Jake McKibbin

I think that's now 17 rain related reschedules/cancelled games for Biloxi. That's insane in terms of development loss for players, reorganising pitching schedules and the lost in game learnings of players like Made

Image courtesy of © Katie Stratman-Imagn Images Jake Bauers has been a potent force all season in the Brewers lineup, almost single-handedly carrying them through the first month of the season. His 139 wRC+ estimates his offensive production to be 39% better than a league-average hitter, and he currently leads the Brewers in home runs. It's tough to be disappointed in those numbers, but the Brewers have seen that production dip in June as pitchers have changed their approach to Bauers. If we isolate him to the last two weeks of games (which include two games in Las Vegas), Bauers has slashed just .161/.297/.258, with a 40.5% strikeout rate. Now, every hitter goes through some peaks and troughs, but there are some areas in which Bauers needs to adjust to how he's being attacked. The first thing we can see clearly is that pitchers are pitching around him more often. The volume of pitches inside the strike zone that he's faced has decreased dramatically in June, and that shouldn't be a surprise. Teams are well aware of his threat in a lineup starved of consistent power, and they're not letting Bauers be the one to beat them. Below is the month-by-month percentage of pitches faced by Bauers inside the strike zone across all counts: He dropped from 55.8% of fastballs in May landing inside the zone to a mere 47.2% of them so far in June, with similar reductions in zone rate for breaking stuff. Bauers has been crushing fastballs this season to the tune of a .314 batting average and .579 slugging percentage, so it's no surprise that pitchers are trying to keep these away from the danger zone. The reduced production over the last two weeks isn't because he's chasing these fastballs, however. in fact, it's quite the opposite, Bauers has become too passive, trying to balance doing damage with avoiding the chase rates that can cause him to swing and miss excessively. If we compare Bauers's performance in June to date against his April/May form, there are some glaring differences: The in-zone swing rate is the lowest in baseball over this time, and that's the opposite of what you want from a player you're relying on to contribute some raw slugging numbers. He's taking a lot of pitches. He isn't chasing, and he's getting on base via the walk at an astonishing clip. He's also still showing remarkable quality of contact numbers. It's just that he doesn't seem to be targeting that contact all too often this month, going a little into his shell. The other thing pitchers are doing a great job of is preventing Bauers from pulling the ball in the air. While he doesn't need that air pull to clear the fences with regularity, and his willingness to drive the ball to the opposite field has been a growth point this season, it's still the primary source of his power. Even bat speed superfreaks find most of their extra-base hits on the pull side. That being said, for Bauers, it's still about striking a balance with his approach at the plate. It's when he uncorks a swing that might need a little more nuance. For example, pitchers are throwing him just 37.5% of pitches inside the strike zone when he gets into a three-ball count. They're not concerned with walking him, and he knows it. However, they're not as concerned with throwing such strikes early in the count, throwing 55% of pitches inside the zone in 0-0 counts, more than they did in May. They're gambling that Bauers, like all Brewers hitters, will be in auto-take mode in a 3-0 count, and that he'll be pretty passive at the front end of the at-bat, too. So Bauers has some leverage in counts with no strikes, and he's getting pitches to hit. Deeper into the at-bat, they're just avoiding the zone at all costs. The problem is, the Brewers slugger is currently swinging more often in deeper counts than he is early, so he's missing his opportunity on those pitches that are there to hit. I'm not suggesting Bauers should swing out of his shoes in every hitter's count, but he's shown enough consistent thump this year that his approach can be centered around more than a prayer to be walked. Bauers is enough of a threat that he's no longer getting pitches to hit in the counts he's previously targeted. It might be that he now has to search elsewhere for those pitches, and be more aggressive early in the at-bat. That, or the Brewers need to engineer some lineup support around him to scare teams off putting a runner on base for free. Either way, it will be fascinating to see how Bauers adjusts to how teams are approaching him. View full article

With a full off-season of physical development and mechanical work with H&H car wash, there's a chance Sproat is the definitive number 2 on this team next year. Just needs a little work on his engine and grooving a more consistent delivery

I grew up in the UK (ish, NI is fun!). Every Saturday evening at 10.30 I watched match of the day with my dad with highlights of all the games played that day, and occasionally full games on a Sunday. I really enjoyed the sport. That being said, I haven't watched more than 2-3 games in the last year purely because it's really difficult to appreciate the intricacies and tactical nuances of the sport in the middle of the park. It's the biggest sport in the world for a reason. But an 8-10 minute highlight video does me just fine. The action is great, the middle bit, a little chewier to really get into.

