Hi, quick programming note before we get started: I’m headed out of the country on my honeymoon tomorrow. I will be devoting my discerning powers of fandom to pintxos and wines and resorts and bistros for a couple weeks, not baseball. We’ll catch up in the first week of June.

My impressions of any situation tend to have a lot of inertia baked in. That means I’m annoyingly calm in fleeting moments of worry, and infuriatingly late to heed real cause for alarm. “It will probably be fine,” is an accidental mantra, but also an accurate description of my micro-level worldview. In a baseball season, that means I am bad at relating to emotional swings before Memorial Day.

I don’t know if this comes from years of numbers-focused baseball writing or if the tendency toward numbers-focused baseball writing springs from that mindset, but here we are.

We’re more than a quarter of the way through the season, and a lot of impressions seem fully baked. So it’s time for an exercise in forced memory. How much of what we think now is likely to stand up as solidified reality come October? And how much will blow away with the breeze of time? I’ve done versions of this for other mental snapshot moments — like when projection season foresees a locked upper class of playoff teams. Spoiler: It’s safe to expect something unexpected.

That’s going to involve a quick trip back in time to this date last season.

First, this year’s standings. Here’s how the postseason field would look if the playoffs started Thursday morning:

American League

Division leaders: Rays, Guardians, A’s

Wild cards: Yankees, White Sox (!), Rangers

Munetaka Murakami is a certain type of slugger

A lot of outcomes could be true.

The BandwagonZach Crizer

National League

Division leaders: Braves, Cubs, Padres

Wild cards: Dodgers, Brewers, Cardinals

There are some eyebrow-raising stories there. The Rays, perhaps the only AL East team without a strong claim on contender status coming into the spring, are conquering that daunting division. The White Sox are competing for the first time in years. The Padres are toppling the Dodgers. The Blue Jays, Mariners, Phillies, Mets and Red Sox are absent. What a wild season we have going!

So, with that in mind, let’s port ourselves to May 14, 2025. I’ve listed the standings on that date, then the eventual full season outcome in parentheses.

American League

Division leaders: Yankees, Tigers, Mariners → (Blue Jays, Guardians, Mariners)

Wild cards: Guardians, Royals, A’s → (Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers)

National League

Division leaders: Mets, Cubs, Dodgers → (Phillies, Brewers, Dodgers)

Wild cards: Padres, Phillies, Giants → (Cubs, Padres, Reds)

At that juncture, the eventual AL pennant-winning Blue Jays, who took the Dodgers to the brink in World Series Game 7, were in a stealthy second, 21-21. The Brewers, who crossed the finish line with baseball’s best record, were two games under .500. The Mets were flying high, if you can imagine that. All told, each league had successfully sifted for four of its six eventual postseason participants, but with only two division winners in position.

So if you ask me what baseball reality I firmly believe in at our current moment, the list might be shorter than you expect. The Braves, Yankees and Dodgers are going to be in the playoffs. I’d be quite surprised if the Cubs weren’t. Everything else is still subject to baseball, to my mind, including the revival of one or more of those contenders missing in action. And that seems fine. ⚾

The Bullpen

⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾

Some young and young-ish catchers are really hitting.

Let’s start with the Braves’ Drake Baldwin. The reigning NL Rookie of the Year is playing even better in Year 2, batting .295/.378/.520 heading into Thursday with 11 homers already. He hit 19 in 124 games last year. Baldwin rolls with a super well-balanced offensive profile. He’s pretty aggressive, but makes enough contact to justify it. He swings hard, but controls it for all-fields power instead of spraying wild 110 mph grounders around.

To quantify what I’d view as swinging hard and knowing you’ll hit it, instead of hoping, I looked for hitters who register a fast swing (75 mph or better) on at least 50% of their hacks and make contact on at least 85% of their swings at pitches in the zone. So far in 2026, minimum 120 plate appearances, Baldwin is one of 13 hitters clearing both thresholds.

That’s a list with some top-line results variance right now, but it’s a list I’d want to be on.

You’ll notice another catcher on there: The A’s backstop Shea Langeliers. He is now a 28-year-old veteran I guess, but he’s a key piece on the young team playing in Sacramento. He took a big step forward last season, logging a career best 132 wRC+ with a more opportunistic approach on obvious strikes and an improved contact rate. The contact rate is up yet again in 2026, which leads me to believe he has another gear in him, even if the 2025 Cal Raleigh-ish home run pace is unsustainable.

⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾

Then there’s a catcher who isn’t hitting at all, but was nonetheless the centerpiece of a wonky early season trade. Patrick Bailey, the defensive extraordinaire shipped from the Giants to the Guardians, has a wRC+ of 11 (aka 89% worse than an average hitter), a batting line worse than the career numbers of John Smoltz.

