The Arizona Diamondbacks might have the best middle-infield duo in MLB, which is something most people outside of their fanbase probably aren’t aware of. Mike Hazen didn’t disagree when I suggested as much to him in Las Vegas.

“We’ve always dealt with that,” the D-Backs general manager replied. “We play on the West Coast — we play late for the East Coast — and we’re not on national TV a lot, so it comes with the territory. But yeah, [Geraldo] Perdomo probably had a top-five season in all of baseball this year, and [Ketel] Marte does it every year. With those two guys, along with [Corbin] Carroll, I think we have three of the top 25-30 guys in all of baseball.”

That was certainly the case in 2025. Carroll, the club’s right-fielder, ranked seventh-best in MLB with 6.5 WAR, while the keystone combination came in at fifth-best (Perdomo at 7.1) and 24th-best (Marte at 4.6) respectively. Productive bats were a big reason for that. Carroll put up a 139 wRC+, Perdomo was a tick below at 138, and Marte was fourth-highest in the senior circuit at 145.

How long Arizona’s middle infield will remain intact is currently in question. Rumors that Marte — on tap to gain 10-5 rights in the coming season — could be traded have been circulating, and while Hazen has reportedly said that moving the 32-year-old second baseman is “mostly unlikely,” he has also acknowledged a need to listen to offers. Howe many of those he has received to this point is unknown, but given Marte’s résumé — the three-time All-Star has a 140 wRC+ and 15.3 WAR over the past three seasons — the return would be noteworthy. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the World Series is over and we’re two weeks into the offseason, the stockpile of questions for our mailbag is getting a little light. For that reason, I’m putting out a request for fresh submissions. I’m sure that if you’re reading this, you have at least some kernel of a question or curiosity noodling around in your noggin, and we are eager to answer it. As you’ll see from the assortment of topics in this week’s column — ranging from the career earnings potentially lost due to gambling allegations all the way to a hypothetical seven-game series between fantasy and sci-fi characters — we are game for almost anything. To ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, please send us an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.

That said, there are a few questions that we have absolutely no way of answering, even though they are fun and interesting. I’ll include one at the start of this week’s edition and respond to it briefly before we get to the meat of the mailbag.

But first, a quick programming note: I will be on vacation next week, so Meg will be steering the mailbag in my absence. If you have any thoughts about the Seattle Seahawks or the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film Contact, I’m sure she’d love to hear from you as she combs through the emails next week. And, as always, I’d like to remind you all 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. OK, let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Meg banter about Based Boras vs. Borscht Belt Boras and a few corny quips they overlooked, then discuss end-of-season awards (Aaron Judge vs. Cal Raleigh, Paul Skenes vs. Cristopher Sánchez, Skenes as a paid pitchman, José Ramírez MVP shares, Shohei Ohtani’s dog vs. Judge’s dogs, repetition among award winners, groupthink among voters, WAR preference, bringing back old-school awards, and more) before touching on the news that Padres ownership is exploring a sale. Then (1:13:43) Michael Mountain joins Ben to Stat Blast about team rivalries.

Audio intro: Josh Busman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Nate Emerson, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Boras/exec comments
Link to BP Boras quip ranking
Link to AL MVP results
Link to Ben on Judge and Raleigh
Link to NL MVP results
Link to AL Cy results
Link to NL Cy results
Link to Skenes reaction
Link to Skenes reaction article
Link to Skenes Raising Cane’s spot
Link to Skenes on EW
Link to Posnanski on retro awards
Link to Ohtani dog video
Link to Judge dog video
Link to Baumann on voting and WAR
Link to award share wiki
Link to Ramírez award share
Link to pitch-fixing fallout article
Link to MLBTR on the Padres sale
Link to rivalry scores data
Link to CTV Barger video
Link to Mense hiring
Link to Secret Santa sign-up

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One of my favorite annual exercises is a quick and dirty assessment of every team’s 40-man roster situation. Which prospects need to be added to their club’s 40-man by next Tuesday’s deadline to be protected from the Rule 5 Draft? Which veterans are in danger of being non-tendered because of their projected arbitration salary? And which players aren’t good enough to make their current org’s active roster, but would see the field for a different club and therefore have some trade value? These are the questions I’m attempting to answer with a piece like this. Most teams add and subtract a handful of players to their roster every offseason — some just one or two, others as many as 10. My aim with this exercise is to attempt to project what each team’s roster will look like when the deadline to add players arrives on Tuesday, or at least give you an idea of the names I think are likely to be on the table for decision-makers to consider.

