Pitching Grips

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 ...

Brett Davis-Imagn Images Rob Thomson, the unlikely skipper of the 2022 National League Champion Philadelphia Phillies, has fulfilled his most important function as manager. The Phillies are 9-19, tied for last place not only in the division, but also in the entire league. That’s unacceptable for a team with championship aspirations. So overboard Thomson goes. Bench coach Don Mattingly , father of Phillies GM Preston Mattingly and an experienced big league manager in his own right, will take the tiller for the foreseeable future. This is the second managerial firing in four days, after Alex Cora ’s ouster in Boston . Both cases involved a well-regarded and successful bench boss paying for the sins of a flawed roster. And just as some wondered why Cora lost his job when Craig Breslow had put a losing team together, fingers across the Delaware Valley are pointing to president of baseball ops Dave Dombrowski as much as Thomson. Including mine, for what it’s worth; just last week ...

Troy Taormina-Imagn Images The Houston Astros have a knack for disappointing Aprils. Despite usually being projected as the favorite or second favorite in the AL West every year for the last decade, the last time the Astros didn’t have a losing record at some point in the second half of April was 2019. But year after year, they’ve tended to get a powerful second wind. Excluding 2020, for obvious reasons, they haven’t finished with fewer than 87 wins in a season since 2016; overall, Houston has the second-most wins in baseball since the start of the 2017 season. During those previous mediocre starts, the projections have stood by the Astros. This time… not so much. To see the last time the Astros started this dreadfully, you don’t have to go back very far. In 2024, they hit their nadir after 26 games, at 7-19. I wrote then, as I do now, about the hole they were digging for themselves . Though it was still an uphill battle to come back in the AL West — they in f...

Nathan Lukes was 28 years old and in his ninth professional season when he made his MLB debut with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2023. He almost didn’t make it that far. Life down on the farm isn’t exactly a bed of roses, and that was especially true prior to conditions — financial and otherwise — improving via a collective bargaining agreement that essentially coincided with his reaching the bigs. A few years earlier, Lukes almost walked away. “It’s been a journey,” Lukes said of his path, which began when Cleveland selected him in the seventh round of the 2015 draft out of Cal State Sacramento. “Five games into my career — this was in short-season ball — I broke my hamate and was out for the rest of the year. The next year, I started in Low-A, and halfway through I got traded to Tampa Bay at the deadline. I stayed with the Rays until my minor-league contract was up, then signed here [in November 2021]. “It was getting to the point where it was almost time to think about hanging it up...

Brad Penner-Imagn Images A question popped into my head as I edited Ryan Blake’s column on the Nationals Friday morning. In the piece, shortly after noting that James Wood ranked third in the majors with a 170 wRC+, Ryan mentioned that Wood’s teammate, CJ Abrams , was sixth with a mark of 168. Upon reading this, I pulled up our leaderboards to see if the Nationals were the only team to have two players in the top 10. Turns out that, yes, they are. I thought about that for all of two seconds before something else caught my eye. Just below Abrams on the list was Mike Trout , who also had a 168 wRC+. This prompted me to wonder: Can Trout return to form? Can he both stay healthy and produce this year? I’m hardly the only one who spent the bulk of the 2020s dreaming on a fully healthy season from Trout, just as I’m not alone in having abandoned that hope as the injuries piled up. But after watching him blast home run after home run last week from the Yankee Stadi...