Looking For the Western Sky

I’ve been thinking a lot about the All-Star rosters this week. They’re not bad, but they’re weird, and missing many of the biggest names in the sport. That’s fine. There’s been heavy turnover atop the WAR leaderboards this year, as Ben Clemens pointed out last month, and that’s given us plenty of fresh storylines — many of which will be deservedly celebrated at the annual halftime show next week.

Still, this feels like it must matter in some way beyond an exhibition. And so I scoured the rosters, looking for a narrative to drive. One thing I noticed is, of the top 25 batters projected by FanGraphs Depth Charts, 17 did not make an All-Star team. Of those, eight are in competitive races out west.

Indeed, the stars have dimmed in the West. How these players perform after the break could determine the shape of the season still to come.

The AL West

Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez were each projected as top-five batters by WAR entering the season. With them, the Mariners began the season as narrow favorites to advance to the World Series from the American League. While that’s still technically true, neither Raleigh nor Rodríguez has played well enough to be in Philadelphia next week. Randy Arozarena is Seattle’s All-Star instead.

Raleigh has had a tough year. He slumped through the World Baseball Classic (which was the least of the news he made at the tournament) and carried that slump into the early part of the season. Just as he seemed to be snapping out of it, with five home runs in seven games at the end of April, he developed a mysterious side injury that sunk his line further. After a long 0-for, he agreed to a month-long stint on the injured list.

He has improved since returning, though the bar wasn’t high. He posted a 62 wRC+ in 181 plate appearances before going on the injured list; he’s put up a 95 wRC+ in the 78 plate appearances since his return. (This, like the rest of the stats cited in this piece, is updated through Wednesday morning) Even at his best, Raleigh is a big hacker prone to whiffs, hoping to win the trade between strikeouts and homers. He has not so far this year.

Things weren’t quite as dire for Rodríguez, at least not until last week. This was actually shaping up to be one of his better seasons at the plate; the notoriously slow-starter ran a 124 wRC+ through May. But over the same period, he’d found himself at the bottom of the Outs Above Average leaderboard among center fielders. As I wrote for Lookout Landing last month, this looked less like a shift in ability and more like a handful of miscues clustered together. But the defensive slump was enough to sink his WAR to merely fine, and nowhere near the top 10.

Rodríguez bounced back defensively in June and actually posted the most OAA among center fielders for the month. At the same time, he slumped at the plate for several weeks. Just as he started to get hot again, putting everything together and threatening for a late All-Star bid, Nolan Schanuel pelted him in the back of the head while trying to get a force out at second. Rodríguez is currently on the injured list with a concussion.

The Mariners were projected by FanGraphs Depth Charts for 12.4 WAR from their top two stars. They’re on pace to get 4.4 from the duo. But their odds to win the AL West and the American League haven’t fundamentally changed, partly because the stars of their closest rival have also underperformed.

Depth Charts wasn’t nearly as fond of Wyatt Langford and Corey Seager in the preseason. Still, both Rangers were projected in the top 25 by WAR, making them one of the best batter duos in the majors. They were projected to combine for 9.3 WAR. They’re on pace for 3.8. Jacob Latz is Texas’ All-Star.

Langford’s season is unfortunate. After a well-rounded, 4-WAR season in 2025, he was positioned as one of the game’s next young stars. That’s looked about right when he’s been healthy this year. He has a 129 wRC+ while maintaining solid outfield defense and baserunning, and he’s playing at a 7-WAR-per-650-plate-appearance pace — even better than what he was projected for in the preseason.

But Langford missed all of May with a right forearm strain. And after returning for a scorching-hot June, he strained his left hamstring while legging out a double. The latest injury isn’t assumed to be serious — he could even be activated this week — but it’s the sixth trip to the injured list for Langford, at just 24 years old.

That’s a nice segue into our next subject: Corey Seager. It’s the same story as ever. Seager has been a great player for more than a decade, but he’s never been able to stay healthy for long. This year, he’s already made three trips to the injured list: once for lower back inflammation, once for a concussion, and once again just last week for the same lower back inflammation. It’s not clear how long the latest stint will keep him away, but when playing this year, Seager has a career-low 87 wRC+ and a career-high 26.9% strikeout rate. The Rangers have played just 25 games with both Langford and Seager in the lineup.

