Welcome to Verducci’s View, a new weekly baseball newsletter from Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci. Every Monday, Tom will empty out his notebook over email and cover MLB’s hottest topics, provide in-depth analysis through both text and video breakdowns, look forward to what’s worth watching during the week and more. This week, we’re focusing on teams who had unexpectedly ugly opening months, Jordan Walker’s encouraging signs and more.
The calendar is their best friend, at a time when they have few of them. The Phillies, Mets, Astros, Red Sox and Royals, all built to contend, instead entered Sunday with the five worst records in baseball. As Philadelphia’s Bryce Harper said, “It’s not good, but obviously, there’s a lot of teams that have come back from where we’re at.”
Is that true? What’s “a lot?” You can go back 112 years and hang your hat on the 1914 Miracle Braves or take comfort in how the 2001 A’s recovered by way of a made-for-Hollywood 20-game win streak. But no, not a lot of teams even in this era of expanded playoffs recover from playing under .400 in April. Only rare outliers come back from a terrible first month.
Here are the seven teams since 1995 that played worse than .390 baseball in March/April and still made the playoffs. That’s seven teams in 30 full seasons (once in the past decade)—and all but one of them were knocked out in their first playoff series. That’s not a lot.
Look at this list of the seven biggest April recoveries of the wild card era and see if you can spot a theme:
Worst March/April Record for Playoff Team, Wild Card Era
Team
W-L
Pct.
Final
Postseason
2001 A’s
8–17
.320
102–60
Lost DS
2015 Rangers
7–14
.333
88–74
Lost DS
2024 Astros
10–19
.345
88–73
Lost WC
2006 Twins
9–15
.375
96–66
Lost DS
2006 Padres
9–15
.375
88–74
Lost DS
2007 Rockies
10–16
.385
90–73
Lost WS
2014 Pirates
10–16
.385
88–74
Lost WC
Did you spot it? No East Division team from either league makes this list. It is hard to make up ground in those divisions. That’s bad news for the Phillies, Mets and Red Sox. They are all in trouble.
Let’s rank the flat five in terms of best chance for a rare recovery.
1. Mets. They are 2-6 in one-run games and 2-6 when David Peterson and Kodai Senga start. Other than figuring out the back end of the rotation, the Mets don’t need major moves. They have high-end talent on hand that needs to stay healthy and/or rise close to career norms, though the age and wear of middle infielders Francisco Lindor, 32, and Marcus Semien, 35, could be a problem. Right now, they are playing poor fundamental offensive baseball. They are the worst slugging team that also has the fifth worst walk rate and fifth worst chase rate. Bad combination.
2. Phillies. They will have to address a talent gap in their lineup. They have no cleanup hitter, which is something you don’t normally say about a playoff team. Alec Bohm has barreled one ball all year and is hitting .107 against fastballs. Batting in the 10th inning Saturday, he looked at two fastballs over the middle of the plate and chased one way out of the zone. He looks lost. Adolis Garcia looks like another Max Kepler; he chases too much, gets beat on velocity and hasn’t hit for three years. Bryson Stott has a career OPS+ of 91. Justin Crawford is a rookie who chases too much and struggles against non-fastballs (.162, one extra base hit). That’s too much to ride out thinking “We’re okay.”
3. Royals. This is another bad offensive team that should be better. The former small-ball team has the third-highest launch angle in MLB—but they also have the second worst pop-up percentage. Launch monsters Salvador Perez, Vinnie Pasquantino and Jac Caglianone are hitting a combined .195 with eight home runs. The division does give them some cover, though.
4. Astros. Injuries to Hunter Brown, Cristian Javier, Tatsuya Imai and Josh Hader, among others, have hurt. Houston used 10 starting pitchers in its first 28 games. But this is the sixth highest scoring team in baseball. As long as Yordan Alvarez stays healthy, they have a small chance.
5. Red Sox. They will get better, but not by much. Their ceiling is low. There is not enough power in this lineup, and the starting pitching is not nearly good enough to make its bones as a “run prevention” team. They have the worst OBP from 1-2 tablesetters (.287) and no true middle of the order slugger. Only 11 players in Red Sox history have been given 1,300 plate appearances and returned an OBP less than .300. Two of them play every day for the 2026 Red Sox: Cedanne Rafaela (.288) and Trevor Story (.296), just two of several examples of the club whiffing on the valuation of long-term deals.
Air Jordan
Cardinals right fielder Jordan Walker hasn’t homered in two weeks, but he’s hitting the ball in the air more this year. | Troy Taormina-Imagn Images
Jordan Walker of the St. Louis Cardinals always has clocked in with great bat speed and great exit velocity. His progress as a slugger was stalled by too many swings and misses and too many groundballs. This month, some subtle swing changes are helping him get the ball in the air more.
Walker, still only 23, has cut his groundball rate by 12% and increased his flyball rate by 11.6%. Both improvements rank among the top eight year-to-year changes in those categories.
Walker has shortened his long swing slightly. He has done a better job keeping his head behind the ball in the stride phase rather than drifting. The tell-tale sign is being on time for fastballs. Even while cooling off in the past two weeks, Walker already has hit as many home runs off fastballs in 24 games this year as he did in 111 games last year.
Walker vs. Fastballs
Home Runs
AVG
SLG
Whiff
Swing Length
2025
4
.226
.341
25.9%
7.9
2026
4
.229
.500
22.2%
7.8
Breakdown of the Week, Part 1
When I saw Nathaniel Lowe blast a 438-foot pull-side home run on Friday, I did not recognize the player. A renowned opposite field hitter with a flat stroke, Lowe rarely hits a towering home run like that. It was the first time since 2022 Lowe hit a ball that far to the pull side. A career .425 slugger, Lowe was slugging .564 in his first 16 games with the Reds, with more playing time due while Eugenio Suarez is on the injured list.
After a career-worst season last year with the Nationals and Red Sox (.689), Lowe, 30, settled for a minor-league deal with the Reds that pays him just $1.75 million in the majors. Cincinnati found themselves a bargain. How did Lowe turn around his career? The answer lies in a swing change you can see here.
Breakdown of the Week, Part 2
Poor Caleb Durbin. He was booed upon his introduction at his first home game as a member of the Red Sox, the result of going 0-for-18 on the first road trip and not being Alex Bregman, the player he is replacing at third base.
It hasn’t gotten much better for Durbin. He’s a scrappy player, a plus defender, a hard worker and, when he’s right, a complementary player who has a knack for getting on base, in part because he is willing to get hit by pitches. It’s the kind of profile that should play well with fans in Boston.
But Durbin is getting buried by the expectations for him and this team, a common fate for players new to a big market and while replacing a star. The tension in his game has manifested itself in a mechanical problem with his swing that is bound to keep him underwater unless he fixes it.
Durbin hits with an open stance and high leg kick. When he’s right, his front foot comes down in a mostly neutral stride position. This year his foot is coming down in a much more open stride position. His front hip is opening too early. It makes it almost impossible for a hitter, especially one who is 5-foot-6, to cover the outside of the plate with any authority.
The result: welcome to Rollover Groundball City. Durbin has the highest increase in groundball rate in the American League. He had zero opposite field hits until Saturday. He had zero extra-base hits on 212 pitches away. Durbin is so hopeless against pitches away that in a three-game series last week at Fenway the Yankees threw him on the outer half 25 times out of 33 pitches (76%). He went 0-for-10.
The numbers entering the weekend tell the story:
Durbin vs. Pitches On Outer Half
Pct.
AVG
SLG
2025
57%
.268
.416
2026
65%
.077
.077
And so do Durbin’s spray charts from April in the past two seasons, where you get the visual of how he has lost the ability to drive the ball with authority the other way.
MLB
To see how one mechanical flaw can send a hitter spiraling down, check this out.
The Pitch of the Century
Brewers pitcher Jacob Misiorowski led the majors with 51 strikeouts entering Monday. | Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Jacob Misiorowski of the Brewers hit 100 mph 39 times on Friday against the Pirates. That’s the most 100-mph pitches in a game in the past three years. Give Pittsburgh credit. The Pirates were 3-for-12, the most hits against triple-digit velo in the past two years.
Hunter Greene holds the top two spots in the pitch tracking era (since 2008) for most 100-mph pitches: 47 in 2022 and 44 in 2023.
Entering Sunday, 38 pitchers had hit 100 mph, a 41% increase from the same date last year (27) and a 90% increase from the same date just five years ago (20).
The Brewers have the third highest average fastball velocity (95.5), tied with the Pirates and trailing only the Marlins (95.7) and Dodgers (95.6)
Heard and Seen
Unicorn sighting: Shohei Ohtani this season has more pitch types (nine) than walks allowed (six). He is throwing three fastballs (four-seamer, sinker, cutter), four breaking pitches (slider, curveball, sweeper and slurve) and two off-speed pitches (changeup and splitter). In his past start he threw pitches at 17 different speeds between 72 and 101 mph. Amazing … One more weird note on the Red Sox: they have made only 32 ABS challenges in 27 games, the fewest in baseball. The Twins have made 78 challenges. Boston and several other teams have made players too reticent to challenge because of overemphasizing leverage. The Twins, with ABS Whisperer Ryan Jeffers behind the plate, have turned 12 ball calls into strikeouts. Boston has five such at-bat flips … Yankees first baseman Ben Rice, who destroys fastballs, was a career .205 hitter and .427 slugger against non-fastballs entering this season—and he saw a ton of them (60%). This year he is seeing 66% non-fastballs—only Brooks Lee of the Twins see a heavier diet of them—and is crushing them for a .313 average and .646 slug. Rice moved his back foot a few inches so it’s dangling off the back line of the batter’s box. But Yankees manager Aaron Boone says the improvement comes from “intense, in-depth game planning” that is among the most thorough he has seen … Analytics evolves. The bunt is no longer verboten. With a few days left in the month, sacrifice hits in April are at their highest level in seven years—which means the highest rate since NL pitchers stopped hitting … Mike Trout has seen the most 95+ mph pitches this year: 166, or 30 more than anybody else. He was hitting .267 against elite velo. He sees 95-plus velocity 30% of the time, more than double the frequency when he won his last MVP in 2019 (13%).
TV on TV This Week
Wednesday, April 29, Giants @ Phillies, 6:30 p.m. ET, MLB Network
These are two of the three worst offenses in baseball, with the Giants at 30 (3.37 runs per game) and the Phillies at 28 (3.70). San Francisco has pulled off the rare feat of being last in home runs and stolen bases. It is the first team in four years with as few as 18 homers and eight stolen bases through 27 games. But the likely pitching matchup is first-rate: Logan Webb vs. Cristopher Sanchez.
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