Pitching Grips

Christopher Hanewinckel-Imagn Images The best team in baseball will be without its biggest star for a few weeks. The Braves placed Ronald Acuña Jr. on the injured list Sunday with a strained left hamstring. Acuña exited Saturday’s game after pulling up in considerable pain while running out a groundout. Manager Walt Weiss told reporters that imaging revealed a Grade 1 strain, the least severe grade. According to MLB.com, Weiss said: “It’s not going to be just a couple days. It’s gonna be more than that, so we need to put him on the IL, and hopefully it’ll be sooner than later. No idea with these soft tissue injuries how long they’re gonna take, but I think the silver lining is that the MRI showed it wasn’t too serious.” While many players return from Grade 1 hamstring strains in just a couple weeks, or even following the 10-day minimum, this is an injury that can linger and delay a return. This is, obviously, less than ideal for the Braves. Acuña is thei...

Stan Szeto-Imagn Images I don’t pay too much attention to the standings in April. I look at them, of course, but that’s more a matter of routine than a desire to learn something substantial. It’s hard for teams to pull ahead of the pack this early in the season, and I’d rather not read too much into the fact that, say, the banged-up Blue Jays are a few games below .500, or that none of the five teams in the NL Central has a losing record. It takes time for these things to sort themselves out. And yet, upon checking the standings Friday morning, I found myself pondering the significance of what I saw: specifically, that only three teams in the American League had a winning record. After a dizzying 20 minutes of digging, I lifted my head from my laptop in a daze, wondering how the heck I ended up staring at Baseball Reference’s playoff odds for the 14-18 White Sox. I think seeing the number 16.1% is what snapped me out of my stupor. (For what it’s wor...

Brad Penner-Imagn Images Major League Baseball’s rules have been in a constant state of flux during the 2020s, with the implementation of the extra-innings runner (the so-called Manfred Man ), the universal designated hitter, the three-batter minimum, the pitch clock, the disengagement rule, larger bases, and the infield shift ban accompanying additional changes to roster sizes and the injured list. Most — but not all — of these rule changes have been aimed at livening the game up, with more action and fewer dead spots, and have generally favored offenses rather than pitchers. This year’s Big New Rule is the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System , which has shaken up batters’ and pitchers’ understanding of the strike zone. With the month of April now behind us, it’s worth checking in on this season’s numbers, in part to see what kind of impact the ABS is having. For starters, scoring levels are up, both relative to last year as whole and to the opening month, ...

2:02 Jason Martinez : Welcome to the RosterResource Chat! Big day today with the release of our new Roster Grid. Great job by Jon, who has re-created an old MLBDepthCharts feature and added some really cool stuff to it. For those of you who have ever wanted to see all 30 teams on one page or download all 30 teams in one click, this is where to go … https://blogs.fangraphs.com/instagraphs/the-rosterresource-roster-grid… Let’s chat. 2:02 Metsox : Ben Brown got a shot at closing in Chicago for a while? 2:04 Jon Becker : Not really, but not for any reason that’s his fault. Daniel Palencia’s lat strain appears to have been extremely mild and they’re debating activating him this weekend without a rehab assignment. That’ll put Brown back into a multi-inning fireman role and he’ll continue to be crucial while there are still a bunch of relievers on the IL and Phil Maton hasn’t gotten it going yet. That new sinke...

Brett Davis-Imagn Images The moment may prove fleeting, but at this writing, the Braves have a claim as the best team in baseball. At the outset of this season, Atlanta looked as though it might be headed for disaster yet again due to injuries and absences, with another Jurickson Profar suspension and the loss of Spencer Strider providing a particular sense of déjà vu . Instead of stumbling out of the gate, however, and even with a far-from-complete roster, the 2026 Braves have dominated opponents on both sides of the ball. At 21-9, they own the majors’ best record — and it appears they’ll get Strider back soon, as well. Nearly five weeks in, the Braves haven’t lost a series. They kicked things off at Truist Park by taking two out of three from both the Royals and A’s, then went on the road and split a four-game set with the Diamondbacks before taking two out of three from the Angels. Upon returning to Atlanta, they took two of three from both the Guardians ...