For much of last summer, it looked as though Enrique Hernández had reached the end of the line with the Dodgers. For as popular as the team’s longtime superutilityman had been, his production was dreadful, and it seemed only a matter of time before he got caught in a numbers game as the team ran out of roster spots. Fortunately for both him and the Dodgers, a visit to the eye doctor helped, his production improved dramatically, and he had some huge moments in October while helping the Dodgers win the World Series. On Sunday afternoon, just before the Super Bowl, Hernández himself announced that he was returning to the fold.

Walking through the open door pic.twitter.com/hsd4IOpva6

— Enrique Hernández (@kikehndez) February 9, 2025

The statement refers to general manager Brandon Gomes’ words at the Dodgers’ recent FanFest. “Obviously, we’ll never close the door to Kiké,” said Gomes of the free agent, who has played a vital part on all four of the Dodgers’ World Series teams during the Dave Roberts era. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Tommy Pham is on the move again. The well-traveled outfielder reportedly agreed to a one-year, $4.025 million deal with the Pirates on Thursday, meaning that he’ll join his ninth team over the past five seasons and the 10th of his 12-year career. Past experience suggests he should probably rent instead of buy.

Pham, who will turn 37 on March 8, spent time with three different teams in 2024. Despite a very solid 2023 showing — .256/.328/.446 (109 wRC+) with 16 homers, 22 steals, and 1.9 WAR — with the Mets and Diamondbacks, he went unsigned through spring training before finally inking a deal with the White Sox in mid-April. He escaped their record-setting futility when he was traded back to the Cardinals (who originally drafted him in 2006) as part of the three-way swap that sent Michael Kopech and Tommy Edman to the Dodgers, and then was plucked off of waivers by the Royals on August 31. At least he’s gotten back-to-back trips to the postseason thanks to all that moving around.

Whether it was because he missed spring training, never stayed in one place for long, or was increasingly subject to the ravages of aging — spending time around those White Sox and Cardinals teams could take years off a man’s life — Pham did not play well in 2024. He hit just .248/.305/.368, setting career lows in on-base percentage and walk rate (7.3%) as well as a full-season low in slugging percentage. (He slugged .312 in 125 plate appearances during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.) He was basically replacement level in 2024, and his 91 wRC+ fit into the weird pattern he’s shown over the past half-decade, with above-average seasons in odd-numbered years and below-average seasons in even-numbered ones. Maybe that bodes well for the Buccos. Read the rest of this entry »

Jose Altuve, left fielder? The nine-time All-Star second baseman first suggested last month that he’d be willing to change positions in order to accommodate the potential return of free agent Alex Bregman. While a reunion with the third baseman may be a long shot at this point, Altuve has spent the past couple weeks taking fly balls. The team indicated earlier this week that he’ll get an extended look at the new position during spring training, and could split his time between left field and second base during the regular season. Whether it will work is another matter.

The Astros still have a six-year, $156 million offer on the table for Bregman, by far the top free agent remaining on the market, but the Tigers are in hot pursuit of him, and the Blue Jays, Cubs, and Red Sox have also shown interest. On Tuesday, Astros general manager Dana Brown made some headlines and raised some eyebrows when he described the team as having “lost [Kyle] Tucker and Bregman,” putting the third baseman in the past tense alongside the since-traded right fielder. However, Brown quickly acknowledged, “We’re continuing to have internal conversations because he’s still available.”

Those discussions have included how the Astros would align their infield in the event Bregman returned. In the December trade that sent Tucker to the Cubs, they received Isaac Paredes, who has major league experience at all four infield positions but has spent 86% of his innings at third over the past two seasons. A week later, they signed free agent Christian Walker to fill their first base vacancy. With Jeremy Peña entrenched at shortstop and Altuve at second, their infield would appear to be a finished product, albeit one that isn’t as good as a version featuring Bregman. Read the rest of this entry »

It was the Before Times, November 21, 2019 to be exact. While dinosaurs no longer roamed the earth, we had yet to learn about COVID-19. Unencumbered, several FanGraphs staffers descended upon Manhattan for a FanGraphs Live event and an Effectively Wild taping. Yours truly was on the Major League Update panel alongside The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler and Marc Carig. Near the end of our half-hour segment, EW co-host Meg Rowley asked us, “What would you change about baseball?… What would you do at this moment, at this juncture, to make baseball more compelling?”

I don’t even recall the answer I intended to give, but after waiting my turn, I built upon one of Marc’s ideas about his desire to see the ball put in play more often. “Start caring about batting average again,” I said. “Because batting average is fun.”

