Giving Small Ball a New Meaning

Baseball has seen a rise this decade in shorter players, and a few teams in particular have succeeded this year after embracing the trend.

Shortstop Brayan Rocchio (left) and outfielder Steven Kwan are one of several Guardians who are less than 6 feet tall. | Jason Miller/Getty Images

This article was originally published as part of Verducci’s View, a new weekly baseball newsletter from Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci. Every Monday, Tom empties out his notebook over email and covers MLB’s hottest topics, provides in-depth analysis through both text and video breakdowns, looks forward to what’s worth watching during the week and more. If you want to be featured in his new mailbag, please email newsletter@si.com with any questions about MLB or his decades in the sport.

One day last week, as the eight starting position players for the first-place Cleveland Guardians took the field, something odd stood out. Six of the eight players were 5'11" or shorter. The exceptions were 6'3" right fielder Chase DeLauter and 6' catcher Austin Hedges.

The Cardinals (13), Guardians and Braves (11) have used the most position players under six feet. All three have winning records. The Brewers are masters of small ball no matter how you define it. The Red Sox, who tried to build a Brewers East team, have flopped with smaller players.

Something is going on here. As changes to baseball rules in recent years encourage a more varied, athletic style of play (no defensive shifts, limits on pickoffs, automatic runner at second base in extra innings), the population of smaller players is growing. Since 2008, qualified hitters under six feet have jumped 87%. Looking at this timeline, you can see the spike in shorter players as rules have changed in the past handful of years:

MLB

Here’s another look at how baseball has welcomed a stylistic change from the analytics-heavy three-true-outcome game. It shows that bunt attempts (for hits and sacrifices) are up 25% from last year and 44% from three years ago.

Bunt Attempts Since Adoption of Universal DH 

Year	Bunt Attempts	Games	Bunt Attempts per Game
2026	670	1,024	0.65
2025	1,268	2,430	0.52
2024	1,191	2,429	0.49
2023	1,103	2,430	0.46
2022	1,116	2,430	0.46

The Marlins are zagging

The Marlins do things a little differently. They have the third hardest throwing staff in MLB with an average fastball velocity of 95.7. Only the Pirates and Brewers throw harder. And yet the Marlins, with pitches called from the dugout, throw more breaking pitches than any other team (39%). Over the past 19 seasons, only the 2020 Twins and 2025 Cardinals threw a higher percentage of spin than Miami. In sweeping Arizona last week, the Marlins threw a whopping 44.5% breaking pitches, holding the D-Backs to a .196 average on spin.

Seen and Heard

History tells us teams such as the Pirates, White Sox, Diamondbacks, Cubs, Athletics and Nationals need to improve their pitching if they want to reach the postseason. Since 2019, only three teams have qualified for the postseason with an ERA worse than the MLB average ... The Marlins push the envelope on the bases. They grade out as the best running team in MLB, along with the Cardinals, even though the Marlins have made more outs on the bases than every team but Washington. The worst-rated baserunning team? The Giants ... Of the top eight hitters in MLB when it comes to bat speed, all of them are between 22 and 27 except one: 33-year-old Kyle Schwarber. The Phillies’ DH set a career high in slugging last year (.563) and is even better this year (.575) ... Tarik Skubal may be back, but the Tigers ace showed some expected rust Saturday. He came out firing 99.9 mph fastballs and averaged 97.9, more than a tick above his season average—a good indication of health. But he neither held his stuff nor located well, a sign of his layoff and abbreviated ramp-up of one minor league rehab start. Skubal’s four-seam velocity dipped from 98.0 mph in the first and second innings to 96.6 in the fifth. Bottom line: it’s rather remarkable how quickly he made it back to full strength after surgery to remove loose bodies in his elbow.

Mann, That’s Weird

Schuemann (Max) and Schneemann (Daniel) met last week when the Yankees played the Guardians. They have more in common than the last five letters of their surname.

	Max Schuemann	Daniel Schneemann
Born	1997	1997
Drafted	2018	2018
Round	20	33
Height	6'	6'
Minor league games	498	445
MLB batting average	.214	.214
Positions played in 2026	2B, 3B, SS, LF, RF	2B, 3B, SS, CF, RF
Surname translation	Shoemaker	Snowman

---