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We’ve all been there. Probably, as D-backs fans, more often than we would like. You reach a certain point in the season, look at the standings and realize that this is not going to be the Diamondbacks’ year. Maybe you keep watching games; maybe you watch fewer of them; maybe you switch over to just checking the box-scores at the end of the night, and find other ways to occupy your free-time. Even here on the SnakePit, I’ll admit that there have been seasons – 2021, most obviously in recent history – where the site has basically been running on the writing equivalent of muscle memory.

What would make you check out on the 2026 season early?

Time to ‘fess up. There’s no denying, it will be an uphill struggle for the D-backs this year. The Dodgers are very heavy favorites to run away with the division – Fangraphs currently projects them to win the NL West by fifteen games. To a certain extent, I’m consequently already checked out – or, at least, less invested in the regular season than I would want to be. Because the outcome of the NL West feels about as close to pre-determined as possible. The wild-card chase is rather more nebulous: I’ll see if we are in the hunt there when we get Corbin Burnes and Justin Martinez back.

But at what point would you find yourself looking at other sports or pastimes?

This is Cubs infielder Ronny Cedeńo, pretty clearly having been called out on strikes against the Pirates at Wrigley Field. It’s another photo from BCB reader Clark Addison.

The Cubs wore blue jerseys at home on occasion pre-Ricketts ownership, and we are looking at an afternoon game.

I was given a clue here by the file name, which contained the year, 2006.

That helped.

The Cubs played nine games against the Pirates at Wrigley Field in 2006. Three of those were night games, now we’re down to six games. I eliminated two others because the game time weather conditions said “cloudy,” so that leaves four.

It’s clearly a warm summer day, as you can see by the way fans are dressed. That eliminates an early May date where the game time temp was 67. Many would have been in jackets or sweatshirts at that temperature.

Then the task was simply to look through the three remaining games to see if there was more than one time where Cedeño was called out on strikes.

Fortunately, there was only one. It happened in the bottom of the fourth inning, Monday, Sept. 4, 2006, an afternoon contest on Labor Day.

The pitcher was someone who’d become a Cub later on, Paul Maholm.

The Cubs lost the game 5-4. Neither team was very good that year. The Pirates were 55-82 after they won that game and the Cubs 55-83. It could be said that game decided fifth place in the NL Central, because the Pirates finished 67-95 and the Cubs 66-96.

Unfortunately, no video of this game appears to have survived, so this photo will have to serve as the only record of that strikeout.

If I were to give you no information about a game other than that your team had a pitcher go 8.2 innings and allow one hit and no earned runs, you’d probably be feeling pretty good about what happened. First, that’s all but one out of a complete game. Second, one hit is not very many and even though I said “earned runs” and not just “runs,” chances are good that total isn’t going to be particularly high considering the hit total.

However, especially in baseball, you can’t get the full picture of the game by looking at just one player’s stats. Too many weird things can happen. In one particular game from 1944, the Yankees got a great outing from pitcher Steve Roser. They also lost because he was only one player in the game.

The Yankees were hosting Cleveland for a doubleheader on July 4, 1944. They dropped the opening game of the twin bill 3-1, but did get nine innings out of starter Monk Dubiel. Getting a good, long outing out of a starting pitcher is always needed in at least one of the games, so you don’t have to rely on your bullpen too much, two separate times.

That was also helpful, because you couldn’t say the same for the second game’s starter Joe Page. Page got Cleveland leadoff hitter Mickey Rocco to ground out to start things off, but things quickly went off the rails after that. Following a single and a walk, Lou Boudreau cleared the bases with a triple, coming around to score himself on a Roy Cullenbine single. Ken Keltner then added an RBI double, which brought Yankees’ manager Joe McCarthy out to the mound for a pitching change.

Steve Roser came in to replace Page. He got off to an iffy start, but throwing a wild pitch and walking the first batter he faced. That ended up being costly, as it moved a runner to third, from which they scored on a groundout. Roser eventually got out of the inning, but the Yankees already trailed 5-0.

Cleveland then picked up two more runs in the second, although they weren’t entirely due to Roser’s pitching. Roser made a fielding error on a Myril Hoag grounder, which eventually led to two unearned runs coming around and scoring.

After that inning, Roser was excellent. From the third through ninth inning, he allowed just one baserunner to reach. That was wasn’t even really due to him, as it came on an error from shortstop Mike Milosevich. Including that error, the Yankee reliever retired 21 out of 22 batters over that stretch. Unfortunately, the Yankee offense didn’t do much to back him up.

