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When pitchers and catchers report, joy abounds. Who doesn’t love grainy cellphone video of a pitcher mounting the slab in the early days of February? But as far as I’m concerned, baseball doesn’t truly start until the first pitch plot surfaces on social media. Not much in spring training matters, but pitch data does. One or two pitches is all it takes to establish the birth of a new pitch or velocity peak. Results — ERA, strikeouts — take a while to stabilize, and in any case, they mean little in the “just trying things out” context of spring ball. But the pitch data — that’s real, man. Nobody throws a new pitch on accident. (For the most part.)

And so, like the well-adjusted baseblogger I am, I’ve spent the first week of spring games knee-deep in the data. Would you believe that as of the final day of February, there have been precisely 4,500 unique pitcher/pitch type combinations? That’s a lot of potential trends to suss out. You, reader, surely don’t want to wade through all of that, so let me present you with a handful of things that have caught my attention in the pitch plot portion of spring training. They fall into three categories: under-the-radar prospects with at least one bonkers pitch, established starters soft-launching new shapes, and relievers with limited big league time popping like potential leverage guys.

Under-the-Radar Prospects

Ryan Lambert, Mets

Okay, this one was slightly more under the radar before Lambert went viral for his “30 raw eggs a day” shenanigans. From that story, you surely learned that he throws a fastball with considerable velocity. But what Anthony DiComo’s excellent report elided was the shape of that fastball. In his lone spring outing, Lambert showed off a 98-mph heater with 21.5 inches of induced vertical break. Outside of Lambert’s arm, that pitch doesn’t exist. Only three pitchers topped even 20 inches of induced vertical break on their heater in 2025 — Alex Vesia, Triston McKenzie, and Yaramil Hiraldo (more on Hiraldo later) — and none of them broke 95 on the radar gun. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Yankees re-signed Cody Bellinger in late January, they more or less committed to running back the same outfield they used in 2025. And why not? Even with limited contributions from their reserves, the primary trio of Bellinger, Trent Grisham, and Aaron Judge combined to produce a major league-high 16.6 WAR. But with secondary roles still up for grabs, New York added outfielder Randal Grichuk to its options last week, signing the 34-year-old veteran to a minor league deal with a non-roster invitation to spring training.

The signing of Grichuk isn’t exactly out of left field, so to speak. While the Yankees do have 23-year-old switch-hitter Jasson Domínguez — who spent all of last season with the Yankees and made 93 starts in left but was reduced to a bench role by September — and 24-year-old prospect Spencer Jones on their 40-man roster, both have minor league options remaining (two for the former, three for the latter). If the primary trio is healthy, and if primary designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton is able to answer the bell often enough (yes, that’s a load-bearing if), the Yankees would prefer that their youngsters continue to develop by playing regularly, if not in the Bronx than at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre.

“I would concede it’s in his best interest to be getting everyday reps,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said in mid-February regarding Domínguez, who placed 16th on our Top 100 Prospects List last spring as a 55-FV prospect despite having been moved from center field to left, then hit a modest .257/.331/.388, (103 wRC+) in 429 plate appearances. While the Yankees tolerated worse from left fielder Alex Verdugo in 2024, when Domínguez was coming off Tommy John surgery on his right (throwing) elbow, between his league-average offense and his struggles in left field (-7 DRS, -9 FRV in 793 innings), he was an afterthought in September. He made just four starts and totaled 20 plate appearances in the final month of the regular season, before getting just one postseason plate appearance. (He made the most of it, lacing a leadoff double into the right-center gap in the bottom of the ninth inning of an elimination game with the Yankees down four runs.) Domínguez’s 0.6 WAR — which matched Verdugo’s 2024 output in about 200 fewer plate appearances — indicates he still has enough to work on to justify another stint in the minors. Read the rest of this entry »

Somewhere in my list of article ideas, I have a theoretical question tucked away. What’s the longest distance you could hit a baseball? Not what’s the longest distance a really strong player could hit a ball, but what’s the longest distance that it’s possible to hit a baseball? I haven’t gotten around to it because I’d need to interview a physicist or a materials scientist or both, but I’m excited about this question. Say you’re an infinitely strong batter with an infinitely fast swing. The distance you can hit the ball isn’t infinite. At some point, you’ll hit the ball hard enough that your bat will shatter, reducing the efficiency of the energy transfer. Or maybe the ball will be the weak link, and you’ll hit it so hard that it will deform into a less aerodynamic shape or explode into a thousand pieces. There’s a limit somewhere.

I will write this article one day (so please don’t steal it), and it will be fun to discover the answer through math and logic, but theory isn’t the only way to solve a problem. Last Thursday, Jac Caglianone tried to find the answer through pure experimentation, which is to say that in the top of the fifth inning against the Diamondbacks, the Royals right fielder turned on a Yilber Díaz fastball and ripped it into the right-center gap at 120.2 mph. The missile made Caglianone just the eighth player to gain entry into the 120 MPH Club in the 11-year history of Statcast.

It’s the hardest-hit ball of Caglianone’s career (officially, anyway; we’ll return to that later). It’s also the hardest-hit ball of spring training, and it’s far from the only fireworks display he’s put on in the past week. With a 116.5-mph double on Saturday and a 115.2-mph homer on Tuesday, Caglianone now owns three of the 10 hardest-hit balls of spring training. More importantly, it’s the 30th-hardest ball ever recorded by Statcast at any level. Thankfully, Statcast is now in every spring training ballpark, or we never would have grasped just how special Caglianone has been this spring. Read the rest of this entry »

Xander Bogaerts is on the verge of multiple milestones. Barring injury, the 33-year-old San Diego Padres shortstop will reach and surpass 400 doubles, 200 home runs, and 1,000 runs scored this season. He also has a shot at 2,000 hits, needing 178 more to arrive at that mark. And then there is the defensive side of the equation. Defying most expectations, Bogaerts is on the doorstep of having started 1,500 games at his middle-of-the-infield position.

As you may recall, Bogaerts’s bat was his calling card when he ranked as the top prospect in the Boston Red Sox system. Few doubted his ability to hit, but the likelihood that he would remain a shortstop was another story. Echoing the opinion of many throughout the industry, our December 2011 writeup of the then-19-year-old Oranjestad, Aruba native included the following:

“Defensively he plays a solid shortstop but he’s expected to slow down and shift over to third base before he reaches the majors.”

I’ve addressed that possibility with Bogaerts multiple times over the years, initially for a print-publication story I wrote when he was in Double-A. Quoting a scout, I titled the piece, “Looks Like a Shortstop to Me.”

All these years later, Bogaerts recalls the conjecture surrounding his future in the field. When I caught up to him at Padres camp last weekend, it was the first thing he mentioned when I posed this question: Had you been told at age 20 that your career would follow the path it has, would anything have surprised you? Read the rest of this entry »

Happy last day of February, everyone. By this time next week, the World Baseball Classic will have begun, allowing us to experience the best of what our global game has to offer. Earlier this month, Kiri Oler previewed the WBC with four team-by-team breakdown pieces, one for each pool, and we’ll have more coverage next week leading into the tournament. Also, I’ll be in Miami covering Pool D, which features Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands, Israel, and Nicaragua, so if you have any questions related to the first-round action at loanDepot park, you know how to reach me.

Of course, the World Baseball Classic isn’t the only baseball we have to look forward to in March. We are less than four weeks away from Opening Day! This year marks the earliest traditional Opening Day in MLB history, with 14 games scheduled for Thursday, March 26. The night before, the Giants will host the Yankees for the first game of the season. That standalone primetime matchup will air on Netflix of all places, because we all needed another streaming service subscription.

Anyway, in this week’s mailbag, we’ll be answering your questions about the NL Central, the value of a foul ball, a hypothetical Hall of Fame election in which every player regained eligibility for one year, and the most and least valuable baseball last names. Before we do, though, 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. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mets pitching prospect Ryan Lambert’s consumption of copious quantities of raw eggs, then preview the 2026 Chicago Cubs (27:15) with The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma, and the 2026 Cleveland Guardians (1:17:46) with The Athletic’s Zack Meisel, plus a postscript.

