NEW YORK — It started out so well.

In their Opening Day game against the Mets at Citi Field, the Pirates jumped out to a two-run lead two batters into the game. Their next three batters struck out, but they had National League Cy Young winner Paul Skenes starting for them. It was the first time in his career that Skenes, who entered the game with a 1.96 ERA, took the mound in the first inning with a lead of two or more runs. Heck, it was just the fourth time in his 56 career starts that he’d thrown his first pitch with any lead at all. Maybe this year would be different after all.

It’s too early to say anything about this year, but this sure was a different game. Just not in the way the Pirates had hoped. For the first time in his career, Skenes did not make it through the first inning. When manager Don Kelly went to the bullpen with two outs in the inning, his ace had thrown 37 pitches, recorded just two outs and allowed five runs. He struck out just one batter, walked two, and hit one with a pitch. The impromptu bullpen game ended about two and a half hours later in an 11-7 Mets win. Read the rest of this entry »

1:10	Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

1:11	Jay Jaffe: Hey hey, Happy Opening Day!

1:11	Dan Szymborski: And I’ll be here for more than expected as I my brother-in-law is already home from his procedure, so I don’t have to spend part of Opening Day wrangling a six-year-old and a four-year-old

Read the rest of this entry »

After an offseason marked by some funky free agent contract structures, a few big trades, and a bunch more handwringing over the Los Angeles Dodgers, the 2026 season is upon us; we made it. And on this, the morning of Opening Day (sorry, Netflix), we engage in our annual tradition of asking our staff to open themselves up to public ridicule by trying to predict the year ahead in baseball. Some of these predictions will prove to be prescient; others will make their forecaster feel a little silly. Such is the prognostication business.

I asked our staff to predict the playoff field, as well as the pennant and World Series winners, and the individual award recipients. Twenty-five of our writers from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs weighed in. Here are the results. Please note that the tables at the end showing the full writer ballots are sortable. Read the rest of this entry »

Will three be the magic number for Tarik Skubal? Fresh off back-to-back Cy Young Awards and a record-setting $32 million arbitration win, the 29-year-old lefty will take the ball for the Tigers against the Padres on Thursday afternoon at Petco Park, the third year in a row he’s had the honor of an Opening Day start. He’s vying to become just the third pitcher to win three straight Cy Youngs — after Greg Maddux (1992–95) and Randy Johnson (1999–2002) — and the first American League pitcher to do so.

Though he didn’t repeat as the winner of the AL Pitching Triple Crown, Skubal was actually slightly better in 2025 than in ’24 by most key measures. He trimmed his ERA, FIP, and walk rate slightly, while improving his strikeout rate, innings total, and WAR:

The major difference between Skubal’s seasons was that his offensive support fell from 5.3 runs per start to 4.5, so his win total dropped. Even so, the Tigers went 21-10 in his starts in both seasons en route to claiming wild card berths. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the number of Opening Days/Nights at the start of the regular-season schedule and how long they think the challenge system will last, review some of their favorite offseason transactions, and do their annual draft of all 30 MLB teams in order of how fun they’ll be to follow this season.

Audio intro: The Spaghettis, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Jimmy Kramer, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Craig on Opening Days/Nights
Link to broadcast dilemma
Link to Ben on the challenge system
Link to Ben on the labor situation
Link to champing/chomping
Link to Rogers tattoo story
Link to Langs Giants stat
Link to pod duration calculator
Link to Adames challenge reaction
Link to EWStats site
Link to freemium model announcement
Link to written explanation

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And just like that, the end of winter has been heralded, not by a groundhog or the vernal equinox, but by 6 1/3 shutout innings by Max Fried last night at Oracle Park. Today is the official Opening Day in MLB, and as such, it’s time for the ZiPS projections to spit out its final preseason projections. Hopefully, its numbers are graceful and kind, just in case it has to eat them in six months. This is the 22nd such exercise I’ve done with the ZiPS projections, and as with the other 21 times, there’s not much to do but sit back and wait for reality to destroy the expectations. Most of you already know the methodology by now, but for those who don’t, I’ll do a quick rundown. The rest of you can skip straight to the reason you’re here: the standings!

The ZiPS projected standings are the results of a million simulations of the 2026 season, using the ZiPS projections and the actual team schedules. The methodology isn’t identical to the one we use for our playoff odds. So how does ZiPS calculate the season? Stored within ZiPS are the first- through 99th-percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as a jumping off point. Since these are my curated projections, I make changes based on arbitrary whimsy my logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion. These projections do reflect the updated post-spring training projections, which were added to the FanGraphs database on Wednesday afternoon. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners are favorites in the American League on the back of an all-time duo.

Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez are the best teammates in the AL. They’re each projected to be among the top 10 batters by FanGraphs Depth Charts, and each led their respective positions in our annual positional power rankings series. The only pair of teammates projected for more WAR in 2026 are Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts and Ohtani and Kyle Tucker.

Since their first season together in 2022, Raleigh and Rodríguez have combined for 44.2 WAR. At 11.1 wins per season, that’s “on pace” for the best duo in team history, just ahead of Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez (65.9 WAR over six years), Griffey and Edgar Martinez (119.3 WAR over 11 years), and all sorts of other combinations from the star-studded squads of the 90s. Raleigh and Rodríguez certainly have much more to achieve before approaching these all-time greats, individually or together. But as the Mariners enter their 50th season, it appears the legacy of the franchise may finally be moving beyond its past. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year for Opening Day, I ask the FanGraphs staff to predict the season’s award winners, playoff field, and eventual World Series Champion. Those predictions tend to be heavily influenced by our playoff odds, projections, and prospect rankings, and while I appreciate the instinct to lean on data to make our guesses more educated, the results can feel a little chalky at times. That’s why I’ve starting asking our writers to make another prediction — a bold prediction. One that might be a little spicy, or perhaps a little silly. A prediction that eschews the obvious, but is still grounded in reality, even if only by one foot. Nineteen of our writers across FanGraphs and RotoGraphs answered the bell, including me. Will any of these predictions prove to be correct? Who knows! Let’s watch 2,430 games and find out. – Meg Rowley

We’ll See a Front Office Gambling Scandal

I realize this isn’t the most fun prediction you’re going to read here, but this just sort of strikes me as next. We’ve seen coach scandals, player scandals, and interpreter scandals. Well, front offices feature plenty of hyper-competitive people, many of whom are experts in the kind of risk analysis involved in gambling, and I don’t see any particular reason that they’d be immune to a disease that has infected so many other parts of baseball over the last few years. I think it’s more likely that the next scandal we see involves more minor league players, but we’re supposed to go bold here. It would be harder for a front office member to get caught. They’re not subject to the same public scrutiny that players are, and they can’t affect the outcome of a game as directly. They’d probably have to screw up in a bigger way. But it certainly seems possible.  – Davy Andrews Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past week and a half, we’ve published our annual season preview, ranking the league’s players by position and team based on a blend of our projections (a 50/50 split between ZiPS and Steamer) and our manually maintained RosterResource playing time estimates courtesy of Jason Martinez and Jon Becker. If you happen to have missed any of those installments, you can use the navigation widget above to catch up.

Today, I’m going to summarize the results. We’ll look at some tables and pick out a few interesting tidbits in a moment, but first, as I do every year, I’ll remind you that this exercise captures a snapshot of how we project teams to perform now. Teams aren’t static. Since we began publishing our rankings, top prospects Kevin McGonigle (no. 5), JJ Wetherholt (no. 12), and Carson Benge (no. 21) made their respective Opening Day rosters, while no. 1 overall prospect Konnor Griffin was sent down to get a bit more seasoning in the minors. Nationals outfielder Dylan Crews, the second overall pick in the 2023 draft and a former top prospect, was optioned to Triple-A Rochester. And a number of notable pitchers hit the injured list, including Spencer Strider, whose strained oblique will no doubt complicate his efforts to regain his 2023 form. Read the rest of this entry »

Dean Kremer has been a staple of the Orioles rotation in recent years. Even while missing significant time due to injuries in a couple of seasons, he’s made more starts than any other Baltimore pitcher since the beginning of 2022, a span that encompasses both the division-winning Orioles from ’23 and last year’s basement dwellers. Yet this past weekend, Kremer was optioned to the team’s minor league camp, the odd man out in a rotation battle. He’s not the only familiar name among those slated to start the season in the minors due to such decisions.

Opening Day is full of fanfare and so often freighted with meaning, but it’s still just one day on the baseball calendar; the decisions regarding who gets to be there (and who doesn’t) don’t actually define the season. Still, unless they’re recalled to replace injured players — which is hardly out of the question — optioned position players need to remain in the minors for 10 days and pitchers for 15 days, counting from March 25 (Opening Day for the Giants and Yankees). In other words, they’ll be eligible to return on April 4 or April 9. Beyond that, circumstances change as the season progresses, and rosters are in a constant state of flux.

Kremer stands out because he’s fully established himself in the majors, while the other high-profile decisions I’ve highlighted below involve players who are or were recently considered top prospects. They’re all headed to Triple-A, and I expect them to stay past the aforementioned dates, but they’re notable because they’re still expected to play substantial roles in 2026. The players are listed alphabetically. Read the rest of this entry »