Two triples is a ballsy call, love it dude!

I really love the depth of thought that's gone into this reply, so I'm going to try and give this the answer it deserves. He has had some success on the four-seamer but that's usually as a by-product of how effective the sinker is and he's use it up above the strike zone for chase and whiff in two stroke counts. The pitch itself doesn't grade out super well on its own unfortunately, though I do love it in that specific situation. On the sinker usage, it's an interesting thought. It depends on how often/comfortable Ashby is using his curve all/slider to get ahead in counts. The 0-0 curveball is the most likely pitch to get a called strike in all of baseball, but again is that because hitters aren't expecting it? And therefore not something to overuse. All of his pitches can survive in the zone, but I'm also not entirely sure he has more command over them than he does with the sinker. I'd potentially stick with his current approach for a little while longer, as you say it's not a huge sample yet, especially as a reliever, and he's not a million miles off. It does bear watching though Thanks again for the detailed response! We as writers absolutely love when you engage with our pieces like this

Image courtesy of © Dale Zanine-Imagn Images Aaron Ashby is the most potent weapon the Brewers have in their bullpen. He can be deployed in a multitude of different roles and has one of the nastiest, most diverse arsenals of any reliever in baseball. Using a shorter stride than most, Ashby gets vicious break on everything he throws, and it's caused despair for a number of the best hitters in baseball. That being said, you cannot succeed in a high-leverage role consistently without a strong fastball, and Ashby hasn't been as dominant with his sinker this year. This month, that's starting to catch up to him. Hitters are hitting .321 and slugging .462 against Ashby's sinker, with an expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) of .355. All of these are career-high marks for one of the most unusual, outstanding pitches in baseball. Excuse a paragraph or two of nerdiness incoming, but it's important to break down why his sinker is so effective at its best, before diagnosing where it might be struggling this year. Ashby's high release point usually coincides with more vertical break and is not always conducive to a sinking fastball. Ashby's short extension gives his pitches more time to break, though, and his ability to generate seam-shifted wake (how the air moves around the seams of a baseball to enhance its movement) makes the sinker drop a lot more than a hitter would expect from his release point. On average. Ashby's sinker drops four inches more than expected from the seam-shifted wake he generates, and runs almost seven inches more than expected from his release point. To show that in a diagram, Ashby's expected movement on the sinker is the shaded orange area. The actual movement is the orange circle. It's a massive difference, and that movement is a key reason for Ashby's ground balls and how he has utterly overmatched hitters in the past. If that pitch is located well, good luck. If anyone has any questions surrounding the graph above or how to translate the data, please let me know in the comments below, by the way, I'm always happy to explain, but if you'd like a further breakdown of seam-shifted wake, I wrote a piece on the phenomenon over the winter here. The problem Ashby is finding so far in 2026 is that his sinker is being elevated at ideal launch angles far more frequently than it has in the past. That's key because, with this Brewers infield, even hard-hit balls are likely to turn into outs if they stay on the ground, and Ashby has historically induced a lot of worm burners. If you can get it over the infield, however, those hard-hit balls turn into extra-base hits and even home runs. Opponents' average launch angle on Ashby's sinker in any season previously reached a high of 2° way back in 2022, and was -1° in 2025. This season, it's all the way up to 8°, and that's the primary reason why we're