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June seems to arrive a little quicker with each passing year. The meat of the 2025 MLB regular season is here and the sample sizes aren’t all that small anymore. Contenders and pretenders are establishing themselves, and we’re closer to the trade deadline than Opening Day. Here are three trends worth keeping an eye on now that the All-Star Game is only a month away.
Logan Webb, now with strikeouts
From 2021-24, Giants ace Logan Webb emerged as one of the best pitchers in baseball and the sport’s premier workhorse. He ranked seventh in starts (124) and second in innings (761 ⅓) those years, and would have finished higher if not for a minor shoulder issue that sidelined him for a few weeks in 2021. Those 761 ⅓ innings came with a 3.18 ERA, which was 22% better than league average even after adjusting for Oracle Park, Webb’s pitcher-friendly home ballpark.
Saturday afternoon, Webb threw six innings of two-run ball against the Braves, and struck out 10. It was already his fourth 10-strikeout game of 2025. He had seven 10-strikeout games from 2021-24. Webb’s strikeout rate, both in terms of batters faced (28.5%) and per nine innings (10.41) is the highest of his career, and not by a little. From 2021-25, he had a 22.3 K% and 8.12 K/9. The MLB averages this season are 22.0 K% and 8.39 K/9.
Webb added a cutter late last year but mostly uses it as a show-me pitch to lefties. The strikeout rate increase is the result of more sweepers and fewer changeups, and also pitching inside a little more, particularly with his sinker. Most impressively, Webb has not sacrificed ground balls to get those strikeouts. His 56.7% ground ball rate is sixth highest among qualified starters and right in line with his 59.0% ground ball rate from 2021-24 (MLB average: 42.1% grounders on balls in play).
Adding strikeouts to ground balls has helped Webb take another step forward, and pitch to a 2.58 ERA in 14 starts and 87 ⅓ innings this year. He was already one of the best pitchers in baseball. Now he’s better than he’s ever been. Here is the strikeouts-plus-ground-balls leaderboard. This is strikeouts-plus-grounders as a percentage of batters faced (min. 50 innings):
- Logan Webb, Giants: 65.6%
- Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Dodgers: 64.6%
- Andre Pallante, Cardinals: 63.7%
- Framber Valdez, Astros: 63.6%
- José Soriano, Angels: 62.5%
(MLB average: 51.1%)
Valdez has been the strikeout-plus-ground-ball king the last few years. Pallante and Soriano are there because of their elite ground ball rates, not because they strike out a ton of batters. Yamamoto does both at a high level — get grounders and get strikeouts — and now so does Webb. Just about two out of every three batters he faces either put the ball on the ground or don’t put it in play at all, and that’s a pretty good recipe for success. Hitters have few opportunities to do real damage against him.
Great players find ways to improve and get better, and Webb has done that this season. He went from being a ground-ball machine who pitches deep into games to doing all that, while also missing a ton of bats as well. This is elite level stuff from San Francisco’s ace. Webb finished sixth in the Cy Young voting last year and was the runner-up to Blake Snell in 2023. With the caveat that it is only June, he is well-positioned to take home the award this season.
Boston’s first-inning problem
Historically, the first inning is the highest-scoring inning (excluding extra innings with the automatic runner), and that makes sense. Teams stack their best hitters at the top of the lineup and the first inning is the only inning the top of the lineup is guaranteed to bat. This is true again in 2025. The league is averaging 0.55 runs in the first inning this year. The eighth inning is the next-highest scoring inning at 0.53 runs. No other inning is at even 0.50 runs.
The Red Sox, more than any team other than the historically terrible Rockies, have had trouble keeping runs off the board in the first inning this season. Entering play Tuesday, they’d allowed 54 first-inning runs in 69 games. Just within the last week, Lucas Giolito had a four-run first inning against the Angels, Richard Fitts had a six-run first inning against the Angels, Walker Buehler had a five-run first inning against the Yankees, and Hunter Dobbins had a two-run first inning against the Yankees.
“I think it’s a matter of being prepared,” Giolito told the Boston Globe following his disaster start against the Angels. “Being prepared to compete from pitch one, having a high level of focus and intent right out of the gate, and kind of dictating the game rather than letting the game dictate you.”
Opposing teams were hitting .319/.383/.560 in the first inning against the Red Sox going into Tuesday’s game. For reference, Alex Bregman is hitting .299/.385/.553 this season. Boston’s starters have turned every hitter they’ve faced in the first inning this season into a version of Bregman that hits for a higher average. It is really, really hard to win that way. Too often this season the Red Sox are playing from behind right out of the gate. They’re constantly playing catch-up, not dictating the action.
The good news is Boston’s starters have a 4.02 ERA after the first inning. That’s not amazing, but it’s not terrible either. Find a way to limit that first inning damage and they’ll be in much better shape. Perhaps it’s time to consider openers for everyone but Garrett Crochet? Use a reliever to match up in the first inning, put a zero on the board, then get the starter in there? Or would that just make the damage inning the second inning? I’m not sure. Either way, the first inning has been a major headache for the BoSox in 2025.
Denzel Clarke’s highlight reel defense
It will be hard to top Denzel Clarke’s Monday night home run robbery for the Catch of the Year. Clarke scaled the Angel Stadium wall to take a sure homer way from Nolan Schanuel. Sometimes it’s not so clear the ball was going over the wall on a home run robbery. This one was definitely going over. This is reminiscent of the Gary Matthews Jr. catch almost 20 years ago:
“I’m always very tentative to say this was the best one, but I think this is probably the best one I’ve ever made,” Clarke told MLB.com about his catch. “… I just timed it up. Found my distance between the wall and just did what the ball told me to do. Just go up there and get it.”
As if Monday’s catch didn’t make it obvious, Clarke is a premium athlete — his mother, Donna, is an Olympic heptathlete — and a tremendous center fielder. Baseball America called his defense “game-changing” before the season and yeah, we saw it there. That was Clarke’s second home run robbery too. He took a homer away from Alejandro Kirk last week in Toronto, his hometown.
Clarke hasn’t done much with the bat since making his MLB debut on May 23 (he took a .216/.245/.294 line into Tuesday’s game), but he already rates as one of the best defensive outfielders in the game. Despite playing only 16 games, he’s tied for third among outfielders in outs above average. Check it out:
- Pete Crow-Armstrong, Cubs: +11 in 590 ⅔ innings
- Ceddanne Rafaela, Red Sox: +10 in 535 ⅓ innings
- Denzel Clarke, Athletics: +8 in 125 innings
- Victor Scott II, Cardinals: +8 in 519 ⅔ innings
- Fernando Tatis Jr., Padres: +7 in 520 innings
Defensive stats can be finicky in small sample sizes, though outs above average is the best we have (it is a Statcast stat based on exit velocity, launch angle, etc.), and it says Clarke has already provided more value on defense this season than all but three other outfielders. If nothing else, the numbers match the eye test. Clarke is a highlight reel defender.