This project is completed by using the RosterResource Depth Charts to examine current 40-man occupancy and roster makeup, and then weigh the young, unrostered prospects who are Rule 5 eligible in December against the least keepable current big leaguers in the org to create a bubble for each roster. The bigger and more talented the bubble, the more imperative it is for a team to make a couple of trades to do something with their talent overage rather than watch it walk out the door for nothing in the Rule 5.

Below you’ll see each team’s current 40-man count, the players I view as locks to be rostered, the fringe players currently on the roster whose spots feel tenuous, and the more marginal prospects who have an argument to be added but aren’t guaranteed. I only included full sections for the teams that have an obvious crunch or churn, with a paragraph of notes addressing the clubs with less intricate roster situations at the bottom. I have the players listed from left to right in the order I prefer them, so the left-most names are the players I’d keep, and right-most names are the guys I’d be more likely to cut. I’ve italicized the names of the players who I believe fall below the cut line. As a reminder, players who signed at age 18 or younger must be added to the 40-man within five seasons to be protected from the Rule 5, while those signed at age 19 or older must be added within four. Brendan Gawlowski examined the National League yesterday, so be sure to check that out too. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Though he won the Rookie of the Year award, a Cy Young, and a World Series all in his first full season while beginning a six-year streak of All-Star selections — the first of those as the game’s starter — Fernando Valenzuela wasn’t just a star pitcher. He was an international icon, the centerpiece of a cultural phenomenon, and a beloved global ambassador who brought generations of Mexican American and Latino fans to baseball while helping to heal the wounds caused by the building of Dodger Stadium, the very ballpark in which he starred.

“Roberto Clemente is ‘The Great One,’ but culturally, Fernando Valenzuela has been more significant in terms of bringing a fan base that didn’t exist in baseball,” José de Jesus Ortiz, the first Latino president of the BBWAA, told author Erik Sherman for Daybreak at Chavez Ravine, a 2023 biography of Valenzuela. Sherman himself described the pitcher as “like a composite of the Beatles — only in Dodger blue. His appeal was universal.”

After excelling in a relief role during a September 1980 cup of coffee with the Dodgers — as a 19-year-old in the heat of a playoff race, no less — Valenzuela took the world by storm the following spring. Pressed into service as the Opening Day starter, he threw a five-hit shutout, then reeled off four more shutouts and six more complete games within his first eight starts, a span during which he posted a 0.50 ERA. Despite speaking barely a word of English, the portly portsider (listed at 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds, but generally presumed to be at least 20 pounds heavier) charmed the baseball world with his bashful smile while bedeviling hitters with impeccable command of his screwball, delivered following a high leg kick and a skyward gaze at the peak of his windup.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Hendricks announced his retirement as the GM Meetings were getting underway earlier this week, which presented a good opportunity to get learned perspectives on how “The Professor” pitched effectively at baseball’s highest level despite a fastball that rarely exceeded 90 mph. Moreover, it provided a chance to ask if teams should be trying to develop more pitchers like Hendricks, rather than focusing so heavily on power arms.

Three executives at the just-completed meetings struck me as likely to have especially good insight into those subjects. Here is what they had to say about both the Dartmouth College product, and how difficult it is to develop pitchers who can succeed in the way that he did.

———

JED HOYER — CHICAGO CUBS

Hendricks spent 11 of his 12 seasons with the Chicago Cubs, all with Hoyer serving as the team’s general manager or president of baseball operations. The first question I posed to the longtime exec was this: To what extent can, or should, teams try to develop more pitchers like Hendricks?

“That’s a great question,” replied Hoyer. “I think you’ll wait a long time before you get the next Kyle Hendricks. His command was exceptional. His changeup was exceptional. If you go back and look at his strikeout rates — I don’t know exactly when it fell down a little bit — but I would say that for six, seven years of his career, he wasn’t a power pitcher in terms of strikeout rates, but he wasn’t a finesse pitcher either. Along with not walking guys, he struck guys out. He just did it in a different way. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 22nd consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Athletics.

Batters

The A’s lineup has made great strides over the last few years, the difference between this graphic and the one from two years ago is nearly night and day. Now, there is no megastar at the top of the WAR stack, but the A’s are pretty solid in most places, aren’t truly abysmal anywhere, and have decent depth options all over the diamond. While this is still far from an elite run creation machine, there’s enough quality surrounding Nick Kurtz and Brent Rooker that this is the type of lineup that could pull its weight in a playoff contention scenario. Even some of the lesser positions like the Max Muncy-led third base amalgamation or the mix-and-match assortment in center field at least project to somewhere around average.