Without their best players (and sometimes even with them), the Mariners and Rangers are each treading water, gasping for the air just above .500. They’re weirdly similar. Both have great pitching staffs, middling lineups, porous defenses, and the most suppressive home parks in the majors. Our Playoff Odds still prefer the Mariners, but the race will likely be won by whichever team gets something — anything — out of its star tandem the rest of the way.

The NL West(ern Wild Card)

A similar dynamic exists for three teams in the National League West, though one of those teams is the Dodgers, who appear unfazed by slow starts from Kyle Tucker and Mookie Betts. They lead the division by 14 games over the Padres and Diamondbacks. Both teams are .500 and battling for a Wild Card spot, without quite what they were hoping for from their top batters.

Let’s start with the Padres and Fernando Tatis Jr. He entered the season with a career 137 wRC+ and was projected by Depth Charts for more of the same, which makes his 105 wRC+ to this point something of a let down. That said, Tatis is the first player I’ve mentioned today that actually seems to be trending upward. His season line is sunk by an early funk — he didn’t hit his first home run until May 30 — but that slump was more weird than it was concerning, as MLB.com’s Mike Petriello wrote at the time. Tatis was walking and striking out at fairly normal rates, and he was still making solid contact. But for whatever reasons, he was struggling to pull the ball and couldn’t buy an extra-base hit to the opposite field. His spray chart looks normal since June 1, and he has a 130 wRC+ to show for it.

The outlook is less rosy for Jackson Merrill, who has been consistently bad at the plate all season, with a 75 wRC+. He is still hitting the ball hard, to be fair, and the quality of contact is fine enough. It’s just not enough to make up for a 0.26 BB/K. The approach isn’t working. He’s always chased a lot, but the whiffs are concerning. And look, it’s understandable. Merrill is still just 23 and spent much of last year tracing back and forth from the injured list. I’m not concerned Merrill is suddenly going to disappear from the majors — he does too many other things well.

But the Padres began the year as something of a fringy playoff contender. And between Tatis’ early slump and Merrill’s ongoing one, San Diego is 29th in the majors with an 88 wRC+. Certainly there are other culprits here (like Manny Machado). But the Padres were projected to get 10.1 WAR from their top two players, and the duo is on pace for 4.4 WAR. That’ll need to change if they’re set on chasing down the… Marlins in the NL Wild Card standings.

Now, the Diamondbacks don’t quite fit my narrative so cleanly. Geraldo Perdomo and Ketel Marte were projected for a combined 9.5 WAR, and they’re on pace for 7.7. That’s pretty good! And when you consider Corbin Carroll was also projected in the top 25 and has played exactly to his potential, it’s hard to blame missing star power for the Snakes’ poor offense.

Depth Charts didn’t expect Perdomo to repeat his 7.1-WAR, 138-wRC+ season from last year, projecting him at a more modest 4.8 WAR and 119 wRC+. At the moment, he has 2.0 WAR and a 102 wRC+, which is essentially just his career line. He’s still a slow swinger who doesn’t strikeout; he’s still a patient hitter who draws lots of walks. But the massive power surge we saw last year hasn’t stuck around. He’s making a lot more pulled contact on the ground, which is the only bad place to hit the ball at Chase Field. It’s a shame because his defense has taken even another step forward this year, and he could very well challenge for the NL’s Gold Glove at shortstop.

The Diamondbacks are also hoping to get a bit more from Ketel Marte. He posted a 149 wRC+ over the last two seasons, and this year he’s posted a 118 wRC+ in the first half. Unlike Perdomo, Marte’s power is still there, and he’s still making tons of great contact. But he’s developed an affinity for chasing sliders out of the zone, and that’s put a big ding in the walk rate that once sustained his line between homers. Much like Tatis, however, Marte’s season line is still hampered by a big slump early, and he has a 134 wRC+ since May 1.

Again, the Diamondbacks shouldn’t be nearly as worried about the top of their roster as the Padres. But we have seen Marte and Perdomo perform at even higher levels in the past. And that might be what it takes for Arizona to get back in the NL Wild Card race in the second half.