Newsletter Excerpt, August 26, 2025 -- "Misses"

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I thought the Marlins would be the worst team in baseball, ranking every one of their units 22nd or below. I saved particular scorn for their offense:

All this decent pitching is in support of an offense that might struggle in the Sun Belt Conference. Losing Jesus Sanchez, the team’s best hitter and a breakout pick of mine, isn’t helping. Sanchez could be back in a week or two from a strain in his left side. Squint and you can project Connor Norby and Kyle Stowers, acquired from the Orioles last summer, for good years. Maybe Xavier Edwards keeps some of his crazy .398 BABIP. The team is neither old nor young, with a lot of mid-twenties fliers like Griffin Conine and Matt Mervis hoping to finally get established. 

Instead, the Marlins are 19th in runs scored, 18th in wRC+. It’s not just All-Star Kyle Stowers, either. Five Marlins have at least 100 PA and a 100 wRC+, and that excludes August sensation Jakob Marsee, with a .329/.398/.671 line in his first taste of the majors. This is their best offense since 2017. On the mound, Sandy Alcantara’s miserable return to play has been offset by the comebacks of Eury Perez and Edward Cabrera, elevating the group into the game’s top 20. The defense has been much, much better than I expected, ranking fourth in Defensive Runs Saved, eighth in Outs Above Average, and is better at almost every spot, per OAA. 

 

 

 

Joe Sheehan Newsletter, August 25, 2025 -- "BWJ, MVP?"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: BWJ, MVP?

Vol. 17, No. 74

August 25, 2025

The thing about inner-circle Hall of Famers is that their down years are pretty good. Mookie Betts is a below-average hitter for the first time in his career, headed for full-season lows in just about everything, and still might end up a four-win player -- something he’s been in every full season of his career. Juan Soto has never been worth less than five wins in a full year. If we look at some younger players on that track, Fernando Tatis Jr. has a career low of 2.6 bWAR. Julio Rodriguez’s floor, in four seasons, is four wins. 

Bobby Witt Jr. will never make a list like that. This is because as a rookie he was overmatched at shortstop and moved around the infield, so bad defensively that he ended up at 0.9 bWAR. I am pretty confident, though, that he meets the spirit of the idea. This season, getting absolutely no attention after finishing second in last year’s AL MVP voting, Witt has been one of the very best players in baseball. 

Winning WARs (sorted by Baseball Reference WAR)

                       bWAR    fWAR

Aaron Judge             6.8     7.3

Pete Crow-Armstrong     6.4     5.4

Cristopher Sanchez      6.2     4.7

Paul Skenes             6.1     5.4

Tarik Skubal            6.0     5.9

Bobby Witt Jr.          5.9     6.5

Cal Raleigh             5.7     7.3

Shohei Ohtani           5.6     7.1

Corey Seager            5.5     3.6

I don’t want to get into a WAR war today, so I’m running the two most popular variants. Aaron Judge has been the best player in baseball, and then there’s a group of others in the mix for second. Cal Raleigh’s value gap is the most controversial, as there’s a two-win difference between how the two systems see his defense. We have plenty of time in September to fight about framing stats and award voting. 

No, my point today is to say that the AL MVP discussion, framed as being between two men for a long time, should be considered a three-man race. Bobby Witt Jr. isn’t having the offensive season he did a year ago, ranking 29th in MLB in wRC+, 19th in batting runs. After posting career bests in everything in 2024, he’s fallen short of those marks in 2025, striking out a little more, walking a little less, not hitting the ball quite as well. His swing decisions, as measured by Robert Orr’s SEAGER, are the same. He makes up ground everywhere else. Witt is a plus defender at shortstop, though getting more credit from FanGraphs than Reference. He’s one of the best baserunners in the game, both in terms of stealing bags (34 SB, 83% success rate) and taking extra bases on hits (56% of the time) without making baserunning outs (2). 

He’s not doing any of this playing out the string, either. Witt has been the best player on a Royals team that’s 20-14 in the second half, within three games of the Mariners for the third wild-card slot, within four games of the Red Sox for the chance to host playoff games. In the second half, in fact, Witt has been the third-best player in the AL behind Nick Kurtz and Shea Langeliers, and tied with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. All games count the same, so I am not a fan of weighting the second half, or September, or any piece of the season more than others. That does become a point of issue in some MVP races, so let’s acknowledge that since the break, Witt, with 1.9 fWAR, has been worth more than Cal Raleigh (1.1) and Aaron Judge (0.3) combined. Witt has, in fact, outplayed both players since the start of June.

