Weekend baseball has returned for the first time since last weekend! Here are five off-the-beaten-path storylines to get you hyped for peanuts and crackerjacks.
Luis Arraez is doing exactly what he did last year, just more frequently
The quest for the first .400 seasonal batting average since Ted Williams's .406 BA in 1941 continues for Luis Arraez. Heading into his Marlins’ Saturday game against the White Sox in Chicago, he’s batting .400 on the dot with some of the craziest peripherals you’ve seen since Tony Gwynn. Arraez is leading Major League Baseball with an astronomical 95% swinging contact rate, almost a full five percentage points higher than second-place Nico Hoerner. You would think that this would be a giant improvement over last year, a year in which he won the AL batting title with only a .316 batting average, but his 2022 swinging contact rate was just a tick below this year’s at 94.1%. In fact, even though Arraez’s 2023 swinging contact rate is the highest it’s ever been, it’s not that far off his career average of 92.9%. What gives? Well, he’s swinging more! Luis Arraez’s swing rate has jumped a full six-and-a-half percentage points year-over-year to almost 50% in 2023. As I wrote when I was doing book signings, Luis, just keep swinging!
The Mets’ June Swoon
No team has lost more games in the month of June since 2014 than the New York Metropolitans, whose total L’s during the last ten editions of Hera’s era total 134 after last night’s drubbing by the Pirates. The Mets have sunk to fourth place in the NL East and are 9.5 games back of the Braves for the top spot in the division and four games out of the last National League Wild Card spot. The biggest weakness for this team is the pitching staff, which has dealt with injuries and poor performances from guys who were expected to post lights-out numbers this year, particularly in the case of Justin Verlander. Verlander has lost a considerable amount of steam on his fastball, which has seen its batting average against rise from .194 in 2022 to .272 in 2023. One of the best pitches in baseball over the past ten years seems to finally be losing its luster.
The potential lineup carousel for the D-Backs and Rangers
The biggest surprises in the standings in 2023 come from the western divisions, where upstart offenses in Arizona and Texas have propelled the Diamondbacks and Rangers to first place spots in their respective five-team groupings. Such breakout offensive performances beg the question for both sides: is there a set lineup that either team can, should, or will use if they make the postseason? Lineup philosophy has been revolutionized over the past few years, so much so that the old roles of different spots in the batting order seem archaic. Do the Snakes or Rangers have anything to lose by mixing up their orders every night? Could Corbin Carroll bat first, second, third, or ninth with the D-Backs? Absolutely. Could Corey Seager and Adolis Garcia bat seventh and eighth in Globe Life Field? It makes a lot of sense to me, and it should make a lot of sense for the Dallas suburbs, too.
A quick sweeper update with Rockies sweeper aficionado, Justin Lawrence
No pitch is hotter off the presses than the sweeper, the newest evolution to the common slider, but with more horizontal movement. This is the first new pitch I’ve seen in my lifetime (and the lifetimes of people born after the invention of the spitball), so it’s still such a novelty to see it thrown. It’ll be a novelty to teams looking for bullpen pieces at the 2023 Trade Deadline, too, when singular pitch types can make or break a reliever’s chances of getting traded. In the case of the sweeper experts, no reliever has a better run value on their sweeper than 28-year-old Rockies arm-barnman Justin Lawrence, whose sweeper produces a .141 slugging percentage against. Lawrence is under Colorado’s control until the late 2020s, but don’t be surprised to see him get traded from a basement-dwelling franchise in the mountains if teams need extra help in the back half of their pitching staff (Steve Cohen, are you listening?).
Could Juan Soto get traded again?
Juan Soto is heating up and the Padres are cooling off in an ultra-competitive National League playoff push. Would that be a big-enough reason for San Diego to deal Juan Soto in what could be a bigger blockbuster than last summer’s Soto trade from the Nationals? My honest answer is that I don’t know if A.J. Preller or Peter Seidler would have the guts to pull that off, but it seems like it could happen? I don’t know, this is a weird one. All I know is that the Padres have an extremely top-heavy, star-studded offense that could use some depth at the bottom of the order. A Soto trade could solve that and replenish their farm system. Gosh, this is really messing with my brain!
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