Mike Petriello

The Phillies don’t have a strong defense, you continue to hear, because for most of the past two years, that’s absolutely been true. In 2022, Philadelphia finished 29th in the Majors in Statcast’s Outs Above Average, and the team’s run to the World Series was full of tales about how

Ninety-nine times this postseason, the American League champion Texas Rangers have sent a rookie batter to the plate. Those hitters, third baseman Josh Jung and outfielder Evan Carter, have combined to hit a sparkling .298/.384/.571 with 14 extra-base hits, good for a .955 OPS. That makes them 56% better than

The World Series is here, and if Arizona-Texas is a most unexpected matchup, it’s also quite a compelling one. Both teams went from more than 100 losses two years ago to the World Series – the first time such a thing has happened – and both teams have an identical

For Monday’s Game 3 of the World Series, it’s difficult to imagine a larger difference in the resumes of the starting pitchers. Texas has living legend Max Scherzer, a three-time Cy Young winner with a likely place in Cooperstown, who all but single-handedly willed his Nationals team to the 2019

With the World Series in the books, it’s time to move on to offseason business, which is to say: The baseball season never really ends. It just takes on a different form for a few months until pitchers and catchers report in February. One of the first decisions teams will

It hasn’t even been a week since the Rangers won the 2023 World Series, but the 2024 season has already begun, in a manner of speaking. Signings have already happened, minor trades have been made, and the rosters that teams have right now already look different than they did just

If the new rules put into place in 2023 were intended to help return some action to the basepaths, then they succeeded. Runners attempted to steal 1,072 additional bases in 2023 than they did in ’22, and they were successful 80.2% of the time, the highest mark in AL/NL history.

Aaron Nola, one of the best free-agent pitchers available, has a problem. Or, at least, he had a problem. But we’ll get back to that. The problem is easy to identify. Over the past eight seasons, only four pitchers were weaker at holding at first base those baserunners who had

It’s the biggest question of the winter. It might be the only question of the winter: Where will Shohei Ohtani sign? Whichever team he chooses will bestow a record-setting contract upon maybe the most talented player who ever lived, and in doing so, they’ll reap the benefits of not only

Early in 2023, Mookie Betts made the surprising in-season transition from right field to the middle infield for one simple reason: Because the Dodgers needed him to. Between injuries to Gavin Lux, Chris Taylor and Miguel Rojas, and the struggles of rookie second baseman Miguel Vargas, Betts found himself making

Juan Soto is at long last a Yankee, and it’s truly difficult to overstate what that means. Soto, who only turned 25 in October, has a career .946 OPS in parts of six seasons, and that rates among the very best hitters through his age in the history of the

This story was excerpted from John Denton’s Cardinals Beat newsletter, with Mike Petriello filling in. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Even the great Mookie Betts, believe it or not, can be made to look uncomfortable on a baseball field. Last season on Aug. 31, Braves ace Spencer Strider threw Betts a wicked 86 mph slider that dove into the ground halfway toward the plate. Betts tried his best to hold

Who is the best player in baseball right now? Well, that’s easy. It’s Shohei Ohtani. There are either 700 million or 460 million reasons to believe so, and he just led the Majors in combined Wins Above Replacement, with 10.0. He won the AL MVP, his second, unanimously, despite not

Last year’s Yankees were, by Yankee standards, a disaster, winning just 82 games and finishing in fourth place for the first time since 1992. Though they weren’t officially eliminated from playoff contention until Sept. 24, their odds dropped below 10% in early August and never recovered. They essentially spent the

Shohei Ohtani should get a little more protection in the Dodgers lineup this season than he’s had in the past, which is a scary proposition for opposing pitchers. After all, he did just hit 44 homers and win his second American League MVP Award. The Dodgers’ lineup is deeper than

When we think about projecting ahead to the upcoming season, we usually think team win/loss records, or what individual pitchers and hitters may do. But defense is an important part of those projections too, even if it’s a little harder to model than pitching or hitting. After all: How can

For the second time this offseason, superstar outfielder Mookie Betts is making a possibly unprecedented position change. In December, the Dodgers stated that the six-time Gold Glove Award winner would be making a permanent move from right field to second base – a switch that we thought, at the time,

There are 30 teams in Major League baseball, all with their own strategies, hopes, and expectations. But it doesn’t mean that all 30 are on 30 different trajectories, either, because you can look at them and come up with groups. You can place them in tiers, as we’ve done in

New Mets designated hitter J.D. Martinez is “the smartest hitter ever,” according to Mets reliever Jake Diekman, who was also teammates with Martinez in Boston in 2022. That’s a reputation the slugger has long since earned. That’s why our eyebrows rose when we saw Martinez explain to MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo