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Poll: Will The Diamondbacks Be Sellers This Summer?

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The Diamondbacks have been one of the better teams in baseball in recent years. The won the NL pennant just two years ago, and last season put together a strong 89-win campaign that just barely missed the playoffs due to a three-way tiebreaker with the Braves and Mets. After an offseason where the club brought in Josh Naylor and Corbin Burnes among a handful of other additions, it wasn’t hard to see the Diamondbacks serving as the main challenger to the Dodgers in the NL West, or at least as an early favorite for one of the NL Wild Card spots.

Things haven’t worked out that way, however. The Diamondbacks entered play today with a 28-31 record that leaves them in fourth place in the NL West, 7.5 games back of the Dodgers but also behind the Padres and Giants. Even in the NL Wild Card race, Arizona is five games back, in line with the records of likely sellers in other divisions like the Nationals and Reds. While they entered the season with a 60.4% chance to make the playoffs according to Fangraphs, today’s playoff odds give them just a 27.9% chance to play in the postseason this year. Those odds are a worrying sign, but they’re hardly the be-all and end-all; the Tigers (20.3%) and Mets (9.8%) both had slimmer odds at the postseason than that one year ago today and ended up not only making the playoffs but playing fairly deep into October.

What separates Arizona from last year’s surprise contenders, however, is that they clearly appear to be on the downswing. Burnes is having elbow troubles, leaving his future at the top of their rotation uncertain at best. Closer A.J. Puk is on the 60-day injured list with an uncertain timeline*. Zac Gallen hasn’t looked like himself all season, and Brandon Pfaadt was having trouble staying consistent even before he gave up eight runs without recording an out in his most recent start against the Nationals. An offense with players like Corbin Carroll, Geraldo Perdomo, Ketel Marte, and even Pavin Smith all hitting incredibly well feels as though it should be a slam dunk to make the postseason, but the club just doesn’t appear to have enough pitching to make a run as presently constructed without significant turnarounds from players like Gallen.

An argument could be made, however, that with Marte nearing the end of his prime years and players like Gallen, Naylor, Merrill Kelly, and Eugenio Suarez ticketed for free agency this winter, that the Diamondbacks would simply be best served supplementing the current roster with more pitching this summer and attempting to make a late-season run. A number of interesting arms could potentially be available this summer, ranging from mid-rotation pieces like Zach Eflin and Nick Martinez to relief help like Pete Fairbanks and Kyle Finnegan. Any of those options could help stabilize the pitching staff enough for Arizona’s vaunted offense to carry the rest of the load, and that’s before considering the unlikely but still feasible possibilities that teams like the Astros and Cardinals decide to dangle Framber Valdez and Ryan Helsley.

The complication with that, however, is that Arizona is already in very uncharted waters when it comes to payroll. Efforts to trade Jordan Montgomery to free up payroll space this winter were unsuccessful, and the fact that he ended up going under the knife before the season began put a stop to any hopes of moving him to make room for other players in the budget this summer. It’s at least theoretically possible ownership could be willing to green-light even more spending for a squad that RosterResource suggests is already costing the club $196MM this year, but it would hardly be a surprise if managing general partner Ken Kendrick was reluctant to invest in the team further without them showing more signs of life. Young players like Carroll, Jordan Lawlar, and Perdomo aren’t going anywhere, so it’s not hard to imagine the club being able to load up on talent this summer by moving players like Gallen and Suarez with an eye towards contending in 2026 and beyond.

Perhaps the best news for the Diamondbacks at this point is that there’s still nearly two months until the deadline, meaning they won’t need to make a decision for at least a few more weeks. A late June stretch where the club enjoys nine consecutive games against the Rockies, White Sox, and Marlins could easily provide just the sort of shot in the arm Arizona needs to get right back into the thick of the Wild Card race, especially if they’re able to take series against more middle-of-the-road clubs like Atlanta, Cincinnati, and Toronto over the next two weeks.

How do MLBTR readers think the Diamondbacks will ultimately handle their deadline dilemma? Will they push their chips in with the 2025 club, or dangle players like Gallen in hopes of building a stronger team for next year? Have your say in the poll below:

*This post originally stated that Puk was done for the year. MLBTR regrets the error.

Poll: Can Willy Adames Turn Things Around?

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2025 has been a good time to be a Giants fan so far. Buster Posey’s turn at the helm of baseball operations has helped push the club to a solid 31-25 start, putting them just one game back of the Cardinals for the final NL Wild Card spot and three games back of the Dodgers for the NL West crown. While San Francisco would surely prefer to be in playoff position right now, it’s been a very encouraging start for a club that was projected by Fangraphs for an 81-81 record and a 28.5% chance of making the postseason prior to the start of the 2025 campaign. Strong as the club’s start has been, however, that’s been almost entirely without contribution from their marquee free agent signing of the 2024-25 offseason.