If there’s a disappointment in the projections, it might be Jacob Wilson, for whom ZiPS sees quite a bit of regression coming in 2026. A big part of it is that Wilson’s approach of excellent contact/soft hitting has a fairly poor developmental history in recent decades, and players of this type, if they become too “see ball, hit ball” can fall off quickly like David Fletcher or Luis Arraez. Just like plate discipline should be a means to an end, so should ultra-high contact.

ZiPS also remains a Tyler Soderstrom skeptic and just isn’t as in love with Lawrence Butler as other projection systems have been.

When I talk about the depth, I’m not just being nice; there are a lot of projections for players in the high minors that suggest that they could be fill-in candidates without completely embarrassing anybody. Joshua Kuroda-Grauer might be one of the most interesting. He’s hardly a household name, but the method I use to estimate defense from hit-location data absolutely loves him, and he has the makings of a really solid pairing with Wilson up the middle. The projections also think that Leo De Vries is just a year or two from being a legitimate major league starter. Also in good news for a lineup on a John Fisher-owned team, none of the key players are nearing big free agency paydays that the A’s simply would not match. These guys should be around for a while.

Pitchers

The pitching staff is considerably less impressive than the offense, but even this group has much better projections overall than it did a year ago. Before this past season, I mused that the A’s had kind of lost their knack for developing an endless stream of moderately competent, soft-tossing fourth starters, and it was hurting their chances at getting out of the bottom of the AL West. There are still no aces on the team or, really, any no. 2 starters, but ZiPS thinks the A’s now have a boatload of 90-100 ERA+ starting pitchers, and a few of them (like Luis Medina and Luis Morales) have actual fastballs that they can use to retire major league hitters. What a concept!

I’m not sure that Luis Severino will still be on the roster three months from now, let alone the beginning of August, given his feelings about the stadium situation and potential value for a contending club, but Jeffrey Springs and Jacob Lopez are acceptable mid-rotation starters, and the team has a number of useful fallback options, such as J.T. Ginn and Henry Baez. ZiPS still holds out some hope on Mitch Spence, and is really in on Gage Jump, who has a decent shot in the projections to be the best A’s pitcher 18 months from now.

A Mason Miller-less bullpen is definitely an emoji sad face. While ZiPS sees the pen as a decidedly below-average group, there are far fewer negative WAR projections here than there were last offseason, and the top four of Hogan Harris, Michael Kelly, Justin Sterner, and Elvis Alvarado projects out as…fine…ish. But the bullpen will be a larger worry when the team gets closer to contention.

So, where do the A’s look to be right now? Probably slightly better than the 76 wins they finished with in 2025. But an awful lot would have to go right with the pitching to make this team anything but the fringiest of wild card contenders in 2026. I mean, sure, the A’s could sign Dylan Cease and/or Ranger Suárez, but we all know they’re not actually going to do that. On the bright side, at least these A’s are probably going to be Sacramento’s best major league baseball team ever.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on Bluesky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.

We’re less than a month from the Winter Meetings and the Rule 5 Draft, which means it’s a good time to evaluate every team’s 40-man roster situation. This is the time of year when teams have one final chance to protect Rule 5 eligible players by placing them on the 40-man. Eligibility is determined by a mix of how long a player has been with their parent organization and how young they were when they signed: Players who signed at 18 or younger must be added to the 40-man within five seasons, while everyone else must be added within four. RosterResource monitors Rule 5 eligibility, if you’re curious to see the lay of the land.

During the season, teams can free up roster space by placing an injured player on the 60-day IL. In the offseason, teams don’t get extra slots for injured players, which tends to put pressure on the back of the roster. The Diamondbacks are a good example of how space can tighten quickly, as they’ve currently got six pitchers battling long-term injuries occupying a spot. You may have noticed a flurry of moves immediately following the World Series, with many teams outrighting players off the 40-man in order to make room for all the guys who were on the IL.

Below, I’ve assessed every National League team’s 40-man roster situation (Eric will sort through the American League tomorrow). Some teams, like the Braves, have plenty of roster space, and thus a lot of flexibility in adding whoever they like. Others, like the Cardinals and Marlins, will face some tough choices as they seek to balance protecting interesting prospects with retaining players already on the roster, as well as finding room for prospective additions via trade or free agency. Some clubs don’t have many impact players to add, while others may need to protect a half-dozen or so guys. I’ve tried to identify which players are most likely to be added, which guys on the 40-man are vulnerable to getting lopped off in a roster crunch, and who could be moved in a deal to free up roster space. Let’s dig in. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »