Read these stories before Yankees-Dodgers rematch. Plus: How rare is all-lefty lineup?
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The World Series rematch starts tonight! Plus: The Dodgers acquire a former All-Star reliever, the Nats did something kinda strange and Ken checks in on the Rangers offense. I'm Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal. Welcome to The Windup!
If you'll pardon a bit of big-market pandering: Last year's World Series was like catnip for the folks whose job it is to market the league and all MLB-adjacent things. (Full disclosure: This very newsletter is an MLB-adjacent thing.)
Well, the rematch starts tonight (10:10 p.m. ET, Apple TV+). And you'd better believe we have a few stories about it.
From my latest notes column:
Hey, let's fire the hitting coach!
The Texas Rangers, before dismissing Donnie Ecker on May 4 and replacing him with Bret Boone, were 17-18 and averaging 3.23 runs per game.
Since the arrival of Boone, who joined the team's other hitting instructors, Justin Viele and Seth Conner, the Rangers are 10-12 and averaging 3.27 runs per game. Yes, that's a lower winning percentage. And an uptick in 'production' of a mammoth .04 runs per game.
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If the Rangers' offensive malaise continues — they currently rank 28th in scoring, wasting perhaps the best pitching in franchise history — the team will have little choice at the trade deadline but to sell.
Maybe things will change now that shortstop Corey Seager has returned from his second injury-list stint due to a strained right hamstring — the Rangers are 15-12 with Seager, 12-18 without him. But Texas' offensive ineptitude is not a new problem.
In 2023, when the Rangers won their first World Series, they ranked third in runs. In '24, they dropped to 18th, prompting general manager Chris Young to add designated hitter Joc Pederson and first baseman Jake Burger during the offseason.
Pederson was hitting .131 with a .507 OPS before suffering a fractured right hand. Burger is hitting .208 with a .639 OPS and recently spent 10 days at Triple A. And they are hardly the only Rangers hitters performing below career norms.
Second baseman Marcus Semien's .485 OPS through Wednesday was the lowest in the majors. Right fielder Adolis García's .626 was the 20th-lowest. Seager, left fielder Wyatt Langford and third baseman Josh Jung are the only Texas hitters with OPSes above .750.
Last year, the Rangers entered the deadline three games under .500 and 3 1/2 games out of first place. With a group of potential free agents that included right-hander Nathan Eovaldi, lefty Andrew Heaney, first baseman Nathaniel Lowe and relievers David Robertson and Kirby Yates, they could have done well as sellers. But coming off a World Series title, Young gave the team the benefit of the doubt and added lefty reliever Andrew Chafin instead.
Now what?
Young thought he put together a championship-caliber club. Ten writers from The Athletic, including yours truly, picked the Rangers to win the World Series. The team is 27-30, but just 4 1/2 games out in the AL West. It's not as if the season is lost. Yet.
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The Rangers' pitching, third in the majors in ERA, could get even stronger in the coming weeks with the returns of Jon Gray, Cody Bradford and Kumar Rocker. Perhaps the staff will grow deep enough for Young to trade from strength; Tyler Mahle, fourth in the league in ERA, is a potential free agent, as are Gray and relievers Chris Martin and Hoby Milner.
More notes here.
'Reds trade Alexis Díaz to the Dodgers.'
It's not as big a headline as it would have been in 2023 or 2024, when Díaz was racking up a combined 65 saves with a 3.49 ERA, making one All-Star game.
It's also not the return the Reds would have gotten back then. All it cost the Dodgers for the 2025 version of Díaz — an ERA of 12.00 in six innings, and optioned to Triple-A Louisville — was 22-year-old RHP Mike Villani, who was Los Angeles' 13th-round draft pick last year. Villani's professional career consists of two games in the Arizona Complex League (though he did strike out five of the six batters he faced).
The move makes a lot of sense for the Dodgers. Brusdar Graterol, Michael Kopech, Evan Phillips, Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips and Kirby Yates — their top five right-handed high-leverage relief options — are currently on the IL
For the Reds, the benefit is less obvious. So I asked our resident expert C. Trent Rosecrans to help me understand why the Reds would make this trade right now. Here's his answer:
💬 The short answer is it saves money. Díaz is making $4.5 million this year and has two years of arbitration left. With what the Reds have seen this year, the team didn't believe he could help them at the big-league level this season. That means they'd also likely non-tender him after the season. If, in their eyes, Díaz wasn't going to help them this year and wouldn't be around next year, why pay him to pitch for the Louisville Bats?
He continued to struggle in Triple A, where he had walked as many batters as he'd struck out (eight) since being optioned. He no longer had value to the Reds, and this was as good of a deal as they could get for a team willing to take on the contract.
For the Reds, the only downside is looking bad if he rebounds, and fear of embarrassment isn't a good reason not to make a move.
Got a text from a friend last night: 'Washington Nationals are doing an all-lefty lineup tonight.' Weird.
I checked it out, and he was technically right. This lineup features seven left-handed hitters and two switch-hitters (who would be batting left-handed against Mariners starter Emerson Hancock).
It got me wondering: How weird is this, anyway? It turns out, I have a resource for this sort of thing. His name is Jayson Stark. Here's what we found:
And, for good measure: The Rays' starting pitcher that night was Blake Snell, who is also left-handed.
I don't have any other significance to this, other than: I missed it when it happened five years ago (or perhaps I memory-holed it, as I've done with about 98 percent of that year), and I think it's neat!
Wanna know why the Tigers have the best record in baseball? Cody Stavenhagen has a brilliant in-depth look at their success today, which is my 'you should definitely read this' suggestion. It follows a recent article that was more numbers-driven.
Mike Trout is set to return to action tonight against the Guardians.
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The All-Quarter Century teams continue to trickle in: Today, we have the Cubs, Giants, Guardians and Mets. Tim Britton has also done the exhaustive work of identifying the 25 best games of the 2000s. It is a cornucopia of still-ripening nostalgia!
Braves starter AJ Smith-Shawver, who was having a breakout season at 22 years old, was added to the IL between games of yesterday's doubleheader after 'hearing a pop' in his elbow. Yeesh.
The most famous baseball card in the world gets a writeup here, as a current auction for a T-206 Honus Wagner has exceeded $3 million.
Have you noticed the new every-inning ritual by Mets outfielders? Will Sammon asked around, and it's Juan Soto's doing.
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