From an offensive perspective, three outcomes all but assure a miserable result in a plate appearance: a strikeout, pop-up, or double play ball on the ground. Devoid of function and aesthetic, all three demand failure by the batter as well as success by an opponent, but they are most commonly where I see and feel frustration while watching baseball. In contrast to the Three True Outcomes of walks, strikeouts, and homers, there is no mixed bag in this virtue-less trio. Like the chthonic goddesses of Greek yore, these three outcomes are my Baseball Furies (not to be confused with the other Baseball Furies).
In some ways, those at the helm of the sport share this sentiment. A well-earned strikeout is gorgeous, but a balance-less sport can be rote. The efforts to curb bullpen engorgement, along with several quality of life adjustments to the sport’s pace and baserunning seem to have at least slightly arrested MLB’s longstanding upward creep in strikeout rate. The 2025 season was MLB’s sixth 40,000 strikeout campaign, but it was also just the third campaign (besides 2021, following the shortened 2020 gauntlet) since 2005 – when the non-pitcher strikeout rate for hitters was 16.0% leaguewide – to see a drop in the league-average strikeout rate. You might’ve missed the parade, watching 22.2% of hitters whiff down from the full-season records of 22.6% and 22.7% in 2024 and 2023, but it’s progress. The how of this trend is not just legislative alterations, it’s hitters consciously altering their behavior, and players like Brendan Donovan seeing their skills creep into higher prioritization.
Donovan is anathema to the Baseball Furies, who will fittingly frame his lens today. It’s not enough to just make contact, or even just slap singles – if it were, Yuniesky Betancourt might’ve been a valuable big leaguer instead of an example of why every big league club now is at least some basic level of analytical in their assessment of the sport. Yes, Brendan Donovan strikes out sparingly, even for 30 years ago, with a minute 13.5% punch-out rate for his career, against a 9.1% walk rate and a healthy .282/.361/.411 line with a 119 wRC+. Just 12 other qualified hitters struck out less often (a sample of 145 hitters) last year. Self-selectingly, they are mostly solid players, though most qualifying hitters are, or else they’d likely not qualify. But it’s Donovan’s ability to do things like this, converting a well-located pitch in a two-strike count into a game-changing line drive, that not only shed strikeouts, but improve Seattle’s roster.
One Fury tamed, two more to go.
Unlike strikeouts, there’s no mighty furor over the trends in pop-ups within baseball. In 2025, players generated infield pop-ups on about 9.9% of their fly balls, per FanGraphs, within essentially the same 1-2% ebb and flow range it’s been since tracking data became uniform in 2002. Baseball Savant’s database on contact goes back to 2008 for pop-ups, with ‘25 yielding a whopping 8,818 pop-ups, or 1.2% or pitches, nearly identical to each other year in the sample, albeit a lessening trajectory down from a consistent 10,000+ from 2008-2011.
Should we mourn the dwindling pop fly? Unless you are in the pocket of Big Can of Corn, there’s little to lament. Pop-ups yielded a .012 Weighted On-Base Average last year, functionally no better than just striking out. Despite making contact at such a high clip and only putting the ball over the fence around a dozen times each year, Donovan’s propensity to avoid pointless pop-ups allows him to avoid empty ABs. Many of the most prodigious pop-uppers are high-contact players like Nolan Arenado, Jose Altuve, and… approximately half of the Milwaukee Brewers lineup last year. But like Donovan, their success comes from splashing enough other contact around the outfield grass to compensate for their fallow fly balls, or clubbing the ball with enough authority (like fellow pop-up producers Cal Raleigh and Kyle Schwarber) to make it worth the risk. For Donovan, his barrel control allows him to cover not just good off-speed below the zone, but heat above it.
That leaves us with just the final Fury, the twin killing terror. While her power is on wane, with 2025 featuring the fewest double plays grounded into since the league expanded to 30 clubs in 1998, Donovan should find this deity his ultimate challenge. Plenty of contact, commonly enough on the ground, and only mediocre foot speed for a big leaguer, it should be the recipe for a double play all day. Sure, Donovan has the benefit of the lefty batter’s box, and is not a true plodder, but Mariners fans are not so far removed from the bittersweetness of Ty France in this regard. And yet, a season ago, Donovan tied with eight others for the 10th-fewest GIDPs in baseball, doing so just four times all season. That tied him with, once again, Schwarber, a famous double play eschewer by the more blunt method of simply never hitting groundballs.
It’s no one-off, either. Since entering the league in 2022, through his combination of sprayed contact, high-effort, and, perhaps, intentional approach, Donovan has grounded into just 20 double plays. 20, in 2,006 plate appearances, tied for 18th-fewest in MLB since 2022 for hitters with at least 1,500 PAs, of which there are 179. To credit Donovan with his successes instead of merely the vices he avoids, since entering the league Donovan has a .307/.389/.451 line with runners on base – a 136 wRC+ that’s 27th out of 251 qualifiers (min. 500 PA) in 788 such plate appearances.
Like many – but not all – hitters, he’s better with runners on, but in Donovan’s case it is a noted improvement, a 136 wRC+ with runners on against a 109 wRC+ with the bases empty.
Herein lies the only conflict I see with Donovan’s fit in Seattle’s roster. The presumptive third baseman of plurality, if not majority, he’ll scuttle across the diamond as needed and provide cromulent glovework. On the heels of Jorge Polanco, blessed may he be, a defensive upgrade is the easiest and least pertinent bar, but it will be noticed. But most projections for Donovan’s fit have placed him as the leadoff hitter in the M’s lineup. He’d be just fine there, and lineup construction is a bit of a cascading impossibility to isolate. His rhyming traits with Josh Naylor create a funny lean for Seattle’s roster, but one to be categorized in the realm of “good problem to have.” Whether Donovan is leading off or cleaning up, he’s well-suited to be the one creating fury for opponents yet again.