Bailey is a rare player whose picture is irretrievably smeared with the discursive paint of both quantitative and unquantifiable hues. I have no idea what Smoltz would think of Bailey, but I bet it would be a strong opinion. Weird, right? To be honest, that’s a way of distracting from the point: I don’t know what I think of Bailey.

Even at his best, this guy is an obvious liability as a hitter (career wRC+: 71). But he’s so superbly valuable defensively — especially as a pitch framer — that many teams would clamor for his services given the opportunity. On the other hand, the ABS system is going to neutralize some portion of his most impactful moments. On the other other hand, maybe his defensive prowess still isn’t fully understood by numbers. On the other other other hand, the Giants and former college manager Tony Vitello are of of several teams that has at least gestured at calling pitches from the dugout, diminishing one more catcher skill.

The call is coming from inside the dugout

On a potentially revolutionary strategy shift. Plus: An announcement about the newsletter

The BandwagonZach Crizer

The Giants, with Buster Posey at the helm, sure seemed like they were one of the teams that did value Bailey, and thus weren’t going to give anyone else an opportunity to employ him. Until, suddenly, they weren’t playing him and traded him to Cleveland, the team that already employs Austin Hedges, the Ghost of Bailey Past. In return, they got pitching prospect Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson (interesting, but not elite outside of his nickname) and the 29th overall pick in the upcoming MLB draft, which is pretty valuable.

Untangling this picture gets tricky. I have no idea how much of the move to attribute to:

• A change in the Giants’ assessment of Bailey’s contributions
• The Guardians’ possibly outlandishly high valuation of those contributions
• The Giants’ general bias toward extreme action under Posey, for better or worse

At the moment, I’m inclined to believe in the Guardians front office over the impulses in San Francisco, but I don’t think anyone should be operating with confidence about how useful a catcher like Bailey is a couple months into MLB’s ABS era.

⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾

The Pirates are a team that has often summed up their doomed outlook with bumbling lowlights. This year’s Pirates team may yet flounder in a good NL Central, but hey! Look! This is not the play a doomed team makes.

That’s a weird, savvy baserunning play that turned into scoring. As this commenter said on BlueSky, “That looks like a play that would have happened TO the Pirates not even 1 year ago.” Agreed!

Now, it may be the case that this play shouldn’t have happened all. MLB gave umpires new guidance ahead of this season that definitely should have applied to the runner who veered into Rockies pitcher Jose Quintana there. From ESPN’s reporting this spring:

The league announced a tweak to its obstruction rule: A runner who initiates contact with a fielder with the intent to draw an obstruction call will be called out. This sometimes occurs in rundowns when a baserunner purposely runs into a fielder hoping to be declared safe due to obstruction. Umpires have now been told to ignore such attempts and instead call the runner out.

But hey, good for the Pirates. There’s still reason for optimism in 2026. Bonus: Hannah recently wrote about that for CNN.

⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾

Turbocharged stick man Jacob Misiorowski is throwing absolute heat for the Brewers. He’s doing mid-2010s Aroldis Chapman velocity things as a starting pitcher, already pumping 102 mph or higher on 45 pitches this season. (Rest of MLB combined: 48 such pitches.)

As Brewers beat writer Curt Hogg pointed out, Misiorowski also throttles his insane velo up and down based on the competition.

“Of the 72 batters Misiorowski has faced this year, these are the five who have faced the highest average fastball velocity: [Aaron] Judge, [Oneil] Cruz, CJ Abrams, [Cody] Bellinger and Spencer Jones,” he wrote.

After facing Misiorowski, Judge was gushing about the baby-faced Milwaukee ace, calling it one of the best fastball he’d ever seen.

“You know, I’ve seen a lot of his games and seen what he's done; it's impressive stuff, man,” Judge said. “They've got a great, great, great young star over there.”

⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾

The Giants outfielders did this to celebrate a win the other night.

Giants beat writer Andrew Baggarly promptly reported that MLB asked them to … refrain from celebratory thrusting. But that word didn’t get out before the Mets’ young outfield tried out the move.

If one or both of these teams manages to pull themselves out of the doldrums, the league may have a real enforcement problem on its hands.

⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾⚾

Made it this far? You must be a fan. If you enjoy the work here, please consider pledging your support to help maintain The Bandwagon as a viable project.

• Become a Fan for just $4 a month or $40 a year.
• Become a Diehard supporter for $8 a month or $75 a year.
• Make a contribution in the amount of your choosing. Maybe $26 to power the newsletter through 2026.
• Forward this newsletter to a friend. The more fans, the merrier.