Welcome to Verducci’s View, a new weekly baseball newsletter fromSports Illustratedsenior 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 ABS returns, surprise Guardians breakout Angel Martinez and more.How far down is hopelessly down only one-third of the way through a season? The Tigers, Mets and Red Sox, all last-place teams entering Sunday despite top-12 payrolls, have been so bad they may be done even with more than 100 games to play.Not far from them on the border of quick irrelevancy are the Royals, Giants and Astros. It has become late early for many teams that fancied themselves contenders.Fifty-four games out of 162 doesn’t sound like much. It turns out they give us a very good idea of identifying pretenders. Let’s do the math to find out the demarcation line of when a 54-game start becomes perilous. Call it the Line of Doom.In the wild card era (since 1995), only one team made the postseason starting with less than 22 wins in the first 54 games, the 2005 Astros (20–34). Of the 231 teams to start 23–31 or worse, only seven made the playoffs—once every 33 times.Wait, you say. We have 12 playoff spots now. This is the fifth season with the expanded field. That should allow more forgiveness for a slow start, right?Uh, not really. Since the postseason field expanded in 2022, 31 teams began 23–31 or worse. Only one, the 2024 Mets (22–32), made the playoffs. That leaves such slow starters with a 1 in 31 chance—virtually the same as the larger sample size.Thus, we find our Line of Doom: start no better than 23–31 and your season is almost over only one-third of the way through the schedule.All teams reached the one-third mark last week. Let’s see where the bottom 13 teams at the one-third mark stood in relation to the Line of Doom, with each team’s playoff odds posted according to Baseball Reference:Worst 26 Teams After 54 GamesW-LPlayoff OddsMariners25–2959.4%Rangers25–2946.3%Blue Jays25–2937.9%Marlins25–293.7%Orioles24–304.6%Line of Doom. 23–31 Dream on Red Sox23–3132.4%Astros23–314.7%Royals22–3218.4%Giants22–321.6%Mets22–321.5%Tigers21–316.1%Angels20–320.1%Rockies20–32<0.1%The last-place Tigers, Mets and Red Sox are particularly inept on offense. All rank in the bottom five in runs per game and slugging. Yes, you can hang your hat on the 2005 Astros, who rallied to win 89 games, and the 2024 Mets, who also won 89 and squeaked into the postseason by clinching the third wild card spot on the final day. Those are extreme outliers.The fact is one-third of the season does a good job separating pretenders from contenders. And as the calendar flips to June, understand that the playoff spots won’t change very much. In the four seasons with 12 playoff spots up for grabs, teams in playoff position when May ended kept a playoff spot 73% of the time—35 of 48 teams.One last caveat: the American League is so weak as to give bad teams hope. Of the 48 playoff teams since the third wild card was added, only one team qualified with fewer than 84 wins: the 83-win Reds last year. The bar to entry might be even lower in the AL this year.Yordan RulesAstros designated hitter Yordan Alvarez is tied for the American League lead with 20 home runs. | Troy Taormina-Imagn ImagesIt was a rare swing not to be missed. On Wednesday Yordan Alvarez did something nobody had done in the 19 seasons of pitch-tracking data: he whacked a 3-and-0 breaking pitch 448 feet for a home run.Only six previous hitters since 2008 homered off a 3-and-0 breaking pitch. None launched it more than 427 feet.“Who swings at a 3–0 [sweeper] and hits it 110 to the batter’s eye?” marveled teammate Jeremy Pena. “That goes to show that he’s two steps ahead. He knew they weren’t going to challenge him with something hard, so it’s soft and he doesn’t miss.”In his career Alvarez has swung at 21 pitches in the strike zone on 3-and-0 counts. He is hitting .556 and slugging 1.556 against those pitches.That brings me to a pet peeve: why do so many hitters statue take at 3-and-0? The last fastball count left in baseball is 3-and-0. A hitter leaves the dugout hoping to see a fastball over the plate. And yet when they get to the count in which 90% of all pitches over the plate is a fastball, they auto-take. I’ve seen too many hitters in this era of spin auto-take a 3-and-0 heater, which gets the pitcher back into the count, which means the next pitch is more likely to be spin or off-speed.Batters this year are hitting .333 and slugging .800 on 3-and-0 counts. Why auto-take when those numbers encourage a free hack?Here are the numbers this year on 3-and-0:StatNumber of InstancesTotal pitches2,754In zone1,657 (60%)Fastballs in zone1,491 (90% of strikes)Fastballs down middle252Takes on fastballs down middle222 (88% of cookies)Hits per game are at a 57-year low and the second lowest in the past 116 years. And yet hitters are swinging at 3-and-0 pitches at a 16-year low!MLB If pitchers do their homework, they know which hitters give them a free strike to get back into the count. Chief among the auto-take crowd: Steven Kwan (0 swings on 129 career 3-and-0 pitches), Nick Kurtz (0 on 59), Cal Raleigh (10 on 140, including 1 on 58 the past two years), Pete Crow-Armstrong (1 on 29), Nico Hoerner (4 on 127), Brandon Lowe (9 on 150, including 1 on 70 the past four years) and, only recently, Shohei Ohtani (4 on 74 the past two years, including none on 20 this year).Asked why so few hitters swing 3-and-0, Tigers manager A.J. Hinch says, “I don’t know—because I liked to do it and I like to give it to our guys.”At least in the majors, Hinch never swung at any of the 43 3-and-0 pitches he saw in his career. The Tigers have swung at 10 3-and-0 pitches this year, fourth most. The Braves have the most 3-and-0 hacks (16) and the Giants the fewest (1).“Sometimes it's situational,” Hinch says. “Maybe a bunch of situations have come up to where 3-and-0 has presented itself to be a stretch of not a lot of good opportunities. Obviously, any time you have a runner in scoring position and two outs, it's almost an automatic even for the eight- or nine-hole hitter. I don't care who you are, I want you swinging there.”Bottom line: hitters are giving pitchers too many free strikes.Wheeler RollingPhillies pitcher Zack Wheeler has recorded a 2.27 ERA through seven starts. | Bill Streicher-Imagn ImagesPhillies righthander Zack Wheeler, the original master of the now-popular three-fastball menu, has made a stunning comeback from thoracic outlet decompression surgery. Though his velocity is down a tick and his strikeout rate is down, he is throwing more strikes with even better command. He is allowing a career-low .169 batting average on his four-seam/sinker/cutter combo, the backbone to his pitching.The Phillies won each of his first six starts, putting him at the heart of their resurgence even more than the change to manager Don Mattingly. So good is Wheeler’s command that even with a decline in his strikeout rate he is the toughest pitcher to hit with two strikes (.042), with just three hits in 72 at-bats.📺 Breakdown of the WeekJordan Walker of the St. Louis Cardinals is the most improved player in baseball. A groundball machine last season with poor mechanics to his swing, Walker has become an impact hitter with more home runs in the first one-third of the season (15) than he had in the past two seasons combined (11).How did he do it? It’s not the usual path of cutting down on a too-high chase rate. (It was 34% last year and is even worse this season, 35.1%). Instead, Walker attacked his swing mechanics. He went to Driveline in the offseason to address the problems in his swing. Walker’s back hip would drift forward, causing his lower half to collapse. At Driveline, he learned how to load on his back hip and rotate without drifting. The swing changes did not take root immediately. Walker struggled so much in spring training that manager Oli Marmol gave him four days off from game action to work with hitting coach Brant Brown. Walker has been a different hitter ever since, especially against non-fastballs.The drift in his swing made Walker vulnerable to breaking pitches and off-speed. His barrel was getting too far in front of the plate. By staying back more, Walker has more time to read the pitch and has moved his contact point closer to the plate.Last season Walker ranked 213 out of 222 hitters in slugging against non-fastballs (min. 1,500 pitches). This year? He is the best slugger in MLB against non-fastballs (min. 750 pitches). The changes in these numbers are absurd:YearGroundball%AVG vs. Breaking/Off-speedSLG vs. Breaking/Off-SpeedHR vs. Breaking/Off-Speed202547.5%.203.2672202639.6%.307.6367Walker always has flashed extraordinary tools, including elite bat speed. He and the vastly underrated Garrett Mitchell of the Brewers are the only two players who rank in the 90th percentile or better in bat speed, exit velocity, arm strength and sprint speed. But what he is doing this season goes beyond great tools. He is becoming a great hitter. I cannot remember a more drastic one-year turnaround. How did he do it? The answer is here.👀 Seen and HeardWill the Tigers trade Tarik Skubal amid their miserable start? Don’t get caught up in the overhyped buzz now. Give it time, folks. If Detroit gets to late July and thinks the forgiving AL still gives it a shot at the World Series, it plays out the year with Skubal. If the Tigers remain too far out of the race, they are obligated to do their due diligence and see what trade package they can get. That leaves above 50 games to be played before that question is answered ... Late bloomer Blake Dunn, 27, deserves a longer run in the Reds’ lineup. A former 15th round pick out of Western Michigan, Dunn is an elite runner and such a good athlete he won 16 varsity letters at Saugatuck (Mich.) High School across four sports (football, basketball, baseball and track). Before he missed his senior baseball season due to an injury, Dunn as a junior hit .573 and posted a 0.61 ERA on the mound. He put up a .391 OBP in the minors. Dunn already has three bunt hits, takes the extra base 60% of the time and continues to have a knack for getting on base ... Only the hack-tastic Ernie Clement has more hits on pitches out of the strike zone than Alec Burleson of the Cardinals. This is so weird: Burleson has a higher batting average on pitches out of the zone (.310) than in the zone (.267) ... By the way, Clement ought to dial back his propensity for swinging at the first pitch. Over the past two seasons he hits .248 on first pitches, far below the MLB average of .334 ... The initial CBA proposal from the MLBPA included a “soft floor” in which teams that don’t spend at least $150 million in payroll would be taxed. It’s a unique position from the union, which long argued for a completely open market and stayed away from floors. The union calls the soft floor a “competitive integrity tax.” Eleven teams this season spend under the proposed union threshold. Owners see floors only in tandem with caps.TV on TV This WeekThursday, June 4: Pirates @ Astros 7:30 p.m. ET (FS1)The Pirates continue to be an interesting watch. Their country hardball pitching staff is tied with Milwaukee for the fastest average four-seam velocity in recorded history (96.0 mph, since 2008). In fact, with four of the top 10 hardest throwing staffs in MLB this year (Pirates and Brewers tied for first, Reds seventh and Cardinals 10th), the NL Central is Fastball Central. The Pittsburgh offense is a top five per-game run producer. But the Pirates are poor with runners in scoring position (22nd) because they don’t make contact often enough (fourth lowest contact rate).Best of SI BaseballAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow