After an impressive rookie season for the Rockies in 2023, Nolan Jones struggled mightily last year, missing roughly two and a half months due to recurring lower back woes and a left knee injury, and slipping below replacement level when he was able to play. On Saturday, the Rockies traded him back to the Guardians — the team that originally drafted and developed him — in exchange for superutilityman Tyler Freeman. It’s puzzling to see the Rockies punt a player who just a year ago appeared to be a franchise cornerstone, particularly as their acquisition of Freeman is driven by the loss of starting second baseman Thairo Estrada to a broken wrist, a short-term problem considering Colorado is unlikely to contend this season.

The 26-year-old Jones hit just .227/.321/.320 (70 wRC+) with three homers in 297 plate appearances for the Rockies last season while splitting his time between left and right field. His 67-point drop from his 137 wRC+ in 2023 tied for the second largest in the majors:

While Jones has shown that he can be a productive major leaguer, the same can’t yet be said for the 25-year-old Freeman, who hit .209/.305/.321 with seven homers in 383 PA for the Guardians last year while mainly playing center field but spotting at second base, shortstop, and third base. His 84 wRC+ was his highest mark in parts of three major league seasons, which isn’t saying much. Read the rest of this entry »

As spring training nears its conclusion, a few unsigned free agents have finally found homes. At best only one of these players will be ready for the majors in time to make the Opening Day roster, and all of them struggled to at least some extent last year, but at the very least, they’ll get another chance to extend their careers by providing depth to organizations hit by injuries. A double whammy of bad luck within their rotation has led the Rangers to sign lefty Patrick Corbin, while the Braves have triple dipped into the pool to sign catcher James McCann, outfielder Alex Verdugo, and reliever Craig Kimbrel.

On Tuesday, March 11 — the day I checked in on the Rangers in the wake of Jacob deGrom’s Cactus League debut — righty Tyler Mahle was scratched from his scheduled start due to forearm soreness, though he was able to take a start against minor leaguers on March 13 and returned to big league action on March 19. Texas wasn’t so lucky when it came to lefty Cody Bradford, who was scratched from his scheduled March 12 start due to left elbow soreness. He’s been shut down from throwing for four weeks and ticketed for the 15-day injured list to start the season; barring any further setbacks, a full buildup would bring him back in mid-May. Then on March 15, righty Jon Gray was hit by a line drive and suffered a fractured right wrist that knocked him onto the 60-day injured list. The break is clean enough that he won’t need surgery, but he’ll be out until at least June.

Given those injuries — and assuming no other ones occur — the Rangers are on track to start the season with an all-righty rotation consisting of Nathan Eovaldi, deGrom (who threw a mere 10 2/3 innings for the Rangers last September after returning from his second Tommy John surgery), Mahle (who threw just 12 2/3 innings between his return from Tommy John surgery and a season-ending bout of shoulder tightness), and former first-round picks Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter, who each made their debuts last year. Rocker made three starts totaling 11 2/3 innings while pitching reasonably well, but Leiter was lit for an 8.83 ERA in six starts and three relief appearances totaling 35 2/3 innings. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year’s edition of the center field Positional Power Rankings marked a changing of the guard. With Julio Rodríguez and the Mariners taking over the top spot, it was the first time since 2013 that the Mike Trout-led Angels did not lead the pack. The times have continued a-changin’, as Trout is no longer a center fielder and the assortment of ex-prospects the Angels are running out in his stead have sunk to 27th. Meanwhile, Aaron Judge is no longer pushing the Yankees to the second spot, as the combination of Juan Soto’s crosstown move and Giancarlo Stanton’s elbow woes has freed the two-time MVP to return to right field, with occasional time at DH. Read the rest of this entry »

Who’s on third? For the Red Sox, the answer appears to be Alex Bregman. When the two-time All-Star and reigning AL Gold Glove third baseman signed with Boston last month, the move created controversy given the presence and the initial public reaction of Rafael Devers, a three-time All-Star and, because of his 10-year contract, the cornerstone of the franchise. These things have a way of working themselves out, however, and Bregman is now on track to handle the hot corner to start the season, with Devers serving as the designated hitter — a move that should strengthen the lineup and defense.

