You’ve already heard it from me. You’ve already heard it from a lot of people. You’re going to keep hearing it all offseason. This is a tough year for teams that want to add offensive firepower in free agency. Unless you’re really into Cody Bellinger or Matt Chapman, it’s Shohei Ohtani or bust, and according to my math, there are 30 teams and only one Ohtani.

That’s a bleak reality, but it paints with too broad of a brush. That description makes it sound like every team who needs a hitter to play anywhere is in equally dire straits. That’s not true, though. If you’re looking for a third baseman or a righty power bat with questionable defensive value, you have options. If you want to sign an intriguing young corner outfielder who might pay dividends a few years down the road, Jung-hoo Lee is a solid choice. But if you’re looking for a catcher – sorry, pal, nothing to see here.

Every year is a bad year for free agent catchers. In the last five years, three catchers have hit the open market after a 3-plus WAR season or its 2020 equivalent: J.T. Realmuto, James McCann, and Willson Contreras. Realmuto was a perennial All-Star when he re-upped with the Phillies, and Contreras has been a valuable offensive contributor for quite some time, but McCann only barely qualifies; he put together a nice season over 111 plate appearances in 2020. If you’re looking for a star catcher, free agency is the wrong place to set your sights. Read the rest of this entry »

In the offseason, there’s no live major league baseball to watch. I’m a lazy consumer, so I don’t watch much LIDOM action; I catch bits and pieces here and there, but for the most part, the winter is when I recharge my baseball batteries and do a little film study.

I can hear what you’re saying: film study? I don’t play, and I don’t coach. I can’t develop some secret sauce that will help me win next year by grinding in the film room in December. For me, though, it’s just fun. Other than the fact that I’m nothing like Roger Federer, I completely identify with what he said about studying tape: “I used to do a lot of video analysis early on, but more for pleasure and looking at my own technique.”

Fine, I’m not watching my own technique, but I do like rewatching games from this year for my own enjoyment. I’m not so much trying to fix something for 2024 as trying to look back at 2023 and smile. Oh, you’d like an example? I’m glad you asked. Here’s the video I’ve been watching most recently: three delightfully ridiculous umpiring calls. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe you’ve heard, but the Diamondbacks bunted a lot this postseason. I’m underselling it, of course — you definitely heard it. Maybe you saw Michael Baumann’s blow-by-blow recap of all the bunts. Maybe you read about Evan Longoria’s freelancing. Maybe you read Patrick Dubuque’s breakdown of teams trying to copy Arizona. Just yesterday, Russell Carleton actually went through all the math of which bunts are getting more popular league-wide in a typically excellent article. Maybe you read any of the countless other takes on it. But I have a different view. I think the Diamondbacks are being misrepresented. I think that it was more a case of a few opportunistic bunters than a team policy, and that their bunts didn’t alter the course of their offensive destiny much at all.

You’ve surely heard, in all that recounting, that the Diamondbacks led the majors in sacrifice bunts this year. It’s true! They also bunted a lot – either 68 or 69 times, depending on which bunt classification database you want to use. Corbin Carroll and Geraldo Perdomo combined to bunt 36 times this regular season. Perdomo was second in the majors in bunt attempts; Carroll was in the top 15. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Adolis García and Josh Jung were important, too. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Nathan Eovaldi is valuable because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process.

One note: In the pitching section, I took a more specific look at reliever matchups. This 2022 Cameron Grove study measures a repeat-matchup reliever penalty. A recent article examines the issue without focusing on specific matchups, but rather looking at relievers pitching on back-to-back days or on short rest after heavy workloads. Both of these things are, unsurprisingly, bad for reliever performance. Managing the balance between starter and reliever over-work is really hard. I probably haven’t given enough credit to the necessity of balancing bullpen workloads against particular opposing batters in the past, but I’ll make a note of it going forward. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Corbin Carroll and Evan Carter were important, too. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Corey Seager is valuable because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process.

One note: In the pitching section, I took a more specific look at reliever matchups. This 2022 Cameron Grove study measures a repeat-matchup reliever penalty. A recent article examines the issue without focusing on specific matchups, but rather looking at relievers pitching on back-to-back days or on short rest after heavy workloads. Both of these things are, unsurprisingly, bad for reliever performance. Managing the balance between starter and reliever over-work is really hard. I probably haven’t given enough credit to the necessity of balancing bullpen workloads against particular opposing batters in the past, but I’ll make a note of it going forward.

