You lose some, and then you lose some. On Sunday at Oracle Park, the Mariners not only fell to the Giants 5-4, but they were forced to remove Victor Robles from the game after he injured his left shoulder making a remarkable catch on the game’s penultimate pitch. His injury is just one of a handful of notable ones suffered in the past several days.
Robles, who broke out last season after being released by the Nationals and signed by the Mariners, had played every inning of every game in right field until the injury. With the score tied 4-4 in the bottom of the ninth, one out, and Luis Matos on first base, Patrick Bailey fouled a drive into the right field corner. Robles sprinted 113 feet, leapt to grab the ball, and then fell over the half-height padded fence and into the netting. After extricating himself, he fell to his knees in obvious pain, rolled the ball to second baseman Ryan Bliss as Matos tagged up and reached third base, and remained on the ground. While he was tended to by Mariners head athletic trainer Kyle Torgerson, Giants manager Bob Melvin challenged the catch ruling, but the call on the field was upheld [as a reader pointed out, Matos was sent back to second under stadium boundary rules]. Finally, Robles was carted off the field, with Torgerson helping him to support his injured left arm.
Miles Mastrobuoni moved from third base to right field to replace Robles, but he didn’t need to for very long, because on the next pitch after play resumed, Wilmer Flores singled in Matos to send the Mariners to defeat, dropping them to 3-7. Medical personnel at Oracle Park popped Robles’ shoulder back into place, and after undergoing X-rays on-site, he was initially diagnosed with a dislocated left shoulder and placed on the 10-day injured list. The results of the follow-up MRI he underwent on Monday afternoon have yet to be announced.Read the rest of this entry »
During the course of my spring training coverage (especially right at the end), I ran into the Giants affiliates a couple of times as I trailed the Brewers and Dodgers farm systems. I saw enough to make a few tweaks to the Giants prospect list, which I have brief notes on below. You can see the complete updated list over on The Board. I’ve also included notes on a few recent trades.
Toolsy Outfielders With Strikeout Risk Who Have Moved Up
Dakota Jordan’s swing has changed (mostly his posture throughout the swing), and I think it gives him a better chance to hit. I was way out on him making any kind of viable contact before last year’s draft, but he has loud showcase tools (power/speed) and now we’ll see if the proactive changes make a difference for his contact ability. He has also looked good in center field, including highlight reel play in which he collided with the wall at Papago Park, but then forgot how many outs there were and spiked the baseball:
Welcome to this season’s first edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I’m never more excited to watch baseball than I am at the end of March. The winter feels endlessly long, even for me in pleasant San Francisco. Spring training doesn’t quite scratch the itch. A series in Tokyo? Eh, everyone was asleep. But then comes Opening Day, and suddenly there’s baseball everywhere. Hats at the grocery store. Announcers on television and on the radio. Crowds filling bars and stadiums, TVs broadcasting the soothing sounds of my favorite sport. I’m all fired up. You only get one opening week a year, and this one’s been excellent. So after the customary nod to Zach Lowe (now of The Ringer, congrats Zach) for the format, let’s get right to the things that made me jump out of my seat this week.
1. Mookie!
I’ll admit to being a little skeptical about how the start of Mookie Betts’s season would go. It’s not because of any doubt about his skill – at this point in his career, I think he’s earned the benefit of the doubt there. But we’re not talking about how Betts would look at full strength. In fact, the reason I was skeptical was because he’s specifically not at full strength after losing nearly 20 pounds during a bout with norovirus.
Betts doesn’t weigh a lot to begin with – he’s officially listed at 180 pounds, but he checked into spring training this year at 175, according to Dodgers announcer Joe Davis. Losing 20 pounds from there is a big deal. Betts hits for a ton of power given his stature, but reducing his body weight by more than 10% makes that an even greater challenge. When he missed the Dodgers’ two games in Tokyo and then came back to play on Opening Day while still clearly affected, I mentally marked down my expectations for him early on.
Betts still isn’t back to full strength. Per a Dodgers broadcast last week, he’s back up to 165 pounds, and still hoping to gain more weight sooner rather than later to deal with the rigors of the season. That lack of oomph shows in the batted ball data; it is, of course, very early in the season, but Betts has barreled up only a single ball, and the hardest he’s hit one all year was a mere 100.8 mph. (For context, his max exit velo last season was 109.4 mph.) His bat speed is down. It shows on Betts’s body, too; he’s always been slight, but he looks smaller this year, because he is.
