Tom Verducci delivers a mix of expert commentary, inside angles and thoughtful perspectives on baseball’s biggest storylines every week.
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Mark J. Rebilas/Imagn Images
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MLB’s 10 Most Improved Players |
Welcome to September. It is too late for flukes. The players who began as early season surprises and who have maintained an elite level into a sixth month are legit breakout stars. Here are the 10 most improved players in MLB—and how they did it.
1. Jacob Misiorowski, RHP, Brewers
Sure, we knew he could throw hard. But after an offseason dedicated to adding weight and strength in his lower half, Misiorowski has become a strike-throwing tower of strength and consistency who repeats his delivery. He cut his walk rate by almost half and boosted his first-pitch strike percentage from 57.9% to 66.4%. Oh, he also has the second biggest increase in whiff rate (+7.9%).
2. Pete Crow-Armstrong, OF, Cubs
He found untapped power with a new setup, leg kick, bat path and another 2.2 mph in bat speed. The hitter from two years ago who most resembled Brandon Nimmo now looks like Kyle Schwarber with speed: a pull-side, airball masher. PCA’s pull-side extra base hits by year starting in 2024: 15, 44, 53 (by far the most in baseball).
3. Dylan Cease, RHP, Blue Jays
Toronto pitching coach Pete Walker promised to “Robbie Ray” Cease—get him in the strike zone more with his wipeout stuff—and he delivered, perhaps even with another Cy Young Award for a Blue Jays addition. No starting pitcher lowered the slugging percentage against him more than Cease (-.135). A tweak in his delivery and a new changeup have helped Cease lead the league in hits per nine, homers per nine and strikeout rate.
4. Jordan Walker, OF, Cardinals
A groundball machine last season, Walker visited Driveline last offseason and then needed a three-day tuneup from the St. Louis staff in spring training (while held out of games). Walker learned how to load on his back hip like Aaron Judge to stop the forward drift in his swing. The result: the biggest increase in slug by any hitter this season (+.193), as the groundball rate dropped from 47.5% to 41.6%, the ninth-biggest drop in MLB.
5. Miguel Vargas, 3B, White Sox
Vargas spent time last winter with underload/overload bat training to increase bat speed. It paid off. Vargas added 3.3 mph to his bat speed, the biggest jump in MLB along with Cam Smith of the Astros. He also changed his setup to be more upright with his bat flatter as a precursor to springing into his legs as he loads. Toss in a more stable base (no more back foot sliding out) and a career .204 hitter is posting an .848 OPS and leading the league in runs.
6. Luis Garcia Jr., 1B, Yankees
He became a different hitter this year. Entering this season, Garcia was a career .410 slugger. When the Nationals traded him to the Yankees at the deadline, he was leading the NL in slugging. Only Walker and Ty France have boosted their slugging more this year. How did he do it? He added almost 2 mph in bat speed while committing to hitting balls in the air to the pull side, something he never had done before. His exit velocity, pull percentage and air percentage are all career highs.
7. Jacob Latz, LHP, Rangers
Latz, who turned 30 in April, worked last winter with Dominick Johnson, a private pitching coach. They performed a deep biomechanical and analytical dive into how he might be better than he’d shown. Part of the result was a slightly shorter arm stroke in which he keeps his body between the hitter and the baseball. (Last year the hitter could see the baseball swing behind him on takeaway.) His fastball has elite induced vertical break and pairs exceptionally well with a killer changeup (.075 opponents’ batting average) and two breaking balls. A converted starter, Latz is the rare closer who is a master at sequencing.
8. Bryan Baker, RHP, Rays
Baker joined Tampa Bay July 10 last year in an otherwise unnoticed trade from Baltimore in which the Rays sent Baltimore the No. 37 pick in the draft. With hardly anyone noticing, the Rays got themselves a power-armed closer with swing and miss stuff and 3 ½ years of control. What did the Rays do with Baker? They encouraged him to lean into his changeup, a great pitch hiding in plain sight. As recently as 2024, Baker was throwing more sliders than changeups. Tampa Bay changed that. The slider is virtually gone. The changeup is a weapon he uses 45% of the time, up from 17% with the Orioles. The magic in Baker’s changeup is in the 11-mph separation in velocity from his fastball.
9. Otto Lopez, SS, Marlins
Entering this season no one would have guessed that Lopez, 27, would be the only MLB shortstop to hit .300 with 5.5 WAR. In more than 1,000 previous career plate appearances he was a below average hitter (OPS+ of 91) who already had been tossed aside by the Blue Jays (sold) and Giants (waived). But over the winter he overhauled his hitting approach. At setup he sinks more into his legs and holds the bat higher in a pre-set loaded position. At contact, he remains lower as he uses his legs more to generate power. A groundball hitter, his grounders are getting through infields with greater exit velocity. His batting average on groundballs has jumped from .230 to .313.