Audio intro: Grant Brisbee, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 1: Guy Russo, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 2: Philip Bergman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Daniel Leckie, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Lambert article
Link to Cool Hand Luke scene
Link to Beauty and the Beast scene
Link to Syndergaard “therapies”
Link to Syndergaard velo story 1
Link to Syndergaard velo story 2
Link to pasteurized eggs wiki
Link to eggs and cholesterol link
Link to Ben’s scrambled eggs pic
Link to Ron Swanson clip
Link to team payrolls page
Link to Cubs offseason tracker
Link to Cubs depth chart
Link to Sahadev on Bregman
Link to PCA profile
Link to Sahadev on PCA
Link to Sahadev’s spring questions
Link to Shaw absence article
Link to Sahadev’s author archive
Link to Sahadev’s podcast
Link to Guardians offseason tracker
Link to Guardians depth chart
Link to team wRC+
Link to team RP WAR
Link to team SP projections
Link to framing leaders
Link to Bregman/Aiken article
Link to Zack on Kwan in CF
Link to Vogt MotY article
Link to Zack’s author archive
Link to Zack’s podcast
Link to Skenes article 1
Link to Skenes article 2
Link to Ohtani/Judge article

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A piece titled “Analytically Inclined, Ben Brown Boasts a Power Arsenal” ran here at FanGraphs back on March 13, 2024, two-plus weeks before Brown made his major league debut. Then one of the top pitching prospects in the Chicago Cubs organization, Brown might now be best described as a high-upside hurler with a lot left to prove. The 26-year-old right-hander is coming off a 2025 season in which he logged a 5.92 ERA and 4.08 FIP while allowing 121 hits, 18 of which left the yard, over 106 1/3 innings.

A new addition to his arsenal could be what allows him to turn the corner. Along with an 96-mph four-seam fastball, 87-mph curveball, and 90-mph kick-change, the 6-foot-6 East Setauket, New York native is now throwing a two-seamer.

“I started pitch-designing it during the offseason,” Brown told me at Cubs camp on Wednesday. “I was training in Nashville, picked the brains of some dudes, and it got to the point where I really liked it. I threw probably 15 of them [over two scoreless innings against the Kansas City Royals] the other day and it went well.”

One “dude” in particular played a key role in him learning the pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

As with many of my articles, Wednesday’s piece on Jarren Duran had its genesis in one of my weekly chats, back in early January. With the Red Sox dealing with a crowded outfield, a reader proposed a trade return for Duran, and in the context of sidestepping the specifics of the deal, I offered a rather curt dismissal of Duran as having had “a pretty meh age-28 season” in 2025. When I received pushback for that bit of reflexive hyperbole — which stood in contrast to the more measured answers I generally give at a notoriously slower pace — I offered a table of his monthly batting splits, and rather than let a debate hijack the chat, I squirreled away the idea of writing more in depth about Duran at a later date.

That date arrived earlier this week, as I caught up with some of the outfielder’s recent comments and other news out of Red Sox camp while diving into his 2025 season. In terms of value, Duran’s fall-off from a 6.8-WAR 2024 season to a 3.9-WAR ’25 campaign produced the second-largest drop in WAR among players with at least 600 plate appearances in both seasons. Duran was still quite valuable — tied for 16th among AL position players in WAR — but not exceptional. “Pretty meh” was obviously an overstatement, but as I noted in the chat, Duran’s above-average offensive production (a 111 wRC+) was driven by one exceptional month that papered over three subpar ones and two others more or less in line with his seasonal numbers:

Duran’s July sticks out like a sore thumb; he didn’t have a slugging percentage within 250 points of it, or a wRC+ within 80 points of it, in any of the other five months. Take his midsummer surge — which included 35 total bases in 35 at-bats against the Twins, Rockies, and Nationals — out of the equation and Duran hit just .247/.320/.405 (98 wRC+) in the other five months. Read the rest of this entry »