Ten early season MLB numbers that could be cause for alarm

New York Times

07-05-2025

We're a little over a month into the season. In terms of sample, it's not a lot. The smart play on most struggling players or teams is just to point to the track record, point to the expectations, point to the things that have been true longer than a month and expect those things to be true again.
But it's also far enough into the season where some indicators are starting to show us signals. Some players and teams are already telling us that something is wrong.
So, with a focus on those numbers that are meaningful quickest, let's take a quick tour around the league and find 10 statistics that might actually matter — and aren't good news. Texas Rangers: 34 percent chase rate
No team is swinging more this year when compared to last year than the Rangers. That's true no matter how you dice it. No team is swinging at more than half the pitches they are seeing this year other than the Rangers, and no team has increased their swing rate year over year as much as the Rangers, and no team has increased swinging at pitches outside the strike zone as much as the Rangers. Look at the individual leaderboard and you'll see prominent Rangers — like Adolis García and Wyatt Langford — reaching more than they used to, and more than the rest of the league.
Chasing pitches outside the strike zone is not itself a marker of poor play. Some hitters are aggressive and make enough powerful contact that they can make the approach work. But on the team level, not chasing is a marker of success, probably because the slugging percentage on pitches outside the zone is more than 250 points lower than on pitches inside the zone. So when a whole team is chasing more, the diagnosis is that its hitters are pressing, and that explains everything down to the team's increase in strikeout rate to the decrease in walk rate to the missing slugging. And that's a state that's hard to get out of, especially when it's spread throughout the clubhouse. Baltimore Orioles starters: 97 Pitching+
If pitching can be broken down into having good stuff and locating it, then the Orioles' pitching staff is in trouble in more ways than their ERA alone points out. Here are the bottom rotations in the big leagues by Pitching+, which looks at the shapes of pitches (through Stuff+) and then adds in command (through Location+).
Only the Rockies, Angels, Cardinals, White Sox and Diamondbacks are showing worse stuff right now than the Orioles' rotation. And though the command has been good, it hasn't been enough to save Dean Kremer and Cade Povich from poor results. Good command can be enough — certainly Tomoyuki Sugano isn't winning because of his poor fastball velocity or middling breaking balls — but poor stuff is the hardest to correct, especially mid-season. The market values stuff over command right now, so there just isn't a great way for Baltimore to pivot and find good stuff quickly right now, and even one offseason may not be enough. And when Zach Eflin comes back, he's not going to solve the stuff deficit on the team.
The worst part about this is maybe not even what it means for this year, though. Because the team seems to have valued command over stuff in the rotation to this point, they'll have a lot of work to do to reverse course. This year's rotational Stuff+ leaders are the Phillies — think about how long it's taken them to amass Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Cristopher Sánchez, Jesús Luzardo and Ranger Suárez. It's amazing how one month can uncover a problem that might take years to fix. Toronto Blue Jays: .686 OPS in the heart of the plate
No team in baseball is worse right now on pitches in the heart of the plate.
Maybe this stat isn't going to stay exactly the same. It doesn't seem like Anthony Santander and Andrés Giménez will continue to slug under .400 on pitches over the heart of the plate, at least. But when a team isn't doing well with the best pitches to hit, it's hard to bet on it to do better. Much has been made about Toronto's lack of power, and how it is last in the big leagues in home run output, and this might be the culprit. Somehow this team is swinging at balls outside the zone at the fourth-worst rate, too. The approach needs to change for the Blue Jays' hitters. Ryan Pressly, Chicago Cubs: 93 Stuff+
While starting pitching is more complicated than just investigating how good a player's stuff is, relieving is much more reliant on having good velocity. We've known that forever, but also as a statistical given once it was shown how much more tightly reliever aging is tied to their fastball velocity than it is for starters. So when you have a closer with iffy stuff, you've got a situation. Here are the relievers with three or more saves this year, sorted backward by Stuff+, to see the bottom of the list:
Team-wise, the Cubs might be okay. Porter Hodge looks the part of a high-stuff, high-leverage reliever, and improving the pen is something that is exceedingly possible in-season. There are always relievers available. For the player, though, this isn't necessarily a list you want to be on. Pressly's declining stuff — he's lost velocity and ride on the four-seam, which has become more cutter-like, and his curve is his only remaining above-average pitch — will probably cost him the closer's role sooner rather than later. Los Angeles Dodgers: 157 innings by starters
Going into Tuesday's games, Royals starters had already thrown 46 more innings than Dodgers starters this year. That means Dodgers starters are on pace for a bottom-five innings output of all time, and are going 4.5 innings, on average, while their Royals counterparts are going a full inning deeper in the game. That may not be surprising, given the injuries that have hit in Los Angeles this year (and every year). The Dodgers have had to turn to pitchers like Ben Casparius, who was a reliever his last time out. This isn't likely to change much either, as their three horses this year — Roki Sasaki, Dustin May and Yoshinobu Yamamoto — haven't had spotless injury track records either.
It's just how things go in Los Angeles these days, and it's been successful for the Dodgers. But over the course of a full season, those extra 200-250 innings that the bullpen will have to throw for the Dodgers will tax them. Lewie Pollis looked at the number and found that managers are going to their bullpen too soon, and it's taxing the relievers. Los Angeles has had a top-three bullpen so far, but will it regress over the course of the season — and most importantly, what will it look like in October? Michael Toglia, Colorado Rockies: 40 percent hard-hit rate
If you're going to be a 6-foot-5 first baseman who strikes out more than 99 percent of baseball, then you better do one thing really well: hit the ball hard. And last year, Michael Toglia did. He was in the 94th percentile for hard-hit rate (how often you hit the ball over 95 mph), and in the top 10 for all sorts of stuff. His Statcast profile was lit up red.
457 FEET! Michael Toglia DEMOLISHES this ball and ties it up for the @Rockies! 😤 pic.twitter.com/10R5lLnBgx
— MLB (@MLB) April 26, 2025
This year? Not so much. Blue is the dominant color now, and his hard-hit rate has suffered the most. He's down now to the 38th percentile there, and doesn't have a single metric that's in the 90th percentile. Maybe it seems too early to sound the alarm here, but he's put 70 balls in play already, and that's a significant amount for most of these batted ball strength statistics. He also has a big hill to climb: Because of his strikeout rate and his home park, even last year's 25-homer effort was judged to be below-average by park-adjusted metrics.
There's a little bit here that's damning of the entire Rockies offense, which was a huge contributor to the Rockies' opening month — one of the worst of all time. The Rockies strike out more than anyone, but have the 20th-best hard-hit rate to show for it. Missing a lot and hitting it softly is not a combination for future success. Nolan Gorman, St. Louis Cardinals: 70.5 mph swing speed
The one thing Toglia still does that could save his season is swing the bat hard, as he's still in the 69th percentile for bat speed. The Cardinals' oft-whiffing power-hitting struggler can't say the same. Gorman's bat speed is down more than any other qualified hitter, all the way to the 29th percentile, down nearly three ticks from last year, when he was in the 70th percentile in that metric.
Bat speed does a good job of describing raw power, though, and Gorman isn't a small-sample prospect any more. If there's hope, it's that he's still getting Barrels (64th percentile) and not chasing (86th percentile), so maybe this is just a blip. On the other hand, like Toglia, Gorman has some flaws. He doesn't run well, the defense is inconsistent, and he doesn't put the ball in play a lot. If the Cardinals second baseman isn't going to have plus bat speed, those flaws are only going to get more attention. Athletics: 172 home run park factor
Right now, the easiest park to homer in at night is Sutter Health Park in Sacramento. Right now, the sixth- hardest place to hit a homer in during the day is Sutter Health Park in Sacramento. Over in Tampa, Steinbrenner Field goes from the sixth-friendliest park overall during the day to a neutral park at night. Michael Rosen over at FanGraphs pointed out that the Rays temporary home is likely to be the most wind-affected park in the big leagues, but Sutter could be close behind.
Here's why: Major league parks are bigger, and the bigger structure creates more of a 'wind shadow' that reduces some of the effect that wind can have on the ball. These two parks are minor league parks, and so they shade their fields less, and so wind will be a major factor. One-year park factors are full of noise, but the signal here is the noise itself: The A's and the Rays will have the wildest swings in home run environment depending on that day's weather, and they're just as likely to see a no-hitter as a blow out from one game to next. That's got to wreak a little havoc on your team on the margins at the very least. Yusei Kikuchi, Los Angeles Angels: Minus-10 Stuff+
Here are the starters who haven't changed roles, have pitched at least 10 innings and have lost the most Stuff+ compared to last season.
There's a lot of bad news on this table, but Kikuchi stands out, to some degree, because all of his pitches have gotten worse. His fastball has less ride and less velocity. His slider has less drop and less velocity. His changeup is two ticks slower. His curveball is three ticks slower and also has less break, which is hard to do. Usually, Kikuchi is a pitcher with good stuff that hopefully has just enough command to thrive. Not good when a pitcher like that loses his stuff. Cleveland Guardians: Minus-23 run differential
Are the Guardians a good team right now? They've been outscored by 23 runs and their pitching staff has been all over this article, and not in a good way. They're the only team in baseball that's been outscored, is projected to be outscored and is also projected to finish over .500 by FanGraphs. That's a little bit of a statistical trick because that site says Cleveland will end up 82-80, but still — the rest of these teams with bad run differentials are either just bad, or projected to be better. Not really true for the Guardians.
On the hitting side, José Ramírez has only been good, and should be better. Maybe Nolan Jones and Jhonkensy Noel can be better, but that's only a maybe given their short major league track records. Even if a few of their pitchers are going to be better, this staff doesn't have the makings of one that would make any positive bold predictions come true. They sit in between the White Sox, Nationals and Athletics when it comes to run differential. That's not usually the mark of a contender.
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic ; top photos: Daniel Kucin Jr. / Imagn Images, Ezra Shaw, Greg Fiume / Getty Images)