The Yankees got on the board in the bottom of the second thanks to a Nick Etten home run. After that, they put runners on in all of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth innings, but couldn’t cash in to chip away further. Finally in the ninth inning, Hersh Martin — pinch hitting for Roser — added another home run, but it was too little, too late. Cleveland pitcher Ray Poat just retired the next three hitters to doom the Yankees to a 7-2 loss.

Between the error made and the base runners he did allow, you can’t fully absolve Roser. However, he finished with a pitching line of no earned runs allowed on one hit and two walks in 8.2 innings. Getting that outing from a pitcher would be plenty good enough to win many games. However, Roser wasn’t the first pitcher of the day, and the one that was got dinged with five earned runs, which proved to be the final margin.

When Marcus Semien was introduced to the New York media for the first time following his trade from the Rangers, the Mets hadn’t yet acquired their new third baseman, Bo Bichette. 

Arriving in Port St. Lucie for his first day in spring training on Saturday afternoon, the veteran infielder finally had a chance to discuss reuniting with his former Toronto teammate. 

“That’s a big pickup,” Semien said. “I got to play with Bo when he was a 23-year-old shortstop, so now he’s a little older, a little more seasoned, and he’s learning a new position -- I was in that position when I met him too, learning second base. 

“Being in a new place and learning a new position can get uncomfortable at times, but because he’s such a pure hitter and a great hitter, that’s where I know he’s going to be one of the best hitters.”

Semien, Bichette, and Luis Robert Jr. are the big-name additions to this offense. 

While losing some key sluggers like Brandon Nimmo and Pete Alonso certainly hurts, Semien feels that the new pieces mixing with the returning stars and young bats make for a strong lineup on both sides of the ball. 

“It’s a loaded group,” he said. “We have a lot of All-Stars, guys who have played in big games; World Series champions, Silver Sluggers, all kinds of accolades up and down this lineup -- a good amount of speed, power, good defenders. 

“I look at the whole package, the lineup is one thing, but everyone is playing both sides of the ball. If we all score as many runs as we can, that means we’re running the bases well, we’re getting on-base, we’re slugging, we’re doing those things -- if we can all do that together, we can win a lot of ballgames with our bats.”

Semien himself is coming off back-to-back down seasons at the plate, but the Mets believe he still has the MVP form he showed during the ’23 campaign. 

The 35-year-old was in contact with New York’s staff all offseason, discussing his performance the last couple of years and adjustments he can make to help get back on track. 

“We’ve had a lot of conversations,” he said. “And those conversations were good. I think I’ve been able to control the strike zone for the most part, but it’s about hitting the ball with more authority, and getting my body in the right position to do that more consistently.”

It’s well known that relievers are a volatile bunch. From year to year you don’t usually know quite what to expect, as mediocre relievers suddenly blossom and have career years and the guys you thought you could count on inexplicably struggle.

Sometimes this volatility doesn’t just show up from one season to the next. Relievers often have great months followed by terrible months even though their velocity and arsenal remain unchanged. Case in point, Justin Sterner, April 2025: 14.2 IP, 0 ER. May, 2025: 11.2 IP, 9 ER. September, 2025: 12 IP, 1 ER.

This makes it especially hard to construct a bullpen for an upcoming season, not knowing who will regress or blossom for no apparent reason, and who will pitch with at least some consistency from month to month versus who will ride the proverbial roller coaster.

Why are relievers so prone to this extreme variance? Some possible answers:

They’re Not

Perhaps relievers aren’t that much more volatile from season to season and month to month than other players. Cody Bellinger is a good example of a position player who has vacillated from spectacular to spectacularly awful without warning. In 2025 Cam Smith went from a 116 wRC+ in the first half to a 41 wRC+ in the 2nd half. Is the whole ‘relievers are volatile’ narrative a “perception” thing rather than a reality?

Small Samples Produce Large Variance

Relievers don’t wind up accruing large inning totals and anytime you look at 50 inning samples instead of 150 innings or 500 plate appearances, you are going to see more variance. This is especially true the more you zoom in: the samples cited above for Sterner are all of 11.2 – 14.2 innings each.

Perhaps the difference between a good season and a medium season, at least statistically, boils down to 2-3 gascan appearances totaling 3 IP and 8 ER which inflate the numbers in a 50 inning sample. A starting pitcher with one start out of 30 in which he lasts just 3 innings and serves up 8 ER still has a chance to put up excellent overall numbers.

It’s The Demographic, Stupid

Hey, no insults on AN please. OK I suppose it’s fine to insult yourself. Just don’t do it again, dumba$$. Anyhoo, another theory is that who becomes a reliever is not a random group of pitchers. It’s pitchers who specifically did not make it as a starting pitcher and don’t have the stuff to thrive multiple times through a batting order.

This might mean reliance on 2 pitches, in which case any time one pitch isn’t working you have a “one pitch pitcher” on your hands. Or it might mean not being good enough to crack the “best 5” — including the flaw of not being consistent enough from outing to outing, or from inning to inning.

Perhaps what got a reliever to the bullpen is precisely what makes him more prone to volatility: he has the stuff to pitch in the big leagues, but just enough flaws to require a slot in the bullpen rather than the rotation.

There’s 3 possibilities, any or all of which could be right or wrong. Here’s where you come in (to type a minimum of 3 words, new rules) and weigh in on whether any of these are correct or what other factors might be in play. And if you have truly figured it out, by all means share it with the A’s because I can assure you no one in MLB has all the answers — or relievers would be a lot more consistent and bullpens would be much easier to assemble.

Brendon Little is a 29-year-old, left-handed reliever. The Jays picked him up from the Cubs in November 2023. When we picked him up, he had less than an inning of major league experience. The Jays liked that got ground balls. Lots of ground balls, thinking that would be a nice combination with their good infield defense. He still has an option year left.

He threw 45.2 innings in 2024, with a 18.7% strikeout rate. In 2025, he threw 68.1 innings and had a 30.8% strikeout rate. Unfortunately, the walk rate also increased substantially, from 9.8% to 15.3%.

Little had a 70.9% ground ball rate in 2024, dropping to 59.0% in 2025 (still very high).

There are a few great stats from last season:

• Whiff rate 100th percentile.
• Strikeout rate 92nd percentile.
• Ground ball rate 97th percentile.
• Barrel rate 80th percentile.

But then there was some bad stats:

• Walk rate 1st percentile.
• Hard hit rate 2nd percentile.

And, as we know, he had a great first half of the season (2.03 ERA, .177/.305/.234, in 44.1) than the second half (4.88, .230/.355/.345 in 24 innings). And, of course, the playoffs didn’t go well for him. He allowed two home runs during the regular season and two home runs in the playoffs.

Brendon was part of a story about the Jays in the Athletic this morning (nice timing). In it, he says that he warmed up too often and too vigorously during games last year, and tired himself out. He mentions that he threw in the pen three times, as well as throwing two other times, before coming into the playoff game, where he gave up the home run to Cal Raleigh.

He also said that he is going to warm up at “80%” before coming into games and “70%” before games, feeling that he tired himself out as the season went on.

And, he also said that he is adding a couple of pitches, a slider and a ‘tweaked’ four-seam fastball, to give him more pitches he can throw in the zone.

Last year he threw three pitches: a knuckle curve (46% of the time), sinker (45.6%) and an occasion cutter (7.8%).

Being a two-pitch pitcher worked for the first half of the season, but batters figured out that he tended to throw the knuckle curve below the strike zone most of the time. Once they realized they didn’t have to chase it, it wasn’t as effective (surprising, isn’t it).

The question is ‘Will he be a high-leverage reliever again this year?’

Since he and Mason Fluharty are the only lefty relievers who are on the 40-man (though Eric Lauer may well be a reliever this year), odds are pretty good that Little will be a high-leverage guy again.

Steamer figured Little will pitch in 54 games, with a 3.41 ERA (and 10 holds, he had team leading 30 last year).

In honor of the Philadelphia Phillies playing host to the 2026 Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park, we here at The Good Phight are launching a yearlong series that focuses on the history of the Phillies and the All-Star Game. Check back regularly for posts about the Phillies participation (or lack thereof) in the Midsummer Classic over its history.

Last time in this series, we learned about the three players from the 1930s Phillies era that appeared in one career All-Star game. Today, we’ll move on to the 1940s. To be completely transparent, there were a lot of them in this decade, as the Phillies were not a particularly good ballclub then (shocker I know), so we’re going to break them up into two posts.

Merrill May, 1940

A 5’11 third baseman from Indiana, Merrill “Pinky” May signed with the New York Yankees upon graduating Indiana University in 1932. May was a star centerfielder at his alma mater and served as c0-captain of a Big 10 Championship team his senior year. College was also where he was bestowed the nickname of “Pinky” due to his face often turning bright red when he was angry. The Yankees sent May to the minor leagues to begin his professional career, and unfortunately for May, that is where he would remain throughout his Yankees tenure. May advanced as high as Double-A Newark by 1935, but he was trapped there through the 1938 season.

That was when May was drafted by the Phillies out of the Yankees farm system. He would go on to make his MLB debut with Philadelphia in 1939 at the fresh young age of 28. May appeared in 135 games with the Phillies his rookie year, hitting .287 with 32 extra-base hits, despite suffering a late spring training injury on March 30th when he twisted his spinal column chasing a pop-up.

May got off to a strong start in 1940, as he was hitting .330 with 24 RBIs through the end of June. Despite the Phillies having the worst record in baseball at 23-44 at the time of the All-Star game, the Phillies sent four representatives to the game, and May’s performance was good enough to be one of them. He was joined by pitchers Hugh Mulcahy (more on him later) and Kirby Higbe as well as manager Doc Prothro at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis.

None of the Phillies player representatives started, but May did find his way into the game as a defensive replacement in the sixth inning for the Dodgers’ Cookie Lavagetto with the National League leading 3-0. May came to the plate in the bottom half of the inning to face the Tigers’ Bobo Newsom and flew out to center in a full count. The Phillies third baseman got another chance to hit in the bottom of the eighth with a runner on third and two outs. But the first pitch from Cleveland’s Bob Feller hit May, putting runners at the corners for the Cardinals’ own Terry Moore, but Feller erased the threat with a strikeout. Nevertheless, despite the Phillies’ rather small impact, the NL went on to beat the AL by a final score of 4-0.

May went on to finish the 1940 season hitting .293 with a .954 fielding percentage at third. He would play three more years for the Phillies, hitting a very pedestrian .264 with a .667 OPS. Then in 1944, the 33-year-old May enlisted in the Navy where he played for the Great Lakes Naval Station team before being deployed to the Pacific theater of World War II. While there, May played for baseball teams that entertained soldiers fighting on the front lines. He was eventually stationed on the island of Tinian, where his makeshift home was less than 100 yards from an airstrip where he watched American B-29 bombers take off for bombing runs over Japan. One such plane he witnessed take off in 1945 was the Enola Gay leaving on its mission on August 6th to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

After the war, May returned to the Phillies but never again appeared in a Major League game. He was released by Philadelphia on May 7th, 1946, and rather than sign with the Pirates as a third baseman, May decided to pursue a managerial career. He first served as a player-manager for the Pirates Single-A affiliate in Albany before moving to the Cleveland organization through 1962. He then had his final stops in the systems of the Yankees and Reds, during the latter of which May became the last person to manage Satchel Paige in 1966 with the Peninsula Grays of the Carolina League. May then made his way back to the Cleveland organization where he managed his son Milt before finally retiring in 1972.

Hugh Mulcahy, 1940

Like his teammate May, Hugh Mulcahy was also a representative of the Phillies at the 1940 All-Star game. Nicknamed “losing pitcher”, Mulcahy led all of baseball in losses twice in six seasons with the Phillies. At the time of the All-Star break in 1940, Mulcahy had a 7-10 record but that was despite a solid 3.44 ERA. That was even after Mulcahy allowed eight runs in just 1.1 IP against the Giants a mere four days before the All-Star game. Luckily for Mulcahy, his numbers were still good enough to get him named to the NL’s team. Unluckily for him however, he did not see the field in the game.

That bad luck seemed to foreshadow much of his next calendar year. Mulcahy returned to the Phillies after the break and won his first five starts, all of which were complete games, to bring his season record above .500 for the first time since June 27th. But the reality of playing on the 1940 Phillies came crashing back down on Mulcahy, as he then embarked on a twelve-game losing streak that started on August 4th and didn’t end until Mulcahy’s last start of the season on September 27th. He didn’t pitch as bad as one might think over such a streak though, as he averaged over 7 innings pitched per start, including two starts where he pitched past the ninth inning, but nevertheless Mulcahy still sported a 4.90 ERA over that span and allowed five or more runs in five of those starts.

The hits kept coming (literally and metaphorically) for Mulcahy. He finished the 1940 season with a respectable 3.60 ERA but led all of baseball in losses with 22 and surrendered the most hits of any pitcher with 283. That season would be Mulcahy’s last until 1945, as his bad luck was capped off by being drafted into the Army on March 8th, 1941, notably becoming the first MLB player drafted into the military. The date of which Mulcahy was drafted had the added touch of bad luck by occurring nine months before the United States’ entry into World War II. It was also right on the eve of Mulcahy possibly being bought by the Brooklyn Dodgers, who finished second in the NL in 1940, for the price of $75,000. The timing ended up costing Mulcahy five full seasons in the Majors, having left for the Army at age 26 and returning at age 31.

