MIAMI — Through the first two games of the World Baseball Classic, the Dominican Republic had scored 24 runs, recorded 22 hits, and drawn 18 walks. Fifteen of those 24 runs had come on the team’s seven home runs. Collectively, the Dominican hitters were slashing .361/.506/.754; their 1.260 OPS was two points better than Babe Ruth’s was in 1927. They couldn’t possibly keep this up.
They cooled off some in Monday afternoon’s 10-1 win over Israel, lowering that slash line to a pedestrian .319/.488/.692. Those slackers.
Obviously, these numbers are staggering. Across three games, the Dominican squad has scored 34 runs and tallied 29 hits, nine home runs, and 29 walks; they’ve struck out just 13 times. Their OPS is now 1.180, slightly better than Ruth’s career mark of 1.164.
How can an opposing team possibly hope to contain them?
“The information to get them out is on computers across baseball,” said Israel manager Brad Ausmus. “The execution of the pitches to get them out is the most important part, and with a lot of them, it’s very difficult because their weaknesses are small. A guy like Juan Soto, he’s going to make you pay if you miss, and there aren’t a lot of places you can go to get him out. They have a lot of guys that are similar.”
Soto, whose walk-off homer in Sunday’s 12-1 win over the Netherlands sparked the wildest mercy-rule celebration in history, was one of the few Dominican hitters who Ausmus’ staff silenced on Monday; Israel’s pitchers limited Soto to just one walk in his five times up. Those similar guys, though? They absolutely raked.
The fatal blow came early, when Fernando Tatis Jr. batted with the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the second inning. He unloaded on a 1-2 changeup from lefty Ryan Prager that caught way too much of the plate and sent it 400 feet to left field for his first home run of the tournament. The grand slam was the team’s first hit of the day — following four walks, including one to Geraldo Perdomo with the bases loaded directly before Tatis stepped in — and it put the D.R. ahead, 5-0.
Tatis is so locked in right now. With a career walk rate of 10.0%, he is not known for his patience, but he has been more than willing to set the table for the thumpers behind him. He’s drawn five walks in 13 plate appearances this WBC; opposing pitchers have gotten him out only four times in three games. Overall, he’s slashing .500/.692/1.000.
For the most part, it seems that opposing pitchers have been trying to force the D.R.’s hitters to get themselves out on pitches outside the zone, hoping that the big stage of the WBC will turn these sluggers swing happy. Only 75 of the 175 pitches Israel threw on Monday were in the strike zone, for a zone rate of 42.9%. That means Israel threw 100 pitches outside the zone; Dominican batters swung at just 16 of them.
The king of the walks on Monday was Manny Machado, who has been less patient in his career than Tatis, posting an 8.1% walk rate over his 14 big league seasons. No matter — the Dominican captain went 0-for-1 with three walks and one hit-by-pitch. He leads the team with six walks, and his on-base percentage is an absurd .714.
Manager Albert Pujols indicated that his team’s excellent plate discipline is more an effect of having such a deep lineup, rather than the cause of it. Each player recognizes that he’s surrounded by All-Stars, so none of them feels any pressure to be the team’s offensive engine.
Cruz, specifically, is making the most of his limited WBC opportunities. He pinch-hit in Friday night’s opener against Nicaragua, demolishing a 116.8-mph, 450-foot home run into the upper deck in right field, but didn’t play in Sunday’s seven-inning contest. Starting in center field and batting seventh on Monday, Cruz was one of the four batters to walk before Tatis’ grand slam in the second inning, and he walked again in the eighth.
Between the two walks, he smoked his second home run of the tournament, a wicked 115.6-mph liner that defied gravity for 400 feet before it landed in the grass beyond the wall in center. The solo shot came with one out in the fourth inning and extended the lead to 6-0. After two quiet innings from the team, he led off the seventh with a double to center, then came around to score on Tatis’ two-run single.
Remarkably, Cruz is no better than the Dominican Republic’s eighth-best hitter. The 6-foot-7 force of nature is coming off a down 2025 campaign, in which he put up just an 86 wRC+. And while it’s fair to attribute some of his woes last year to his transitioning to playing center field full-time, he has always been a frustratingly inconsistent player. He boasts 100th-percentile exit velocity and bat speed, yet the trade-off is he whiffs on more than a third of his swings.
That said, the World Baseball Classic might be the ideal setting for him to thrive. Cruz has never met a slider in the dirt that he didn’t want to chase, but he doesn’t have to worry about that from the pitchers representing teams like Nicaragua and Israel. He can unleash on any pitch he sees without having to worry about it darting below the zone.
Considering that competition, it’s here that we should exercise some caution when it comes to this offense. Only three of the 20 pitchers the Dominicans have faced in their three games have appeared in the major leagues: Kenley Jansen of the Netherlands, and Israel’s Zack Weiss and Jake Fishman. Against that trio, the Dominicans scored two runs in a combined 4 2/3 innings. And really, two of those pitchers aren’t representative of the quality of arms that await these hitters the rest of the tournament. Weiss has pitched in parts of three big league seasons and recorded just 27 1/3 innings, the last of which came in 2023. All 11 of Fishman’s major league innings came with the 2022 Marlins.
