Eno Sarris

5 days ago | nytimes.com | Eno Sarris

5 days ago | nytimes.com | Eno Sarris

In 2023, Juan Soto spent March and April hitting .202 with a good on-base percentage (always!) but not great power - only five homers and three doubles in 126 plate appearances. This, coming off a September in 2022 that saw him hit .220 with three homers and five doubles, might have led some to think there wasn't anything that legendary about his bat going forward. From May 1 to the end of the 2023 season, Soto hit .290 with a .418 OBP and a .548 SLG, built on 30 homers and 29 doubles.

1 week ago | nytimes.com | Eno Sarris

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.

1 week ago | sacbee.com | Eno Sarris

April couldn’t have ended any sooner for the Colorado Rockies. Five wins and 25 losses through the first full month of the season, nine of those losses by four runs or more. They were tied for the worst start over 29 games in league history. They allowed the second-most runs in baseball, which might have been expected, but they also scored at a worse pace. Nothing has seemed to go right.

1 week ago | nytimes.com | Eno Sarris

The strike zone is being enforced slightly differently this year, and it's the smallest it's ever been. But that doesn't mean every pitcher is suffering equally from the tighter, perhaps more by-the-book zone. Some are getting it worse - and may continue to have a hard time due to how they pitch. Pitches taken inside the strike zone used to be called balls almost a quarter of the time at the beginning of the pitch-tracking era, and that number has been cut in half at least.