The Ben Rice helium has deflated. It shouldn’t.
Cags hits the ball as hard as Kurtz in the air—but not often enough—with better contact skills. Is he a Kurtz/Yandy mashup?
With assists from @notthebobbyorr.bsky.social’s awesome new app:
open.substack.com/pub/michaelc...
FIRST DAY OF BRAVES CAMP
[Jeremy Hefner drags a thick burlap sack to the mound, tearing a hole in the bag. Bowling balls roll everywhere]
STRIDER: what are those for
HEFNER: warm-ups
now includes minor league pitcher equivalencies and folds those into the Pitcher Comps page the same way
fun new update: I added a page for MLB equivalencies that translates stats from the minor leagues to MLB, and those outputs can be used to look at your favorite minor leaguers on the Hitter Comps page:
Some news for those of you that use my app: I’m rolling out an improved version with a ton of new features, including splits, customizable hitter & pitcher comps, plots on each page, updated SEAGER/damage/pitch models, sample size adjustments, and more.
py-players.streamlit.app
Realized it wasn’t accessing the MiLB data I had compiled and fixed that. Should have all the statcast from the minors available in the stats/auto-regressed/splits pages now too
the crashing issues should be better now. Was not prepared for the influx of traffic at first 😭
It’s paywalled for a small monthly ($5) or yearly ($40) fee but will be updated during the season with new data + features. The data can be downloaded easier and has MLB player ids, and it goes back to 2015.
The shiny app will stay up but this will be my focus going forward.
Some news for those of you that use my app: I’m rolling out an improved version with a ton of new features, including splits, customizable hitter & pitcher comps, plots on each page, updated SEAGER/damage/pitch models, sample size adjustments, and more.
py-players.streamlit.app
When an athlete thanks God in an interview it always makes me wonder just how into X’s & O’s they think the big guy is. Would JC run a west coast offense or is he more of a triple option guy? Does he appreciate moving the runner over or does he dig the long ball?
there were two middle infielders in 2025 with 500+ PA and five HR or fewer: Chase Meidroth and Xavier Edwards
24 middle infielders did that in 1976.
the White Sox infield has a little bit of everything
Chase Meidroth-Luisangel Acuña middle infield would be straight out of 1973
A Munetaka Murakami-Colson Montgomery left side would be straight from 2073
Cignetti just completed the greatest NCAA save anybody has ever played
Carson Beck kinda has Blake Snell Face
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: My gosh, can you believe it? I tell ya, this is just like The Battle of Tsushima
MIKE TIRICO: and so that’ll be Rams ball at the 30
the Twins agree
I think Vic Caratini is one of the most underrated players in the game.
gonna guess a 29 yo Bo will get more than 6/158 next winter if he has even a halfway decent season so can’t really blame him for taking that
there’s a saying in soccer: it’s a simple game where 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes, and at the end, the Germans always win.
can be applied to the MLB offseason now: it’s a simple time where 30 teams chase stars for 5 months and at the end, the Dodgers sign everybody.
felt like I haven’t had my best writing fastball for a minute. It’s back. On Pete Alonso for @baseballprospectus.com www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...
AA isn’t for Alex Anthopoulos it’s for AARP
Kill your pookies.
-David Stearns
My advice to Coby Mayo: download Zillow and start browsing in Miami
Also find it pretty odd the Mets didn’t match 3/69, assuming Diaz shopped it back to them. I wouldn’t have given him 5 years but 3 I think is probably gonna be fine
Gotta say I find it a bit odd the org that churns out Jack Dreyers and Anthony Bandas for fun every year has suddenly decided to invest heavily in what is famously the most volatile free agent demographic.
Ken Rosenthal with the groundbreaking news that the Reds like Schwarber but probably won’t offer him as much as the Phillies. What would we do without such insight
it kinda makes my brain melt too fwiw
Teams just pay for Ks. It’s the most predictable, reliable way to prevent runs and being able to miss bats with spin is something that ages better than nearly anything else—velo can wane but wicked break can last forever.
Been thinking about this and the other words to describe his tenure/ethos that come to my mind are “dogmatic” & “rote”.
The job demands a creative element to set it apart from just hitting “accept” on every +EV decision in a model. Has he run the O’s any differently than a naive BTV model would?
probably didn’t take much to convince Brandon Nimmo to move from NYC to Texas