It’s been a rough first year in San Francisco for Willy Adames, to put it mildly. Long viewed as an excellent two-way shortstop, Adames has yet to post on either side of the ball for the Giants. Advanced defensive metrics are notoriously finicky and take quite a long time to stabilize, but Adames’s -3 Outs Above Average and -2 Fielding Run Value are both worrying figures for a player who was a Gold Glove candidate as recently as 2023, while his -8 DRS this year stands dead last among all qualifying shortstops. Errors are hardly the best way to measure defensive value, but only Manny Machado and Elly De La Cruz have committed more of them in 2025. No matter how you slice it, Adames has started his stay in the Bay Area off with lackluster defense.

Perhaps that would be easy enough to look past if Adames was putting up strong numbers at the plate. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. He’s hitting just .208/.288/.333 with a wRC+ of 77. His 26.2% strikeout rate and 9.8% walk rate aren’t out of the ordinary relative to his career numbers, but they are the worst figures he’s posted in both categories since 2022. The primary red flag in Adames’s profile this year is his vanishing power, however. After averaging 28 homers a season from 2021 to 2024, the shortstop has hit just five in his first 56 games as a Giant.

At least some of that can be blamed on his ballpark, and Statcast suggests that Adames would have as many as eight homers if he played all of his games at a friendlier ballpark like Dodger Stadium. Park factors aren’t the only thing to blame for Adames’s power-outage, however. While his barrel rate of 11% is more or less in line with what he’s done throughout his career, Adames is pulling the ball less often than he ever did with the Brewers and hitting the ball softly more frequently than ever before. The fact that Adames has stopped pulling the ball as much and is hitting it the other way more is surely a big reason for his drop in power, particularly combined with the aforementioned unforgiving park factors at Oracle Park, which are especially harsh on right-handed oppo hitters.

That leaves Adames with an altered batted ball profile that works in tandem with his new environment to create some of the worst results of his career. That means his struggles aren’t likely to end so long as he keeps going the other way, but the good news is that Adames can get back to the approach he demonstrated in 2023 and ’24, when he pulled 45.8% of his batted balls and went the other way just 19.5% of the time, it’s not hard to imagine his results improving considerably. While it may be too late in the season at this point to expect Adames to match his 119 wRC+ from last year, getting back up around league average or even matching the 107 wRC+ he posted over the last four years could be a much more realistic target.

How do MLBTR readers think the rest of Adames’s season will play out from here? Will he be able to make the adjustments necessary to hit well in Oracle Park and turn his season around, or will he remain a below-average hitter this season? Have your say in the poll below:

Poll: Should The Rangers Shake Up The Lineup?

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The Rangers have had a rough go of it so far in the month of May. They’ve gone just 11-15 on the month entering play today, including an embarrassing sweep at the hands of the White Sox last week, and three of those 11 wins came at the expense of a hapless Rockies club that has still not yet won its tenth game of the season. That’s left the team three games under .500, four games back in the AL Wild Card race, and 4.5 games back of the Mariners in the AL West. Those struggles have come in spite of a rotation so dominant that a fully healthy and effective Jacob deGrom is arguably the #3 starter this year by the results.

To find the culprit of the Rangers’ struggles, one need look no further than the starting lineup. The club’s hitters have posted a collective .219/.281/.354 slash line this year with a wRC+ of 80 that’s better than only that of the Pirates and Rockies. Texas has the lowest on-base percentage in the majors and the fewest runs scored in the AL. Going position-by-position, they have been in the bottom half of the league in wRC+ at almost every position in the majors with below-average production everywhere except third base and left field. Those positions are salvaged by standout performances from Josh Jung and Wyatt Langford, but the rest of the lineup is faltering.

That’s not to say there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, however. Josh Smith remains an above average hitter overall on the year, and perhaps he can shake his current cold stretch (.233/.295/.337 in May) once he’s relieved of the defensive rigors of serving as the club’s everyday shortstop. Smith took that role up in the absence of Corey Seager, who has been his typical excellent self when healthy but has appeared in just 27 games this season due to injuries. Seager’s recent return and the likely impending return of Evan Carter from the injured list leaves the Rangers with some decisions to make about their lineup, as discussed recently by Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News.

Seager’s return yesterday (albeit as a DH) pushed Sam Haggerty out of the lineup, but that leaves no room for Carter unless the club is willing to pull the plug on outfielder Alejandro Osuna despite him having looked good in his first cup of coffee as a big leaguer. Once Carter returns, Grant suggests that it could mean a shift in playing time for second baseman Marcus Semien and/or right fielder Adolis Garcia. Both veterans were key pieces of the club’s 2023 World Series championship but struggled through below-average (99 wRC+ for Semien, 92 for Garcia) seasons last year. 2025 has been far worse for both hitters, with Semien slashing just .173/.260/.224 (42 wRC+) on the year while Garcia has posted a lackluster .208/.256/.371 (74 wRC+) line.