Ultimately, Mulcahy would pitch in only 23 more MLB games after being honorably discharged by the Army on August 5th, 1945. He played in Philadelphia until asking for and being granted a release following the 1946 season. Mulcahy then signed with the Pirates who ultimately released him on May 11th after appearing in only two games. He then bounced around the minor leagues for the Chicago White Sox before retiring in 1951 and embarking on a career as a pitching coach.

Danny Litwhiler, 1942

Not many people may have ever heard of Danny Litwhiler, but he continues to impact the game today in ways you wouldn’t expect. A Ringtown, Pennsylvania native and Bloomsburg University graduate, Litwhiler originally signed with the Detroit Tigers organization in 1936. He suffered a pair of major injuries to his ankle and knee over the next few years, resulting in Litwhiler being released by the Tigers in 1939. He joined his brother at a tryout for the Baltimore Orioles, and after waiting for a promised call that never came, finally discovered that the scout that wanted to sign him was John Ogden, who in the meantime had been hired as general manager of the Phillies and wanted to sign him to play in Philadelphia instead.

The Pennsylvania Dutch outfielder made his MLB debut with the Phillies in 1940 after recovering from knee surgery stemming from his injury with the Tigers. He appeared in just 36 games but hit .345 with 5 home runs. Littwhiler got down ballot MVP votes in his first full season in 1941 when he finished the year hitting .305/.350/.466. He wasn’t as impressive in 1942, as he was hitting just .265 by the end of June, but Litwhiler had not yet committed an error in the outfield after having a Major League leading 14 errors the previous year.

That defensive improvement was good enough to earn Litwhiler a spot at the All-Star game as the 21-54 Phillies lone representative at the Polo Grounds. The National League was defeated 3-1 thanks in large part to a two-run homer in the first inning from Rudy York of the Tigers, but Litwhiler was actually able to see some action. He entered the game as a pinch hitter in the sixth and hit the first pitch he saw from Detroit’s Al Benton into right for a single. His effort was quickly erased though, as the Cardinals’ Jimmy Brown grounded into a double play.

Litwhiler returned to the Phillies and finished the season hitting a very pedestrian .271/.310/.389. However, he became the first player in MLB history to play a full season without recording an error, a remarkable accomplishment considering his previous history of poor defense. Perhaps part of that success could be due to his fielding glove’s fingers being tied together by rawhide, the first time any player had done that to a glove in the Majors.

The following year, Litwhiler and fellow outfielder Earl Naylor were traded to the Cardinals in exchange for Herman Coaker Triplett, Dain Clay, and Elvin “Buster” Adams, all of which were also outfielders. The surprise trade of Litwhiler angered the Phillies fanbase who were given a “frothing-at-the-mouth argument that will enable them to take their minds off war worries for a few minutes” according to Stan Baumgartner of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Baumgartner wrote in the paper that fan reaction was very “bitter” and even talked to one man with a Texas accent who remarked “I saw that Clay play in the Texas League- and if he’s a big leaguer, I’m a storm trooper.”

Things worked out pretty good for Litwhiler at least, as he was a member of the 1944 World Series champion Cardinals while the Phillies continued to wallow in loathing and self-pity. Litwhiler, who was previously ineligible for military service due to his knee injury, was accepted for limited service in the Army in 1945 and rose to be recreation director for the 10,000 soldiers stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington state. He returned to the Cardinals in 1946 but was traded to the Boston Braves whom he started for on Opening Day 1947. That day was rather significant, as it was the day Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the team Litwhiler’s Braves were playing against that day.

Litwhiler played for four more seasons in the Majors, having been traded to the Reds in 1948 and playing his last game with Cincinnati in 1951. He then embarked on a coaching career that started in the minor leagues but soon moved to college ball. During his time coaching is when Litwhiler created numerous inventions that are still in use today, such as the JUGGS radar gun and Diamond Grit, the drying agent that grounds crews use during rain delays. His prototype radar gun and his tied rawhide glove are both enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Sources

Baseball-Reference.com

Alan Cohen, Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) biography for Pinky May

Evansville Press, June 1st, 1932

The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 2nd, 1940

James C. Isaminger, The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 7th, 1940

C. Paul Rogers III, Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) biography for Hugh Mulcahy

The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 25th, 1940

John M. Cummings, The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 2nd, 1941

Glen Vasey, Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) biography for Danny Litwhiler

Pottsville Republican, June 26th, 1942

Stan Baumgartner, The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 3rd, 1943

The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 2nd, 1943