One place it hasn’t showed up? His batting line. He’s hitting .300/.364/.750 to start the year, and that’s with a .188 BABIP. He has more home runs (three) than strikeouts (one). Every single one of those homers gave the Dodgers the lead. And every single one of them had juuuuuust enough power to clear the wall:
How much distance did those balls have to spare? Maybe 10 feet combined? I think we need to look into the possibility that Betts is a magical being unconstrained by the rules of reality. I don’t know how else to explain his incredible performance even as he’s so focused on recovery that he eats meals during games to try to regain muscle mass.
If you’ve followed his career, you know that Betts is prone to white-hot streaks where he hits everything out of the park. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. But doing it when he’s visibly weakened by illness? Doing it while playing shortstop full time? Doubt Betts at your own risk. The Dodgers are impressive in a million ways – but right now, I can’t stop watching Mookie and giggling with delight.
2. Follow the Bouncing Wall
Ever heard of a strike ‘em out, throw ‘em out single play? Jeremiah Estrada managed that trick over the weekend, and in a way I’ve never seen before:
It’s not unheard of for a pitcher to retrieve the ball after a dropped third strike. Here’s another from the first week of the season:
But that’s how they happen, with balls that bounce back toward the field of play, and bounce far enough that the catcher can’t reach them. After the ball gets behind the plate, it’s the catcher’s ball for better or worse. Unless you’re playing with the wall bumper settings turned up to maximum, that is:
The ball hit a solid railing perfectly, flush and angled back into the field of play. A fraction of an inch in any direction would have made it completely unplayable. But throw enough fastballs off the wall behind the plate, and apparently one will kick back perfectly for some pitcher fielding practice. I’ve never seen anything like it – and that feeling, that I’ve never seen anything like what just occurred, is exactly why I’m so happy to have regular-season baseball back in my life.
3. Genius Defenders and Oblivious Baserunners
If you played baseball or softball growing up, you probably have the same instincts as me: When you see a rundown, you get giddy. Maybe, like me, you even say “Ooh! Pickle!” before you even notice that you’re talking. At the youth level, turning a pickled runner into an out is anything but a sure thing, and both the defenders and the runner have a lot to say about how things go. In the big leagues, the defenders are just too good for that. Escaping a rundown is getting tougher every year, because with perfect execution by both the runner and the defense, the runner is always out.
Here’s a classic one for you, a grounder to third base that hung Dairon Blanco out to dry on the basepaths:
You can quibble with having Blanco run on contact there, with no outs and Bobby Witt Jr. on deck. After the ball was in play, though, he didn’t have a lot of options. Catcher Bo Naylor came up the line aggressively and gave Blanco nowhere to hide. So Blanco went for the classic “break toward the thrower after he releases” plan; he didn’t execute it perfectly, but even if he did, it probably wouldn’t have worked. José Ramírez is fast, Hunter Gaddis and Carlos Santana were both covering home plate for reinforcements if the rundown continued, and like I said, it’s nearly impossible to escape a rundown conducted by major league fielders.
Why am I showing you this standard play? Because it wasn’t a standard play, and didn’t end there. Ramírez wasn’t just bluffing to third with that post-tag pivot:
It’s fun to watch a baseball genius at work. Ramírez made a string of great decisions on this play that equaled Kansas City’s string of bad ones. First, he took off down the third base line even before Naylor’s throw was in his glove. Blanco might be faster than him in a footrace, but he was already accelerating homeward when Blanco planted and changed direction. Rundowns are about quickness, not speed, and Ramírez is preternaturally agile.
He had the runner at second on his mind the entire time, too. You can see him waving Naylor toward him to hurry the play up. By the time he received the throw, he was already thinking about second base. Then, as he turned that way, he gave Kyle Isbel enough of a deke to freeze him on the basepaths. He even managed to re-insert himself into the rundown, though he wisely stepped aside when he saw his teammates had it under control.
Isbel, on the other hand, didn’t cover himself with glory. On this snapshot, the play should essentially be over:
Look at how far down the line Ramírez had already gotten, with Blanco still trying to change direction. That out was as good as made, Isbel had a perfect view of it, and he was close enough to second base to get back easily. But with the ball still right near third base and a fast and accelerating player holding it, Isbel inexplicably decided to take off:
Here’s how bad that decision was: Between Isbel deciding to run and Ramírez tagging Blanco out, Isbel took exactly two steps. He was maybe 20% of the way to third when Ramírez made the tag, and Ramírez was maybe 20% of the way from third to home.
Poor Jonathan India. He seems to know his way around a rundown. While the rest of the Royals were finding ways to create outs, he played everything perfectly. He tore down the line to first. When the defense abandoned him to cover the rundown, he went partway to second. And when Isbel got caught too, India did the right thing and went all the way to the second base bag. Just to put the cherry on top, rewatch the clip of Isbel getting tagged out. India didn’t step on the bag until the tag was applied. That’s because he was trying to start a rundown of his own; if Isbel had just sprinted back to second instead of stopping, India would have retreated to first, hopefully allowing Isbel to reach third or maybe even getting out of the rundown without being tagged given how many fielders were down near home plate. It’s amazing how good baseball players are at these little things. Well, how good they usually are, at least.
4. Lunging Practice
Double plays are a frequent feature of this column, because a well-turned double play, particularly if the degree of difficulty is high, is one of the most exciting plays in baseball. It features so many people operating in unison, there are usually close plays for at least one of the outs, and acrobatic pivots at second are just visually pleasing, period. And then you’ve got the double plays that aren’t perfect but are satisfying nonetheless:
What happened here? First, Mark Vientos made a difficult pick on a short hop. Then he judged that he had enough time and threw to second:
You can tell that something is wrong with the throw even in that abbreviated clip. The angle looks wrong, and so does his arm action. Good hands, yes, but bad throw:
Luisangel Acuña made that look easier than it was, but that could have been a disaster. His glove actually clipped second base as he went down for that one. How could it not, given the short hop? The ball rattled around in his glove, and he nearly lost his footing on the base while securing it, but he made the tough catch and even kept himself in position to throw to first.
At this point in the play, doubling up Isaac Paredes was far from automatic. Acuña didn’t have the time to baby the throw; he had to rip it and hope for reasonable accuracy. And “reasonable” is about what he got:
Pete Alonso isn’t a heralded defender, but he played this ball perfectly. When he saw the flight path, he went out and attacked the catch point. Stay back, and you have an in-between hop. Paredes might even beat out the throw; it was a really close play. But Alonso cut down the distance with his stretch, and he even got a bit of momentum by pushing on the base with his right foot, making sure to keep in contact until after he’d caught the ball. I love the brace with his right hand, too; that’s a good way to make sure that a collision with the ground doesn’t jar the ball out of the glove.
Honestly, that ball should be a double play every time without the need for anything spectacular. But hey, it was the first day of the season. Everyone was still getting up to game speed. And what better way to do that than by practicing some tough catches?
5. George Springer Still Has It
In the prime of his career, George Springer was a do-it-all outfielder in addition to being a slugger. He played 500 or so innings a year in center, spent the balance in right field, and showed off a cannon arm and fantastic instincts to go with plus speed. At 35, he’s not that kind of defender anymore. His last two seasons have been his worst defensive efforts as a major leaguer. But there’s a big difference between a diminished Springer and your regular kind of bad defender.
You can be a bad defender in many different ways. You can have bad instincts, or no speed, or a scattershot arm. But while Springer’s sprint speed is down, his heady play isn’t. How many below-average defenders can do this?
That’s not a great angle from the live broadcast, but I wanted to show it to you first so you can get an idea of how routine everything looked until the slide. Springer was playing far off the line in right when Ryan O’Hearn ripped the ball down the line, so it was a clean double off the bat. With Colton Cowser running from first, the math was pretty easy: If the ball hits the wall, Cowser scores. That’s why the broadcast cut to Cowser rounding second; he was the focus of attention at that point.
In his younger years, Springer might have gotten to that one standing up. But even missing a step or two, he has outstanding defensive instincts. He realized there was little downside and plenty of upside in trying to make a tough play, then pulled it off perfectly:
Every little thing about that is gorgeous. He was into the slide with legs extended by the time the ball hit his glove. He set his feet and lifted his body off the turf without using either hand, which let him complete the transfer from glove to throwing hand more quickly. Check out his left foot as he pivoted into the throw; his toe was pointed in the wrong direction at first, so he gave a quick jab to establish the correct position. Then he ripped the throw, off balance and falling away, hitting the cutoff man on the fly. Cowser had rounded second before Springer even started his slide, and yet the ball was back in an infielder’s hands by the time he stepped on third.
Small potatoes? Sure. He didn’t record an out or even prevent the hitter from getting to second. But keeping a runner from scoring, even with one out, has value. The O’s didn’t score in this inning, and that definitely wouldn’t have been true if Springer hadn’t made the play so seamlessly. And seriously, he was way off the line for that one. Here’s where he started the play:
The Jays like to shade Springer that way against lefties, but it’s nowhere near a straight-up right field position. Look at where he was standing against righties:
Now, did I pick that particular clip to show you that Andrés Giménez can juggle a baseball with his feet? I sure did. But you can see where Springer came into the picture, and he was maybe 20 feet closer to the line than he was against O’Hearn. My point is that it would have been easy for him to play that ball off the wall, or trap it with his momentum going the wrong way, or any number of ways that bad defenders play the ball when it’s not right at them. But Springer still has the elite defensive instincts he showed earlier in his career, and he made the kind of play that he always has. I love it. Even as he ages, you can still see what makes Springer so electric. Oh, and he’s slugging so far this year too. You love to see it.
Programming note: My chat next week will take place Tuesday at 2 p.m. Eastern, as I’ll be out on Monday. Talk to you then, I hope.
Joshua L. Jones-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Every year, most teams hold some sort of team bonding, social event during spring training. The specifics of the event vary from team to team, but frequently they include renting out a movie theater and showing some cloying, inspirational movie like The Blind Side, Cool Runnings, Rudy, or better yet, a documentary like Free Solo. Regardless of the team’s outlook on the year, the goal is to get the players amped up for the season and ready to compete on the field, even if the competition in question is for fourth place in the division.
But what if instead of taking the clichéd route, teams actually tried to select a movie that fits their current vibe, one that’s thematically on brand with the state of their franchise? They won’t do this because spring training is a time for hope merchants to peddle their wares, even if they’re selling snake oil to sub-.500 teams. But spring training is over now, the regular season has begun, and it’s time to get real. So here are my movie selections for each National League team, sorted by release date from oldest to newest.
If you’re interested in which movies I selected for the American League teams, you can find those picks here. Read the rest of this entry »
Early Wednesday morning, the regular season ended — for another week anyway. The Dodgers and Cubs played the second and final game of the Tokyo Series, casting us back into the pit of spring training baseball. Below, some notes on the game, a 6-3 Los Angeles win.
First Inning
It’s snowing in Tokyo. Roki Sasaki Day has finally come.
I woke up just after 4:00 a.m. ET and once again decided to just stay up. I have already written a thousand words about Max Scherzer. I’m not necessarily crisp.
On the first pitch of the game, Justin Steele starts Shohei Ohtani off with a fastball over the plate. Of course he does. He’s Justin Steele. Ohtani seems to be familiar with the scouting report – uh, fastballs – and he launches the ball to the opposite field. For a moment you think he’ll do it. The crowd thinks he’ll do it. Ohtani looks up at the ball hopefully, then grimaces. It lands just short of the warning track. Read the rest of this entry »
The 2025 Major League Baseball season began at 6:10 a.m. Eastern on Monday in the Tokyo Dome. After tuneups against NPB teams, the Cubs and Dodgers played a game that counted, though it still featured telltale signs of mid-March rust. Below, some notes on the game (and, more importantly, managerial eyewear).
First Inning
The first pitch of the game, Shota Imanaga to Shohei Ohtani, is a four-seam fastball for a called strike. The K-Zone graphic says it’s way too high. Statcast says it’s perfectly located at the top of the zone. Ohtani doesn’t challenge. This isn’t spring training anymore.
Both the Chicago and Los Angeles broadcasts have the crowd noise dialed way down, which is a shame. For all the talk of the electric atmosphere, the crowd registers as faint background noise, an oscillating fan in the other room.
Second Inning
In the top of the second, Imanaga walks the first two Dodgers and shakes his head in anger. In the dugout, Craig Counsell reaches for his spectacles.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto is having trouble locating too. In the bottom half, Dansby Swanson stays back and drives a curveball back up the middle. It’s the first hit of the season. Miguel Amaya doubles him home with a liner to right center. It’s the first run of the season. Yamamoto gets out of the inning by dotting a curve at the bottom of the zone to freeze Jon Berti. It doesn’t quite seem fair.
Third Inning
Imanaga leads Ohtani off with a high, hanging sweeper. It stays inside, and Ohtani tries and fails to let his elbow drift into it. “This has gotta be a splitter right here,” says Clayton Kershaw up in the booth when the count gets to 2-2. It’s another high sweeper, and Ohtani smashes it right at the second baseman for a lineout. Kershaw feels vindicated; he didn’t predict the pitch correctly, but the pitch he didn’t predict got crushed.
Ian Happ chops Yamamoto’s first pitch straight into the ground. A backpedaling Yamamoto reaches up and biffs it with the tip of his glove, slowing it down just enough that the second baseman can’t catch Happ.
Michael Busch’s bat looks like it’s as old as he is. The black finish is all nicked and scuffed, like he spent the offseason using it to knock the side of the TV when the reception got fuzzy. It’s the only thing on the screen that isn’t shiny and new. He grounds out on a splitter just like everyone else.
Fourth Inning
A giant screen behind home plate advertises a company called dip, all lowercase. If we’re lucky, we will never have to think about this company again.
Imanaga walks two more batters. Pitching coach Tommy Hottovy, a dark horse contender for the best name in baseball, walks out to say hello. Enrique Hernández lifts the first fly ball of the game, a deep out to center field.
Counsell picks up the phone. The Dodgers still don’t have a hit. Imanaga’s night is done.
Fifth Inning
The center field camera is lower than usual. It gives a nice view of the strike zone, and it has the added benefit of making the pitcher look larger than life. Ben Brown appears to be releasing the ball approximately eight inches from home plate.
The action picks up. Strikeout. Walk. Ohtani rips a single into right field. First and third, first hit of the game for the Dodgers. Ohtani and first base coach Chris Woodward lean in close, turn, and gently touch helmets.
Tommy Edman sends a dying liner into left. Happ lays out but can only trap it. First and second, tie ballgame. Teoscar Hernández hits a chopper to Matt Shaw at third. He throws to second to get the force, but Berti makes the turn and throws the ball away, allowing Ohtani to score from second. Will Smith chops one through the left side, and it’s a 3-1 game. Hottovy returns to the mound. Brown has a moustache as fine as cornsilk.
Max Muncy’s bat is painted industrial gray. He chases a big curveball in the dirt, then drops the bat in the dirt.
Yamamoto induces a couple hard groundballs. Miguel Rojas makes a nice play deep in the hole at short. Enrique Hernández makes a nice play deep in the hole at first, which isn’t something you get to say very often. Yamamoto punches Happ out with a fastball on the corner.
Sixth Inning
Yamamoto receives congratulations in the dugout. His night is done after five innings: one run, three hits, four strikeouts, one walk.
Ohtani comes up with two on and two out. You can finally hear the crowd for a moment. Brown strikes him out on three pitches. The crowd gasps.
With lefties due up for the Cubs, Anthony Banda replaces Yamamoto. There’s a little bit of Roy Hobbs in his delivery; it’s the way he swings his arms upward at the beginning. Three up, three down.
Seventh Inning
Brown is still out there, and when the Dodgers aren’t hitting him, he looks unhittable. But he’s profligate, requiring 65 pitches to get through 2 2/3 innings. He issues a two-out walk, and Counsell emerges from the dugout, glasses hooked on the collar of his jersey. Eli Morgan is everything Brown isn’t: short, dark-haired, economical. Muncy chops his first pitch to second base and the inning is over.
The crowd murmurs when Swanson lifts a Ben Casparius fastball into the right field corner, but Teoscar Hernández eventually drifts over to make the play. Pete Crow-Armstrong whiffs and sends his bat cartwheeling back toward the dugout.
Eighth Inning
With one out in the eighth, umpire Bill Miller stops the game because of a fan with a laser pointer in the left field stands. After play resumes, Michael Conforto drives a ball down the left field line for a double. For the third year in a row, the Dodgers are celebrating their doubles with the Freddie Freeman dance. Freeman was a last minute scratch with a rib injury. Attempting his own dance would probably leave him in agony right now.
“Day-O,” sings Harry Belafonte. Halfway through the crowd’s response, whoever’s in charge of the sound mix finally turns up the crowd noise for a moment. They dial down the fun again as soon as the call and response has finished.
Blake Treinen hits Berti on the forearm and the ball ricochets into Smith behind the plate for good measure. All of a sudden, the Cubs have the tying run at the plate. Berti steals second easily. Seiya Suzuki, 0-for-3 on the night, comes to the plate with two outs. He could be the hero. The crowd roars when Suzuki fouls a fastball into the stands on the first base side, but Treinen catches him way out in front on a sweeper, resulting in a weak liner to third.
“Thank you,” says Treinen to his God as he walks off the mound. Miller meets Treinen on the third base line and chats him up as he pats his pitching hand.
Ninth Inning
Ohtani hooks another base hit down the line, this one a line drive double off a Ryan Brasier slider. As is so often the case, Ohtani looks awkward, completely off balance, like he just reached out to poke the ball, but it comes off the bat at 107.8 mph. An Edman groundout and a Teoscar Hernández single bring Ohtani home, extending the lead to 4-1. Brasier gets into more trouble, gets out of it.
The Dodgers have chosen to forgo the gold trim with which World Series champions are allowed to accent their uniforms. The only gaudy touch is the MLB logo on the back of the jersey, which has had its white negative space gilded.
The other indicator of the Dodgers’ dominance, the addition that takes them from great to downright decadent, comes in from the bullpen. Tanner Scott sets the Cubs down in order, and just like that, Los Angeles is in first place once again.
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA — For the Los Angeles Dodgers, being able to pay so many stars comes with a hidden value that one general manager has called “the unseen part of spending.”
The Dodgers have impact players like Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Blake Snell on big contracts. As their luxury tax bill goes up, and as they sign free agents with qualifying offers attached to them, the Dodgers lose out on draft picks and bonus pool money for international free agents.
But they’ve made up for some of the future value that they’ve lost. The Dodgers are known for their buying moves, but they can also sell with the best of them.
“When they go out and acquire players, that makes other good players available,” said Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, who has been a part of one of those deals with the Dodgers. “They’ve done a really good job of going out and getting good prospects.” Read the rest of this entry »
If the winter is a time for dreams, the spring is a time for solutions. Your team may have been going after Juan Soto or Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani, depending on the offseason, but short of something going weird in free agency (like the unsigned Boras clients last year), if you don’t have them under contract at this point, they’ll be improving someone else’s club. However, that doesn’t mean that spring training is only about ramping up for the daily grind. Teams have real needs to address, and while they’re no doubt workshopping their own solutions – or possibly convincing themselves that the problem doesn’t exist, like when I wonder why my acid reflux is awful after some spicy food – that doesn’t mean that we can’t cook up some ideas in the FanGraphs test kitchen.
This is the final piece in a three-part series in which I’ll propose one way for each team to fill a roster hole or improve for future seasons. Some of my solutions are more likely to happen than others, but I tried to say away from the completely implausible ones. We’ll leave the hypothetical trades for Bobby Witt Jr. and Paul Skenes to WFAN callers. Also, I will not recommend the same fix for different teams; in real life, for example, David Robertson can help only one club’s bullpen. I wrote about the teams in the two East divisions last Wednesday, and then covered the Central divisions on Friday. Today, we’ll tackle the 10 teams in the West divisions, beginning with the five in the AL West before moving on to their counterparts in the NL West. Each division is sorted by the current Depth Charts projected win totals.
Texas Rangers: Reunite with Kyle Gibson
Look at the Rangers in our Depth Charts projection and glance down at the pitchers. Do you see a problem? We project the Rangers to have a decent rotation, right at the back of the top 10, but that also relies on a lot of innings from pitchers who have not been able to throw many in recent years. Jacob deGrom and Tyler Mahle are both projected to throw more innings apiece than the two of them have thrown combined over the last two years. I’d love to see 270 innings from deGrom and Mahle, but to count on that is just begging for a sad story. I probably believe in Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter more than most, but neither of them should be counted on to solidify an injury-depleted rotation in 2025.
The Rangers need a reliable innings-eater, and old friend Kyle Gibson is still out there. He has made at least 30 starts in five of the last six full seasons, with the one time he didn’t reach that threshold coming in 2019, when he made 29 starts, appeared in 34 games, and put up 2.6 WAR across 160 innings — the fewest innings he’s thrown in that span, excluding 2020. He’s probably never again going to be as good as he was in 2021, when he was an All-Star with Texas before getting traded to the Phillies and finished with a 3.71 ERA, a 3.87 FIP, and 3.1 WAR, but Gibson comes with a fairly high floor. His performance last year with the Cardinals (4.24 ERA, 4.42 FIP, 1.5 WAR, 169 2/3 innings) was his least-productive campaign during that 2018-2024 stretch, but even that would benefit the Rangers right now.
Seattle Mariners: Add some Tork to the lineup
The Mariners have gotten more out of Luke Raley than they’ve had any right to, but he remains a platoon first baseman, with a .575 OPS in the majors against lefties. Even if he can do better than that — ZiPS thinks he’ll put up about a hundred more points of OPS in 2025 — he’s not David Ortiz against righties, so it’s hard to just give him a full-time job at first. The likely candidates to pair with Raley are thoroughly uninteresting, so why not look at Spencer Torkelson, a player who is just begging for a change of scenery? The Tigers have clearly soured on him; otherwise, they likely would not have signed second baseman Gleyber Torres and moved Colt Keith to first base to start there over Torkelson. He’s still young enough to have some upside and get things back on track, but even if he doesn’t ever reach his full potential, he ought to at least beat up on lefties. The Mariners could use more power, and I doubt the price tag will be high.
Houston Astros: Add a very boring arm
The Astros dug themselves a hole early on in 2024, in large part because of a spate of pitching injuries that tested their depth to the breaking point. Houston’s rotation ought to be good, but there still are a number of pitchers with injury concerns, once again leaving the team vulnerable to some bad health luck. The Astros could use some veteran depth to preemptively reinforce the rotation just in case someone goes down, and I think for them, Lance Lynn is the most interesting free agent still available.
The Astros are skilled at refining pitch arsenals, for both prospects and veterans, and Lynn has the weirdest repertoire of the remaining free-agent starters. Rather than the standard fastball-breaking-offspeed mix, Lynn basically throws a bunch of slightly-to-moderately different fastballs, making him the type of pitcher who could benefit from Houston’s wizardry. A sweeper could cause some additional tension for batters compared to his cutter, and he’s never really had a refined offspeed offering to use as a putaway pitch against lefties. The specifics would be for the Astros to figure out. Lynn also has expressed a willingness to pitch out of the bullpen after teams started inquiring about using him as a reliever, so even if Houston’s rotation remains in tact for the whole season, Lynn could still have a role.
Athletics: Get Sandy before heading to the desert
The good: The A’s actually spent some money this winter. The bad: We still project the A’s to have a losing record. The really bad: Our Depth Charts project the A’s to have a worse starting rotation than the White Sox. The Marlins are clearly in the shopping mood, having already sent away Jesús Luzardo, and with teams likely waiting to see how Sandy Alcantara fares after returning from Tommy John surgery, the A’s have an opportunity to jump the 2022 NL Cy Young’s trade market and steal a march on the better wild card contenders. A potential wrinkle here: The Yankees may be in the market for Alcantara now that Gerrit Cole is going to miss the 2025 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. Still, the A’s shouldn’t let that deter them from targeting an ace at a time when he could be relatively affordable.
Los Angeles Angels: Hire a team of archaeologists to design a very complex treasure hunt that convinces Arte Moreno to sell the team so that he’s free to go on an Indiana Jones adventure
I admit it, I’m at a loss for words with the Angels. In some ways, they’re actually worse off than the White Sox, in that Chicago at least has a reasonable long-term plan while the Angels keep teetering between strategies that are either unclear, unrealistic, or both. Their moves reflect their extreme short-term thinking, leaving the organization without a coherent path to winning now or winning later. Leadership has to come from the top, and Moreno continues to show he is incapable of fixing things. Case in point: The Halos spent this offseason adding veteran depth pieces. These would’ve been smart moves if the Angels were already a good team and looking to patch up their few remaining areas of weakness. That, of course, is not the case. The Angels need to accept that they’re lost before they can move forward and begin to assemble a winning team while Mike Trout is still around. But as long as they keep following an ineffective leader, they’re going to keep walking in circles.
Los Angeles Dodgers: Find a weird reclamation project
This one was a struggle because the Dodgers, while not having the highest median win projection of any team in ZiPS history (that’s still the 2021 Dodgers), they have the highest floor, with no obvious weaknesses anywhere. I guess the one thing the Dodgers are missing is that random broken-down reliever that you forget still plays baseball until they inevitably fix him. I’d love to see if Daniel Bard has another improbable comeback left in him, or maybe Adam Cimber, because a star in the sky disappears whenever a sidearmer loses his job.
Arizona Diamondbacks: See if the Yankees are interested in Jordan Montgomery
As I mentioned in the A’s section, Cole’s Tommy John surgery is a massive blow to the Yankees as they look to defend their American League pennant in 2025. Will Warren has a good shot at being a pretty solid rotation fill-in, but with Luis Gil also out for a while and Nestor Cortes now on the Brewers, the team now has just about zero starting pitching depth left. Jordan Montgomery and the Yankees have a good history, and there’s an obvious need now. Montgomery really struggled in 2024, to the point that Arizona owner Ken Kendrick said publicly that adding the lefty was a “horrible signing.” The Diamondbacks also have plenty of rotation options, so many, in fact, that RosterResource currently projects Montgomery to pitch out of their bullpen. They surely won’t get much in return for him, and they should be prepared to eat a good chunk of his remaining salary, but if they want to move on from him and maybe even get a prospect or two in return, this is the way to do it.
San Diego Padres: Sign David Robertson
The Padres’ bullpen is hardly a dumpster fire, but it is kind of top-heavy, and we project everybody after the fifth option (Yuki Matsui) to be at or below replacement level. There’s not a lot of financial flexibility right now in San Diego for various reasons we won’t go into here, but if the Padres are looking for marginal gains on a budget, David Robertson is by far the best move they could make. They shouldn’t have to spend much to get him, considering he’s 40 years old and remains unsigned in the second week of March, but he is coming off a very good season and is comfortable pitching in a variety of bullpen roles.
San Francisco Giants: Inquire about Jesús Sánchez
The Giants are likely a tier below the Diamondbacks and Padres in the NL Wild Card race, but they’re still close enough that short-term improvements matter. San Francisco’s designated hitter spot is bleak, and the player we have getting the most plate appearances there, Jerar Encarnacion, was in an indie league for much of last season and put up a .277 on-base percentage in the majors. The Giants should see what it would take to get Jesús Sánchez from the Marlins. He’s never developed into a big home run hitter despite solid hard-hit numbers, in large part because he’s never generated much loft. He’s also a spray hitter, and last season, 13 of his 25 doubles were line drives hit the opposite way. It’s the type of game that could be better suited for the spacious Oracle Park. Sánchez would provide a left-handed complement to Encarnacion, and he’s good enough to play all three outfield positions if needed.
Colorado Rockies: Find the next Nolan Jones and Brenton Doyle
Since the departure of former GM Jeff Bridich, the Rockies have made quite a bit of progress in no longer treating prospects as annoyances, and they now give internal, lesser prospects chances to surprise them. The last bit is important, as the Rockies of five or six years ago would never have given someone like Nolan Jones or Brenton Doyle enough playing time to break out in the majors. Doyle hit 23 homers and stole 30 bases in 2024 while winning his second Gold Glove in as many seasons, and although Jones struggled last year, he was hurt on and off and should be expected to at least split the difference between that performance and his 2023 production.
Considering this, the Rockies should go full-carrion bird as the season approaches. Colorado ought to be in on any and all mildly interesting players who are shut out of major league opportunities in 2025. Among the guys the Rockies should target are Mickey Gasper, Edouard Julien, Addison Barger, Shay Whitcomb, Curtis Mead, and Leo Jiménez. They may never develop into stars, but the Rockies need to be willing to throw everything at the wall and hope to find at least a few productive players.
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a surprising amount of Mo Vaughn content, a rash of spring injuries (including Gerrit Cole‘s Tommy John surgery and other Yankees ailments), the latest A’s and Rays woes, and more. Then they preview the 2025 Los Angeles Dodgers (26:11) with The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya, and the 2025 Colorado Rockies (1:34:00) with The Rockies Insider’s Patrick Lyons.
One way to tell the difference between a baseball fan who has a life and a true sicko is whether they have strong opinions on players who sign minor league contracts and attend spring training on a non-roster invite. The person in a Cubs hat who’s stoked about the Kyle Tucker trade and knows all sorts of intimate biographical details about Shota Imanaga? That’s your friend. If they start talking to you about Travis Jankowski, they might be in a little too deep.
We sickos know that while championships can be won and glory earned on the major league free agent market, NRIs are nonetheless a meaningful collection of useful roster players. Sometimes more. I’d argue that these fringe hopefuls are the only players who truly stand to gain by their performance in camp.
Moreover, these players are by definition underdogs. They include former top prospects, guys recovering from injury, and itinerant Quad-A players hoping for one last spin of the wheel. If you weren’t interested in their progress on a competitive level, surely we can interest you in an underdog story. Read the rest of this entry »
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