seeing more hard-hit balls. His ground ball rate has dropped from 64% in 2025 to 51% this season. The first thing to check is whether the movement profile has changed, and it has—but ever so slightly. Ashby is getting about an inch less induced "drop" on the sinker. During his more dominant stretches, Ashby averages about seven inches of induced vertical break, but has been above eight inches each month so far in 2026. We can see from this graphic (both of the above graphics are from Jeremy Maschino at Pitch Profiler, an excellent resource for pitching information and analysis) that Ashby's Stuff+ grades on his sinker are largely identical this year. He's throwing from a slightly higher arm slot, which explains the increase in induced vertical break, but he's still getting impressive drop for that release slot. What is interesting, however, is the reduction in his ProPitch+ score, which combines location and his Stuff+ grades. His ProPitch+ has dropped this year, while Stuff+ remains the same—suggesting we could have a location issue so far. The other point to note is whether he's adjusted his pitch mix, and while I don't think this has made a massive difference, Ashby is using his slider more this year at the expense of his curveball. The changeup usage has slightly dropped, and a good changeup can keep hitters off your primary fastball, but not enough to cause this level of change in contact quality. So let's dig into Ashby's locations with his sinker. At his best, Ashby manages to get hitters off the end of the bat (a "flail") with regularity; that can be helped by hitting the outer third of the plate. We mentioned earlier that Ashby gets a lot of seam-shifted wake effects that help the pitch "sink", but have an even bigger effect on how much horizontal movement he gets. To right-handers, in particular, this movement can force the pitch onto the end of the bats and help with inducing weak contact. If we look at 2025 pitch locations to right-handers: While Ashby wasn't averse to hitting the heart of the plate, and that's something he could get away with given the vicious movement and depth in his arsenal, his most often hit zone was on the outer third of the plate to righties. He was happy enough to front-door his sinker to them, as well, locating quite evenly across the strike zone, but he didn't specifically live in the heart of the plate. When he did, he also kept it down more than up in the strike zone, and we can see the importance of Ashby keeping the ball off the heart of the plate when it comes to his ground ball rate on the sinker: Ashby's ground ball rates were far higher when he could find the inner and outer thirds of the plate, staying away from the center of the barrel, and saying good luck to any who dared chase below the strike zone. There are two clear areas in which Ashby didn't get ground balls with regularity: middle-middle fastballs, and middle-up fastballs. So let's take a look at his locations in 2026: Well, there's a fairly clear answer here. Overall, Asbhy is staying in those two danger areas more often than any other location inside the strike zone. Compounding this is that he seems to have lost the feel for locating in the bottom third of the zone, with his zone rate (how often a pitch lands inside the rulebook strike zone) dipping from 59% in 2025 to 53% in 2026. Ashby is electric when he gets ahead of hitters, but every pitcher in baseball finds it more difficult when they fall behind to a hitter. When they force him into the strike zone in a fastball count, 37% of those pitches are in the danger zone where his sinker gets elevated and hit hard. In short, Ashby needs to find his command of the sinker. Command has never been his overarching strength, but this is a step back for him in that regard. If he can command the two sides of the zone, or even locate better at the bottom of the strike zone, the Brewers will have their high swing-and-miss, high ground ball pitcher that's one of the toughest relievers in baseball. If he can't establish the fastball a bit more tidily, prepare for a slightly bumpier ride. View full article

Image courtesy of © Dale Zanine-Imagn Images Jackson Chourio has long been talked about as a potential MVP candidate. We've seen the fast hands, the impressive swing speed and surprising contact rates, but we haven't always seen the results to back up the talent that he possesses. Chourio only turned 22 this March, an important part of this equation, but even so, we'd seen some short glimpses of what Chourio is capable of—and then some more mediocre performance. In his first two seasons, Chourio recorded a wRC+ of 118 and 111 in 2024 and 2025, respectively, striking out a little over 20% of the time and accumulating 6.8 WAR over that period. That's a very valuable run, and one that I don't mean to demean at all, especially for someone of Chourio's age. That being said, his subpar walk rate in each season highlights why Chourio hadn't ascended to the heights he was capable of in his first two seasons. Across both 2024 and 2025, the Brewers phenom was chasing pitches outside the strike zone at a 34.5% clip, on the edge of the worst quintile in baseball. In doing so, he was putting bat to ball on pitches that he couldn't enact much impact on, and also whiffing a lot. Putting yourself in a good hitter's count is key for any batter, and when you do so, you force pitchers into your wheelhouse. By taking more pitches outside the strike zone, Chourio can bring pitchers back into the zone. Then he can unleash. After some of his worst swing decisions in May (something I wrote about three weeks ago), Chourio has completely flipped the switch, and it's directly correlated to his performance so far this month. Have a look at his in-zone swing rate and his chase rate so far in each of the two months, and how that's tied to a variety of batted-ball quality metrics: Chourio is striking out less, and perhaps most importantly, he's finding better launch angles on his batted balls. Hitting the ball hard and into the ground will only get you so far as a hitter, but the screaming line drives have become a real feature of his performance thus far in June. The change in his plate discipline is allowing him to be aggressive at anything inside the strike zone early in the count, letting his bat fly and looking to do damage to the pull side, while being more secure in the knowledge that he can work his way back into the count later on if he gets down to two strikes. The big change so far this year is that Chourio is actively hunting fastballs. If you listened to Jason Wang last night on our Sunday live podcast, you'd know this hasn't always been an area of strength for the young star. In 2025, Chourio struggled at times to really impact fastballs. Against sinkers and four-seamer in 2025, he had a -12 run value (-6 for each pitch). With an expected slugging of just .378 in 2025 against four-seam fastballs, he wasn't impacting the pitch seen most often across major-league baseball. Compare that to 2026, in which he has a +5 run value against four-seamers and sinkers thus far, doing more damage (.471 expected slugging) against four-seamers and marmalising sinkers with a 71% hard hit rate. That marks a real change for Chourio. If we look at his timings, there's quite a clear difference in where exactly Chourio is hitting these fastballs: The graph on the left shows if the pitchers are able to get Chourio down on the end of the bat or get in on his hands to stay off his barrel. In 2025, he was catching a lot of fastballs off the end of the bat, but this year, he's centered the ball on his barrel much better, which is the key to generating exit velocity. (He's also slightly better at being on time and lining up the fastball, possibly because he's hunting them, but let's stay with the flail element for now.) Why would a hitter be hitting a ball off the toe of the bat? One of the main causes would be if Chourio was trying to pull pitches on the outer third of the plate, The bat would be angled toward the pull side on a pitch that just shouldn't be taken in that direction—not for someone with Chourio's stance and set-up, and someone who doesn't need to pull the ball to access his power. The other is by being late to the ball, and again, the tilt of the bat means the ball comes off the end of the bat rather than the barrel. In expertly drawn schematics from my trained hand, these are the same lengths of lines at different angles, but note the difference in where the ball is touching said lines: So, being late or early can influence where a hitter is being tied up or flailing, and so can the types of pitches at which he's swinging. A hitter is more likely to flail at a pitch on the outer third of the plate than one on the inner third, and Chourio has been marginally more selective in swinging at those outer-third fastballs in 2026, especially those lower down in the strike zone (which require a longer bat path to reach). He's also been increasingly aggressive against fastballs on the inner third of the plate. Those locations might tie up a number of hitters, but Chourio's hands allow him to get to those pitches with aplomb, and it's helping him find the center of the bat more often. On average, Chourio is hitting fastball variants almost 5 mph harder in 2026 than he did in 2025, a massive leap forward. He's averaging over 95 mph in exit velocity against these pitches, without sacrificing his contact skills. So does that mean he's been more susceptible to breaking balls? Well, the answer is slightly nuanced. Better swing decisions are helping Chourio force pitchers to throw those breaking pitches inside the strike zone more often, and that definitely helps. He also appears to be reading the pitch out of the hand well, because he's been on time with his swing more often this year than he was in 2025. From May to June, his miss distance on breaking pitches is lower, he's generating fewer "flawed swings" (where he's off in all three dimensions), and overall, he's whiffing a lot less while finding better launch angles on the breaking balls he's hit. As a result, he's got a .371 expected batting average against breaking pitches this month. So between the fastball and the breaking ball, there's been no let-up from Chourio. He's not over-committing one way or the other, and is becoming about as pure a total hitter as one can get. There will be more thorny adjustments to come. We'll see if pitchers try to pitch around him more now; we saw him intentionally walked multiple times last week. Chourio has a 195 wRC+ so far in June, with a 1.091 OPS. He's produced 1.3 fWAR in the last three weeks alone. The plate discipline is fueling all of this change, and the question now becomes whether he can sustain this for longer than a three-week period. If so, the MVP version of Jackson Chourio is leaving the station. Get on board, Milwaukee. View full article