For now, though, we shouldn’t hold it against the Dominican Republic that their hitters have mashed against inferior pitchers. That’s exactly what they’re supposed to do. Besides, it’s not like Soto or Guerrero or Ketel Marte is incapable of hitting big league pitching. The Dominican Republic probably won’t keep scoring more than 10 runs each game, but it isn’t going to stop scoring, either.
The key question is whether this dangerous offense is potent enough to beat the best teams even if the pitching doesn’t hold its own. The first real test for the Dominican Republic’s hitters is set for Wednesday night against Venezuela in the final game of pool play. Nothing we’ve seen so far has told us much of anything. We’ll find out more soon enough.
This is Ryan Blake’s first piece as a contributor for FanGraphs. He is a former newspaper reporter in the Inland Northwest and a current writer for Lookout Landing, where his work on the batter’s eye at T-Mobile Park was nominated for a 2026 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award.
A bottom-ranked pitching staff got a little deeper this weekend.
Zack Littell and the Nationals have agreed on a one-year contract, as several outlets reported Sunday. The price tag is currently unknown, though the deal includes a mutual option for 2027. Littell, 30, ranked next-to-last on our Top 50 Free Agents list this offseason. As it happens, he is also next-to-last to sign (only Lucas Giolito remains available).
Littell threw a career high 186.2 innings in 2025 across 32 starts for the Rays and Reds. Only 10 pitchers threw more innings last year. His 3.81 ERA was above average among qualified starters, and his 4.2% walk rate was the best in the majors. On the other hand, his 4.88 FIP, 17.1% strikeout rate, and 1.74 HR/9 each ranked in the bottom five. It was a mix of strengths and weaknesses that, taken together, made him the 88th-most valuable starting pitcher by WAR — useful depth for most organizations. Read the rest of this entry »
Charles LeClaire and Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel-USA Today Network via Imagn Images
This offseason, I’ve taken high-level looks at the offseason decisions made by the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox. It’s been a popular series, so today, I’m going to use the same framework to offer a holistic evaluation of the Brewers. As a refresher, here’s how I’ve been thinking about the exercise:
“How should we evaluate a front office, particularly in the offseason when we don’t have games to look at? I’ve never been able to arrive at a single framework. That’s only logical. If there were one simple tool we could use to evaluate the sport, baseball wouldn’t be as interesting to us as it is. The metrics we use to evaluate teams, and even players, are mere abstractions. The goal of baseball – winning games, or winning the World Series in a broad sense – can be achieved in a ton of different ways. We measure a select few of those in most of our attempts at estimating value, or at figuring out who “won” or “lost” a given transaction. So today, I thought I’d try something a little bit different.”
I won’t be offering a single grade. Instead, I’m going to assess the decisions that Matt Arnold and the Brewers made across three axes. The first is Coherence of Strategy. If you make a win-now trade, but then head into the season with a gaping hole on your roster, that’s not a coherent approach. It’s never quite that simple in the real world, but good teams make sets of decisions that work toward the same overarching goal. Read the rest of this entry »
OOPSY peak projections for all minor and major league players are now available for FanGraphs Members.
I’ve been publishing current season OOPSY projections since 2025. They broadly fit in with the other FanGraphs systems in terms of methodology (and accuracy), though like all projection systems, they have their own methodological quirks. OOPSY makes use of its own aging curves, major league equivalencies, park factors, league scoring environment factors, regression, and recency weights to project players. For those interested in learning more, the OOPSY introduction, 2025 review, and recent Top 100 Prospects list provide a more detailed overview of my methodology.
Since 2022, OOPSY peak projections have been featured on Scout the Statline and, since 2024, they have also been featured on RotoGraphs, where I’ve used them to generate fantasy-oriented top prospect lists. Last month, after incorporating defense into the projections using our prospect team’s work on The Board, I published OOPSY’s first top prospect list with a real-life focus, ranking prospects by peak projected WAR. Read the rest of this entry »
If there’s something even more satisfying than spending your hard-earned money, it’s spending someone else’s money that you didn’t earn. When we’re talking baseball, unless you’re an extremely high-net-worth individual who can casually spend hundreds of millions of dollars — if this describes you, call me and we can totally hang out or something — you only have the option to spend other people’s cash. I mean, I haven’t technically asked American Express to up my credit limit to $300 million, but I’m guessing the answer would be no. Every year around this time, I make a whole piece out of it, naming seven players I think teams should attempt to sign to long-term contracts now, rather than waiting until later. There are some additional complications, of course, with a lockout likely coming after this season, but teams and players could be willing to act with more urgency to sign contracts now before all the uncertainty ahead of them.