The pair’s expected numbers are better than their current production, leaving the door cracked open to optimism for a rebound, but even those numbers would be good for merely average offensive production. As things stand, neither of those performances are acceptable for a big league regular. With the first two months of the season in the books and other hitters starting to get healthy, the leash for both veterans may be shortening. It’s hard to imagine the Rangers cutting either player (particularly with three years and $72MM left on Semien’s deal after 2025), but some sort of change appears to be necessary.

On paper, using lefty hitters on the club like Smith and Osuna as platoon partners for the righty-swinging Semien and Garcia could make some sense. A look under the hood reveals that may not be as helpful as it might seem, however; Garcia is actually roughly average (99 wRC+) against right-handed pitching this year but has gone just 7-for-48 with one walk and one double against southpaws. Semien, meanwhile, is hitting lefties better than righties but is striking out at a 30.8% clip against southpaws with a 51 wRC+. Whatever advantage he has against opposite-handed pitching is more of a commentary on his struggles against fellow righties than a sign of actual success.

If neither player makes sense as a candidate for a platoon role, then perhaps the Rangers’ best option would simply be to decrease the playing time of both hitters slightly. A reduction in playing time could be tough to stomach for the veterans, particularly in the case of an iron man like Semien who last played less than 159 games in a full season back in 2017, but it seems clear that something needs to change for the Rangers moving forward. The club could also consider benching either one for the time being to offer a physical breather and mental reset, but Semien’s solid defense at second base would be missed and, as previously mentioned, Garcia has performed decently enough at least against right-handed pitching.

How would MLBTR readers handle the situation? Would you fully bench one of the two struggling veterans, continue sticking with them as regulars in the lineup, or try to work out a timeshare between all of the Rangers’ bats? Have your say in the poll below:

Poll: Can The Guardians Hang Onto A Playoff Spot?

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The Guardians made it all the way to the ALCS last year while dominating an AL Central division that sent three teams to the playoffs, and over the offseason they augmented their lineup with players like Carlos Santana, Nolan Jones, and Luis Ortiz. While that hasn’t been enough to prevent the Tigers from becoming the kings of the hill in the division, it’s still been more than enough to keep the Guardians firmly in the AL playoff picture throughout the year. They currently sport a solid 29-25 record, which leaves them tied with the Astros in the standings for the second of three AL Wild Card spots.

Cracks have begun to show in Cleveland’s armor, however. Their 93 wRC+ as a team gives them the eighth-worst offense in the majors this year, down from last year’s 100 wRC+ that was dead-on average and good for a median 8th in the AL. The rotation, similarly, is in the bottom eight in baseball by measure of both ERA (4.21) and FIP (4.52) this year. That’s actually one spot better than last year’s team, which ranked seventh from the bottom in rotation ERA (4.40) and FIP (4.51), but the pitching has deteriorated overall thanks to a massive step back for the club’s once-impenetrable bullpen.

Relievers have always been fickle when it comes to year-to-year performance, and evidently even a group as dominant as the Guardians’ 2024 bullpen is subject to variance. After leading baseball in both ERA (2.57) and FIP (3.30) out of the pen by a substantial margin last year, this year’s relief corps is actually below average by ERA (4.01), and has fallen to eighth in the majors (3.58) by measure of FIP. For a team that leaned so heavily on elite performances from pieces like Emmanuel Clase and Cade Smith last year, a leaky bullpen is a major concern.

On some level, it’s impressive that the Guards have been able to win even this much given their backsliding offense and much weaker contributions from the bullpen. With that being said, those flaws have made them the only team presently in playoff position in either league with a negative run differential; they’ve allowed 20 more runs than they’ve scored entering play today, and the next weakest mark among that group is held by a Padres club that has done the inverse, with 20 more runs scored than allowed.

Will Cleveland be able to either improve those underlying numbers, or continue winning in spite of them? One thing that should benefit them is that their bullpen’s underlying metrics remain strong. As previously mentioned, they remain a top-ten club by bullpen FIP, and their relief corps’s 3.39 SIERA is good for an even better sixth in the majors. There’s some positive signs on offense, too, with Jones significantly under-performing his expected metrics and Lane Thomas likely to improve his performance the longer he’s back from the injured list. The rotation should get reinforcements eventually, as well, with longtime ace Shane Bieber expected back from Tommy John surgery at some point this year.