An actual listen to the podcast suggests otherwise, but in my own recollection, it felt like one of those record-scratch moments where everything stops abruptly and you can hear a pin drop. A FanGraphs writer, one with a lengthy track record of applying sabermetric principles, one who made his name with objectivity-based Hall of Fame analysis — that guy, defending batting average? Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Hey folks! Welcome to my Tuesday chat. Please hang tight for a moment as I’m in the midst of conferring with editors about today’s piece

12:05

Jay Jaffe: Ok, I’m back but please bear with me if there are further interruptions. My long-awaited-threatened opus — “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Enjoy Batting Average Again” — is in the editorial pipeline. No, that’s not a joke, it’s a piece that’s five years in the making

12:07

Jay Jaffe: Since the Hall of Fame circus has left town, I’ve gotten back into the business of covering transactions via the Taylor Rogers trade (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/reds-trade-for-taylor-taylor-not-tyler-or-…) and the Max Scherzer signing (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/max-scherzer-takes-flight-to-toronto/)

12:07

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, I’ll link to today’s piece when it’s up. In the meantime, on with the show…

12:09

Jay Jaffe: Thanks for the kind words. The results you cite are a mixed blessing, indeed, but the particularities of the first group lead me to prefer a more inclusive Hall of Fame to a less inclusive one. That said, I’d be happier with the concept of a Trammel/Morris trade-off if it also included Lou Whitaker

Read the rest of this entry »

Max Scherzer is heading north of the border. On the heels of an injury-marred season, the three-time Cy Young winner agreed to a one-year, $15.5 million contract with the Blue Jays on Thursday. The deal is still pending a physical, no trivial matter for a 40-year-old pitcher who was limited to nine starts in 2024.

Scherzer spent the last season and change with the Rangers after being acquired from the Mets ahead of the 2023 trade deadline, and the past three seasons on a three-year, $130 million contract that set a record for the highest average annual value for a pitcher. This time around it’s former Tigers and Mets teammate Justin Verlander, whose subsequent two-year, $86.67 million deal with New York matched Scherzer’s AAV, more or less setting the market for over-40 future Hall of Famers coming off injury plagued seasons for AL West teams. He signed a one-year, $15 million deal with the Giants earlier this month.

The Rangers didn’t get much out of Scherzer, whose time in Texas added up to just 17 regular season and three postseason starts interrupted by five separate trips to the injured list. That count doesn’t even include his being replaced on the World Series roster after leaving Game 3 with back spasms. Fortunately for the Rangers, they wrapped up their win over the Diamondbacks in five games, nipping in the bud any what-might-have-beens regarding Scherzer missing a potential Game 7 start. Read the rest of this entry »

Break up the twins! The Giants did just that on Wednesday, sending lefty Taylor Rogers and cash to the Reds in exchange for minor league righty Braxton Roxby. The move ends the two-year run that paired Rogers with his twin brother Tyler in San Francisco, and fortifies the back end of Cincinnati’s bullpen.

If you don’t have your scorecard handy, this Rogers brother is the lefty who throws from a three-quarters arm slot, with an average release angle of 29 degrees according to Statcast. The one still on the Giants is the righty submariner with an average arm angle of -64 degrees. Trevor Rogers is no relation, and the timing of this morning’s piece by Michael Baumann is just an eerie coincidence.

Taylor Rogers, who turned 34 on December 17 — Tyler did too, to be clear — is coming off a season in which he posted a career-low 2.40 ERA in 60 innings spread across 64 appearances. It was his third year in a row and the sixth time in his nine-year career that he’s reached the 60-game plateau. For as impressive as his ERA was, it was somewhat out of step with his 3.75 FIP and 3.29 xERA. While he lowered his walk rate from an unsightly 11.6% in 2023 to 8.8%, his strikeout rate fell from 29.6% to 25.7%, making his 16.9% K-BB% his worst mark since 2017. This was the third year in a row that Rogers’ strikeout rate has declined, from a high of 35.5% while he was with the Twins (but not with his twin) in 2021. The velocity of his sinker has been on the wane as well, dropping annually from a high of 95.7 mph in 2021 to 93.0 last year.

Rogers’ declining strikeout rate was offset by his dramatic improvement in suppressing hard contact. Where he was significantly below average in both 2022 and ’23, he was among the best in ’24:

So what changed? The big thing is that Rogers threw his sinker more often than his sweeper for the first time since 2020; his share of sinkers rose from 41.3% to 52.8%, and his share of those in the strike zone rose from 40.7% to 54.2%. That increase in sinker usage was sort of a hopping-on-the-bandwagon thing for Rogers, as the Giants threw more sinkers than any other club for the second straight year; their 26.4% rate led the majors, though it was actually down from their 28.1% rate in 2023, the highest of any team since the pandemic-shortened season. Rogers’ sinker was much more effective against righties than it had been in recent years, and while it would be a misnomer to suggest they tattooed his sweeper, both righties and lefties got much better results against it on contact than expected:

Overall, righties hit just .202/.268/.380 (.282 wOBA) against Rogers, while lefties slashed .284/.364/.421 (.343 wOBA). This was the first time Rogers showed a reverse platoon split since 2019, a handy outcome considering 57% of the batters he faced were righties, but it’s not necessarily a split that we should expect to continue. Over the past three years, Rogers has held lefties to a .253 wOBA, compared to .339 for righties.

Rogers joins lefties Sam Moll and Brent Suter in the Cincinnati bullpen. While Rogers has experience closing — he saved 79 games from 2019–22 with the Twins, Padres, and Brewers — he figures to share setup duties with righty Emilio Pagán in front of closer Alexis Díaz. Though he did trim his walk rate late in the season, Díaz was rather erratic last year, pitching to a 3.99 ERA and 4.57 FIP even while converting 28 of 32 save chances, so it’s definitely not a bad thing that Rogers gives new manager Terry Francona a ninth-inning alternative in case Díaz struggles.

The Giants will pay $6 million of the $12 million Rogers will make in the third year of his three-year, $33 million deal, so this is something of a bargain for the Reds. That $6 million bought the Giants the righty Roxby, who turns 26 in March. After going undrafted out of the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Roxby connected with the Reds during a Zoom meeting with the Kyle Boddy, then the team’s director of pitching, and assistant pitching coach Eric Jagers. “[T]hey had video breaking down my mechanics, as well as the analytics of my pitches and how I can use them better,” Roxby told David Laurila in 2021. “That made it hard not to choose them.”

The 6-foot-3, 215-pound Roxby posted a 5.21 ERA but a 28.8% strikeout rate in 48 1/3 innings at Double-A Chattanooga in 2024, his first full season in the upper minors. Eric Longenhagen graded his slider as a plus with his fastball and cutter both above average, though his command is just 30-grade. From Roxby’s prospect report:

Roxby’s fastball was up two ticks in 2024 and now lives in the mid-90s with uphill angle and tail. Roxby’s funky lower slot creates these characteristics. He tends to pitch backwards off of his sweeping mid-80s slider, which he commands better than his fastball. He has the stuff of a pretty standard middle reliever, though Roxby’s command puts him in more of an up/down bucket.

On the subject of the trade, Tyler Rogers shared this very sweet note:

In all, it’s hard to characterize this trade as an impact move for either team, but it is one of several additions the Reds have made this month — most notably the additions of Gavin Lux and Austin Hays — while trying to upgrade from last year’s 77-85 record. Who knows, maybe they’ll trade for Tyler (or Trevor) next?

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! For the first time in awhile I’m on my second chat of the month, as the Hall of Fame election is now behind us

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Before I forget: I’m going to be part of Nick Pollock’s PitchCon this Friday at 3 PM, doing  — what else — a Hall of Fame-related presentation while helping to raise $ for ALS research https://pitcherlist.com/pitchcon/2025/

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Please check it out if so inclined

12:03

Jay Jaffe: I’m very lucky to be in a position where FanGraphs give me as much space to cover the candidates and the Hall of Fame process. It’s a lot of fun, and i know it’s something people care deeply about. As I like to say, it’s been my dumb luck to happen upon a resource that is practically a renewable source of energy

12:05

Jay Jaffe: Given that the Veterans/Era Committees are generally about 50% players, it’s not surprising that they default to the more mainstream statistics which are not only usually offense-related but also centered more around old-school stats (AVG-HR-RBI, W-L) than new-school ones. That’s a lot of what drives the choices — with less thought to defense

12:06

Jay Jaffe: which isn’t to say that WAR and JAWS don’t get mentioned – I’ve been told my stuff gets circulated in the room but that’s not to say it’s driving voters’ choices

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Last week, for the second year in a row, BBWAA voters elected a trio of players to the Hall of Fame, namely first year candidates Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia, plus 10th-year candidate Billy Wagner. Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones both finished within 10 points of election as well, setting themselves up for 2026. With that in mind, it’s time to look ahead to what the next five ballots have in store.

This is the 12th time I’ve broken out my crystal ball in such a manner, dating back to the wrap-up of my 2014 election coverage at SI.com. As of last year, I’ve now done this more times at FanGraphs than Sports Illustrated. That first edition was so long ago that candidates still had 15 years of eligibility instead of 10, and so I could afford to project Tim Raines for election in 2018, his 11th year of eligibility. The Hall’s unilateral decision to truncate candidacies to 10 years would come just months later, though thankfully voters accelerated their acceptance of Raines, who was elected in 2017. Read the rest of this entry »