I’ve (hopefully) chosen seven players whose possible extensions would benefit both the player and the team, as all good contracts ought to do. I’ve included the up-to-date ZiPS projections for each player, as well as the contract that ZiPS thinks each player should get, though that doesn’t necessarily mean I think the player will end up with that figure or even sign an extension. Read the rest of this entry »
Collin Snider is with Chicago looking to recapture what he had two seasons ago with Seattle. Currently in camp with the Cubs, the 30-year-old right-hander was a pleasant surprise for the Mariners in 2024, logging a 1.94 with a 27.8% strikeout rate over 42 relief outings comprising 41-and-two-thirds innings. Last year was a different story. Hampered by a flexor strain and unable to get back on track, Snider struggled to the tune of a 5.47 ERA across 24 appearances in the majors, then posted an even uglier 8.06 ERA across 25 games with Triple-A Tacoma. Cut loose by Seattle in November, he subsequently inked a deal with the Cubs in December.
Despite the dismal results, Snider wasn’t without suitors. He had options — every team can use more pitching — and in the case of the Cubs, he also had connections. Tyler Zombro, the NL Central club’s Vice President of Pitching Strategy, previously worked at Tread Athletics, where Snider trained in previous offseasons. As the erstwhile Vanderbilt Commodore put it, “That really steered my decision. I like the way the pitching development is here.”
Asked about his poor 2025 performance, Snider pointed to how his injury contributed to bad mechanical habits that resulted in a drop in velocity, as well as “pitch shapes that weren’t the same.” He knew what was happening, but correcting it was another matter.
“I was very rotational, throwing too side-to-side, whereas I need to be north-south,” Snider said. “Side-to-side made the velo go down, because I couldn’t get behind the baseball. I was aware of what was going on, but I didn’t know why I was doing it, or how to make the adjustment quickly. It ended up being one of those things where I needed the offseason to straighten it out.”
Snider averaged 92.5 mph with his four-seamer last season, whereas in the prior two years that number was 94.2 and 95.3. His sweeper was also impacted by his delivery being out of sync. Read the rest of this entry »
MIAMI — Mere seconds after the ball left his bat in the bottom of the sixth inning, Junior Caminero was booking it around the bases, euphoria smothering all sense of reason. You see, he’d just tattooed a two-run homer to straightaway center field to give the Dominican Republic the lead in its opening game of the World Baseball Classic, and even though nobody could possibly get him out, the 22-year-old slugger couldn’t contain himself.
He sprinted so fast toward second base that his helmet flew off. He skipped to third, where he seemed to finally realize that he didn’t have to run. He paused and gestured toward the Dominican fans behind the dugout, then pranced home.
It was one of the most electric home run celebrations in the history of the World Baseball Classic, a moment of catharsis after five and a half bewildering innings. The blast snapped the Dominican squad out of its temporary daze, as one of the most lethal lineups ever assembled pummeled Nicaragua’s pitchers for the remainder of the game. The final score of 12-3 didn’t reflect the chaos of what could have been. Up until that point, the Dominicans were getting outplayed by a vastly inferior Nicaragua team, whose leadoff batter, Chase Dawson, is from Northern Indiana and has never played affiliated baseball; it was only last year that he established residency in the country while playing winter ball there. Read the rest of this entry »
Hello from loanDepot Park in Miami, where I am covering Pool D of the World Baseball Classic. In the two games here Friday, Venezuela beat the Netherlands, 6-2, and the Dominican Republic defeated Nicaragua, 12-3. I am writing about those two games in a separate piece that will go live later today. You can find all of our WBC preview stories, as well as our coverage throughout the tournament, on the blog roll here.
Of course, those were just two of the eight games that took place on Friday. (Well, Friday in the United States, anyway.) Elsewhere in the WBC, Team Japan was every bit as dominant as expected in the first game of its title defense, blowing out Taiwan 13-0 in seven innings. Shohei Ohtani went 3-for-4, with his grand slam getting Japan on the board and kicking off a 10-run second inning. Cuba opened the action from Pool A in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with a 3-1 win over Panama. Puerto Rico, despite being without many of its best players because of insurance issues, shut out Colombia, 5-0, in the second game of that pool. Over in Houston for Pool B, Great Britain kept things tight with a superior Mexican team for the first seven innings before Mexico exploded for three runs in the eighth and four more in the ninth to win, 8-2. Then, in the second game at Daikin Park, Team USA routed Brazil, 15-5, in one of the oddest-looking blowout box scores that I can recall. The leadoff batter for Brazil, Lucas Ramirez, son of Manny, hit more home runs (2) than the entire United States team. The lone U.S. homer came when Aaron Judge a two-run shot in the first inning. The key difference in the game was the Americans drew 17 walks while issuing only one. Later, back in Tokyo for the final game of the night, a matchup of 0-2 teams, Taiwan trounced Czechia, 14-0, in seven innings.
We’ll be talking more about the World Baseball Classic in today’s mailbag, when we answer your questions about the future Hall of Famers playing in this year’s tournament, as well as the Dominican Republic’s chances of contending for the title with Japan, the United States, and Pool D rival, Venezuela. Also in today’s mailbag, we’ll look at the best baseball birthdays and honor Bill Mazeroski with the all-time Az team. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
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Hi,
Mailbag is awesome. Thanks for doing it. It’s one of my favorite reads. I was looking over the roster for Team USA in this year’s WBC, and it’s really loaded. How many future Hall of Famers does Jay Jaffe think will be playing in this year’s tournament, from both the U.S. team and across the entire WBC?
Thanks for all the amazing FanGraphs work! It has really transformed my understanding of baseball. — Dovi Bergman
Jay Jaffe: Dovi, thanks for the kind words, and for creating an opening for me to dip my toe into WBC coverage for the first time in this cycle. Based on the rosters for the pool play stage, I count six teams (out of 20 participating) that have players who are on my radar, Hall-wise, and a seventh if you count managers and coaches. That’s not to say somebody from one of the other teams couldn’t make it, but I’d just be idly spitballing about them rather than analyzing.
Since I will cite JAWS, all WAR used here will refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated. I’ll start with Team USA, which you specifically asked about and which not coincidentally has the most candidates, both in terms of likely Hall of Famers and longer shots.
The American squad has three players who are already above the JAWS standard at their position. Clayton Kershaw (80.9 career WAR/49.7 adjusted peak WAR/65.3 S-JAWS, 20th among starting pitchers) announced his retirement last September, but after having to withdraw from participation in the 2023 WBC for insurance reasons, he’s on board to check one more item off his bucket list. Paul Goldschmidt (63.8/45.0/54.4) now sits 15th among first basemen, 0.2 points above 2024 inductee Todd Helton. And despite a late start to his major league career, Aaron Judge (62.3/56.9/59.6) ranks 11th among right fielders, with the fourth-highest peak score, behind only those of Babe Ruth, Stan Musial, and Henry Aaron; while he enters his age-34 season with “only” 368 homers and 1,205 hits, he’s got three home run titles and three MVP awards to his credit, and he’s coming off back-to-back seasons (and three out of four) with a wRC+ of at least 200. The only other hitters with at least three such seasons in AL/NL history are Ruth (nine), Ted Williams (six), and Barry Bonds (four). Ahem.
Bryce Harper (54.0/38.5/46.2) isn’t at those players’ level, career-wise, but he’s six months younger than Judge and has 363 home runs plus eight All-Star appearances, two MVPs, and a stellar postseason track record. Between his penchant for raw milk and his embrace of Extracorporeal Blood Oxygenation and Ozonation (EBOO) equipment, he’s got some strange personal habits, but if those don’t backfire, I think he’ll wind up in Cooperstown. I’m less convinced when it comes to Alex Bregman (43.0/37.7/40.4), as he has just two seasons with at least 5.0 WAR, the last of them in 2019, but he’s close enough to the magic 40-WAR peak mark — about three-quarters of players who reach it are eventually enshrined — that he bears noting. I’m even less convinced when it comes to Kyle Schwarber, who despite hitting 340 home runs through his age-32 season and leading the league twice has just 19.9 WAR.
Beyond that, Cal Raleigh (22.9 fWAR through age 28) and Will Smith (22.4 fWAR through age 30, not to mention three World Series rings) have laid some groundwork; I’m citing our version of WAR there because it includes pitch framing, while the version at Baseball Reference does not, and even with the arrival of the ABS challenge system, framing is going to remain valuable. Both of those guys have a long way to go to become serious Hall of Fame candidates, but they already have more fWAR than Venezuela’s Salvador Perez (19.0 due to -124.6 framing runs). More on him below. Also laying significant groundwork, but too early to merit more than a brief mention at this stage: Bobby Witt Jr. (21.7 WAR through age 25), Paul Skenes (13.5 WAR, a Cy Young and a Rookie of the Year though age 23), Tarik Skubal (54 wins and two Cy Youngs but just 17.9 WAR through age 28).
On the coaching staff, the candidacy of Andy Pettitte (60.2/34.1/47.2, along with 256 wins and a slew of postseason records) has new life. He just jumped over 20 percentage points to 48.5% in his eighth year of eligibility, a share that suggests eventual election, though he’s running out of time on the writers’ ballot, and has admitted to HGH use, which could present an obstacle if the Hall continues to stack Era Committees with PED hardliners.
With that out of the way, I’ll work in alphabetical order for the other countries with at least one candidate who merits mention.
Dominican Republic
The Dominican team is the only one besides Team USA to have more than one likely Hall of Famer, and I’m not even counting manager Albert Pujols, who will become eligible in 2028 and has 703 homers and 3,384 hits to his name. The player who’s done most of the heavy lifting is Manny Machado, a seven-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove winner with four top-five finishes in the MVP voting. He’s 18th in JAWS among third basemen, with a line of 61.7/42.6/52.2. He collected his 2,000th hit last summer, the day after his 33rd birthday, and when I checked in at the time, his odds of reaching 3,000 stood at 31%, according to Dan Szymborski. Both his 4.1 WAR and 169 hits were his highest marks since 2022.
Juan Soto isn’t as far along as his former Padres teammate, but at age 27, with just eight seasons — including his age-19 rookie season, when he was called up in late May, and the pandemic-shortened 2020 season — under his belt, he’s already got 244 home runs and a 42.6/40.4/41.5 line. The MVP award has eluded him because his defense generally dents his WAR, but like Machado, he does have four top-five finishes in the voting. For now, I’m going to put him at the same level as Harper – a likely Hall of Famer, but still with some work to do.