I was thinking exactly the same. His home runs are baffling at times, the side on profile shows the bat speed, but front on it looks like a really lazy swing and a flick of the wrists. Such incredible power

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images Garrett Mitchell has been working all season to get his high fastball problem under control, but it's cost him in some other areas previously considered strong points. He was making some real strides with this goal, as you can see in the graph below, with a rolling swing-and-miss rate that reached league average on May 19. The problem was, he was still hitting too many ground balls and just not tapping into the benefits that limiting his whiffs should have brought about for a player of his capabilities. Through that May 19 date, Mitchell had a 101 RC+, so he was just about a league-average hitter, but his overall slash line was propped up with walks as he hit .224/.347/.352. Since that date, despite his whiff rate climbing, Mitchell has slashed .308/.366/.569 for a 159 wRC+, and a strikeout rate that's actually lower than his first month and a half. How is that happening? The theory was always that if Mitchell could survive against the high fastball, the results could be remarkable. Mitchell knew this. Opponents knew this. It's been a real focus for him this year, and he was really beginning to get on top of it in May. If we break down his whiff rates by month against each pitch type, we can see some real progress, in May against hard pitches: That's bounced back up in June, but not entirely in the way you might think. Throughout the first two months of the season, Mitchell was demonstrating a lot of patience at the plate. He had an 11.4% walk rate, with a league average swing rate at pitches inside the strike zone and exceptional command of the zone, in the form of a very low chase rate. It prevented his whiff rate (and his strikeouts) from ballooning to genuinely untenable proportions. In June however, he's flipped a switch and is taking off. Mitchell has eschewed plate discipline for earlier swings and more aggressive intent, and the results have been excellent. TJstats has a model that can showcase the two in percentile form, side by side: By taking fewer early strikes in the count and swinging more aggressively, Mitchell is actually striking out a lot less at only 25% of the time this month. The one caveat to this is the reduced movement on pitches in both Colorado and Las Vegas. That will have helped Mitchell square up the ball a little more often, and perhaps the offensive environment fed into his desire to swing a little more. That being said, this is a noticeable change, and it seems intentional when we see how exactly he's doing it. Mitchell's bread and butter is that he crushes breaking balls in the zone. Murders them. He's never swung at fewer than 43% of breaking balls in his career, but that changed in the first few months of 2026. He was swinging less, and he wasn't making the type of contact on those mistake pitches that he's known for in Milwaukee—that is, of course, until June came around: Mitchell was swinging at less than 35% of breaking balls this season through May, but has been firing off at almost 70% of them so far in June. That's bringing about more chase, but also allowing him to square up those pitches that are inside the strike zone. He's been unlucky in spots, but the process has looked strong. Then, Tuesday night, he left nothing to chance. On a hanging slider from Guardians reliever Hunter Gaddis, he crushed a line-drive home run to right field, restoring the Brewers' lead just one half-inning after they'd lost it. He's gone through an adjustment period during which he gave away some of his authoritative contact on breaking stuff, but boy, is it ever back. More important, however, is how Mitchell has handled fastballs. Yes, he's still swinging and missing more than you would like, but when pitchers are missing that high fastball, he's punishing them for it. Mitchell's expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) of .422 against fastballs would mark the highest of his career in any month in which he faced over 50 pitches, and he's doing it by crushing line drives on anything on the middle or inner thirds. He still struggles up and away from him, but it marks a big transformation in that he's reduced the size of the hole in his swing from the entire top of the strike zone to just one area. Here are his whiff zones against fastballs so far in June: There's still room for improvement, as Mitchell is really struggling against a fastball up and away. What he's also doing, however, is crushing anything if you drop slightly lower down in the zone, especially against right-handed pitchers. His average exit velocity against fastballs by zone is impressive against opposite-handed pitchers in June: There could be an argument to platoon Mitchell occasionally on this basis, especially against left-handers with strong fastballs. He's not doing the same level of damage against southpaws, and that bears noting. We can see it in his swing timing, as well. So far in June (the orange line below), Mitchell is more on time, perhaps even occasionally early for the first time, on fastballs, while being more lined up with the middle of the bat. Overall, Mitchell appears to be slowly shedding some of the concerns he brought into the season. He seems less concerned with how his body holds up in the outfield defensively. He might be beginning to worry less about his strikeout rate, and being more aggressive early in counts. Relaxation and comfort are massive in any sport, and it's something Mitchell seems to be taking full advantage of right now. He still has adjustments to make. He'd probably like to be chasing a little bit less than he is at present, and there's still a lot of swing-and-miss to suggest the strikeout rates are a bit of a mirage for now. Most adjustments come from finding an extreme change and dialling that back, and Mitchell has definitely ventured outside of his early-season comfort zone to test the boundaries of what he's capable of. He's beginning to find who he is at the plate, and it might result in some cat-and-mouse with his swing rates as pitchers adjust throughout a season with where and how they pitch him. The good news is, Mitchell seems equally capable of adjusting with them. With a manageable strikeout rate, and actually elevating his hard contact, this version of Garrett Mitchell looks like a force to be reckoned with. View full article

He'll be here for good now Michael! Lots of runway and game time