10. Cade Cavalli, RHP, Nationals
The universe of pitchers with 10 punchouts per nine innings and a sub 3.20 is tiny. Population: 8. Cavalli is one of them because ... well, because he’s healthy. Cavalli threw only 355 innings over his first six years in pro baseball. A natural supinator, he blew out his arm chasing velo and vert. Back to his natural hand/wrist position and a simpler delivery, Cavalli produces cut-ride on his heater and uncorks some of the nastiest breaking pitches in baseball. He has thrown 1,067 curves and sweepers and allowed six extra-base hits on them (one since June).
Honorable mentions: Andy Pages, CF, Dodgers; Ty France, 1B, Padres; Oneil Cruz, CF, Pirates; Michael Harris II, CF, Braves; Joey Ortiz, INF, Brewers; Jake Bauers, 1B, Brewers; Cal Quantrill, RHP, Rangers; Louis Varland, RHP, Blue Jays; Eduardo Rodriguez, LHP, D-Backs
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The Skenes Dilemma (continued) |
Pirates righthander Paul Skenes on Sunday won for the first time in eight starts, stopping a drought in which he was 5–3 with a 5.77 ERA. His start against the Angels was not vintage Skenes, however. He did throw shutout ball but departed one out into the fifth inning and with only two strikeouts, tying a career low for any start of one inning or more.
Skenes hit 98 mph twice, which doesn’t sound impressive for someone who did it 20 times in an April start. But the good news is that it marks the first time since June he reached 98 mph in three consecutive starts. His four-seam fastball averaged 96.7 mph, the lowest in his past four starts.
What the start against the Angels continues to prove is that Skenes out of necessity has been transitioning from an elite power pitcher into a craftsman who must make do without the same swing-and-miss stuff. Here’s what we know about Skenes:
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- Without an elite four-seam fastball, he is becoming a sinker-heavy pitcher. Over his past three starts, Skenes has thrown 24.2% sinkers, more than double his previous rate this year (10.5%). He is more Hunter Brown than Jacob Misiorowski.
- His whiff rate this month is 18.7%, the worst of any month in his career and down from 33.6% as recently as June.
- He has returned to his usual crossfire stride in his past five starts after unsuccessfully grinding through 11 starts (3–5, 5.28) with a neutral stride, which is when his slump deepened.
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| Time Period |
Skenes Horizontal Release Point |
| First 13 Starts |
-2.54' |
| Next 11 Starts |
-2.16' |
| Past 5 Starts |
-2.73' |
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- The Pirates are lightening his workload. In six starts in August and September, Skenes is averaging only 21 batters faced and 86 pitches.
- He has lost the feel for his splitter. Skenes averaged 18 splitters a game in 2024–25. It’s down to 9.8 per game this season. The last time he struck out a batter on a splitter was June 3. His off-speed run value (splitters and changeups) has cratered from the 98th percentile last year to 6th this year.
- The four-seam fastball has just its juice. Even on his best days, Skenes’s four-seamer has less spin and less induced vertical break than an average heater. A fastball with below-average properties is much more gettable when it is sitting at 96–97 mph rather than the 98–99 mph we saw from peak Skenes.
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| Four-Seam Fastball |
MPH |
RPM |
IVB |
Hard Hit % |
| Skenes |
96.9 |
2,171 |
13.0 |
46.5% |
| Average MLB Pitcher |
94.8 |
2,314 |
15.6 |
44.8% |
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Skenes for some reason has lost the ability to dial up elite velocity when he needs it.
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Skenes has two more starts—three if he pitches the final weekend of the season. After that, he will need to step back and assess what happened to his velocity and how his pitch mix could be tweaked.
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Kylie Bridenhagen/Getty Images
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Antonio Senzatela is a 31-year-old pitcher who has been pitching in the majors for 10 years, mostly as a starter with the Rockies. Converted to the bullpen this year, Senzatela was traded at the deadline to the Brewers. That means he got the “H & H Car Wash” treatment, the name manager Pat Murphy gave to the work of pitching coach Chris Hook and pitching coordinator Jim Henderson, evoking an El Paso breakfast/car wash establishment.
Suddenly, Senzatela is a different pitcher throwing harder than ever. With the Brewers, Senzatela is throwing 88% sinkers and cutters (up from 42%) while reducing his four-seam use to 9% (from 40%). On Sunday he threw the fastest two-seamer of his career: 100.1 mph.
The Brewers know velocity. Of course, there is nobody like Misiorowski, their ace. But Milwaukee has a half dozen pitchers who throw 100 mph: Misiorowski, Senzatela, Abner Uribe, Aaron Ashby, Trevor Megill and Brandon Sproat. (Dustin May has hit 99.6). Brewers pitchers are on pace to throw nearly twice as many pitches 100 mph than any staff in recorded history:
Most Pitches 100+ MPH
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| Team |
Pitches |
| 1. 2026 Brewers |
1,046 |
| 2. 2018 Cardinals |
673 |
| 3. 2026 Padres |
639 |
| 4. 2024 Athletics |
565 |
| 5. 2015 Reds |
533 |
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Sunday was just another day in the world of ever-increasing velocity. Fourteen different pitchers hit 100 mph, including the bullpen tandems of the Padres’ Adrian Morejon and Mason Miller and the Phillies’ Alex McFarlane and Jhoan Duran. There were 73 100-mph pitches in 15 games.