From among the rest, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (25.9 WAR through age 26) and Julio Rodríguez (22.9 WAR through age 24) are off to fine starts, but both have much more to do. Fernando Tatis Jr. (27.2 WAR through age 26) is ahead of both in terms of WAR, but until voters break the precedent, his 2022 PED suspension will presumably be an obstacle.
Japan
The reigning WBC champions have just one likely Hall of Famer, but he happens to be the best player on the planet: four-time MVP and two time World Series winner Shohei Ohtani, who in his last tournament action struck out then-teammate Mike Trout to seal the championship for Samurai Japan. Though Ohtani has played just eight seasons stateside, between his pitching and his hitting he’s already accumulated 51.5 WAR, 15th among active players (not counting Kershaw), with 51.9 peak WAR in his best seven seasons (he had -0.4 WAR in his worst one in 2020), and thus a JAWS of 51.7. I don’t have a positional standard for unicorns, but that’s a guy who’s going to have a bronze plaque some day.
Of Ohtani’s WBC teammates who have come to the U.S., only Seiya Suzuki is even in double digits in WAR (11.1), and that’s in four seasons; he’s not on a Hall path. On the other hand, I’m not yet ready to rule out Ohtani’s Dodgers teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who arrived in the U.S. early enough that his best years may still be ahead of him. The 6.7 WAR he totaled in his age-25 and -26 seasons is respectable but not exceptional; it’s his October work that puts him on my radar, as he’s gone 7-1 with a 2.25 ERA and two complete games in 56 innings over two postseasons, capped by a legendary 2 2/3-inning relief appearance on zero days of rest in Game 7 of the 2025 World Series, which earned him the series’ MVP award.
Netherlands
Curaçao-born manager Andruw Jones was elected to the Hall of Fame in January and will be inducted in July. Of the players, Kenley Jansen — who has the distinction of participating in the WBC both as a catcher (2009) and as a pitcher (2017) — has positioned himself as the next reliever likely to be enshrined. Though he’s no longer the dominant force he was with the Dodgers, his signature cutter still baffles hitters, so he’s been able to continue piling up saves (476, fourth all-time, and just two behind third-ranked Lee Smith) and climb the Reliever JAWS rankings, where he’s sixth behind Mariano Rivera, Dennis Eckersley, Hoyt Wilhelm, Rich Gossage, and Trevor Hoffman, and just ahead of 2025 inductee Billy Wagner.
Of the roster’s other players, Aruba native Xander Bogaerts is the most accomplished. He’s a four-time All-Star with a 42.0/34.3/38.2 line, but he’s now 33 and has totaled just 3.2 WAR over the past two seasons, with his last five-win season coming back in 2022, his final one with the Red Sox. His only shot at reaching Cooperstown would be exceptionally strong play in his mid-30s.
Nicaragua
When the best-known player on the roster is Mark Vientos, you won’t find any future Hall of Famers in Nicaragua’s lineup, but the dugout is another matter. By his own admission, 76-year-old Dusty Baker has never set foot in Nicaragua, but he was successfully recruited to manage its WBC team by Marvin Benard, who played outfield for the Giants under Baker from 1995–2002 and became the most successful major league position player the country has produced — a coup that shocked Team Nicaragua executives.
Baker is eighth in career wins (2,183) and games managed (4,046), and 16th in games above .500 (321). He’s the only manager to take five teams to the postseason, which as of 2021 was a sore spot for him given that he was forced out of jobs where he had recently been successful, but it’s impressive just the same. His total of 13 postseason appearances ranks fourth all-time and is a product of working in the Wild Card era, but he did win 10 division titles, three pennants, and a championship, finally shedding the reputation that he couldn’t win the big one with the Astros’ victory in 2022. He could be elected as soon as next year via the Contemporary Baseball Era/Managers-Executives-Umpires Ballot.
Puerto Rico
Injuries and insurance issues have cost the team Francisco Lindor (55.7/42.4/49.0, 19th among shortstops) and Carlos Correa (45.7/38.4/42.1, 29th), but Nolan Arenado (57.8/44.2/51.0, 20th among third basemen) is here. He’s totaled just 6.0 WAR over the past three seasons, but has already banked 10 Gold Glove and eight All-Star appearances, not to mention 353 home runs, including three league-leading seasons. He doesn’t have the momentum of Machado, but the hardware and the higher peak score give him a case that looks like a cross between Helton and Jones.
Other than that, the pickings are slim among the players. Edwin Díaz does have 253 saves through his age-31 season, but just 12.4 R-JAWS, so I wouldn’t hold my breath. Manager Yadier Molina has 55.6 fWAR thanks to elite framing numbers, and I expect he’ll be elected someday. One of his coaches, Edgar Martinez, is already in the Hall.
Venezuela
Coach Miguel Cabrera is one of seven players with at least 3,000 hits and 500 homers; he’ll be an easy first-ballot honoree in 2029. Coach Johan Santana is a two-time Cy Young winner and a two-time hard-luck story, first in the injury department (he threw just 117 innings after his age-31 season) and then while going one-and-done on an overcrowded 2018 ballot. Cribbing from what I wrote in this space last week, given the recent discourse on starting pitchers, I strongly believe he’d fare better now than any other starting pitcher on the ballot. Despite his short career, he ranks 70th in S-JAWS at 48.3, two spots above Cole Hamels (48.2) and 27 spots above Félix Hernández (44.1), who surged to 46.1% in his second year on the ballot despite his own shortened career. Basically, Santana is Jacob deGrom plus another 500 innings, a no-hitter, and what should have been a third Cy Young. He could appear on the 2029 Contemporary Baseball ballot, but even that isn’t a given.
As noted above and in a million other spots over the past several years, I’m not on board with the notion that Perez is Hall-worthy despite an impressive résumé that includes seven All-Star appearances, five Gold Gloves, and a World Series MVP award. Royals fans love him and rightly so, and he has his boosters in the media, as well. But even if you ignore his pitch framing — and how can we, given the abundance of data from the past two decades? — he’s just 32nd in bWAR-based JAWS (35.5/24.2/29.2), ahead of only two of the 17 enshrined catchers, Ray Schalk and Rick Ferrell. In a related note, I don’t think bWAR-based JAWS is the right tool for the job of evaluating catchers. I’m not at all looking forward to the debate around his candidacy.
Beyond that, two of Venezuela’s young outfielders have taken steps toward building a case. Ronald Acuña Jr. has 28.6 WAR through his age-27 season, not to mention MVP and Rookie of the Year awards and a World Series ring, but he’s only played in at least 100 games twice in the past six seasons, and he has just two seasons with at least 5.0 WAR. Jackson Chourio, like Acuña, debuted at age 20 and more than held his own; while he more or less replicated his rookie season with the bat in 2025, his defense fell off, from 12 DRS to -4, and so did his WAR. Compiling 6.0 WAR through his age-21 season is a very good start, but only a start.
All told, I’d say we have seven players I’d classify as highly likely or locks for Cooperstown (Arenado, Goldschmidt, Jansen, Judge, Kershaw, Machado, and Ohtani), and two more that I think are likely but not yet in that group (Harper and Soto), with everybody else I’ve mentioned working to get to at least that point. Counting only the highly likely/locks among managers and coaches — since it’s not like they can add to their credentials at this point — and excluding the ones already enshrined, I see four (Baker, Cabrera, Molina, and Pujols.) Age and injuries have cost us the participation of several other potential Hall of Famers, but I think we have enough to add another dimension to what’s already been a very fun tournament.
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We know the Dominican Republic’s lineup is stacked, but does this team have enough pitching to compete with the U.S. and Japan, or even Venezuela in pool play? The D.R. famously didn’t make it out of pool play last time out. Is the team at risk of an early exit again?
Thanks,
Vincent
Michael Baumann: Great question, Vincent.
The real issue for the Dominican Republic is not the pitching staff; it’s the pool assignment. Last time around, the Dominican Republic got drawn in to the Miami group with Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Israel, and Nicaragua. I’d argue that this group had three teams that were better than any of the ones that got placed in Pool A (Cuba, Italy, the Netherlands, Panama, Taiwan).
And the unbalanced seeding didn’t stop there. The Phoenix group had the U.S., Mexico, one cupcake (Great Britain), and two teams either of the favorites could lose to, but only if a lot of stuff went wrong (Canada and Colombia).
That stunk for the Dominican Republic, which lost to two teams (Venezuela and Puerto Rico) that there isn’t any shame in losing to. And in 2026, it drew almost the same group, with the Netherlands swapped in for Puerto Rico. So the Dominican team has one brutal game it can afford to lose, against Venezuela, plus two others in which it will be a favorite, but not a prohibitive one.
This Dutch team is a bit weaker than the one that went to the semifinal in 2013 and 2017, especially on the pitching side. But Israel is going to be a tough out; its best position player is probably Harrison Bader, but the Israeli pitching staff has a lot of big league-quality players, plus a couple of guys (Charlie Beilenson and Ryan Prager) who aren’t known to MLB fans but were absolute monsters in college.
But you asked about the Dominican pitching staff. It’s not as good as the American pitching staff — few baseball teams in history have been — but it doesn’t look that bad to me. I’ll call back to two things I wrote in my appraisal of Team USA earlier this week: the Dominican Republic has Cristopher Sánchez, one of two non-U.S. starters (the other being Yoshinobu Yamamoto) who’s good enough to break the Team USA rotation of Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal, Logan Webb, and Nolan McLean.
That’s huge. The other thing I mentioned about Team USA is that by lining Skenes up to pitch third, the Americans have their best pitcher in line to start both their toughest group stage games, and to come back on full rest for either the semifinal or final.
If I were Dominican manager Albert Pujols, I would’ve saved Sánchez for the last pool stage game, which is against Venezuela. Pujols, unfortunately, threw Sánchez first against Nicaragua, followed by Luis Severino against the Netherlands, Brayan Bello against Israel, and Sandy Alcantara against Venezuela.
Of course, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Sánchez lasted just four outs against Nicaragua, in which he allowed three runs and seven baserunners. So much for that Skenes-like ace performance. Besides, Alcantara is a recent Cy Young winner; it’s not like Pujols is starting a recently un-retired Vance Worley or Phillippe Aumont here. It’ll probably be OK.
The other two pitchers in the Dominican rotation are Severino (who’s starting against the Netherlands) and Bello (who’s starting against Israel). Those are two good big league starters. If Sánchez and Alcantara swapped spots in the rotation, the Dominican Republic would have the better starting pitcher in every pool stage game; this still might be the case, depending on who Venezuela goes with for its final game.
That only counts for so much, with starters limited to 60 pitches in group play, but the Dominican Republic has some good relievers, too. Dennis Santana is an elite closer. Carlos Estévez is a very good closer. Seranthony Domínguez, Gregory Soto, Abner Uribe, and Camilo Doval are now or have recently been high-leverage relievers on playoff teams. You can run out of pitchers in a tournament where it’s against the rules to pitch on consecutive days, but the Dominican Republic will have to do that a maximum of twice. It’s a perfectly manageable situation.
Now, after that core cadre of high-leverage guys, it gets into Remember Some Guys territory pretty quickly. For instance, I saw Albert Abreu’s name and thought, “Oh, he was serviceable for the Yankees not that long ago,” not realizing that he hasn’t thrown a pitch in the majors since 2023. The key for Pujols, who has as much professional managerial experience as you or I do, will be finding places to hide his Albert Abreu innings. Easier said than done.
When Sánchez recorded just four outs against Nicaragua, and his own lineup failed to break the game open until late, Pujols had to dip into that high-leverage group in the middle innings. Santana, Domínguez, and Doval each had to eat an inning against a team that should’ve been beatable with weaker pitchers. But hey, they combined to allow just one hit in three scoreless innings, which goes back to my original point: Yes, the Dominican Republic does have enough quality pitching.
Is this pitching staff as good as the American or Japanese pitching staffs? No. It’s definitely not as deep. But is it good enough to beat Venezuela, get out of the group, and even win the tournament? With this lineup, absolutely to all three questions.
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Hi guys —
On Bluesky, Baseball Reference posts that day’s top five birthdays, ranked by how much bWAR they accrued in their career. About a year ago I replied to one of these posts as a gag, with the following question(s):
So what birthday has the most WAR? What would a bar chart of all 365 days look like? Is it similar to the NHL thing where most players are born in January because of the age cutoff for junior hockey? ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!
If you’re not familiar with the hockey reference, a decade or so ago Malcolm Gladwell noticed that most NHL players are born between January and March because of the cutoff date for youth hockey in Canada is January 1. The closer a kid is to that date while still being past it means that they wind up being the oldest kid at every level, and (generally speaking) the best at that level.
I never received a reply, but didn’t think much of it. This past week, I was looking for something in old replies and came across this again, but now I’m actually curious. I’m far too lazy to build the dataset and do the actual work, but it seemed like something up Ben’s alley, so I reached out to him (also on Bluesky, the Official App of Baseball Nerds™). He said to submit it to the mailbag. So here it is!
Thanks as always for everything you all do. It’s very much appreciated.
Warren Taylor
(“War2D2” in the chats)
Ben Clemens: Ah, the birthday question. That Gladwell finding was great, and in my opinion it was the single fact that made his empire. I’ve related that anecdote to tons of different people over the years, and they all go “ohhhhhh” with appreciation if they haven’t heard it. It’s just so cool! Of course, some hidden variable like a junior hockey calendar is the secret reason for a distribution of birthdays. Life is cool that way sometimes.
I ran the same analysis of baseball birthdays to see if I could turn anything up. The first thing I found out was that Babe Ruth produced more than half of the WAR of all players with his birthday, February 6. That’ll happen when you account for 180 WAR (batting plus pitching.) The next thing I found out is that if you create a database of birthdays and WAR totals, you’ll play around with it endlessly. For example, Ruth accounts for 50.5% of the WAR from February 6 birthdays, but that’s not the highest ratio in history. That honor goes to Barry Bonds, whose 164 WAR represents a whopping 67% of all WAR accrued by players born on July 24. In fact, Ruth isn’t even second. Al Rosen was born on February 29, leap day, and his 35 WAR is 50.7% of all leap day WAR.
None of those three days comes close to being the best in history, though. That’s November 26, with a staggering 554 WAR accrued by players born on that day. It’s one of only three days – along with September 19 and April 2 – to top the 500 mark. But while September 19 and April 2 have glitzy headliners – Joe Morgan and Don Sutton respectively – November 26 gets there in bulk. The best player born on November 26? That’d be Bob Johnson, a seven-time All Star who played from 1933-1945 and finished in the top 10 of MVP voting three times. His 57 WAR wasn’t enough to get him into Cooperstown, but as Birthday King, maybe it should have been. It’s striking, in fact: November 26 is one of only two days among the top 10 without an inner-circle Hall of Famer leading it, and other other is led by a player (Bill Dahlen) who should be an inner-circle Hall of Famer but somehow, insanely, isn’t.
