Something might be brewing in Sacramento. The 2024 A’s beat expectations by a mile, though expectations were admittedly muted coming off of a disastrous 2023, and this offseason has seen the club be quite busy. The team’s best player, Brent Rooker, signed an extension that will keep him around through at least 2029, well past when the A’s are scheduled to move to Las Vegas. The pitching staff looks much improved, thanks to the surprise signing of Luis Severino and a trade for Jeffrey Springs. And now last year’s second-best player, Lawrence Butler, has signed a contract extension too:

BREAKING: Outfielder Lawrence Butler and the A’s are in agreement on a seven-year, $66.5 million contract extension with one club option, sources tell ESPN. Butler, 24, broke out as a rookie last year and is seen as a foundational player for the A’s moving forward.

— Jeff Passan (@jeffpasan.bsky.social) 2025-03-07T04:22:52.566Z

A year ago, this contract would have been mind-boggling. Butler debuted in the bigs in 2023 with an uneven two months of work. His minor league track record suggested intriguing upside – he flashed excellent power while climbing the ranks and was only in a position to struggle in the majors because he’d reached Triple-A at age 22 – but like so many A’s, he was a question mark, a talented youngster with some good signs and some red flags.

The A’s started 2024 hot, at least by their standards, but Butler didn’t. After breaking camp with the team, he ran into a huge power outage. Over 121 plate appearances, he managed just two homers en route to a .179/.281/.274 slash line, so the A’s sent him back down to Triple-A. What can you do? Sometimes your 23-year-old who never played above A-ball until a year ago needs a bit of extra seasoning. Read the rest of this entry »

As I write this, the winter free agency period has essentially drawn to a close. Out of the top 50 free agents I highlighted before the offseason began, 48 have found homes — sorry, David Robertson and Kyle Gibson. Per RosterResource, only five free agents – including the two holdovers from the top 50 – accrued 1 WAR or more in 2024 and haven’t yet signed new deals. In other words, all the signing that is going to happen basically has, so it’s time to look back and see how you and I did at predicting the deals players would sign.

I like to evaluate my own predictions in service of making better ones in the future, dividing them up into a few categories. First, I break signings down by position, because the market for relievers and second basemen is different. Second, I look at both average annual value and total guarantee. There’s no set ratio for how to relate those two, so looking at each independently seems best to me. Finally, I look at both the individual predictions (how close to the actual contract that a player signed my predictions came), as well as the overall trend (how my aggregate predictions for each position group did compared to the total amount they received).

This year, I made all of that back-checking more rigorous. I put all of my predictions, as well as every crowdsourced one, into a giant spreadsheet. I noted all the contracts that were signed, made adjustments for deferrals, and ignored non-guaranteed money. I compared each actual contract to our predictions. I also gathered some of the best non-FanGraphs predictions I could find, looking to outlets like ESPN, The Athletic, and MLB Trade Rumors. Below, you’ll find how both the crowd (you) and I did, as well as the best non-FanGraphs entrant in each category. Read the rest of this entry »

I got my start in baseball writing as a Cardinals blogger. That’s only natural – I’m a Cardinals fan. My dad grew up in St. Louis and passed it on to me. I’m still a fan, though certainly less than I was before I started writing about the sport as my full-time job. But whether you’re looking at it through the lens of a fan or just as an analyst, the trajectory of this always-competing, never-quite-dominant team has been fascinating to watch.

I had a strange feeling while watching the Redbirds last year. I kept wondering, “Why is this team full of old guys?” Ever since the 2011 World Series win, Albert Pujols’ first finale in St. Louis, the team always seemed full of young, devil-magicky contributors. An average Cards roster had a few recognizable stars plus a bunch of young guys you’d never heard of who were way better than you initially realized. Matt Carpenter and Michael Wacha were unexpected stars in 2013. Carlos Martínez and Kolten Wong came on strong. After a few years of missing the playoffs despite interesting young contributors (Tommy Pham, Randal Grichuk, Luke Weaver), the 2019 Cards coalesced around Jack Flaherty, Tommy Edman, and Paul DeJong.

You’ve heard of all of those players, of course, but at the time, they were young up-and-comers. The Cardinals never seemed to be old despite running out Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright year after year. Those guys were a key veteran core, helping to spread the team gospel to the young horde backing them up. But even with those old hands running things, my view of the Cards as a youthful outfit was correct. From 2013 through 2018, St. Louis’ roster was younger than average every year. Then they were ever so slightly older than league average in 2019 and again in 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

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They’ve changed the rules to make it easier to steal bases. That’s not my conjecture. That’s just the truth. By limiting the number of pickoffs and setting a timer that baserunners can use to establish a rhythm, the game has changed completely. Obviously, it has. You knew this. There were 158 baserunners who tried to steal 10 or more times last season, up from 115 in the final year before the rule changes. Most of them were incredibly successful, too: Those 158 stole at an aggregate 80.4% clip.

That’s not all that interesting, to be honest. You knew it already. But what you might not know? Three baserunners apparently didn’t get the memo. Ryan McMahon, Nicky Lopez, and Vidal Bruján all attempted double digit steals and got thrown out more than half the time. I had to know more, so I tried to see what had gone wrong for these three would-be thieves. Read the rest of this entry »

Catcher is a thankless job. If you do it successfully, perfectly even, that means that you’re letting highly paid professionals whip projectiles at you as hard as they can hundreds of times a day. Sometimes, other highly paid professionals will divert these projectiles toward you at the last second, or inadvertently hit you with the giant wooden sticks they’re carrying. You have to dive around and flail your limbs, because the only thing worse than getting hit by one of these balls is not getting hit by them; letting them fly by hurts your team. People try to steal from you constantly, so while you’re trying to catch a rock-hard 100-mph pellet, you also have to scan your peripherals. And if all of that isn’t bad enough, here’s the worst part: Sometimes your manager chooses to start Martín Maldonado ahead of you.

I kid, of course, but I’m writing about Yainer Diaz today, and his gradual phase-in to the major leagues is a key part of his major league career so far. Diaz burst onto the big league scene in 2023 with the kind of approach that makes hitting instructors wince, then shrug their shoulders and nod. He swung early and often, took big hacks, and generally acted like he was allergic to taking walks or hitting singles. It worked. He clobbered 23 homers in only 377 plate appearances, spraying loud contact to all fields. He played better-than-expected defense, too, belying his early scouting reports.

Despite that excellent rookie season, Diaz couldn’t displace an aging Maldonado as the team’s primary catcher; he took some reps at DH, but lost those as well when the team got healthy. By the playoffs, he was an afterthought, a pure backup catcher. But when Maldonado (and manager Dusty Baker) departed in the offseason, Diaz ascended to a starting job. Then he struggled – through the All-Star break, he was hitting a so-so .284/.308/.409 with iffy defense. If you’re more of a WAR person, that’s 1.1 WAR, not great. Here’s one story you could tell about Yainer Diaz: a prospect who struggled to break through with regular playing time.
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You have to hand it to the Mets. There really does seem to be something ineffable that brings drama to Queens. No, I don’t mean the LOLMets meme, the belief that things will find a way to break every year, because I don’t really think it’s true. The Mets aren’t cursed. But they do have a way of making things interesting. It’s never all smooth sailing, but they’re never completely down and out either. There’s always a little more to explore at Citi Field, and this offseason is no exception. The Mets are on top of the world, because they signed Juan Soto, one of the biggest free agent prizes of all time. And they have their backs to the wall, because two pitchers they signed to assemble a playoff rotation are already injured.

Frankie Montas was the first casualty. He felt discomfort after his very first bullpen session of spring training, and a lat sprain means that he won’t be able to throw for another 5-7 weeks. Given that the regular season is five weeks away, and that Montas had done essentially no buildup before his injury, we’re talking about multiple months of absence.

The good news is the Mets built their rotation this offseason to withstand injuries. After all, Montas wasn’t the most prominent starting pitcher they signed this winter. Sean Manaea holds that distinction; he was the best pitcher on last year’s team, and though he hit free agency, he signed a three-year deal worth $75 million to come back. That’s not quite ace money in today’s game, which is perfect: Manaea’s not quite an ace, just a solid playoff starter with upside. Except, he’s also hurt now. After feeling some discomfort of his own, an MRI revealed a right oblique strain.
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The first baseball cap I remember buying was a gorgeous Orioles throwback. I’m not sure what exactly drew me to it. Maybe it was my mom’s lifelong Orioles fandom. Maybe it had to do with the crisp colors. Maybe I’d just listened to noted ornithological transporter Jay-Z on the drive to West Town Mall. “Before Mitchel and Ness did it/I was moving birds like an Oriole fitted/I’m Cal Ripken Jr., let’s get it” always got me excited to watch some baseball. Whatever the reason was, though, that hat called out to me, so I paid an exorbitant price for something I ended up not wearing very frequently.

I’m telling you this story for a few reasons. First, I want to establish my bona fides as someone who has always had a soft spot for the O’s. Second, I get to show my age a bit — I was in high school when The Blueprint 2 came out. Third, who doesn’t like telling stories? But the main reason is that ledes are hard to write, and I want to talk about the O’s today. To quote Jay-Z: Let’s get it.

A recent Ken Rosenthal article had me double-checking payroll lists and salary tables. The Orioles – the Orioles!! – were listed as the team who increased its payroll by the most from 2024 to 2025. I looked at that for a little bit, looked at the data to confirm that the never-errant Rosenthal had, in fact, not erred, and then I let out a long puzzled sigh. It’s true! The O’s have opened the purse strings this winter. There are a few ways to calculate payroll, but based on the yearly expenditures listed in RosterResource, here are the top five payroll increases across the majors:

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The biggest remaining free agent of the 2024-25 offseason is off the board. In a splashy signing Wednesday night, the Boston Red Sox and Alex Bregman agreed to a three-year, $120 million deal. There’s no shortage of things I want to say about this match of team and player, so let’s stop with this boring introduction already and get right into it.

The Team

The Red Sox needed Bregman, or someone like him, badly. Just one problem – there was no one else like him. When Dan Szymborski ran the numbers last week, he found that the Sox were one of the teams who would receive the greatest boost in playoff odds from signing Houston’s long-time third baseman. Per Dan, Bregman adds 10.8 percentage points to Boston’s chances of reaching October.

The Red Sox play in the toughest division in baseball. They have some holes in their lineup, particularly a decided lack of juice at the bottom of the order. Their bullpen projects well but is packed with uncertainty. A sure thing was just what they needed. Bregman is just that. Since his 2016 debut, he’s been the 10th-best hitter in baseball according to our measure of WAR. “Oh, but Ben, he’s old, he’s faded, he’s past his prime, no one cares about 2019.” Yeah, well, over the last four years, Bregman has been the 11th-best position player in baseball. So much for a decline phase.
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In the middle of the 2024 season, MLB released bat tracking data for the current year. It was a huge revolution in publicly available data, taking something previously observable but not measurable and turning it into numbers. You can see how hard Giancarlo Stanton swings, but now you can also quantify how different that is from other large hitters. Luis Arraez’s superhuman coordination is obvious from watching him play. But in terms of getting his barrel on the ball, relative to the rest of the league, how superhuman is he? Now we know. I think that public research on this front is likely to deliver more and more insights in the coming years.

Of course, what we all wanted to know about bat speed wasn’t available right away. Namely: How does it change? Was Ronald Acuña Jr.’s disappointing start to the season related to an inability to impact the ball with force? Did Matt Olson’s decline have more to do with bat speed or plate discipline? Also, plenty of non-Braves questions, presumably. In any case, we couldn’t say much about that because all we had were the 2024 numbers.

Guess what: Now we have some 2023 data. MLB and Statcast released 2023 data starting after the All-Star break, the earliest data we’ll ever get because that’s when the bat tracking infrastructure got going. Obviously, we’re also going to get more year-over-year data when the 2025 season starts. But our first crack at multiple seasons of data is still noteworthy, so I set out to look through the numbers and came to a few conclusions. I don’t intend for these to be comprehensive, and I’m sure that a measured and careful approach is going to tease out some new insights that I don’t have. But the data came out yesterday, and here are a few highlights.
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