team USA in the WBC, allowing one earned run.

Skenes continued and clarified that the drop in velocity was intentional at first, but over the course of the season he was unable to ramp up to his usual level.

“Usually, that time of year, you’re kind of ramping up and it’s a little bit slow,” Skenes said. “You can kind of get onto the slope and find your body. One live [batting practice], you’re topping at 97 [mph], and then the next you’re 98, 99. And that wasn’t the case this year…looking back I don’t think that really helped.”

Skenes hasn’t been dreadful this season, posting a 3.91 ERA, 1.13 WHIP and 192 strikeouts in 168 innings, but it’s not what Pittsburgh and baseball fans have come to expect from the 2024 NL Rookie of the Year and 2025 NL Cy Young winner.

The lack of a 2027 WBC should help Skenes go through his normal offseason and ramping-up period, which the Pirates will need next season if they want to make the playoffs for the first time since 2015.

With just six games to go, the Diamondbacks have a record of 82-74. While not technically eliminated from post-season contention yet, their playoff hopes would require a spectacular confluence of events in the first half of the week, probably followed by a sweep of the Padres in San Diego next weekend. Obviously, that’s disappointing. But on the other hand, the D-backs have, albeit in a small way, actually done better than what most neutral expectations were for team at the beginning of the year. Let’s start off by reviewing what various parties predicted Arizona would do before Opening Day.

The metrics

• Baseball Prospectus (PECOTA): 78.4 wins. Our friends over at Purple Row captured this prediction in their preview of the division. They (and not BP) said, “The D-Backs still have some question marks and might not emerge as one of MLB’s top teams, but they certainly are positioned to push for the playoffs if they see a return to form for Gallen and some improvements to their pitching numbers overall. However, an uptick in pitching could unfortunately pair with a regression in batting, threatening those chances.”
• Fangraphs: 81-81. These came out in late January, once Dan Szymborski had finished running ZIPS for all thirty teams. We’ll get more into those later, as we look at which individuals out- or under-performed their projections. But there isn’t much said about them at the overall level, except for “ZIPS remains unsure of Arizona’s rotation.” However, at the end of spring training, the expected tally was still basically 81-81, with a 31% chance of making the post-season.

The pundits

• George Castillo, ESPN: 81-81. “Will the pitching staff sink Arizona’s playoff chances again? The Diamondbacks can score. Two years ago, they paced the majors in runs scored. Last year, they finished sixth… And yet, the Diamondbacks have not reached the postseason since their surprise run to the World Series in 2023, largely because their pitching staff ranked 27th in ERA in 2024 and 23rd last season.”
• Tim Kelly, Bleacher Report: 82-80. “Lovullo has shown an ability to get the most out of his teams, and with Corbin Caroll, Ketel Marte and Gerlado Perdomo anchoring his lineup, this is going to be a competitive team. They just have too much working against them in terms of pitching injuries.”
• Gabe Lacques, USA Today: 81-81. “In coming weeks, Arizona Diamondbacks (80-82) corner infielders Nolan Arenado and Carlos Santana will turn 35 and 40, respectively. They’ll need some gulps from the fountain of youth to ensure the bottom of the lineup isn’t an arid wasteland.”
• Ryan Phillips, Sports Illustrated: 77-85. “The Diamondbacks signed several late-career veterans, searching for the magic of 2023. But Arizona’s roster doesn’t look anywhere near pennant-worthy. Manager Torey Lovullo has just two playoff appearances in nine seasons.”
• Fred Zinkle, Yahoo! Sports: 82-80. “This figures to be a retooling year in Arizona, while the organization waits to get Burnes back in 2027. Success this season might look like determining which players, particularly among Del Castillo, Lawlar, Pfaadt, Nelson and Thomas, can be part of the next wave of success. There will also be more trade rumors around Marte in July, and the front office will have to decide whether to recoup a package of prospects or keep Marte in hopes of competing in 2027.”

