Back in the fall, Daniel R. Epstein of Baseball Prospectus wrote a couple of articles about where hitters stand in the batter’s box. Statcast released batting stance information last year as part of the ongoing rollout of bat tracking information that started in 2024. Understandably, the location of a hitter’s center of mass got a bit overshadowed by the wealth of information about how their bat moves through space and finds its way to the ball (or not), but Dan did his part to drag it into the light. He found a relationship between contact rate and where the batter stands. Specifically, standing deeper in the box and standing closer to home plate are both associated with higher contact rates.

Both of those findings are intuitive enough. Standing deeper in the box gives you a longer reaction time. It’s no surprise that batters who take advantage of that extra information make more contact. It’s also easy to spot a potential selection bias: The players in the back of the box are likely back there because they’re the kind of contact-oriented players who want the extra reaction time.

I saw less of a physical reason for players who stand farther from home plate to make more contact, unless they stand so far from the plate that they have trouble reaching the outside corner, but (almost) nobody actually does that. It might take your bat head slightly longer to reach the outside part of the plate, but the ideal contact point for an outside pitch is deeper anyway, so I assumed the two would balance out and chalked the difference up to selection bias. Bigger players with longer arms naturally feel more comfortable farther away from home plate, and those bigger players tend to have more powerful swings, which tend to result in more whiffs. Causation isn’t correlation, and I wasn’t ready to go so far as to assume that standing farther away from home plate actually causes a batter to make less contact. Then I watched A League of Their Own again. Read the rest of this entry »

One can’t help but imagine the chagrin of Pete Fairbanks’ dermatologist. The fair-haired closer has spent nearly his entire major league career with the Rays, racking up at least 23 saves in each of the past three seasons. And now, instead of leaving the Sunshine State, he’s traveling even farther south to Miami. The 32-year-old Fairbanks has signed a one-year, $13 million deal with the Marlins. He was the last closer available in free agency, and with Ronny Henriquez out for the season due to a torn UCL, Fairbanks will play a crucial role for a Miami bullpen that finished in the bottom 10 in just about any category you can think of. Will Sammon of The Athletic broke the news, while Jeff Passan of ESPN reported the terms, and Mark Feinsand of MLB.com reported that the contract included a $1 million signing bonus and another $1 million in incentives. According to AJ Eustace of MLB Trade Rumors, Fairbanks would also get a $500,000 bonus if he’s traded.

The move represents a reunion with president of baseball operations Peter Bendix, who previously served as Tampa Bay’s general manager. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Fairbanks made it clear that Bendix’s role with the Marlins was part of their appeal. “To hear all the things that he’s been doing over his tenure down in Miami, from what I’ve heard previously to what I have now, how much things are changing and how much he has been attempting to put his stamp on things. I felt like that made it a pretty easy choice, and I am excited to see the direction that he takes.” (Hat tip to Kevin Barral of Fish on First, who published this quote and the others you’ll read in this article.) Fairbanks also noted that moving just a four-hour drive away from Tampa is a boon because he and his wife are expecting their third child “basically on Opening Day.” This is the first All-Star break baby we write in 2026, but I can assure you that it won’t be the last. Read the rest of this entry »

I got sick last week. So did my wife. We canceled our plans. We spent the weekend horizontal. We watched TV. On Sunday morning, I woke up and found my wife on the couch watching A League of Their Own. I did what anyone does when they catch a glimpse of the greatest baseball movie of all time on television. I sat down and watched the rest of it.

I’m still kind of sick. My wife is still fully sick. A League of Their Own is still on my mind. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the scouting report that Rockford Peaches catcher Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) delivered to pitcher Ellen Sue Gotlander (Freddie Simpson) with two outs and the tying run on first in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7 of the World Series in Racine. I had useful thoughts, and we’ll get to those in a moment. First, though, we’re going to wade through some useless thoughts. I beg you to humor me, because I am about to critique the baseball strategy in a perfect movie. I told you I’m sick.

There’s nothing wrong with making a mound visit in a big moment, giving the pitcher a break and reminding them of the scouting report. But the batter was Hinson’s sister Kit Keller (Lori Petty), who spent nearly the entire season with the Peaches, then faced them throughout the Series, including three times alone in Game 7. There’s no way Ellen Sue needed a refresher on that particular scouting report. Then, there’s the scouting report itself. “High fastballs,” Dottie said. “Can’t hit ‘em, can’t lay off ‘em.” It was right on the money, but they didn’t have to follow it on every single pitch, did they? Once they’d jumped ahead 0-2, did it never occur to Dottie or Ellen Sue to waste a breaking ball in the dirt in order to reset Kit’s eye level? I don’t care who’s at the plate; you can’t throw the same pitch to the same spot three times in a row and expect to get away with it. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a regular FanGraphs reader, then you know that this week, the week after the Winter Meetings, is a week for roundups. The Rangers make a couple moves on a Friday? I’ll bundle them into one snug article. A passel of lefties comes off the board on a Tuesday? Michael Rosen will arrange them into a tidy bouquet. A couple teams talk themselves into believing that they could be the ones to figure out Josh Bell and Adolis García? Michael Baumann will slam his head into the wall repeatedly for our amusement. That’s how it goes.

On Wednesday, Chris Martin, the big, 39-year-old middle reliever from Texas, signed up for one last rodeo with his hometown Rangers. As with many minor deals, no one has reported how much Martin will be paid for the 2026 season. The news seemed all but destined to occupy one quarter of a reliever roundup, but I’d like to give Martin single billing here, because I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job of celebrating just how good he’s been. Let’s start at the beginning. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, the Braves must have liked what they saw. After Atlanta claimed Ha-Seong Kim off waivers in September and watched him decline his $16 million option for the 2026 season, the team is bringing him back on a one-year, $20 million contract. In a rare coup, Jon Heyman scooped the Braves by breaking the news before they could slap some text onto their trusty press release template and post a JPEG to social media. (Peter Labuza of Twins Daily made note of the most important part of the deal: The press release featured no mention of Kim donating 1% of his salary to the Atlanta Braves Foundation.) The reunion isn’t necessarily surprising, as president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos expressed interest in bringing Kim back when he opted out. However, the deal represents a departure from Atlanta’s recent strategy, and doesn’t match most of the estimates of what Kim would get in free agency.

This is the first time the Braves have deigned to spend money on the shortstop position since they let Dansby Swanson walk in 2022. They rolled with Orlando Arcia in 2023, and he rewarded them with a 100 wRC+ and 2.4 WAR. When Arcia reverted back to his career norms with a 72 wRC+ in 2023, the Braves got just 0.7 WAR from the position, fifth worst in the league. The punchless, slick-fielding Nick Allen didn’t work out in 2025, prompting the team to claim Kim; on the year, Atlanta’s 0.4 WAR at short was third from the bottom. They recently traded Allen to Houston in exchange for utilityman Mauricio Dubón, who has surprisingly good numbers at short but isn’t really an everyday option. The Braves are clearly sick of having a gaping black hole at short, but you might not be prepared for just how big a departure this is. Swanson made just $10 million in his final year of arbitration, meaning the Braves are about to spend double the amount they’ve ever spent on a shortstop.

Coming into the offseason, most estimates had Kim signing a deal like the one he signed with the Rays last year: two or three years with an opt-out for something like $15 million per year. That made sense, because he was still in a similar position. After a brilliant seven-year KBO career, Kim struggled in his first stateside campaign, then settled in as a reliably above-average middle infielder for the Padres. From 2022 to 2024, he combined great defense with a 106 wRC+, averaging 3.7 WAR per 150 games. That’s a borderline All-Star at a premium position. In 2023, Kim won a Gold Glove and earned some MVP votes. He looked primed for a payday and a long contract heading into free agency. Instead, he tore the labrum in his right shoulder diving back into first base against the Rockies in August 2024. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rangers had just 35 players on their 40-man roster at the end of the Winter Meetings, and they did their best to rectify the situation on Friday, signing catcher Danny Jansen to a two-year deal and relievers Alexis Díaz and Tyler Alexander to one-year deals. The three moves have not yet been officially announced by the club, but with the agreements, the roster is starting to look not just fuller, but much more settled. These moves may look underwhelming on the surface, but Jansen fills the team’s biggest hole, and the relievers give the Rangers the kind of upside play they’ll need to find their way back into the playoff picture in 2026.

We’ll start with Jansen, who has agreed to a two-year, $14.5 million contract, according to Robert Murray of FanSided. He is the youngest of the three catchers who made our Top 50 Free Agents list, slotting in at 38th between J.T. Realmuto (30th) and Victor Caratini (39th). Jansen beat Ben Clemens’ estimated one year and $9 million contract, and the Rangers got an extra year at a lower AAV. You may be inclined to chalk that up the relative weakness of the catcher market, but keep in mind that last year, Jansen was the only catcher to make the top 50, and the Rays gave him one year and $8.5 million. Read the rest of this entry »

How many outfielders does one team need? It really, really depends on who you ask. On Thursday, the Royals and Brewers decided that they needed to add at least one more each to their very differently sized stores. Kansas City signed Lane Thomas to a one-year deal for $5.2 million, with up to another million in incentives, according to Will Sammon of The Athletic and Mark Feinsand of MLB.com, while Milwaukee agreed to a major league deal with Akil Baddoo, the terms of which are not yet known, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. It’s safe to assume it’s a split contract, as Baddoo still has one minor league option left.

Thomas is by far the bigger addition, but we’re going to start in Milwaukee in order to highlight two very different approaches to building an outfield. Read the rest of this entry »

ORLANDO — Congratulations, everybody. We made it. It’s now Thursday, and the Winter Meetings have officially concluded. It’s time to reflect on the state of effort in Major League Baseball, and I am pleased to report that it is strong. At this time last year, we had seen 22 We Trieds (though a few more would be added retroactively due to a rule clarification). As of now, we’re sitting at 24, so let’s take a moment to congratulate all the agents, the anonymous sources, and the reporters who took us this far. As always, I invite you to peruse this vast bounty on the official We Tried Tracker.

Before we break down the last couple days, I should start with an important update on the most recent entry of this series. When news broke that the Giants asked for Tatsuya Imai’s medicals even though they didn’t plan on pursuing him, I gave it an intentionally cumbersome moniker: We’re Not Even Going To Try, So Don’t Bother Getting Your Hopes Up. This was a classic defense mechanism. I went with the big, long name to deflect from the fact that I couldn’t come up with a clever, pithy one. But the right name came to me this week. In the future, such a move will be known as a Pre-Tried. I have spoken.

Since that last update, Bob Nightengale took a new angle on this exercise, packaging the news that the Reds “were hoping to sign” Devin Williams with the news that they had actually re-signed Emilio Pagán. It’s a brilliant maneuver. You sign a lesser player while also announcing that you were also thinking even bigger. We Trieds are all about partial credit, but here are the Reds, breaking out the razzle dazzle and running an end-around in a bid for double credit!

This strategy is also something of a double-edged sword, though. Some fans might give the Reds the double credit they want, but it’s also easy to take the information in the other direction. The Reds held onto a good reliever, Reds fans! Let’s celebrate! Oh, also, they only got him because they tried and failed to get an even better reliever? Do you still want to celebrate? Try pulling that move with a child. Take them to an ice cream shop and get them a kid’s cone. Once they’ve given it a big lick and smiled their adorable little smile, lean over and say, “You know, I was hoping to get you a giant ice cream sundae, but you’ll have to settle for this little one because the New York Mets ordered it first.” Read the rest of this entry »

The first day of the Winter Meetings turns out to have been the calm before the storm, but it did end with a modest bang. Late Monday night, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reported that left-hander Steven Matz has agreed to a two-year deal with the Rays. Many details have yet to be reported. The dollar amount is unknown, and it’s not immediately clear whether Matz will slot into the bullpen or the rotation. What is known is that the 34-year-old is coming off an excellent 2025 season, his first as a full-time reliever after 11 years in the majors, and his first without spending a single day on the IL. Matz started the season with the Cardinals before getting dealt to Boston at the deadline. He ran a 3.05 ERA and 3.46 FIP over 53 appearances, including a hot stretch with a 2.08 ERA after the move.

Matz is a sinkerballing left-hander with a career 46% groundball rate. A second-round pick by the Mets in the 2009 draft, he suffered a series of injuries in the minors, including a UCL tear. He debuted in 2015, the last member to debut out of the fearsome youth movement that included Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Zack Wheeler, and Noah Syndergaard. After all that waiting, Matz succeeded immediately, posting a 2.27 ERA over six starts and pitching well in the team’s World Series run. He followed that up in 2016 by going 13-8 with a 3.16 ERA and 3.44 FIP and picking up a Rookie of the Year vote. Unfortunately, the injuries kept coming: back spasm, elbow tightness, shoulder strain, bone spurs, flexor tendon strain, ulnar nerve transposition, finger strain, forearm strain, shoulder impingement. Amazingly, Matz still reached 30 starts twice in his six years with the Mets (and made a full complement of starts in the shortened 2020 season), but he combined for a 4.35 ERA and 4.49 FIP, putting up just 5.1 WAR.

The Mets traded Matz to Toronto in 2021, and he had arguably the most productive season of his career, running a 3.82 ERA and 3.79 FIP over 29 starts and 150 2/3 innings. He parlayed that success into a four-year deal with the Cardinals. His performance was up and down in St. Louis; he continued to deal with injuries and posted ERAs over 5.00 in 2022 and 2024. He put up solid numbers in 2023, but things looked different in 2025. After filling a swingman role in previous seasons, Matz spent the nearly the entire 2025 campaign in the bullpen, where he flourished. (He made two spot starts for St. Louis.) He went more than an inning in 25 out of his 53 appearances, and he was one of just 39 pitchers to throw at least 75 innings and run both an ERA and FIP below 3.50. The Cardinals traded Matz to the Red Sox at the deadline, and he made two more scoreless appearances against the Yankees in the Wild Card Series. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Soroka is getting another chance to start. Bright and early on Monday morning, Jesse Rogers and Jeff Passan of ESPN kicked off the Winter Meetings with news that the right-handed former sinkerballer has agreed to a one-year deal with the Diamondbacks. Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reported that the deal is for one year and $7.5 million, along with up to $2 million in incentives. Soroka slots into a new team as a starter for the second year in a row after struggling in the rotation and then pitching better out of the bullpen. He’ll now do so for a Diamondbacks team in desperate need of starting pitching, as both Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly have entered free agency. It’s a small gamble on a pitcher whose upside isn’t necessarily set in stone.

Still just 28, Soroka has already walked a long road. The Braves’ first-round pick out of high school in 2015, he debuted in 2018 at the age of 20. He dominated in 2019, going 13-4 with a 2.68 ERA and 3.45 FIP, and finishing second in the Rookie of the Year voting and sixth in the Cy Young voting. A sinkerballer by trade, he ran a 51% groundball rate and allowed just 0.72 homers per nine innings. He was one of the most promising young arms in the game. Then he tore his Achilles tendon in both 2020 and 2021 and followed those up with shoulder injuries. From 2020 to 2023, he made just 10 major league appearances, missing the 2021 and 2022 seasons entirely. Read the rest of this entry »