Descending even further into the ebbs and flows of a baseball season, some players continue hot streaks while others bounce back after slow starts. While jumping on the bandwagon early is essential to ensure you don’t miss out on improved players, it’s also important to recognize when a hot streak is just noisy variance so you can be ready to jump on the next hay in the needle stack.
Logan Webb, SP, San Francisco Giants
Logan Webb has been a consistent force in the league over the past few years, carrying valuable ratios over a high volume of innings in each campaign. He’s leaned on a similar repertoire of sinkers, changeups, and sweepers in each of the last four years, sprinkling in a four-seam fastball and the occasional cutter more recently.
This aspect of Webb is legit. As we’ve seen in the first part of this year, he eats innings and limits runs thanks to his consistent ability to induce ground balls. This approach might inflate his WHIP when the occasional ground ball finds a gap through the infield, but the hits he gives up are far less damaging than average, as reflected by his low ERAs.
No, the aspect of Webb in question is his 29.3% strikeout rate. If the season ended today, this would be the highest single-season strikeout rate of his career. It would top the 26.5% mark he put up in 2021 while far surpassing his 22.3% rate over the last four years.
This change in his strikeout rate stems from a dramatic increase in whiff rate on the chases he’s consistently been able to induce. His pitches that have seen the biggest increase in whiff rates are his sweeper and his changeup, both seeing whiffs at rates near 10 percentage points higher than last year.
Though it’s been better at getting whiffs, his changeup profiles worse this year compared to last by PLV, dropping from a strong 5.33 to a more average 4.94 this year. This difference in pitch quality has seen his bread-and-butter pitch drop from a 97th percentile Q-BP% to a 67th percentile mark in 2025. While a slight whiff percentage increase could be expected as he dropped the pitch’s usage in half so far this season, the changeup’s pitch qualities don’t indicate that this whiff rate is sustainable for Webb.
While his change has taken more of a backseat this year, his sweeper has seen more usage, even becoming his most-used pitch against lefties. This seems counterproductive, as sweepers are one of the worst pitches to throw against opposite-handed batters. Unless, of course, they’re dotted down-and-in, where there are very slim margins between getting a whiff and allowing a barrel. With the sweeper also seeing an increase in whiffs this year, it might seem as though Webb has been painting that spot. But in actuality, he has thrown this pitch more in the lefties’ nitro zone in the heart of the plate.
There’s a chance he’s been able to find new ways to improve his pitch effectiveness through new tunnels, as this sweeper location likely works well off the sinkers he’s been elevating this year. But more likely, this is a product of early-season noise and whiff-prone competition as we’re still just 9 starts into the year, 4 of which came against teams with a top-4-worst strikeout rate this season.
Verdict: Not Legit – Webb has been a known entity through the last few seasons. While he’s been showing an uncharacteristic jump in strikeout rate, his pitches haven’t improved in quality to indicate this is sustainable. As he continues tinkering with his approach on the mound, this strikeout rate should likely level off towards his career norms throughout the rest of the season. While the strikeout rate likely won’t continue, Webb still looks to be the high-volume, low-ERA pitcher he’s always been.
Jorge Polanco, 2B/3B, Seattle Mariners
When the Mariners traded for Jorge Polanco before the 2024 season, they were likely expecting a strong weapon to help bolster their lineup. With his consistent ability to mitigate strikeouts and lift the ball in his lengthy tenure with the Twins, Polanco was destined to anchor the strikeout-heavy Mariners offense.
To the dismay of Mariners fans, Polanco instead struggled heavily in his first year away from Minnesota. While he saw a gradual uptick in strikeout rate in his last few years before the trade, Polanco’s near-30% strikeout rate in 2024 was fairly unexpected. Some intangibles may have played a factor here, like the notoriously terrible T-Mobile Park batter’s eye resulting in a 5% higher K-rate in Seattle vs on the road. Even simply a prolonged adjustment period assimilating into a new organization for the first time in his career could have provided a substantial performance hurdle. Either way, the resultant contact issues and strikeout rates Polanco experienced in 2024 held him from being the version of himself the Mariners hoped for.
However, Polanco seems to have been reborn in 2025. He’s popped 9 home runs in just 30 games to start the year alongside a commendable .327/.373/.653 slash line. He’s been able to access his elite launch angles and power potential thanks to his minuscule 10.8% strikeout rate, a far cry from his 30%-2024 season. While this strikeout rate is likely to regress a tad, he has started to hit the critical sample size thresholds where strikeout rate becomes more indicative (~100 PA). Similarly, he has shown a marked improvement in the contact portion of PLV, which has not only been improving throughout the year but is also reaching the threshold where contact becomes more indicative (~400 pitches faced).
Verdict: Legit – Polanco has seen a massive improvement in strikeout rates this year compared to his faltering 2024 season. Combined with his strong launch angles and improving bat speed, his ability to put more balls in play has enabled Polanco to reach his offensive potential. While likely to show some regression throughout the rest of the season, Polanco’s skills give him plenty of room to cushion his landing.
Tomoyuki Sugano, SP, Baltimore Orioles
Transferring over from the NPB, Tomoyuki Sugano has put together a solid start to his first MLB season. He brings six different pitches to the table with a diverse set of movement profiles and velocity bands, using each over 10% of the time. With his last 5 starts bringing 32.1 innings with only 8 runs allowed, it appears Sugano’s deep arsenal has been translating well to the MLB.
While he has many tools in his belt, Sugano’s approach is centered around ground balls and pitching to poor contact. This is because Sugano’s skillset doesn’t quite have the firepower to blow hitters away. Of his 6 pitches, only his four-seamer and his splitter grade out above a 90 stuff+. As a result, Sugano carries a 6th percentile 14.2% strikeout rate.
However, Sugano didn’t rely on strikeouts in the NPB. Instead, he excelled (in part) by limiting free passes, posting a walk rate below 5.6% in each of his 7 NPB seasons. This has been replicated so far in his 2025 season, sitting at an electric 4.4% rate. While he might not have great pure stuff, every single one of his pitches grades out above-average by PLV thanks to his signature incredible command.
While he may not give up many free passes, Sugano relies on getting outs by getting poor-quality balls in play. With a 46.3% groundball rate and a .225 batting average against, it seems Sugano’s reliance has effectively transferred over to the MLB. But behind the .225 BA is a .229 BABIP. With the xBA on the balls hit in play against him being at .311, he’s just been getting lucky. As a non-strikeout-centric pitcher, the due regression in batting average against over a higher volume of balls put in play doesn’t bode too well for the future.
Verdict: Not Legit – Tomoyuki Sugano finds success through limiting walks and mitigating quality contact. While he’s been working his command well, he doesn’t get poor enough contact to indicate his 2.72 ERA and 1.01 WHIP are sustainable through the rest of the season. He’s more likely to remain just a decent streaming/QS option where strikeouts aren’t a priority.
Photos by Icon Sportswire | Adapted by Doug Carlin (@Bdougals on Twitter)
