Lawrence Butler’s breakout and more reasons to watch MLB’s five worst teams in final weeks of 2024 season

One of the best things about baseball is that it has the longest regular season of any of the main professional sports. If you’re a fan of a bad team, it can be argued that the length of the season doubles as one of the worst things about baseball. We get it: after enduring a spring and summer of losses, the soul can begin to yearn for more fulfilling ways to welcome the fall.

While we can’t criticize anyone who decides there are better ways to spend their September nights, we here at CBS Sports figured this would be a good time to look for reasons for hope for some of Major League Baseball’s worst teams. With that in mind, below we’ve identified one encouraging young player — one “reason for hope” — for each of the five worst teams in the majors. 

Do note that since the purpose of this exercise is to provide fans with a reason to dream of a better tomorrow, we limited ourselves to players who entered this season with less than a year of major league service time. When it comes to poor-performing teams, the right veterans can lure you to watch a bad team all the way to game 162; competent youngsters, though, compel you to dream.

With all that mumbo jumbo out of the way, let’s get to the five teams in question.

1. Oakland Athletics: OF Lawrence Butler 

If you’re not not familiar with Butler’s story, he was demoted to the minors in mid-May after hitting .179/.281/.274 through his first 41 games. The Athletics brought him back up about a month later, and since then he’s been one of the most productive hitters in the sport, complete with an OPS over .970.

Butler, 24, hammers the ball. Even with that poor stretch to begin the year, he entered Monday having recorded a 49.3% hard-hit percentage overall — that is to say that nearly half his batted balls have had an exit velocity of 95 mph or above. For perspective, that places him in the top 9% of all Major League Baseball hitters.

What makes Butler really intriguing is that his game avoids the pitfalls that tend to sink pop-up sluggers. He’s not going up there and mindlessly gripping and ripping; both his chase and whiff rates are close to league-average, giving him a firm offensive foundation. He’s clearly not a product of favorable stadium construction, and he’s not particularly lift- or pull-happy. It’s tough to find nits to pick here.

As such, we think Butler’s breakout is genuine. Maybe he doesn’t achieve these same heights heading forward, but he appears to have transformed himself into an actual building block for a team that could use several more of them.

2. Colorado Rockies: CF Brenton Doyle

Back in January, we wrote the following of Doyle:

There used to be a running joke about how this or that defensive wizard just didn’t hit well enough to win whenever they would be snubbed for a Gold Glove Award. Doyle tested the limits of that “joke” last season, deservedly claiming the hardware despite an abysmal showing at the plate. He batted .203/.250/.343 (52 OPS+) with nearly seven times as many strikeouts as walks. Bear in mind, he did that while playing his home games at Coors Field, of all places, making him one of the least productive regulars in the league on a park-adjusted basis.

Here, nearly eight months later, we’re pleased to write that Happy learned how to putt. Doyle, 26, hasn’t just had an improved offensive season — he’s had a downright good one. He’s already notched a 20-20 campaign, and there’s a fair chance that he “doubles” his OPS+ from year to year.

How “real” is Doyle’s breakout? The underlying indicators are mostly good. He’s improved his chase and whiff rates, as well as his average exit velocity. He’s hitting the ball in the air more frequently, too, allowing him to produce better power numbers than we could have reasonably expected in the spring.

Doyle remains an absolute demon in the outfield, too. He doesn’t have to hit this well to have starting value. But, if he can keep this up, it’s fair to label him a star. 

3. Los Angeles Angels: SS Zach Neto

Depending on your preferred Wins Above Replacement source, Neto is either having a good first full season in the majors or a very good first full season in the majors. Just over two years since his drafting, he’s clearly the best healthy position player on the Angels, and the best overall not named Mike Trout — and while that could be asserted in a dismissive way by certain authors in certain contexts, that’s not the intent here.

Neto’s biggest gains have to do with his performance on breaking pitches. Last season, he batted .168 against them with a .242 slugging; this year, he’s up to .259 and .482. He’s also improved his whiff rate against breakers by about three percentage points. That’s all encouraging stuff from someone who was rushed along to the majors.

If Neto wants to shore up another area of his game in the future, he’d be wise to focus on his defense, and particularly when he’s charging in. According to Statcast’s metrics, he’s been the worst fielding shortstop whenever he’s had to come in to field a ball. Angels skipper Ron Washington knows a thing or two about teaching infield defense, so in that sense, Neto might be in the best possible situation to take another step forward next year.

4. Miami Marlins: INF Xavier Edwards

Edwards took the scenic route to get here. He was originally a top-40 draft pick by the Padres who lasted about 18 months in the organization before being shipped to the Rays in the Tommy Pham trade. (Edwards, you may recall, was characterized by Blake Snell at the time as being a “slapdick prospect.”) The Rays parted with him just under three years later, trading him to the Marlins in an otherwise forgettable deal. 

Edwards, 25, had an unimpressive 30-game stint in the majors last season. This year, though, he’s served as a relative bright spot for a rebuilding club. In more than 50 games, he’s hit 20% above the league average while showcasing his basestealing talents. Mind you, Edwards is still slappy: he’s homered just once and his exit velocity numbers suggest he’s not going to turn into a slugger anytime soon. He’s been able to atone for that by controlling the zone and leveraging his bat-to-ball skills by hitting grounder and liner after grounder and line back up the middle.

Edwards is a little stretched at shortstop, and if Miami presently cared about optimizing its defense he would be stationed at the keystone. The Marlins, of course, have benefitted as much as any team from employing a contact-driven right-side infielder; still, it’s fair to have reservations about the sustainability of his offensive skill set until he proves it for a full season. If we had to make a judgment, we think it’s unlikely that he’ll continue to be this prolific offensively. 

Do note that we also considered Connor Norby for this spot. We went with Edwards because he had the larger sample and, arguably, the better story working in his favor.

5. Chicago White Sox: RHP Jonathan Cannon

The University of Georgia has produced a handful of pitchers drafted in the top five rounds in recent years, including Emerson Hancock and Cole Wilcox. Cannon, 24, has thus far enjoyed the most success of any of them at the big-league level.

Cannon is on pace to finish his rookie season as a league-average starting pitcher. That’s not exciting, but any kind of competency qualifies as a silver lining when you’re playing on what seems likely to go down as the worst team in modern MLB history.

Cannon is worth watching for another reason unrelated to the White Sox’s team quality: to see if he can continue to refine his arsenal in ways that make him more effective heading forward. 

Although Cannon’s season-long pitch mix breakdown suggests he’s a sinkerballer, he’s reduced his sinker usage each month, all the while upping his changeup usage. We think that’s a wise call, in part because his sinker has been his worst-performing pitch and in part because his changeup has been a more effective bat-misser. 

Cannon doesn’t stand out in any one way — he’s not a big strikeout artist or contact manager — and there’s no sense being complacent, especially not when the team’s results allow for experimentation.