Mike Petriello

A month into the first season with the ABS system in place, the biggest takeaway is, “The baseball world didn’t end.” Challenges have been infrequent, as expected (coming on approximately 1% of pitches), and memorable moments have been created. If there’s anything that’s happened which we didn’t quite see coming,

Nearly a decade ago, Max Muncy was – along with Justin Turner and Chris Taylor – one of the faces of the other side of how the Dodgers continually contend for a championship, year after year. It’s not just the willingness to play at the top of the salary scale,

The Blue Jays, coming off a sweep in Tampa Bay, their long-time house of horrors, may be having trouble getting going. But there is one pretty large silver lining, and it's their biggest offseason acquisition, third baseman Kazuma Okamoto. Okamoto's first three weeks in the Majors were mostly what you’d

Fernando Tatis Jr. is absolutely mashing the ball, by one important measure. He’s hitting the ball hard more often than Aaron Judge, or Shohei Ohtani, or Kyle Schwarber, or Yordan Alvarez, or almost anyone else you can think of. He's been making solid contact so often, in fact, that he’s

A year ago, Cal Raleigh had something like the most incredible season by a catcher of all time, hitting 60 homers and driving in 125, while breaking more than a few dinger marks along the way. (Most by a catcher. Most by a Mariner. Most by a switch-hitter. Most by

Jacob Misiorowski is the hardest-throwing starting pitcher in the hardest-throwing season on record, which means we can start right off here with the big, flashing premise: Misiorowski is (probably) the hardest-throwing starting pitcher of all time, and you get to see him, right now. That’s good news for you, the

All stats through Monday's games.

Chandler Simpson pulled off a difficult and unfortunate trick as a rookie last year, which is to say that despite being one of the fastest players in the sport (97th percentile in Statcast’s sprint speed, at 29.6 ft/sec), he rated as one of baseball’s weakest outfield defenders (11th percentile in

This story was excerpted from the Cubs Beat newsletter. This edition was written by Mike Petriello. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox. All stats updated through Tuesday's games.

Aaron Judge was widely expected to be one of the primary beneficiaries of the new ABS system, and we know that because it was all anyone could talk about at Yankees camp this spring. Due to his 6-foot-7 frame, umpires had long struggled to identify the bottom of Judge’s zone,