The 30-year-old Bregman agreed to a three-year, $120 million deal with the Red Sox on February 12. When he signed, several outlets noted the likelihood, or at least the possibility, that he would switch from the position at which he’s spent most of his nine-year major league career, particularly as the Red Sox had already acknowledged the situation. When the team was courting Bregman in January, manager Alex Cora — who coached him in Houston — told NESN viewers of his previous experience with the infielder:

“Alex was a Gold Glover at third base. We all know that… But in 2017, I had a conversation with him and he needed to play third because it was [Carlos] Correa and [Jose] Altuve [at shortstop and second]. I always envisioned Alex as a Gold Glove second baseman. His size, the way he moves, it felt kind of like, ‘You will be a second baseman.’ But he has played third base at a high level. So we’ll see where he ends up and we’ll see where he ends up playing.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Ronald Acuña Jr. did something we’ve never seen in 2023, becoming the first player to combine at least 40 homers and 70 stolen bases in the same season en route to NL MVP honors. Unfortunately, Acuña followed up that spectacular season by doing something we had seen before when he tore his anterior cruciate ligament. Having already torn his right ACL just before the All-Star break in 2021, he tore his left one last May 26. While he was playing defense for the first one and stealing a base for the second, the end result was the same: season-ending surgery and a massive hole in the Braves’ lineup. The team has taken his rehab more slowly this time around. Acuña will start the year on the injured list, and likely miss the first month if not more.

When Acuña reported to camp in mid-February, the Braves said that he wouldn’t play in any Grapefruit League games. The 27-year-old slugger has since been cleared for some baseball activity, and has been entertaining onlookers with his long-distance home runs in batting practice, building a legend in the process. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Ken Suguria, Braves manager Brian Snitker claimed that one Acuña homer cleared a video board beyond left center field at CoolToday Park, the team’s spring facility — a shot that would have traveled at least 450 feet.

“[Hitting coach Tim Hyers] was saying he was in the cage the other day and [Acuña was] whistling that bat around like guys would do a Wiffle bat,” Snitker told reporters. “He’s probably as strong as he’s ever been right now.” Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob deGrom made his Cactus League debut on Saturday, tossing two perfect innings against the Royals and looking dominant while doing so. The 36-year-old righty, who returned from his second Tommy John surgery to make three abbreviated starts last September, projects to be the team’s most valuable starter, even while pitching at the back of the rotation in order to limit his innings. He’s the most substantial “addition” to a team that succumbed to a championship hangover last year but is forecast (barely) to have the upper hand in a three-way race in the AL West.

After winning the 2023 World Series in manager Bruce Bochy’s return to the dugout, so much went wrong for the Rangers in terms of injury and underperformance last season that they slipped to 78 wins and third place in the AL West. But while the Astros traded Kyle Tucker and lost Alex Bregman this winter, and the Mariners mostly sat on their hands, the Rangers had a comparatively productive winter, with general manager Chris Young making a couple key trades and adding a handful of free agents to augment their lineup and overhaul their bullpen. Our Playoff Odds currently project Texas for 84.8 wins and a 32.8% chance of winning the division, compared to 84.4 wins for the other two teams, with Seattle’s odds at 30.6% and Houston’s at 29.4%. Obviously, that’s a true toss-up, but things look better for the Rangers than at the start of last year, when even as reigning champs, they projected for 81.8 wins (and 10.7% odds) to the Astros’ 90.5.

Unlike Jake Burger, Kyle Higashioka, Chris Martin and Joc Pederson — the most prominent outside additions to this roster — deGrom was already a Ranger, having signed a five-year, $185 million deal in December 2022. Yet his contribution since putting pen to paper has been minimal. He made just six starts before needing another repair of his torn ulnar collateral ligament on June 12, 2023 (his first was in 2010). Fifteen months and one day later, he returned to throw 10.2 innings spread over three starts, enough to provide some peace of mind heading into the offseason. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to another edition of my weekly chat — the third week in a row I’ve been able to do this (please clap).

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday, I wrote about the Hall of Fame’s latest tweaks to Era Committee rules and (reluctantly) weighed in on the recent news regarding Pete Rose’s potential reinstatement https://blogs.fangraphs.com/never-is-a-long-long-time-permanent-inelig…

12:02

Jay Jaffe: There’s a lot of confusion circulating around the latter aspect of that, so I hope I helped bring some clarity to the matter.

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Beyond that, I’ve got a look at Jacob deGrom’s spring debut and the overhauled Rangers roster in the pipeline for today.