That’s interesting not because second-half WAR counts more, but because it shows how quickly a race can change. Witt has made up nearly two wins on Aaron Judge in five weeks (Judge was on the IL for some of that time), and almost one on Raleigh. Were he to do anything like that again over the next five weeks, which isn’t out of the question, he’d be right there with the two favorites statistically. 

No one has to tell Witt how quickly these conversations can change. Heading into last September, Witt was second to Judge in AL WAR, but close enough -- despite Judge’s incredible offensive numbers -- that the MVP race was in doubt. Witt had a decent month, hitting .278/.371/.444 and doing everything else he does so well, but he couldn’t keep pace with Judge. So by the end of the season, we had a consensus 1-2 in the AL MVP voting.

WAR, in any form, is an excellent sorting tool, but it’s not precise inside of a win. If one player has two or three more WAR than another, we can safely say he’s better. Once you’re talking about differences of less than one WAR, though, you want to be careful. Right now, in both bWAR and fWAR, Judge, Raleigh, and Witt are separated by less than one WAR with five weeks to play. Because of the order of events, with Judge getting off to that massive start and Raleigh setting minor home-run records, the conversation has been about those two. For three months now, though, it’s Bobby Witt Jr. who has been the best player in the AL. By value, he should be mentioned right along with the other two as a top AL MVP candidate. This is now a three-man race.

Newsletter Excerpt, August 24, 2025 -- "Weekend Update"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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Steinbrenner has spent money, bringing in Max Fried and Carlos Rodon in recent years, meeting Aaron Judge’s demands, letting Cashman pick up Cody Bellinger for merely a willingness to pay Cody Bellinger’s salary. He has a stopping point, though, and that stopping point becomes an issue when the Yankees don’t have a third baseman for three months, or their first baseman is a bargain-bin pickup in his decline phase, or an injury stack puts Carlos Carrasco into the rotation. 

The Yankees lost two starting pitchers in March and another in June, their DH missed three months, and they’re going to be in the playoffs. It’s time to stop comparing them to teams from a quarter-century ago, but if you’re going to do so, make the right comp: The biggest difference is in the owner’s box.

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, August 22, 2025 -- "Weekend Plans"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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The Dodgers have been getting slowly healthier while the Padres have been getting a bit more injured. Down King and perhaps Merrill, and taking the bad side of every starter matchup, the Padres will be hard-pressed to take the early leads they need to make their model work. Still, any game that gets to the sixth inning tied or in their favor is one they’re likely to win. They just need two like that to head into the last five weeks of the season tied for first.

 

Newsletter Excerpt, August 20, 2025 -- "Thinking Inside the Box"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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Yankees 13, Rays 3

                    AB  R  H  BI

Bellinger LF-RF-CF   5  4  4   3  2 HR

Part of a Yankee barrage of nine homers last night, Cody Bellinger’s two bombs gave him 24 on the season. He’s a top-40 hitter by wRC+, top-30 player by fWAR. He’s played in 114 of the Yankees’ 125 games and is third on the team in plate appearances, second in defensive innings played.

Cody Poteet has a 12.66 ERA in 10 2/3 innings split between the majors and Triple-A.

Every time I hear a Yankee fan screaming about Brian Cashman, I look at the roster. All I see are Cashman wins. Cody Bellinger is one of his biggest ones, a four-win player acquired for literally nothing but the willingness to pay him. It’s not as if Bellinger had a bad deal, either; the Yankees are on the hook for $25 million this year, less than the price of a three-win player, and $25 million next year if Bellinger doesn’t opt out.

Adding Cody Bellinger this winter was one of the best moves of the offseason and one of the best moves of Cashman’s career.

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, August 19, 2025 -- "Mailbag"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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I’m a White Sox fan, but I live on the North Side among the Cub world and I can't help asking, why do the Cubs fall apart every July? Do their hitters not adjust when opponents find their weaknesses? Are they overrated to begin with? Is the organization's infrastructure deeply flawed? 

-- Paul W.

I reject the premise. The Cubs are 21-19 since July 1, fourth-best record in the NL in that time. They have not collapsed; a 91-win team (my projection for them) playing at an 84-win pace for six weeks isn’t notable at all. The Cubs simply happen to be competing against a team that’s 32-8 in that same timeframe. The wild success of the Brewers is creating the illusion of a Cubs collapse. 

Last year, the Cubs were 39-46 through June 30, 44-33 after. They went 12-11 in July, much better than they played in May and June. In 2023, the Cubs went 38-42 through June 30, 45-37 after, 15-11 in July. 

The Cubs don’t fall apart every July.

--J.