Even if those players don’t manage to turn things around, the Guardians could still benefit from a weak AL playoff field. While no team within even six games of a playoff spot in the NL has a negative run differential entering play today, the Royals, Rangers, and Blue Jays all have negative run differentials and make up three of the four teams within three games of an AL Wild Card spot. Unlike the Guardians, those clubs haven’t been so fortunate as to substantially outperform their expected records in the early going, with Texas and Toronto in particular both underwater at present. Each of those teams have their own flaws and challenges that could make it hard for them to catch the Guardians, while a more well-constructed club like the Red Sox just lost Alex Bregman and is currently on a four-game skid that leaves them 3.5 games behind Cleveland.

How do MLBTR readers view the Guardians’ playoff situation? Will they be able to hold onto their position in the playoff race for the long haul in spite of the early red flags? Or will another team emerge to push them out of the conversation? Have your say in the poll below:

Can The Marlins’ Top Slugger Keep This Up?

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Marlins fans don’t have much to root for this year, especially given the disastrous results Sandy Alcantara has gotten in his first ten starts back from Tommy John surgery. Miami’s 21-31 record is already enough to put them nine games out of a Wild Card spot and 12.5 games back of the Phillies in the NL East. Given the fact that the Fish are already buried in the standings and Alcantara is struggling, it would be easy to expect this season to be little more than waiting for Eury Perez to get healthy and watching Max Meyer develop at the big league level.

Kyle Stowers has changed that with a phenomenal start to the season. Acquired from the Orioles alongside infielder Connor Norby at the trade deadline last year in exchange for lefty Trevor Rogers, Stowers showed very little in his first 50 games with the Marlins. In 172 plate appearances with Miami last year, he hit a paltry .186/.262/.295 (56 wRC+) with minimal power and a massive 35.5% strikeout rate. That left him with a lot to prove headed into 2025, especially given that he celebrated his 27th birthday back in January.

Fortunately for both Stowers and the Marlins, he’s gone well beyond looking like an everyday player in the majors in the early part of the year. In 204 plate appearances, Stowers has recorded a terrific .300/.369/.528 slash with ten home runs and a wRC+ of 145. That’s a top-25 offensive performance in the majors this year, on par with stars like Corbin Carroll and Jose Ramirez. That sort of offensive firepower would provide a much-needed boost to the Marlins’ lineup as they try to push through this latest rebuild — if Stowers can sustain it.

When looking at Stowers’ underlying metrics, the results are a mixed bag with some surface level peripherals telling different stories than others. The slugger’s .396 xwOBA is actually better than his .387 wOBA, which typically suggests that a player is more than earning his production. On the other hand, Stowers has undeniably benefited from a .379 BABIP, the seventh-highest figure in the majors so far this year and nine points higher than Seiya Suzuki’s 2024 performance, which led all qualified hitters. Stowers has tended toward high BABIP figures throughout his young MLB career, but that figure is almost certain to come down. That means he’s unlikely to remain a .300 hitter, particularly given his improved but still elevated 27.5% strikeout rate.

An explanation for Stowers’ impressive numbers can be found, to some extent, in one simple fact: he hits the ball hard very frequently. The outfielder’s 53.5% hard-hit rate this year is good for 16th in the majors among qualified hitters. His 91.5 mph average exit velocity is within the top 50, and perhaps most impressively, his 20.5% barrel rate is topped by just four players in baseball this year: Oneil Cruz, Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, and Cal Raleigh. You can’t keep much better company than that in the power department, and as long as Stowers is barreling up one out of every five batted balls, he should be a productive player.

A comparison to Ohtani and Judge might make it seem as though Stowers is a guaranteed budding All-Star, but the reality isn’t quite that simple. That’s because the 27-year-old’s plate discipline is nearly as weak as his batted-ball profile is strong. Stowers swings at virtually everything, with the 12th-highest swing rate (55.7%) in the majors. Most of the players ahead of him on that leaderboard hit the ball incredibly hard, which Stowers does as well, but they also make contact at a solid rate, which Stowers does not. In fact, Stowers’ 69.4% contact rate is the tenth-lowest in baseball this year; only Guardians infielder Gabriel Arias swings more frequently while making contact less often, and his 91 wRC+ isn’t exactly something Stowers should be looking to emulate.

Between his high swing rate and low contact rate, Stowers is left tied for second in baseball behind Arias in swinging-strike rate this year. There’s some room for optimism, as the player he’s tied with is Bryce Harper. Harper has made his high swinging-strike rate work by mostly whiffing at pitches outside of he zone while still laying off those pitches often enough to draw a healthy number of walks. Stowers makes less contact on pitches in the zone than Harper, swings more often, and has a walk rate five percentage points lower than that of the star Phillies slugger.

Taking Stowers’ poor discipline and elite power potential together, it’s easy to see how he could have struggled so badly in his first 50 games with the Marlins while excelling so impressively through his next 50 games. When Stowers is getting his bat on the ball often enough for his power potential to carry his profile, like he is this season, he will likely excel. When that’s not happening and his strikeout rate is closer to the 35.5% clip he posted with the Fish last year, he’s likely to face some serious struggles without the discipline to lay off bad pitches and draw more walks.

How do MLBTR readers think Stowers will fare going forward? Have your say in the poll below:

Poll: Can The Cardinals Keep This Up?

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Today is Memorial Day, and the conventional wisdom in baseball suggests that means the current standings now have more signal than noise moving forward. Perhaps that means it’s time to take the Cardinals, who have been white-hot in recent weeks, more seriously despite the narratives surrounding their quiet offseason and slow start to the year last month. A nine-game win streak earlier this month has helped propel them to a 16-4 record over their past 20 games and a 30-23 record overall. That’s put them in a statistical tie with the Padres for the final NL Wild Card spot as things stand and just two games back of the Cubs in the NL Central.

When looking at the eight teams that have won 30+ games entering Memorial Day, it’s hard to deny that the Cardinals are the most surprising. As previously mentioned, they made virtually no additions this winter as they signed Phil Maton late in the offseason but otherwise stood pat while players like Paul Goldschmidt and Kyle Gibson departed the organization. Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that players who appeared likely to be a big part of any success the Cardinals may have had this year, like youngsters Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman, are struggling badly. Willson Contreras was a standout at the plate last year but has been merely league average this season and is currently day-to-day with a back injury, while Nolan Arenado is hitting at a below-average clip after the Cards failed to trade him this winter. Even on-paper ace Sonny Gray has a middling 4.06 ERA through 11 starts, and closer Ryan Helsley’s 3.50 ERA is his weakest since 2021.

Instead of the usual suspects, the Cardinals’ successes have come from unlikely places. The best hitter on the team is Brendan Donovan, who has long been a steady piece for St. Louis but now appears to be in the midst of a breakout season in his age-28 campaign with a 140 wRC+ and 2.0 fWAR across 51 games. The ace of the rotation is Matthew Liberatore, who has a 2.73 ERA in ten starts so far despite having never posted an ERA below 4.40 in the big leagues before and not even being assured of a rotation role entering camp this year. Behind Liberatore, Miles Mikolas has turned back the clock in his age-36 season to post a solid 3.51 ERA in his first ten starts and fellow veteran Steven Matz has been brilliant in a swing role with a 1.99 ERA in 31 2/3 innings of work.

All of this surprising performances beg the question: how sustainable can this be? Mikolas, Andre Pallante, and Erick Fedde are all pitching well above their peripherals so far this year. Impressive as he’s been, Ivan Herrera won’t finish the year with a wRC+ above 200. Even Donovan’s .360 BABIP must be looked at with at least some skepticism, as should the league average performance the Cards have gotten out of Victor Scott II and his .368 BABIP. On the other hand, many of the club’s more established players should be expected to improve. Gray and Contreras have both performed to their usual All-Star caliber levels when looking at the underlying metrics, Arenado’s .245 BABIP would be the lowest of his career in a full season, and Lars Nootbaar’s solid 112 wRC+ may be just the tip of the iceberg with his discipline and power potential. There’s also some players, such as Liberatore and Donovan, whose breakouts are fairly convincing even if they aren’t locks to stay quite as good as they have been so far.

Where does that leave the Cardinals? If you look at the playoff odds over at Fangraphs, the answer is likely outside of the final playoff picture. The club is projected by the site for an 84-win season with a 39.1% chance of making the playoffs. If you gave fans in St. Louis those odds at the start of the 2025 season, the vast majority would’ve surely taken that happily. As it stands, however, winning a touch under half their games for the rest of the season would surely be a disappointing outcome after this exciting start to the season. At the same time, it’s not hard to see why projection systems might doubt the Cardinals. The NL Wild Card race has been extremely competitive so far, even with strong teams like the Diamondbacks and Braves struggling to find their footing so far. That could make St. Louis’s best path to the postseason through the NL Central, where the Cubs are projected to win 90 games and have the NL’s easiest schedule the rest of the way.

Where do MLBTR readers believe the Cardinals will end up? Is postseason baseball returning to St. Louis this October, or will this team wind up at home like they did the past two seasons? Have your say in the poll below:

Poll: Can Jeremy Pena Keep This Up?

