Last season, despite his team’s struggles, Byron Buxton set career highs in plate appearances (542), home runs (35), runs (97), RBI (83), hits (129), and WAR (5.0). He only played in 126 games, his second-highest single-season total, because he made two separate trips to the injured list. We saw enough of him in 2025 to appreciate his astonishing abilities, yet at the same time, his presence was a reminder of the career that might’ve been if only he hadn’t gotten hurt so much.
Fortunately, Buxton is healthy again this season. As of Friday morning, he has played in 64 of the Twins’ 76 games this year. That might not seem like a lot, but that works out to a pace of 136 games. Crucially, despite dealing with a few minor injuries, he has avoided the IL so far in 2026. He’s on track to hit 49 home runs and accumulate just shy of 6 WAR. ZiPS and our Depth Charts both project him to slow down a little bit, but they still peg him for at least 45 homers and right around 5 WAR. That would be an impressive season for anybody, but especially for an injury-prone 32-year-old center fielder.
That bit on Buxton is all you’ll hear from me this weekend. I’m on vacation as you’re reading this, and Meg Rowley is handling mailbag editing duties while I’m gone. This week, we’re answering your questions on Juan Soto’s slower swing speed, the teams that have the greatest all-time differences between player WAR and franchise wins, and whether an American League team will make the playoffs with a losing record. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
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Why is Juan Soto swinging so much slower? It seems intentional. I assume it’s because he likes the idea of a Juan Soto who is always in control in every at-bat. He’s striking out less (and walking less). But second question, why are all his xStats still so good with him swinging so much less?
Tangentially, why do sluggers seem to consistently underperform xwOBA compared to speedsters? And if that’s the case, why can’t xwOBA better account for that, given that it seems pretty clear that there’s something quantifiable in there. Alex Chamberlain discussed a related issue for RotoGraphs, as did Viva El Birdos and Max’s Sporting Studio.
Thanks!
Joel Coxander
Davy Andrews: Hi Joel! What a nice quadrangular query. Let’s be organized about this, shall we?
1. Why is Juan Soto swinging so much slower?
I’m not sure. I hope it’s not because he’s trying to live up to the picture of himself that he has in his head, as you suggested. That’s a tough way to live.
That said, I do see a couple obvious factors. First, he’s running his highest swing rate in years, and his zone contact rate is the highest it has ever been. At the same time, his contact rate on pitches in the zone has gone way up. That’s a recipe for weaker contact (which comes from weaker swings). Maybe it’s a random fluctuation, but maybe he’s decided to trade some slug (and some walks and strikeouts) for some contact. Here’s the thing, though: He hasn’t given up any slug! His isolated power and slugging percentage are both above his career averages, and as I write this on Wednesday, he’s on pace for 33 homers. He’s pulling the ball in the air more than he ever has. His on-base percentage is down some, but not much, because he’s given up more strikeouts than walks. The result is a vintage Juan Soto season, even if it looks a bit less Juan Soto-y than we’re used to.
I’m not certain, but I suspect some of this has to do with the pitch mix he’s seeing. As you’ll recall, bat speed is hugely dependent on the pitch type and location. Soto’s bat speed is down specifically against fastballs over the heart of the plate (down 0.8 mph) and breaking balls down the middle (down a whopping 1.8 mph). His bat speed against offspeed stuff is virtually unchanged, but he’s seeing them just 13.2% of the time, the lowest mark of his career.
2. Why are all his xStats still so good with him swinging so much less?
He’s not. He’s swinging more. I assume you mean with him swinging so much less hard, and I think it’s important to remember that although Soto isn’t swinging as hard, he’s definitely swinging hard enough. It’s not like he’s lost his fastball (so to speak), and average bat speed combined with a preternatural feel for squaring up the baseball works just great, especially when you’re hitting the ball in the air way more often. Expected stats know that’s where the home runs happen. Also, as we mentioned before, his strikeout rate is way down, and the expected value of a ball in play, even a softly hit one, is a lot higher than the expected value of a strikeout.
3. Why do sluggers seem to consistently underperform xwOBA compared to speedsters?
A few factors can affect these things, but I’m just going to go with the obvious answer here, which is speed. Speedy speedsters beat out infield hits. Sluggish sluggers do not.
4. Why can’t xwOBA better account for that?
It can. In fact, on certain specific kinds of balls – namely, toppers and weakly hit balls – it does. But that doesn’t account for the doubles that speedsters stretch into triples or would-be doubles where sluggers have to settle for singles, or a million other possible tweaks that might make xwOBA more descriptive but less predictive. To be clear, it could account for all those things, but they would likely make it worse as a tool. xwOBA is not designed to cover every eventuality. It’s designed to give us useful information about who a hitter is and what they might do going forward.
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You answered the June 13 mailbag question about which teams historically have had the greatest difference between cumulative player WAR generated and actual team wins with respect to individual seasons. That got me thinking about how franchises have done historically overall. So, as a follow-up, which franchises collectively, over their entire history, have had the greatest differences, and why will the greatest under-achievers have turned out to be the Mets? I mean, it has to be the Mets, right? — Lennie Augustine
Michael Baumann:
Lennie, I don’t know what it is about Mets fans that makes them think their team is a world-historical disaster. Maybe it’s because New Yorkers have this uniquely insular worldview where nothing worth knowing exists west of the Hudson. We’re just the right side of Knicks fans blowing their 2004 Red Sox moment because they think they’re the center of the universe.
It reminds me of the most annoying line in Hamilton, where they stop a song to do a little three-part harmony about how New York is “the greatest city in the world,” which is just cheap pandering to the local Broadway crowd. Here’s how great New York was back then: The Continental Army lost the city in its first major battle after the Declaration of Independence, and never bothered to take it back. We should’ve let the British keep it. Then Lin-Manuel Miranda would be their problem.
But I digress. If your only point of comparison is the Yankees, then sure, the Mets sure look like the biblical Job by comparison. But they’ve been around for 65 years, and they’ve won five pennants and two World Series, which seems pretty average to me. As I write, they have the 20th-best historical winning percentage of the 30 active major league teams: .484.
Even then, that number is so heavily influenced by the franchise’s first decade, when they truly were the most woeful team in baseball. Lennie, if you’re writing from 1968, I owe you an apology. And while you’re back there, please tell someone that this Nixon character is bad news and we should avoid electing him if possible.
Since 1969, when the Mets became the first expansion team to win a World Series, they’re actually seven games over .500. So when I consult the grand WAR spreadsheet, I’d expect them to be in the middle somewhere. Especially because the team didn’t exist in the early 1900s, which is where you get most of the big WAR-win discrepancies.
Let’s see. I wrote that angry preamble before I actually crunched the numbers, so it would be extremely funny if after all that, the Mets were in fact underperforming their historical WAR by like 50 points:
| Team | Games | Real Win% | WAR Win% | Diff. | Pythag.% | Diff. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ARI | 4,508 | .489 | .491 | -.002 | .493 | -.004 |
| ATH | 19,510 | .486 | .483 | .003 | .482 | .004 |
| ATL | 19,542 | .491 | .490 | .001 | .491 | .000 |
| BAL | 19,547 | .475 | .484 | -.009 | .468 | .006 |
| BOS | 19,534 | .518 | .527 | -.009 | .521 | -.003 |
| CHC | 19,577 | .505 | .504 | .001 | .507 | -.002 |
| CHW | 19,542 | .499 | .495 | .003 | .499 | .000 |
| CIN | 19,573 | .498 | .502 | -.003 | .496 | .002 |
| CLE | 19,548 | .513 | .513 | .000 | .513 | .000 |
| COL | 5,257 | .455 | .443 | .012 | .458 | -.003 |
| DET | 19,570 | .503 | .506 | -.004 | .502 | .001 |
| HOU | 10,217 | .502 | .511 | -.008 | .508 | -.005 |
| KCR | 9,070 | .476 | .472 | .004 | .473 | .003 |
| LAA | 10,376 | .494 | .484 | .010 | .491 | .003 |
| LAD | 19,560 | .532 | .529 | .003 | .535 | -.003 |
| MIA | 5,249 | .461 | .467 | -.006 | .452 | .009 |
| MIL | 9,075 | .491 | .484 | .007 | .494 | -.003 |
| MIN | 19,559 | .481 | .489 | -.007 | .481 | .001 |
| NYM | 10,208 | .484 | .491 | -.008 | .491 | -.007 |
| NYY | 19,522 | .568 | .560 | .008 | .574 | -.006 |
| PHI | 19,518 | .470 | .483 | -.013 | .464 | .006 |
| PIT | 19,561 | .504 | .507 | -.004 | .505 | -.001 |
| SDP | 9,081 | .469 | .468 | .000 | .463 | .005 |
| SEA | 7,788 | .479 | .492 | -.013 | .478 | .001 |
| SFG | 19,554 | .533 | .524 | .009 | .536 | -.003 |
| STL | 19,563 | .522 | .522 | -.001 | .522 | .000 |
| TBD | 4,503 | .491 | .502 | -.011 | .489 | .001 |
| TEX | 10,361 | .476 | .477 | .000 | .479 | -.002 |
| TOR | 7,788 | .500 | .503 | -.003 | .506 | -.006 |
| WSN | 9,075 | .482 | .482 | .000 | .479 | .003 |
No such luck. The Mets have underperformed their historical WAR by 77 wins, which does actually put them on the unlucky end of the scale, just not far enough to be funny. The two teams that have underperformed their WAR the most are the Phillies and the Mariners. The Phillies have had three distinct runs of competence over the past 50 years, which has obscured the fact that they were consistently execrable for, oh, the first 90-odd years of their existence.