I’ve already covered the losing managers of the Wild Card round, the various Division Series eliminations, the ALCS, and the NLCS. Today, it’s Torey Lovullo’s turn. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the offseason. As is customary, FanGraphs’ annual top 50 free agent rankings come out the week after the World Series. In recent years, we’ve rotated through the writers principally responsible for the list – first Dave Cameron, then Kiley McDaniel, Craig Edwards, and, more recently, me. I’m back this year and I’ve brought help: the FanGraphs staff contributed mightily to this piece.

Below, I’ve provided contract estimates and rankings of the winter’s top free agents, along with market-focused breakdowns for the top 25 players. That could be a quick discussion of where a player might sign, what a team might look for, or even just statistical analysis masquerading as market analysis – I’m an analyst at heart and never stray far from my roots. Meanwhile, a combination of Davy Andrews, Michael Baumann, Chris Gilligan, Jay Jaffe, Kyle Kishimoto, David Laurila, Eric Longenhagen, Leo Morgenstern, Dan Szymborski, and Esteban Rivera supplied player-focused breakdowns, which are designed to provide some context for each player at this moment in his career. Special thanks to David Appelman, Sean Dolinar, Jason Martinez, and Meg Rowley for their help behind the scenes.

The players are ranked in the order in which I prefer them. That’s often the same as ranking them in contract order, but not always. In some cases, I prefer a player I expect will get less money over one who stands to make more. I’ll generally make note of that in the accompanying comment, but just to reiterate, this list isn’t exclusively sorted by descending average annual value or anything like that. All of the dollar amounts are estimated guarantees. Plenty of contracts will include team options or player incentives, but those aren’t included here. Player opt outs are similarly not included. Unless otherwise noted, the projections below are Steamer 2024 projections, but use our Depth Chart playing time allocations. The listed ages indicate the age-season the player is about to play. Every player’s crowdsourced projection will appear alongside my projection, with the exception of Yariel Rodriguez, who we did not poll on due to a slip up on my and Meg’s part. Read the rest of this entry »

Tommy Pham got benched this postseason. That probably sounds weird to you, and for good reason. He’s been one of Arizona’s most consistent players in the World Series, with hits in every game and a boatload of loud contact. But not so long ago – Game 5 of the NLCS, to be precise – Torey Lovullo sent Pham to the bench and didn’t even call on him to pinch-hit.

Why? It’s pretty simple: Pham wasn’t hitting. He struck out six times in his first 13 plate appearances of the championship series. More broadly, he was mired in a postseason-long funk. He was hitting .229/.250/.314 in October, and his peripherals were somehow even worse than that. He posted a 2.8% walk rate and 30.6% strikeout rate. His chase rate was up five percentage points compared to the regular season. His hard-hit rate was down, albeit in a tiny sample. Don’t write this off as merely a random blip; Pham was legitimately playing worse, and the poor results were a natural consequence.

While Torey Lovullo phrased it as more of a rest day – “I just was giving him a little bit of a blow,” he told Sam Blum – I think there was a little more to it than that. Zack Wheeler, the pitcher that night, has an expansive arsenal, but against righties, he tends to feature his sinker and sweeper. Sinkers might be Pham’s greatest weakness. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you like pitchers? Of course you do – you’re reading a recap of a World Series game on FanGraphs. Good news, then: Game 4 had so many pitchers. Swingmen, high-leverage guys, LOOGYs, ROOGYs, forgotten starters who had accumulated a light covering of dust throughout the playoffs, closers, setup men. You name it, this one had it. Unless, of course, you were rooting for the Diamondbacks.

When bullpen games work, a whirling mass of relievers traipse onto the mound and befuddle the hitters. When bullpen games don’t work, a whirling mass of relievers still traipse onto the mound, but with significantly less befuddling. Tuesday was one of those nights.

Joe Mantiply started off smoothly for the Diamondbacks, with four outs among the first six hitters. The bottom of the lineup was up, but Mantiply had already thrown 28 pitches, and Torey Lovullo started the bullpen carousel. Miguel Castro came in – and then things fell apart.

Castro retired the first batter he faced, but he just didn’t have it. Even that at-bat featured spotty command, and things got worse from there. With Leody Taveras batting, Castro uncorked a wild pitch that allowed a run to score. Then he walked Taveras. Then Travis Jankowski, who had only batted twice this postseason and was only in the lineup due to Adolis García’s oblique injury, laced a line drive single. Suddenly Texas’ best hitters were up with a chance to do damage. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Josh Jung and Geraldo Perdomo have been important, too. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Nathan Eovaldi is valuable because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. Read the rest of this entry »