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It’s been a struggle for the Astros to even keep their heads above water this year thanks to the substantial losses they suffered over the offseason and a large number of lackluster in-season performances. Justin Verlander, Alex Bregman, and Kyle Tucker are all playing elsewhere. Yordan Alvarez is hurt. Jose Altuve, Yainer Diaz, and new addition Christian Walker have all been disappointing so far. And the rotation has virtually no certainty behind Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown. All of that makes staying just 2.5 games back in the AL West an impressive feat in its own right, even if the days of the dynasty that brought home two World Series championships appear to be over.

The development of shortstop Jeremy Pena is a major reason why they’re still in the hunt for the playoffs at all at this point. A third-rounder in the 2018 draft who debuted in 2022 with a brilliant season that earned him a Gold Glove award, Pena has always been a valuable player thanks to his excellent work at shortstop but has never been more than a league average performer at the plate. Entering 2025, the 27-year-old had slashed .261/.307/.399 with a wRC+ of exactly 100 during his MLB career.

As the Cubs demonstrated when they offered Dansby Swanson $177MM to become their starting shortstop, a league average bat with an excellent glove at shortstop is already incredibly valuable. Pena has seemingly taken his game to another level so far this year, however. He’s hitting an excellent .298/.362/.447 with six homers, six steals, and a wRC+ of 132 this season. Those numbers aren’t exactly appearing at the top of any leaderboards this early in the season, when relatively small sample sizes allow baseball’s most fearsome hitters to flirt with a .400 batting average or a 60-homer season virtually every year. But could Pena’s step forward be more sustainable than the typical hot start to a season?

There’s plenty of reason to believe that’s the case. One of the most positive changes in Pena’s profile is his substantially improved plate discipline. After striking out at a 20.4% clip and posting the third-lowest walk rate in the majors among hitters with at least 1500 plate appearances over the past three years, Pena is now one of just 19 qualified hitters with a strikeout rate under 14% this year (13.7%). He’s even walking a bit more frequently, with a 6.2% rate that grades out as merely below average rather than in the conversation for lowest in the league. Those improvements in plate discipline appear to be largely sustainable. Pena is swinging less often than ever (49.0%), and while that’s come with a decrease in swing rate inside the strike zone it’s also allowed him to cut down his swinging strike rate by nearly three points relative to his career norms.

While Pena’s increased passivity in the strike zone could be a cause for concern down the line, for now it seems as though swinging less often is doing wonders for his plate discipline. That willingness to take strikes inside the zone has been offset so far by increased power production. Pena’s .149 ISO to this point in the season doesn’t quite match his rookie campaign, when he launched 22 homers and 20 doubles, but it’s still ten points above his career norms and leaves room for him to flirt with a second 20-homer season after combining for just 25 long balls in 2023 and ’24. If this newfound power proves to be sustainable, that could help Pena avoid opposing pitchers challenging him in the zone more often to exploit the fact that he’s begun to swing less often.

The underlying metrics on Pena’s power output are mixed, however. He’s hitting the ball hard more often than ever before with a 40.1% hard-hit rate that would be the best of his career, but his 6.8% barrel rate is not substantially different from his career 6.2% mark, his average exit velocity is virtually unchanged, and his max exit velocity is actually lower than ever before. His bat speed has actually come down slightly as well. It’s not all bad news, however: in addition to his aforementioned hard-hit rate improvements, Pena is squaring the ball up more often than ever before (28.9%). In all, Pena’s xwOBA (.349) is more or less in line with his wOBA of .355, which suggests that he’s more or less earned his production to this point.

How do MLBTR readers feel about Pena’s strong start to the season? Is it a sustainable step forward for the young hitter, or will he revert back to average with time? Have your say in the poll below:

Poll: Did The White Sox Find A Gem In The Rule 5?

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There’s not been much for fans on the South Side of Chicago to get excited about of late. The club’s lengthy rebuild in the 2010s assembled a core that included well-regarded pieces like Lucas Giolito, Dylan Cease, Eloy Jimenez, Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, and Luis Robert Jr. but did not translate to much success on the field; the group ultimately made it to the playoffs in 2020 and ’21 but lost in the first round both years before regressing to an 81-81 record in 2022 and kicking off the latest rebuild.

Since then, White Sox fans have watched that core get dismantled, whether via trades or declined club options, and breakout ace Garrett Crochet followed them out the door over the offseason. Crochet’s excellent pitching performances were the one highlight of the White Sox season this side of the Campfire Milkshake, so that left fans with little to look forward to in 2025… or so we thought. In reality, the White Sox seem to have replaced their dominant ace with another potential front-of-the-rotation arm who came from the most unlikely of places: the Rule 5 draft.

Righty Shane Smith was plucked from the Brewers’ organization and made Chicago’s Opening Day rotation out of Spring Training. It was difficult to know what to expect from Smith, given that an organization as well-regarded for its pitching development as Milwaukee was comfortable leaving the righty unprotected this past winter. That’s quickly proving to have been a mistake. Through his first ten starts of the season, Smith has posted a sterling 2.36 ERA that stands as the eleventh-best figure among qualified starters this year, just ahead of Paul Skenes.

ERA is an imperfect estimator of talent, of course, and Smith’s personal figure is deflated by the fact that a six-run, five-inning outing against the Cubs saw five of those runs scored as unearned. Even setting ERA aside, however, his season has been an impressive one so far: a 3.32 FIP (26th) and 3.57 xERA (t-29th) lend credence to the idea of Smith as a potential front-end arm, even if he isn’t quite in the Cy Young conversation based on those more advanced metrics. Have the White Sox truly found a diamond in the rough, or is Smith’s hot start to his career just a flash in the pan?

Overall, Smith’s profile is a solid one, but there are signs that it’s closer to that of a league average starter than anything else. His 22.0% strikeout rate and 8.1% walk rate are both middle of the pack, and a 45.3% ground ball rate is above-average but not exactly elite. His .259 BABIP and 5.9% home run to fly ball ratio are both top-of-the-scale, but neither of those figures are particularly skill-interactive or sustainable, particularly for a hurler who rarely generates soft contact. If anything, those figures are potential red flags that indicate risk of future regression. Smith’s 3.96 SIERA and 97 xFIP- paint him as a roughly average MLB starter as well, offering all the more reason to think he might regress.

There are reasons for optimism as well, however. Smith generates swinging strikes at a well above average clip, which could be a sign for strikeout potential beyond the average rates that he’s shown to this point. An uptick in strikeouts would raise the floor on his whole profile in a way that could allow him to keep producing at this level. Even without that, however, it’s fair to point out that there have certainly been pitchers who have found consistent MLB success over the years despite mediocre underlying data. Smith’s metrics are better than, as one example, those of Javier Assad on the other side of town. Assad has a career 3.40 ERA across nearly 300 innings in the majors despite lackluster metrics, and that’s a figure any team would happily take from a Rule 5 pick.

How do MLBTR readers think Smith will pan out going forward? Will he be able to find another gear and keep producing like a front-half of the rotation arm, will he settle in as more of a reliable back-end starter, or will this hot start prove to be a total mirage? Have your say in the poll below:

Poll: Should The Royals Be Worried About Salvador Perez?

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Veteran catcher Salvador Perez is the face of the Royals franchise, the last man standing from the club’s 2015 World Series team, and a nine-time All-Star with five Gold Gloves and five Silver Sluggers to his name. He’s one of the most important players in the organization’s history, and in that sense the 35-year-old’s legacy is already secure. That impenetrable legacy does little to help the Royals’ playoff odds in 2025, however, and in that regard Perez’s performance this year has been lacking. He’s hit just .218/.254/.324 across 46 games and 190 plate appearances so far in 2025. That leaves him with a wRC+ of just 57 and negative WAR according to both Baseball Reference and Fangraphs, and that’s in spite of a brief hot streak where he collected 14 hits (including eight doubles) in ten games from April 24 to May 6.

That sort of production just won’t cut it for a Royals club that has playoff aspirations. Their 27-22 record entering play today is enough to keep them in the thick of the Wild Card race, but the recent losses of both Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans from the front of their rotation will put more pressure than ever on the offense to score runs. Perez is typically a key part of that offense, and with other key cogs in the lineup like Vinnie Pasquantino and Jonathan India also struggling to produce early in the year, Perez remains as important as ever. Can he turn things around, or do the Royals have a tough decision to make this summer about a franchise legend’s playing time in a pennant race?

A look at the underlying metrics provides plenty of reason for optimism. The most glaring factor in Perez’s downturn in performance is his anemic .106 ISO, which would put him on par with the 2024 performances of light-hitting, contact-oriented bats like Nico Hoerner and Nolan Schanuel. That’s a worrisome comparison to make considering Perez averaged 30 homers per season from 2021 to 2024, but the good news is that all signs point to this power outage coming to an end sooner rather than later. Despite hitting just two home runs so far this year, Perez’s 13.0% barrel rate is actually his best since he smacked 48 bombs in 2021 and his 45.7% hard-hit rate is better than it was in either of the past two seasons. In fact, Perez’s barrel and hard-hit rates are almost identical to those of Pete Alonso this year.

That could make it easy to write off Perez’s lackluster performance so far this season as little more than a fluke that should correct itself in due time, and the Royals are surely hoping that’s the case. With that being said, there are at least some potential red flags in the veteran’s performance that are worth keeping an eye on. While Perez has never been a particularly well-disciplined hitter, his 22.6% strikeout rate and 4.2% walk rate are both trending in the wrong direction relative to his All-Star 2024 season. He’s also hitting slightly more balls on the ground with fewer line drives relative to last year. All four of those figures are well within the bounds of Perez’s career norms, however.