Is there a Gladwell pattern? Kind of, and it starts in August. This is a familiar effect, more or less the same one as Gladwell’s. Many school systems in the United States have August 1 cutoffs; if you’re born on or after that date, you go down a grade, whereas a July 31 birthday will generally place you up a grade. August has the most WAR of any month, with 9,435. October is second. The last five months of the year have produced an average of an extra 1,000 WAR per month compared to the first seven:
What did I learn from this? School systems exert a powerful pull on the world. Also, maybe the fact that I was born four days after my own school system’s grade cutoff helps explain why I was good at sports. Dangit! Finally, Bob Johnson is under-appreciated. Here’s the day-by-day list of WAR by birthday, in case you feel like perusing more of it.
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Dear Matt,
This is your friend and colleague, Davy Andrews. I am a paying FanGraphs Member, and I would like to make someone else answer a question for once, damn it. Sorry, the end of that sentence really got away from me.
We recently lost Bill Mazeroski, and as I remembered Maz, I found myself rolling other famous ‘Azzes around in my head. Yaz. Jazz. Kazuo Matsui. Mike PiAZza (emphasis mine). In honor of Maz, could you please assemble an all-time Az team?
Thanks very much,
Davy Andrews
PS: I’m going to be off March 9 for jury duty.
Matt Martell: To paraphrase Taylor Swift, this is our mailbag; we make the rules. And the rule is this: If Davy submits a question to the mailbag, he has to answer it himself. So now, let’s kick it back to him, shall we?
Davy Andrews: Fine words! I wonder where you stole ‘em.
Wait, sorry Matt, that was Jonathan Swift. I didn’t realize Taylor Swift wrote songs about mailbags, but here we go.
Wow, what an excellent question, Davy! I’m so glad we have members like you. So obviously, we’re going to include everybody you mentioned. A shockingly large percentage of our guys are or were second basemen, but Mazeroski obviously gets pride of place. Kaz Matsui spent a little bit of time at short, so he’ll shift over. Jazz Chisholm Jr. has played quite a bit of third base for the Yankees, so he’ll go there. Hall of Famer Tony Lazzeri spent a whopping three innings at first base, but tough luck, Tony, you’re our first baseman. That takes care of the infield.
The battery is composed entirely of Hall of Famers. Mike Piazza is our catcher, and our pitcher will be none other than Dazzy Vance, who in 1924 struck out more batters than the next two pitchers in the league combined!
The outfield starts with Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski in left field, and his grandson Mike Yastrzemski heads to right. Yes, I know they technically spell their last name with an “as” instead of an “az,” but as you said, we make the rules here. Center field will belong to Cuban Lázaro Salazar, whose name has two different Azzes, and who excelled over a 22-year career between the Negro Leagues and the Mexican and Venezuelan leagues from 1930 to 1952. Salazar spent most of his time in center, but he played all over the diamond and even pitched. His complete stats aren’t available, but Baseball Reference has stats for 560 of his games, during which time he had a .332 batting average. He also managed in Venezuela and was inducted into the Cuban, Mexican, and Venezuelan halls of fame.
Our DH is Zaza Harvey, who ran a .332 batting average from 1900 to 1902 with the Cubs (technically, they were the Chicago Orphans at the time), the White Sox, and the Cleveland Blues. Harvey played only 72 major league games, but that extra Z earns him the final spot.
Put it all together, and you get this:
C: Mike Piazza
1B: Tony Lazzeri
2B: Bill Mazeroski
SS: Kaz Matsui
3B: Jazz Chisholm
LF: Carl Yastrzemski
CF: Lázaro Salazar
RF: Mike Yastrzemski
DH: Zaza Harvey
P: Dazzy Vance
We’ve got Daz, Jazz, Kaz, Lazz, Láz, Maz, double Yaz, Zaz, and Mike Piazza. It’s a pretty good team! Counting Salazar, we’ve got six Hall of Famers, though it still leaves a lot of notable players on the bench. My apologies to Johnny Lazor, Javier Vazquez, Yonathan Daza, Alejandro De Aza, Joe Azcue, and Eddie Kazak. It was a real shame to miss out on Mike Gazella (nickname Gazook!), and I absolutely would’ve crammed Jeremy Hazelbaker on here if I could have.
After slipping from 89 wins and a trip to the National League Championship Series in 2024 to 83 wins and the short straw in a tiebreaker for a Wild Card berth in 2025, the Mets have a new look to their outfield thanks to an active offseason, some position changes, and an astute draft pick. While the right field job has yet to be settled, several players battling for time at the position have put their best foot forward during the first two weeks of exhibition season, with the two who figure most prominently in the team’s plans homering earlier this week. On Wednesday, top prospect Carson Benge hit his first home run of the spring in an exhibition game against Team Israel, and on Thursday, Brett Baty went deep against the Nationals while making his debut in right field, a continuation of his effort to expand his defensive repertoire.
Meanwhile, MLB.com beat reporter Anthony DiComo summarized last week’s highlights:
It's been quite the week for the Mets' right-field competition.
Tuesday: Mike Tauchman homered in his first Grapefruit League at-bat.
Thursday: Carson Benge went 3-for-3, and Tyrone Taylor hit a three-run homer.
No spring training result should be taken at face value given the varying levels of competition, and that’s especially true before people have been warned about the Ides of March, but the whole situation is worth a closer look. Read the rest of this entry »
