All-Star Week is next week at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia and the trade deadline is less than three weeks after that. These next few weeks will be a hectic time for baseball. Here now are three trends to keep an eye on as we barrel toward the All-Star break, the trade deadline, and then eventually the dog days of summer.
The sloppy Yankees
It has been very tough sledding for the Yankees the last two weeks or so. Going into Tuesday's game, New York was 4-12 in its last 16 games, during which time it was outscored 87-46. That slide coincided with the Rays rattling off nine straight wins. In the span of about two weeks, the Yankees went from three games up in the AL East to three games back.
Just about everything is going wrong for the Yankees right now. Their offense, with Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton (and, for a time, Trent Grisham) on the injured list, has gone ice cold. Their vaunted rotation, which is without Max Fried, has stumbled. The bullpen has been shaky all season and has let some games get away recently.
There's also the defense, something that has plagued the Yankees for years. Their shoddy defense was on full display in Game 5 of the 2024 World Series, but anyone who watched the Yankees in the months leading up to that game (and in the years since) knows it was not just one bad night. Fundamentally, the Yankees are about as unreliable as it gets.
Even excluding the automatic runner in extra innings, the Yankees have allowed 28 -- 28! -- unearned runs during the 4-12 stretch. Going into Tuesday, there were seven teams that hadn't allowed 28 unearned runs all season. The Yankees had a 3.67 ERA during the 4-12 stretch, but they allowed 5.50 actual runs per nine innings. That's an awful lot of unearned runs.
"That's been part of the issue," manager Aaron Boone said about the team's poor defense Monday (via the New York Daily News). "We gotta play better defense, and we're capable of that. I feel like with a couple guys back now in the mix that are good defenders, hopefully that settles that a little bit, because I do feel like the first 60, 70, 80 games, that was a strength for us and should continue to be."
Judge called his teammates out for a "lack of focus" last week and he's definitely not wrong. It's one thing to boot a ground ball or pull the first baseman off the bag with a throw. Those are physical errors and part of the game. But the mental errors are unforgivable. Throwing to the wrong base. Missing the cutoff man. Not backing up. Attention to detail escapes the Yankees.
Poor defense hurts in so many ways. It's extra baserunners and runs for the opponents. It's more pitches for your pitchers, which in turn means the bullpen is used more often. With no Judge and Stanton on offense, and the rotation hitting a rough patch, the Yankees have little margin for error right now. Too often, careless mistakes have cost them games, and have for years.
Jacob Latz's All-Star emergence
When the All-Star Game rosters were announced Saturday, one player perhaps stood out as more anonymous than the rest: Rangers closer Jacob Latz. The left-hander certainly deserves to be an All-Star. Going into Tuesday, Latz had a shiny 1.71 ERA and was also top 10 among all pitchers with a 2.63 FIP and 2.47 expected ERA. He passes the eye test and the analytical test.
More than 200 pitchers have thrown at least 40 innings this season and Latz is 20th in strikeout rate (28.3% of batters faced) and 35th in walk rate (5.7%). Simple strikeout rate minus walk rate has shown to be as predictive as more in-depth stats like FIP, et al, and Latz's 22.4 K-BB% is a top 15 mark in baseball. It puts him alongside Chris Sale (22.4%) and Chase Burns (21.8%), among others.
The Rangers did not enter the season counting on Latz to close games. He made eight starts and 25 relief appearances last season and was effective in both roles. Texas stretched him out as a starter in spring training and he even started the second game of the regular season when Jacob deGrom was scratched with a neck issue. It wasn't until mid-April that Latz got high leverage innings.
By late April, Latz was closing games and often getting more than three outs. Latz has five two-inning saves (no one else has more than two) and nine four-out saves (no one else has more than six). You'd think that heavy workload would take a toll, but it hasn't yet. If anything, Latz is getting stronger as we get deeper into the season. His fastball has jumped almost 3 mph in-season.
"He just reminds me so much of Tanner Scott, when I was in Miami," former Marlins manager and current Rangers manager Skip Schumaker told MLB.com about Latz last month. "We didn't really know what Tanner was going to bring, and then you look up a month into this thing and he's pitching the highest leverage games. And then he ends up being an All-Star-caliber closer. I think (Latz) is an All-Star-caliber pitcher and closer."
Latz uses three pitches regularly (fastball, slider, changeup) and will show a fourth now and then (curveball). That has allowed him to be even more effective against righties (.353 OPS and 33.7 K%) than lefties (.459 OPS and 20.0 K%), and pitch longer outings when needed. Latz is a deserving All-Star and he has been one of the game's best relievers in 2026, period.
The Rangers are in the AL West and wild-card races and they need Latz pitching at the end of games. Given his four-pitch arsenal and his control though, boy, I'd be tempted to give the 30-year-old another chance to start in 2027. There's a chance Latz becomes a really good starter, and if not, Texas can put him right back in the bullpen. For now, he's a top-notch closer and an All-Star.
Sam Antonacci's HBP pace
The White Sox had about as impressive a four-game series split as you can have this past weekend. Chicago blew late leads and got walked off in the first two games against the Guardians, then rallied to win close games Saturday and Sunday to escape the series in first place in the AL Central. The ChiSox showed some serious resilience in bouncing back the way they did.
The Fightin' Reinsdorfs lost 121 games two years ago and now they're contending for a division title because they overhauled what was one of the worst offenses in baseball history. Andrew Benintendi and Miguel Vargas are the only position players remaining from the 121-loss team in 2024. (Lenyn Sosa started the year with the White Sox, then was designated for assignment in April.)
Chicago remade its offense through a series of internal promotions, trades, and lower-cost free-agent signings. Left fielder Sam Antonacci is one of those internal promotions. He was called up earlier this year and made his MLB debut on April 15. Antonacci took a .377 on-base percentage and microscopic 5.8% swinging strike rate into Tuesday (MLB average is 10.8%).
That on-base percentage is not a product of a high walk rate. Antonacci has walked in 7.1% of his plate appearances, which is a bit below the 9.0% league average. What he does do well is get hit by pitches. He had been hit by 17 pitches going into Tuesday, the second most in baseball behind Iván Herrera's 24, and three more than any other American League player despite not debuting until Tax Day.
Antonacci even had a two hit-by-pitch inning against the Giants on May 22. He was the first White Sox player to get hit by two pitches in one inning, and only the ninth major leaguer to do it in the past 50 years, according to MLB.com.
"It's just knowing that I don't have that luxury of being able to hit 30 or 40 home runs in a season. I have to find different ways to produce, and that just happens to be one of them," Antonacci told The Athletic about his HBP prowess last month. "I guess just being unselfish, trying to get on any way I can. I'm not going up there trying to be hit by a pitch, but if he happens to throw one at me, I'm not going to move out of the way."
A big HBP total is nothing new for Antonacci. He finished second in the minors with 35 HBPs last season (he was one behind the leader in 44 fewer plate appearances) and had 27 HBPs in 61 games his draft year at Coastal Carolina in 2024. Wearing pitches is a Coastal Carolina specialty. The Chanticleers set the NCAA HBP record en route to winning the 2025 College World Series.
There is definitely some skill involved in racking up big HBP totals, though it's more about willingness to stand in the box and take the pitch, even knowing it will hurt. The skill comes in recognizing pitches and not instinctively diving out of the way. Clearly, Antonacci has the skill and the willingness, and it's one reason Chicago is in the AL Central hunt in 2026.
