A 40-year-old throwing 94.5 mph? A .696 batting average!? Spring training numbers we do (and don’t) believe in
Three weeks into spring training, the Athletics and Colorado Rockies have better Cactus League records than the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers. The Toronto Blue Jays, coming off a last-place finish, are atop the Grapefruit League while the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies, considered top contenders for a National League pennant, sit near the bottom of the standings. Boston Red Sox journeyman Trayce Thompson leads the majors with six spring home runs.
It’s hard to know what to believe regarding spring training numbers, but every year some spring stats foretell a breakout season or the emergence of an unexpected contender — if you know where to look.
With that in mind, we asked our MLB experts to identify the most fascinating number of the spring so far and break down what it tells us about the regular season.
Jorge Castillo: 9⅔. That’s how many scoreless innings Clay Holmes has thrown over three starts this spring. The converted closer has surrendered two hits, struck out 13 and walked four. On Sunday, he compiled eight strikeouts and three walks in 67 pitches across 3⅔ innings — the most pitches he has thrown in a major league game since 2018.
That was also the last time Holmes started a game before this spring. He made four starts that season for the Pittsburgh Pirates, posting a 7.80 ERA in 15 innings. He became a full-time reliever the following season, was traded to the Yankees during summer 2021 and spent three-plus seasons as the club’s closer, making two All-Star teams in the role. So, it came as a surprise when rumblings surfaced that he could sign in the offseason as a starter entering his age-32 season.
The biggest challenge is obvious: figuring out how to maintain his stuff for longer durations while navigating lineups multiple times. Besides building up his pitch count, the sinker specialist has added a changeup for his return to starting. He threw the pitch seven times Sunday and induced five swing-and-misses. He was throwing 95 to 96 mph late in the outing. It’s just spring training. It’s super early. The sample size is small. But Holmes’ dominance is a promising development for a Mets rotation that will be without Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas to begin the season.
Bradford Doolittle: 110.7 mph, which is the average exit velocity of Kris Bryant‘s first two extra-base hits this spring. Is it right? I don’t know! Does it mean anything? Beats me! What I do know is that Bryant’s career with the Rockies has been painful to witness and with each season, he’s looking increasingly feeble.
Those hits included a homer at 111.8 mph and a double at 109.6. If those numbers are correct, both balls were hit harder than any regular-season exit velocity reading he has recorded since joining Colorado. It’s great to see Bryant air out a swing again that once produced such jaw-dropping power. I hope it translates to a big and healthy season for him.
Alden Gonzalez: 1.444. That’s Corbin Carroll‘s OPS this spring. Before this year, he had played in 47 Cactus League games in his career and had never produced a home run. Through six games in 2025 — a stint briefly interrupted by what was described as a mild case of lower back tightness — he has three.
And though it’s easy to dismiss star players’ spring training stats, keep in mind that Carroll spent four months last season searching for answers before finally working out of a dreadful slump. With that version of Carroll, the Arizona Diamondbacks won 89 games in 2024 — five more than in 2023, when they advanced to the World Series — but still not enough to get into the playoffs.
D-backs officials watched Carroll recover after struggling for the first time, and they believe he’ll be much better for it. A big year is anticipated. If Carroll is unlocked, the D-backs’ offense will be a force. If that happens, and they pair it with what looks like a dominant starting rotation … well, maybe the Dodgers might have something to worry about.
Kiley McDaniel: 518 rpm, which was the average spin rate of Roki Sasaki’s 18 splitters in his debut outing. Those splitters averaged an induced vertical break (IVB) of -4.3 and an average velocity of 85.8 mph. For context, no splitter in the big leagues last year averaged a spin rate that low or had that much sink.
Due to the low spin, there’s an unpredictable knuckleball-like quality to Sasaki’s splitter, with a wide variance of vertical and horizontal movement from pitch to pitch. Some have five inches of glove-side cut, with the velocity and shape of a slider, and some have seven inches or arm-side run, like roughly an average splitter; the vertical break also ranged from +1 to -10. Sasaki threw 10 of 18 splitters for strikes and seven of eight swings against the pitch were misses, with the other swing producing a flyout from Jake Fraley that had an expected batting average of .000.
Sasaki’s splitter averaged over 90 mph and about 1,100 rpm in the World Baseball Classic in 2023. Scouts I spoke with this winter either put a 70- or 80-grade on the pitch (with 80 being the highest on the scouting scale) and now I’m leaning more toward the latter.