Perhaps the biggest reason for concern regarding Perez is his age. As a 35-year-old catcher, it would hardly be a surprise if he wasn’t as physically capable of maintaining peak performance across 162 games as he was in his younger days. Regular reps at first base and DH should help that somewhat, but it’s still worth noting that Perez has seen his offense take a turn for the worse when the calendar flips to July in each of the past two seasons. If that trend of Perez slowing down as the year progresses continues in 2025, he may be running out of time to turn his overall season numbers around despite the solid underlying metrics to this point in the year.

How do MLBTR readers think the rest of Perez’s 2025 campaign will play out? Will he bounce back to around where he’s been in recent years, as the underlying numbers suggest? Or has he struggled too deeply for too long in the first half to make up for a potential slowdown after the All-Star break? Have your say in the poll below:

Poll: How Effective Has The Prospect Promotion Incentive Been?

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The Prospect Promotion Incentive was instituted as part of the latest collective bargaining agreement prior to the 2022 season. As the name implies, it’s designed to incentivize teams to more quickly promote their top prospects to the majors and avoid service time manipulation to gain a seventh year of team control over a given player. If an eligible player wins the Rookie of the Year award or is a finalist for either the MVP or Cy Young award before he reaches arbitration eligibility, then his team will be awarded a pick immediately after the first round of the following year’s draft.

Over the first three years of the incentive’s existence, four players have earned a PPI pick for their team: Julio Rodriguez, Gunnar Henderson, and Corbin Carroll all did so by winning their league’s Rookie of the Year award, while Bobby Witt Jr. did so last year by finishing second in AL MVP voting. That’s more than one player per year bringing in an extra pick for their team, and that collection of some of the league’s brightest young stars would have otherwise been prime candidates for service time manipulation; all were viewed as among the game’s best prospects, and all except Carroll had not yet signed an extension with their club although both Witt and Rodriguez would do so later on. The Mariners, in particular, had a history of manipulating service time with their best prospects including a controversy surrounding their handling of then-top prospect Jarred Kelenic.

In the cases of Rodriguez, Henderson, and Witt, the club in question evidently felt that the combination of a potential PPI pick and a full season of their top prospect in the majors was the better choice to pursue than the possibility of a seventh year of team control. The fact that players who finish in the top-two of Rookie of the Year voting are awarded a full year of service time even if they have not yet reached 172 days naturally surely factors into that calculation as well; the Pirates held star right-hander Paul Skenes back from their Opening Day roster and ended up with the worst of both worlds when he won the NL Rookie of the Year award last year. Not only did they not receive a PPI pick for Skenes’s win after he wasn’t included on their roster to begin the year, but his win cost them that extra year of team control gained by holding him back in until May anyway. 2015 NL Rookie of the Year Kris Bryant surely would’ve appreciated the opportunity to get that same bump in service time and move his free agency up to the 2020-21 offseason.

Not all instances of the PPI’s influence are quite this cut-and-dry, however. One recent trend regarding PPI-eligible prospects has been for clubs to put potential Rookie of the Year candidates on their Opening Day roster (or promote them early enough in the season so that they retain PPI eligibility) before giving them a short run in the majors and optioning them to the minor leagues if they don’t excel. The Cubs recently did exactly this with top infield prospect Matt Shaw, who was promoted back today after making the Opening Day roster, struggling in 18 games, and then spending a month at Triple-A. The Orioles have used this tactic when handling the promotions of Grayson Rodriguez and Jackson Holliday, as well.

Exactly how much those demotions had to do with service time and how much they had to do with performance can be debated, but it’s a method that allows a team to essentially hedge their bets by only extracting that extra year of team control once the PPI-eligible player has struggled enough in the majors to make a top-two finish in Rookie of the Year voting extremely unlikely. Aside from those cases, there are also some teams that seem completely undeterred from holding down their top prospects by the PPI. The aforementioned Pirates fall into this group even after the debacle with Skenes last year, as they’ve shown no inclination towards promoting top pitching prospect Bubba Chandler despite his dominance at Triple-A and the club’s struggles at the big league level.

How do MLBTR readers view the incentive? Has it been a success because it’s allowed players like Skenes to earn a full year of service while getting players like Henderson the opportunity to break camp with the big league team on Opening Day of their rookie seasons? Or is the fact that players like Chandler are still being held down in the minors while players like Shaw and Holliday have been sent back to Triple-A once they’re no longer good bets to bring in a PPI evidence enough that the system is ineffective? Have your say in the poll below:

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