The group exercises

• Sports books: 79.5 wins. This was more or less the consensus across the board, with the line being drawn here by Caesar’s, Draft Kings and BetMGM.
• Arizona Sports roundtable: 81.8 wins. The radio station polled 14 of their staff, with numbers ranging from 75 to 86 wins. They also asked if the team would make the playoffs, and “No” won that vote, ten of the fourteen polled saying there’d be no post-season.
• AZ SnakePit writers: 84.2 wins. The highest prediction and not unexpectedly, the usual optimism prevailing. This is in line with history over the last couple of years, the 2025 prediction being a (now somewhat embarrassing!) 91.3 wins, and the 2024 prediction also being higher than reality could deliver, at 86.7 wins. And that 2024 figure was before we signed Jordan Montgomery, which seemed like a big deal at the time…
• Fan vote: 84 wins. This answer is based off the median – half above, half below – for SnakePit voters in our poll. The most popular category was actually higher, at 86-88 wins. But that only got 21%, barely edging out the 83-85 win group, at 20%. The “tail” below that was also longer, bringing the median down.

A straight average of the eleven predictions above comes in at 81 wins – an expectation of just one more victory than the previous season. As we head into the final week of the season, the Diamondbacks are already above that. There is even a significant chance of reaching 85 wins, which would be better than any of the 11 pre-season projections mentioned above. Taking two of three in Colorado and one in San Diego would get us there. Get one less, and 84 wins is certainly very plausible. That would only be (very narrowly) surpassed by the SnakePit writers’ poll. But what are the individual contributors to the moderate over-performance?

Winners and losers

When it comes to looking at individual players, we are mostly going off the 2026 ZIPS projections for Arizona. [I had to chase down some players not present on that page, no longer with AZ] As with any projection system, these are expectations, not guarantees. Inevitably, reality will differ, and that’s no mark at all against the effort Dan Szymborski puts in to them. Don’t worry about the playing time numbers, especially for those we didn’t see. Cristofer Torin did not quite make 129 appearances. We’re looking only at the fWAR expected tallies, compared to the actual ones. Those are through Saturday night’s game, although with only about 4% of the schedule remaining, I didn’t bother pro-rating.

Hitters: Over- and under-performers

• Gabriel Moreno 4.9 vs. 3.3
• Nolan Arenado 2.7 vs. 1.9
• ———
• Carlos Santana 0.6 vs. -0.5
• Ketel Marte 2.3 vs 4.3
• Lourdes Gurriel 1.3 vs. -1.0

I’ve not listed on either side, players like Jordan Lawlar, whose playing time didn’t come close to the ZIPS figure, for reasons beyond their control. Though technically, Santana and Gurriel’s didn’t either. So yes, I am being very arbitrary about this. No question who the team’s MVP has been, and I’m sure Mike Hazen is regretting not being able to ink Moreno to a long-term contract last winter. The asking price will now be considerably higher, and a significant arbitration bump will be coming down Gaby Lane next year (lockout permitting). Arenado has also been everything we could have wanted, and more.

On the downside, hopes that Santana might be able to play a competent first-base proved wildly optimistic, and the team didn’t really have a Plan B. That’s why we have Ildemaro Vargas getting more at-bats at 1B than anyone else. This was a mistake by Hazen. The discovery Gurriel was now well below replacement level in left was also unpleasant, and Max Kepler wasn’t the answer either. Then there’s the whole Marte situation. Be very interesting to see what happens there over the winter, because if the sharp drop-off in production was not a blip, those four remaining guaranteed years might not be a lot of fun.

Pitchers: Over- and under-performers

• Eduardo Rodriguez: 3.1 vs. 1.5
• Michael Soroka: 2.5 vs. 0.9
• Juan Morillo: 1.5 vs. -0.1
• Brandyn Garcia: 1.3 vs. 0.0
• ———
• Zac Gallen: -0.1 vs. 1.8
• Merrill Kelly: -0.2 vs. 1.9
• Corbin Burnes: 0.0 vs. 2.6

Very much a rotation of two halves. ERod and Soroka have both performed much better than expected, while Gallen and Kelly have been sore disappointments. We should have let Zac just walk, and the lack of suitors for his services in 2026 turned out to be the reddest of red flags. Kelly will be around next year, and there is hope in that he has been better of late. Small sample-size, but over the four games since the spat with the Cubs, where he may have discovered he was pitch-tipping, Merrill has a 2.86 ERA and 3.55 FIP. Anything like those figures in the remaining year of his contract will be a huge improvement. But Burnes’ extremely belated arrival might have hurt most of all.