Buster Olney: 9-to-1. That’s the ratio of walks-to-strikeouts this spring for 30-year-old outfielder Alex Call, and these are numbers I’ve never seen. Nine walks and one strikeout in his first 27 plate appearances this spring. And he has an OPS of 1.056. We don’t think of plate discipline as a skill that improves significantly over a career, but it seems like that’s what has happened with Call, a third-round pick of the White Sox in 2016. He has bounced around the minor leagues for a while, accumulating 22 walks and 93 strikeouts over 81 games in Double-A in 2019. And in 30 games for the Nationals last year, he had a slash line of .343/.425/.525. He has figured out something.
“He’s always given us good at-bats,” Nationals GM Mike Rizzo wrote in a text. “He’s got a grinder-type approach at the plate that has served him well, and I think that with consistent at-bats, he’s seeing it well. Great guy to have.”
Jeff Passan: .696. The list of single-season spring training batting average leaders over the past half-decade is mostly a who’s who of “Who?” The top three: Max Schrock, Kevin Newman and Christian Encarnacion-Strand. So this is not to suggest that Curtis Mead — he of that otherworldly batting average above — is about to be a world-beater. But Mead gained 20 pounds of muscle and leaned up this winter, and the results have thrust the 24-year-old, once a top prospect, into contention for real at-bats on a Tampa Bay team teeming with talented young position players.
Mead started the spring 10-for-12, went into an 0-for-2 slump, uncorked a 4-for-4 afternoon and has tallied a hit in each of his last two games since. In total, he is 16-for-23. Only two of those hits are for extra bases, but who cares? Mead’s 1.611 OPS ranks sixth among players with at least 20 plate appearances this spring, and if he keeps hitting like this, the Rays will find those ABs one way or another.
Jesse Rogers: .309. It’s what the Chicago Cubs are hitting, 28 points higher than the next-best offense in either Arizona or Florida.
What’s behind the hot spring for so many Chicago hitters? An early start to the regular season, for one. The Cubs and Dodgers face off in Japan on March 18 so everyone is a little ahead of schedule. The team also turned over all its backups from last year’s roster so there’s fierce competition for playing time behind the regulars.
For example, Rule 5 pick Gage Workman is hitting .438 with three home runs while OF Greg Allen is 9-for-16. Meanwhile, young players such as Pete Crow-Armstrong and Miguel Amaya have picked up where they left off last season. Crow-Armstong looks like a star in the making. And the Cubs are doing this with newcomer Kyle Tucker struggling so far. Tucker was 0-for-20 before finally hitting a home run Sunday — yet the Cubs are the lone team hitting .300 this spring. It feels like the floor and ceiling have been raised at the plate for Chicago this year. Just how much remains to be seen.
David Schoenfield: 94.5 mph. That’s what Max Scherzer‘s fastball hit during Saturday’s dominant 10-out start against the Tigers, in which the new Blue Jays starter allowed just one hit and struck out six. His numbers through three spring appearances look like vintage Scherzer: 9 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 14 SO. Scherzer missed time last season after offseason back surgery followed by shoulder and hamstring injuries that limited him to nine starts and 43 innings while his fastball averaged just 92.5 mph.
He’s 40 years old and looks healthy. The Blue Jays’ one-year, $15.5 million deal could be one of the offseason’s biggest bargains.
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Dan Wetzel
Week 0 is college football’s oft-ignored start to the season. The good stuff doesn’t generally happen until the smorgasbord of Labor Day weekend.
This year, though, it begins with a unique bang. Consider that, right now in some Dublin pub, two fan bases from Middle America are likely baffling locals by arguing not merely over their teams but the per-acre yields of wheat vs. corn.
It’s Iowa State and Kansas State to kick things off — in Ireland no less.
It’s Farmageddon on the old sod, or Farm O’Geddon, as some have dubbed it this year.
The rural-rooted and wonderfully self-aware rivalry is getting a rare but well-deserved turn in the spotlight.
These are two proud and solid programs. Both are nationally ranked. The Wildcats check in at No. 17, and the Cyclones at 22. It’s a Big 12 game with conference title and national playoff implications.
“It’s certainly a great opportunity, and we certainly feel honored to be able to be a part of it,” Iowa State coach Matt Campbell said.
It’s also a reminder of how, even when college football is doing something well, the sport’s self-destructive ways can hang over everything.
This is the 109th consecutive meeting between these two schools, a run that dates to 1917.
Yet in 2027, there will be no scheduled game; Farmageddon’s streak will be a casualty of conference realignment.
The series predates the old Big Eight, which is now called the Big 12 even though it has 16 members, complicating everything. Trying to manage a schedule in a league that large is a massive challenge. The conference relies on what it calls a “scheduling matrix” to get it done.
