The Angels haven’t changed. It’s Mike Trout who is worse.

The Angels are bad. It’s the truest thing about them. Their hitting is bad, their pitching is bad, their fielding is bad, and everything else is bad, too. This isn’t breaking news. They’ve finished below .500 each year since 2015, the only team not to make the postseason in that time. But expectations have reached a new low as we enter 2026:

I was initially skeptical of these figures, or at least the direction of them. How could the Angels possibly be going backwards? They don’t seem to be rebuilding, and their depth chart looks the same as ever: a few truly good players, a few players who would be good if they were playing a different position (or perhaps in a different organization), a few players who were drafted far too recently, a few aging veterans who were nearly All-Stars at one point, and Trout. Read the rest of this entry »

RotoGraphs is now accepting applications to join our staff as a contributing writer.

Contributors typically write two to three times a week. Familiarity and comfort with fantasy baseball and the data on FanGraphs is a requirement, but just as importantly, we’re looking for writers who can generate their own ideas and questions while providing interesting analysis and commentary on the game of fantasy baseball. From standard roto redraft to long-term keeper leagues, identifying intriguing prospects and breakouts to managing a fantasy roster, we want to cover it all.

We use rigor, creativity and the latest analytical tools to provide useful, interesting insights and advice to fantasy managers. And while we take our responsibility to support fantasy managers seriously, we’re also willing to be silly and keep things light. After all, fantasy baseball is supposed to be fun! Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the Reds sent Hunter Greene for imaging on his throwing elbow. Never a good sign for the no. 1 starter on a team that made the playoffs last season. In those situations, we on the outside are usually conditioned to fear the worst, or at least Tommy John surgery, recovery from which — while all but routine these days — takes more than a year.

Only in that context could Tuesday’s news be taken as positive: Greene will have surgery to remove bone chips from his elbow. (In fact, as you read this, he may have already undergone the procedure.) The recovery time is expected to be on the order of three to four months, but losing an ace until the trade deadline is much better than losing him until 2027.

This is a banner year for bone chips and loose bodies. The Braves alone have two starters — Hurston Waldrep and Spencer Schwellenbach — on the IL after receiving similar treatment. Actually, since we’re talking about bone chips, this feels like a good excuse to talk about Dazzy Vance. Read the rest of this entry »

The baseball season will soon be upon us, which means it’s time for an age-old question: How long until the best hitter’s reign ends? This year, and seemingly every year of late, that means Aaron Judge. You can quibble about who the best overall player is, but Judge is pretty clearly the best offensive player on the planet. Over the last four years, he has a composite 204 wRC+, miles clear of the competition, and he just put up that exact number in 2025. In 2026, we think he’s going to be the best hitter again, obviously.

Will we in 2027, though? It depends, of course. If Judge looks like his usual self this year, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking the crown. I wanted a little bit more rigor than that, however, so I dusted off the Marcel projection methodology. Marcel is what Tom Tango dubbed the minimum sufficient projection system. It’s as simple as taking the last three years of performance, weighting them, and tossing in some league average.

Let’s take Judge’s last few seasons as an example. I grabbed his wOBA and plate appearances for 2023-2025 and threw them into a table. Then I calculated league average across those three years (the exact calculation uses some weighting to match Judge’s playing time by season). That looks like this:

Turning those into a Marcel projection is simple. Multiply the most recent year’s plate appearances by five, the next-most-recent year’s by four, the next by three, and the league average by two. Take a weighted average of these new values. The result is Judge’s 2026 Marcel projection – which works out to a .440 wOBA. That tracks logically, which is the point of Marcel. It’s really close to what you and I would think about a player’s skill. Post a wOBA above .450 for two straight years, and I’ll expect you to come back to the pack a little but still do something outrageous the next year.

Using this methodology, here are the top projected hitters for 2026:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Cal Raleigh, Randy Arozarena, and WBC handshake etiquette, whether a mercy-rule-inducing dinger qualifies as a walk-off, whether a winning home team could voluntarily play the bottom of the ninth, MLB’s ban of the Brewers’ challenge-system system, why the MLBPA should defend Jurickson Profar and other players with positive PED tests, and Joe Sewell’s indestructible bat, then preview the 2026 New York Mets (56:35) with The Athletic’s Tim Britton, and the 2026 Washington Nationals (1:40:27) with The Athletic’s Spencer Nusbaum, plus several postscript updates (2:27:10).

Audio intro: Luke Lillard, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 1: Ian Philllips, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 2: Josh Busman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Gabriel-Ernest, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to espresso shots
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With Ranger Suarez now a Red Sock, Zack Wheeler rehabbing from thoracic outlet surgery, and Aaron Nola trying to rebound from a career-worst season, the Phillies rotation has its share of uncertainty as the 2026 regular season approaches. On Monday, the team did its best to bolster that unit for the longer term, agreeing to a five-year, $135 million extension with lefty Jesús Luzardo.

The 28-year-old Luzardo is coming off an impressive first season with the Phillies, who acquired him (along with catching prospect Paul McIntosh) from the Marlins in December 2024 in exchange for two prospects, shortstop Starlyn Caba and outfielder Emaarion Boyd. After making just 12 starts for Miami in 2024 due to elbow tightness and a stress reaction in his lower back, Luzardo made a full complement of 32 starts last year while setting career highs with 183.2 innings and 5.3 WAR, both second on the team behind Cristopher Sánchez. Both his 2.90 FIP and 3.33 xERA — each of which ranked fourth in the National League — make better cases for the quality of his pitching than his 3.92 ERA; in fact, the gap between his ERA and FIP was the third-highest among all qualifiers:

Strangely enough, all 10 of those pitchers hail from the NL; José Soriano, who had the largest gap in the American League at 0.53 runs (4.26 ERA, 3.73 FIP), ranked 11th among qualifiers, just below the cutoff in the table above. Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks!

12:04

Jay Jaffe: Got a late start in creating this chat so I’m going to give it a few minutes to fill the queue. In the meantime, here’s my freshly-published piece on Jesús Luzardo’s extension  https://blogs.fangraphs.com/philly-ing-up-luzardo-inks-a-five-year-ext…

12:04

Jay Jaffe: and if you missed it, here’s Friday’s look at the Mets’ new-look outfield picture https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-mets-search-for-the-right-choices-in-t…

12:06

Jay Jaffe: Re: Luzardo, he was one of seven extension candidates highlighted by Dan Szymborski just yesterday https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-sign-some-contracts-2026-edition/

12:07

Jay Jaffe: I wish we had a World Baseball Classic game on right now as backdrop — there were so many games yesterday I couldn’t focus on and yet nothing tonight until 7. Blergh

Read the rest of this entry »

A pitcher goes to the mound hoping to record outs without allowing runs. Unfortunately, a lot goes on between the ball leaving the pitcher’s hand and the scoreboard changing. You can’t just toe the rubber, chuck the ball, and say, “God’s will be done,” as you stare glassy-eyed into the distance like Martin Sheen as Robert E. Lee in Gettysburg.

I mean, you could, but you wouldn’t like the results.

A modern pitcher goes to the mound with a plan to influence events much further up the causal chain. Every pitcher is special in his own way, but every plan boils down to this: By changing speed, movement, or location, trick the hitter into swinging somewhere other than where the ball will be. Read the rest of this entry »

The Seattle Mariners boast two of the game’s most promising young arms. Second and third respectively in a highly regarded farm system, Ryan Sloan and Kade Anderson also reside in the front half of our 2026 Top 100 Prospects list. Sloan, a 20-year-old right-hander, ranks 20th, while Anderson, a 21-year-old southpaw, comes in at no. 50.

How do the two compare in terms of repertoire and approach? Both are profiled in the write-ups that accompany the aforementioned rankings, but what about how the pitchers see themselves? Moreover, how are they viewed by a catcher who knows them well and a prominent member of the organization’s pitching brain trust? Wanting to find out, I spoke to Anderson and Sloan, as well as to Luke Stevenson and Trent Blank, at Seattle’s spring training complex late last month.

Before we get to those perspectives, here are brief snapshots, augmented with quotes from our prospect analyst team of Eric Longenhagen, Brendan Gawlowski, and James Fegan:

Drafted third overall last year out of LSU, Anderson, who threw his first professional pitch this spring, was described as follows: “Maybe the best pitcher in the 2025 draft, [he] projects as a quick-moving mid-rotation starter with a great breaking ball.”

Sloan, who was drafted 55th overall in 2024 out of York Community High School in Elmhurst, Illinois, debuted professionally last season and logged a 3.73 ERA, a 3.18 FIP, and a 27.0% strikeout rate over 82 innings between Low-A Modesto and High-A Everett. “The upside is sky-high here,” wrote our prospect analysts, “and it’s not too early to say Sloan is one of the best pitching prospects in baseball.”

Blank serves as Seattle’s director of pitching strategy, so let’s start with his thoughts. Read the rest of this entry »