12:03

Jay Jaffe: And now, on with the show

Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve often said when evaluating the prospects of various controversial candidates for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, “forever” and “never” are very long times. Two reports from the last week could put that assertion to the test. According to ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr., commissioner Rob Manfred is considering a petition from the family of the late Pete Rose requesting that he be removed from the permanently ineligible list, which would clear the way for his consideration for election to the Hall. Separately, on Wednesday the institution announced that its board of directors has adjusted the requirements for Era Committee candidates in a way that could eventually strip some of them of eligibility for future consideration — and could be subject to abuse.

Before addressing the Rose matter, which became politically charged after president Donald Trump posted to social media in support of him on February 28, it’s worth unpacking the ramifications of the Hall’s announcement. On February 26 in Orlando, Florida, chairman Jane Forbes Clark met with the 16-member board of directors (which includes Manfred) to address several matters, including the Era Committee process. Starting with the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot for players, which will be voted on at the Winter Meetings in Orlando in December, candidates who don’t receive at least five out of 16 possible votes will be ineligible to appear on the next ballot three years later, when that particular pool of candidates is considered again. Candidates who don’t receive at least five of 16 votes on multiple Era Committee ballots will no longer be eligible for future consideration, period. To these eyes, the first part of that change is reasonable, but the second is unnecessarily heavy-handed and smacks of punishment — punishment merely for landing on a ballot at the wrong time. Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s Padres lineup may not be made entirely out of current and former shortstops, but on Wednesday, they added one to the fold. Jose Iglesias, who revived his career with the Mets last season in impressive fashion while also scoring an unlikely pop hit with “OMG,” has agreed to a minor league deal with the Padres, one with a non-roster invitation to their major league camp.

Iglesias headed last week’s roundup of prominent position players still on the free agent market. That’s a particularly funny sentence to write, not only since this spring hasn’t exactly offered the second coming of the Boras Four, but because Iglesias (who did hire Scott Boras to represent him this past offseason) wasn’t in the majors at all in 2023 after playing with six different teams over the previous six seasons. Nonetheless, I led my overview with the 35-year-old infielder because his 2.5 WAR — a career high, accumulated in just 85 games — was tops among the group and because the arc of his 2024 season was so compelling.

Coincidentally enough, during Iglesias’ absence from the majors in 2023 he spent about six weeks with the Padres’ Triple-A El Paso affiliate. This came after he’d signed a minor league contract with the Marlins and gone through spring training with them; he opted out a few weeks into April without ever playing a regular season game within their organization. From there, he signed that minor league deal with the Padres, hitting .317/.356/.537 in 28 games at El Paso. He opted out twice to test the free agent waters but didn’t catch on elsewhere, and played his last game of the season on June 7. Read the rest of this entry »

A cynic would say that Giancarlo Stanton is in midseason form. On Saturday, the Yankees officially announced that the 35-year-old slugger will open the season on the injured list due to recurring issues with both elbows. He’s not the only prominent Yankee who’s out of the picture — or at least doubtful — for the Opening Day roster, as Luis Gil will be sidelined for a good chunk of the season due to a strained latissimus dorsi, and DJ LeMahieu has suffered an apparent left calf strain, with its severity and prognosis to be determined by an MRI on Tuesday.

The most notable injury, if not the most impactful one, is Stanton’s. Two weeks ago, just before the team’s first full-squad workout, manager Aaron Boone said that the slugger was “dealing with some elbow stuff… akin to tennis elbow” in both arms, adding that it was an issue he dealt with last year as well. Tennis elbow, formally known as lateral epicondylitis, is a condition caused by overuse of the muscles and tendons in the elbow, particularly by a repetitive twisting of the wrist (think swinging a tennis racket… or a bat). The tendons that join the forearm muscles on the outside of the elbow suffer microscopic tears and don’t heal fully, leading to irritation and pain. With Stanton having not swung a bat since mid-January due to pain and the risk of exacerbating the problem, and in spite of anti-inflammatory medication, team doctors have moved on to a more aggressive approach. Last week, while traveling to New York for a private matter, Stanton received platelet-rich plasma injections in both arms in order to promote healing.

The injections rule out Stanton for the Yankees’ March 27 opener against the Brewers in New York. Beyond that, his timeline is unclear, but assuming a few weeks of recovery from the PRP shots, a few more to ramp up to full game activity, a rehab assignment, and a couple extra weeks of padding because Stanton isn’t the world’s fastest healer, the math suggests an April return is unlikely. That said, I wouldn’t recommend parsing Aaron Judge’s words — “I want a healthy G in the middle of the season” — too literally just yet. Read the rest of this entry »