It has become an everyday occurrence like never before. This is the first season in history in which 100-mph pitches will outnumber games played. And with 91 pitchers already throwing 100, we just might get 100 at 100.
Two years ago, MLB released a special report on pitcher injuries. It found that increased velocity—without modulation—was a primary risk factor to arms blowing out. The warning went unheeded.
Pitches at or above 100 mph have increased 47% just since last season, from 3,701 to a prorated 5,450 pitches this season. They are up 198% in five years. And while hitters are seeing many more pitches at 100 mph, the most elite fastballs only are becoming more difficult to hit.
MLB Pitches 100+ MPH (*Prorated 5,450 for full season)
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| Year |
Pitches |
Pitchers |
BA |
| 2026 |
4,831* |
91 |
.173 |
| 2025 |
3,701 |
82 |
.193 |
| 2024 |
3,321 |
62 |
.207 |
| 2023 |
3,880 |
64 |
.194 |
| 2022 |
3,369 |
64 |
.203 |
| 2021 |
1,829 |
57 |
.206 |
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The Rays knew they were acquiring a project when they traded for Freddy Peralta from the Mets. As I detailed earlier, “Fastball Freddy,” a drop-and-drive pitcher, lost his famous extension while pitching from a more upright posture. He lost his edge in perceived velocity, and he lost the finish on his changeup. He had a 4.99 ERA in 22 starts with New York.
I would not have traded for Peralta because I don’t like the idea of trying to fix a newly acquired pitcher in the short window of a pennant race. But these are the Rays, and their pitching coach, Kyle Snyder, is one of the best in the business. Fixing pitchers is what they do, especially when it comes to changeups. No team in recorded history throws more changeups than the 2026 Rays.
Voila! It took a few starts, but Peralta is a revived pitcher. In his past two starts he has allowed one run and no walks over 12 innings. What happened?
You can view the changes above. In brief, the Rays closed off his delivery, returned extension to his stride, junked his slider and, of course, fixed his changeup. Here are the details. Keep in mind that he has been adding extension as these changes take root; it’s been 6.7 over his past four starts.
Peralta by Team, 2026
With Mets 6.5 33.0° 21.1% 54.1% 5.7% .264
With Rays 6.6 35.2° 32.8% 48.5% 0.0% .231
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| Team |
Ext. |
Arm Angle |
Changeup |
Four-Seam |
Slider |
BA |
| Mets |
6.5 |
33.0° |
21.1% |
54.1% |
5.7% |
.264 |
| Rays |
6.6 |
35.2° |
32.8% |
48.5% |
0.0% |
.231 |
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The fixes are most noticeable in the frequency and effectiveness of his changeup. Notice in the heat maps how Peralta’s more closed posture is getting his changeup more to the arm-side edge of the plate rather than with the Mets how he would pull that pitch into the center of the plate.
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| Peralta Changeup |
With Mets |
With Rays |
| Use |
21.1% |
32.8% |
| Whiff Rate |
28.1% |
32.2% |
| Batting Average |
.280 |
.132 |
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Saturday, Sept. 12: New York Mets @ New York Yankees, 1:30 PM (MLBN)
The Subway Series takes on a bigger, deeper meaning on the weekend commemorating 25 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At least five former professional baseball players were among the thousands who perished that day. The baseball community proudly remembers:
Marty Boryczewski, 29
A trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, he played one year of independent ball and two minor league seasons in the Pirates and Tigers systems (1994–96) A catcher, Marty played at Morris Catholic (N.J.) High School and St. Peter’s College before pro ball. The 9/11 Memorial Museum includes his warmup jacket from St. Peter’s and a custom bat he used in the minors.
Mark Hindy, 28
A three-sport athlete at Poly Prep in Brooklyn, he pitched as a walk-on at Vanderbilt and in 1995 drove to Ogden, Utah, to fulfill his dream of being a pro ballplayer, pitching for the independent Ogden Raptors. He joined Cantor Fitzgerald the next year as an equity trader.
Brent Woodall, 31
A trader at Keefe, Bruyette and Woods, he pitched two years in the Cubs’ system (1993–94). Woodall was a two-sport athlete at Cal, appearing in the College World Series (as the closer) and in two football bowl games (as a fullback and tight end).
Mike Weinberg, 34
A second-generation firefighter at Engine 1, Station 24 in Lower Manhattan, he played four years at St. John’s and was an outfielder for two years in the Tigers’ system. He was on vacation on 9/11 and preparing to play golf at Forest Park Golf Course. When he saw the first plane hit the tower, he raced to his firehouse. From there he drove Rev. Mychal Judge and Capt. Dan Brethel to the site. They arrived just before the collapse of Two World Trade Center. They were killed by falling debris.
Ralph Scorca, 61
An assistant vice president at Marsh McLennan, Ralph signed with the Yankees in 1958 out of Nutley (N.J.) High School. He pitched four seasons in the Yankees’ minor league system. In 1959 he pitched on the same short-season Class D Kearney, Neb., staff with Jim Bouton. His last season was 1962, when he was on the Greensboro (Class B) staff with Mel Stottlemyre.
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