The Big 12 chose just four long-standing rivalries to be “protected” and thus forced into the matrix each season: Arizona-Arizona State, BYU-Utah, Baylor-TCU and Kansas State-Kansas.
Those make sense — each is an intense, in-state clash. K-State would rather assure a game against Kansas than Iowa State, just as Iowa State wants to make sure it plays Iowa, of the Big Ten, each year in nonconference play.
Scheduling is tough. Sometimes something has to give.
Still, Farmageddon’s run of games is longer than Texas-Oklahoma, Michigan-Ohio State and the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn. While Iowa State-Kansas State will be played again in future seasons, any break feels unfortunate.
Obviously, the rivalry isn’t nearly as storied as those. Both teams have endured lengthy periods where even mediocrity would have been welcomed. Still, there is something endearing about tradition. It isn’t just for the winners.
The strength of college football isn’t the blue bloods, or at least it isn’t solely in the blue bloods. Yes, the powerhouse teams drive the boat and command the television ratings. Every sport has that, though.
What college football has is everything else, everywhere else. The nation’s 136 FBS-level programs hail from more than 40 states. They are in big cities and tiny towns. There are big state schools and small private ones, religious institutions and military academies. Not everyone expects a national title. Or even a conference one.
This is an American creation that represents America in the broadest sense. That is: None of it makes sense except all of it makes sense. The passion. The pageantry. The pride.
That includes these weird neighborhood rivalries. Leagues were once formed because of familiarity or cultural commonality. You went to one school, your neighbor another. The geographic footprint mattered. Now it’s all about media rights and money.
The Big Ten has 18 teams. The Atlantic Coast Conference has two schools overlooking the Pacific Ocean. And the Big 12 is so big that the Kansas State-Iowa State rivalry — which survived world wars, droughts and depressions — can be brushed to the side.
Saturday’s game is a showcase for what needs to be maintained against the avalanche of money. It’s old-school stuff featuring two programs with reasonable expectations that mostly just want a taste of the big time and all the fun that comes with it.
So they’ve invested in it — as institutions and individuals. Try explaining to some Irishman that the 50,000-seat Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium in the Little Apple of Manhattan, Kansas, is larger than any sporting venue in the Big Apple of Manhattan, New York.
Or that Iowa State running back Abu Sama III is already a school legend for racking up 276 yards and scoring four touchdowns during a winter storm in 2023 at Kansas State.
That game will be forever known as Snowmageddon.
The tradition continues in Ireland, of all places, now with everyone watching. It’s a fitting moment for an overlooked series. It’s also a reminder to appreciate what this sport can produce, because even the good stuff isn’t necessarily safe.
MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee’s Joey Ortiz went on the 10-day injured list with a strained left hamstring Friday, leaving the NL Central-leading Brewers without their starting shortstop.
The Brewers also reinstated first baseman/outfielder Jake Bauers from the injured list and sent outfielder Jackson Chourio to a rehabilitation assignment with Triple-A Nashville.
Ortiz left a 4-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs on Thursday after hurting himself while grounding out in the fifth inning. Manager Pat Murphy said he has been told it’s a low-grade strain, an indication that Ortiz’s stay on the IL might not be too long.
Ortiz, 27, is hitting .233 with seven homers, 43 RBIs and 11 steals in 125 games. He has batted .343 with an .830 OPS in August.
“I felt like I was finally kind of getting a groove going, especially offensively, that I was starting to swing the bat as I feel I can,” Ortiz said. “Things happen. It’s baseball. It’s going to happen. I’ve just got to do what I can to get back.”
Murphy said Andruw Monasterio will be the Brewers’ primary shortstop while Ortiz is out. Monasterio, 28, has hit .254 with two homers and 11 RBIs in 43 games.
Bauers, 29, was dealing with a left shoulder impingement and last played in the majors on July 18. Bauers is hitting .197 with five homers and 18 RBIs in 59 games. He had gone just 2-for-23 in July while dealing with the shoulder issue before finally going on the injured list.
“Since April, May, I’ve been dealing with it,” Bauers said.
Chourio, 21, hasn’t played since straining his right hamstring while running out a triple in a 9-3 victory over the Cubs on July 29.
“He’s got to be able to get comfortable standing on the diamond back-to-back days,” Murphy said. “He’s got to be comfortable playing all nine (innings) in the outfield back-to-back days, because you can’t bring him back here and then just [go] zero to 100.”
Chourio is hitting .276 with 17 homers, 67 RBIs and 18 steals in 106 games.
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