Previous years have seen mocking of Mike Hazen for his dumpster diving approach to building a bullpen. But it has worked very well. Discounting Gallen, the eight other current members of the bullpen are earning a total of less than $13 million this year. That’s several million less than the Dodgers are paying Edwin Diaz alone this year, for 15.2 innings of work and a 10.34 ERA. Morillo, Garcia and Jonathan Loaisiga have thrown 171.2 combined innings for an ERA of 2.15. That has been worth a total of 3.9 fWAR, while the trio are getting paid only about $3 million between them. After years of quiet desperation, this bullpen has been quite the refreshing change.

Conclusions

Projections are always going to be wrong. If you look at the Fangraphs totals, there are some big misses: most notably under-estimating the Padres, and over-estimating the Mets. But five of the six teams at the top of the NL will indeed (almost certainly, I guess I should caveat) be among the six teams representing the league in the post-season. While it’s obviously disappointing again not to be in the playoffs, I think it’s encouraging to see the team surpassing expectations. The sharp improvement in the pitching, especially the bullpen, is hopefully something which can be sustained. Get some improved offense and if there is a 2027 season, I expect the D-backs again to be playing meaningful baseball into September.

Six games remain in the 2026 regular season.

All four teams still alive in the National League Wild Card race — the Cubs, Padres, Phillies and Diamondbacks — are off Monday. Thus they will begin Tuesday’s action with the same position and percentages noted in this article.

The Cubs and Padres are currently tied for the top Wild Card spot at 87-69, with the Cubs ahead because they own the tiebreaker with San Diego. The Phillies are one game back at 86-70 and the Diamondbacks are 82-74 and on the verge of elimination, four games behind the Phillies; their elimination number with the Cubs is 1, so the Cubs can clinch a Wild Card spot by defeating the Marlins Tuesday.

This is where it’s really fortunate that the Cubs have the tiebreaker over the Padres and Phillies. If all three teams wound up tied at the end of the regular season, the Cubs would get the first wild card spot. In that scenario they’d host the Phillies, because Philadelphia swept their season series 6-0 over San Diego. Here are all the various tiebreaker rules.

The article in The Athletic noting the odds and percentages for various postseason scenarios has been updated through Sunday’s games, so I thought today would be a good time to take a look at the various odds and chances.

First, here are the percentage odds for the possible postseason matchups for the first two rounds:

As compared to the last post I made on this topic on Saturday, the chances for the Cubs to be the No. 4 seed (and top Wild Card) have increased from 40 percent to 60 percent. The Cubs still control their own destiny — win out and they’re the top Wild Card.

The Brewers are very likely to be the No. 1 National League seed. They currently lead the Dodgers by two games and hold the tiebreaker.

Now, here are the Cubs’ percentages of making the postseason and where they would wind up, based on each possible W/L record in the remaining six games:

Aa you can see, the Cubs’ chances of being that No. 4 seed are better than 50 percent even if they go just 3-3 over the six games, and they increase to 99 percent if they can go at least 5-1.

The worst-case scenarios are going 1-5 or 0-6, which could dump them into the No. 6 position. But with the Marlins coming to town, that seems very unlikely. Miami is 31-47 on the road this year and so the Cubs ought to take at least two of three from them at Wrigley Field. Then the Cubs travel to Boston, where the Red Sox are likely going to be locked in to the second wild card spot in the American League before that series begins. Hopefully the Cubs can win at least one, maybe two, at Fenway Park.

That would leave the Cubs with either three or four wins, at minimum, this week and that’s even before considering what the other teams are doing. The Padres have to face the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium for a three-game series before finishing the season at home against the Diamondbacks. The Phillies are home, but face the teams with the best record in each league for a three-game series each, the Brewers and Rays. The Brewers still need to win to clinch home field throughout the postseason, and the Rays have a magic number of 2 to clinch the AL East. In any case, neither is a pushover for the Phillies.

So the Cubs have a pretty good chance of hosting a Wild Card series next week at Wrigley Field. And as always, we await developments.