The Mariners, well: That’s what it looks like when God actually has it out for you. The M’s have had a parade of the most popular and charismatic athletes in American sports history, and in 50 years, they’ve never even participated in a World Series. Last year, they got closer than they ever had before, and in the process ruined a terrific bit of baseball trivia: Until last year, the Mariners had the same number of playoff appearances as players lost to testicular injuries.
The other end of the scale is a little weird. The third- and fourth-biggest overperformers are the Giants and the Yankees, who are at or near the top of every leaderboard you can think of. But the top two teams by WAR overperformance are the Rockies and the Angels; if you asked me to guess which franchise is actually the victim of some kind of metaphysical shenanigans, these two teams would’ve been high on the list.
The baseball gods work in mysterious ways, I guess.
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How many sub-.500 teams will make the AL playoffs? — Jeremy
Dan Szymborski:
Jeremy, I’ll start by saying that now that we have tiebreakers instead of play-in games (the obviously morally superior method of sorting out the postseason field), playoff teams with losing records might be the closest thing we’ll get to Team Entropy — and I’m naturally in favor of a little chaos.
As for it’s likelihood, thanks to the mediocrity of the AL’s middle class, there’s a real chance the junior circuit will field a sub-.500 playoff team. As of Friday morning, ZiPS estimates a 19.7% chance that at least one AL playoff team will have a losing record. Even multiple losing teams is a plausible outcome if the records clump together in a certain way: ZiPS also projects a 5.1% chance of there being two losing teams, with a 0.6% shot of all three Wild Cards having losing records (those teams generally have 79-80 wins).
They’re much longer odds, but there were even a few simulations in ZiPS’ million runs in which four losing AL teams make the playoffs, with the three Wild Card teams and the AL Central winner all “achieving” this dreadful “success.” That’s a little harder to pull off, though; you basically need to have the Yankees and Mariners go on massive runs, and for the National League to be surprisingly strong relative to the AL and sap away many of the AL’s wins. That said, it’s a lot more plausible in a world with interleague play.
For informational purposes, I’ve tallied the probability that each team in the AL makes the playoffs while having a losing record:
| Team | Probability |
|---|---|
| Tampa Bay Rays | 2.95% |
| Baltimore Orioles | 2.84% |
| Boston Red Sox | 2.53% |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 2.52% |
| Houston Astros | 2.16% |
| Texas Rangers | 2.03% |
| Chicago White Sox | 1.78% |
| Athletics | 1.59% |
| Cleveland Guardians | 1.50% |
| Minnesota Twins | 1.47% |
| Seattle Mariners | 1.28% |
| Detroit Tigers | 1.27% |
| Kansas City Royals | 0.98% |
| New York Yankees | 0.41% |
| Los Angeles Angels | 0.05% |
Seeing the Rays at the top here may surprise some, but ZiPS remains skeptical of the club, and they drop down to 79-80 wins in a few of the system’s runs even with their existing cushion.
We wouldn’t want this sort of thing to happen every year, but it feels like it would be fun, in a gallows humor kind of way, for us to get a few clunker teams every once in a while.
* This article was originally published here
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