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 »

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another edition of my weekly chat!

12:03

Jay Jaffe: My look at the impact of the wave of spring injuries that’s hit the Yankees roster, taking out DH Giancarlo Stanton, the MVP of last year’s ALCS, and starter Luis Gil, the reigning AL Rookie of the Year, just went live https://blogs.fangraphs.com/injuries-to-stanton-gil-and-lemahieu-will-…

12:04

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I took a look at the recent sighting of Kyle Schwarber playing first base for the Phillies https://blogs.fangraphs.com/first-sign-of-spring-kyle-schwarber-dabbli…

12:05

Jay Jaffe: No, I don’t think it changes anything. Regardless of what happens throughout the remainder of his career, he’ll wind up having played more games at, and accrued more value at second base than any other position.

12:06

Jay Jaffe: if the changes help him boost his career totals, it’s probably a net positive (barring the additional injury risk created by a move). I don’t see him doing much DHing in Houston so long as Yordan Alvarez is there, though

Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday in Clearwater, Florida, Kyle Schwarber was spotted doing something he hadn’t done in awhile: playing first base. Not only did he work out at the position with Phillies coach Bobby Dickerson in the morning, he manned the spot for five innings during the team’s Grapefruit League game against the Yankees in the afternoon. He didn’t field any grounders, but he made three putouts on throws from second baseman Kody Clemens.

For the first time since 2021, Kyle Schwarber records a putout at First Base. pic.twitter.com/IKKeeRhq7F

— Phillies Tailgate (@PhilsTailgate) February 27, 2025

According to The Athletic’s Matt Gelb, it was the first time Schwarber played first base in a game since Game 6 of the 2021 American League Championship Series. He was a member of the Red Sox at the time, acquired from the Nationals in a July 29 trade and given a crash course at the position while rehabbing from a right hamstring injury. Up to the point of the trade, Schwarber’s post-high school first base experience consisted of two games in the Cape Cod League in 2013 and a single-batter cameo in extra innings with the Cubs in ’17. (He swapped places with Anthony Rizzo just before a game-ending wild pitch.) He went on to play 10 regular season games at first for the Red Sox, starting nine of them, and then made nine more starts at the position in the postseason. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2024 season was a big one for Kyle Finnegan, or at least it started that way. On the strength of a 2.45 ERA and 25 saves, the Nationals’ closer made his first All-Star team (he finished the year with 38 saves, good for second in the National League). Yet he struggled in the second half, and in November, the Nationals non-tendered him rather than risk a trip through arbitration. On Tuesday — the same day I highlighted his continued free agency within this roundup — he returned to the fold nonetheless on a one-year, $6 million contract.

The deal, which is pending a physical and a 40-man roster move at this writing, is not yet official. Given that Finnegan made $5.1 million last year, the new contract constitutes about an 18% raise for the 33-year-old righty. However, in his annual projections for arbitration-eligible players at MLB Trade Rumors, Matt Swartz estimated that Finnegan would land a salary of $8.6 million, just shy of a 69% raise, because saves play well in arbitration. The view that Finnegan got something of a raw deal by this process is offset by the fact that he did get to test free agency a year ahead of schedule, only to find the market for his services limited enough to make a return his best option. Among the other 29 teams, the Cubs appeared to show the most interest.

Earlier this month, Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo told reporters that the team had kept in touch with Finnegan “throughout the offseason.” He likely lingered on the market because his profile and his performance both have some notable dings. Conceptually, Finnegan is basically a two-pitch pitcher, with a four-seam fastball that averaged 97.2 mph in 2024, and a splitter that has replaced his slider as his main secondary pitch over the past couple of seasons. By the pitch models, the fastball is about average, while the splitter is above-average but short of being a true plus pitch. He doesn’t miss a ton of bats, and while he generates a healthy share of groundballs, he gives up a lot of hard contact. Read the rest of this entry »

Jose Quintana spent much of the 2024 season as the weak link in the Mets’ rotation. Through August 20 — a point when I happened to check in at Citi Field — he was lit for a 4.57 ERA and 5.13 FIP in 25 starts covering 134 innings. But after that date, just when the Mets needed him the most, he went on a roll, allowing five runs (three earned) over his next eight starts totaling 47 1/3 innings; the last two of those starts were the Wild Card and Division Series clinchers. Though he was shellacked by the Dodgers in his NLCS start, he was hardly alone in that regard.

Despite his high-profile hot streak, Quintana has yet to find a home for 2025. After making $13 million in each of his past two seasons, the 36-year-old southpaw reportedly rebuffed an offer from the Pirates that was larger than the $5.25 million deal to which Andrew Heaney agreed last week. While a return to the Mets might appear to be in order now that Sean Manaea will miss a chunk of April due to an oblique strain — that following the loss of Frankie Montas to a high-grade lat strain that could keep him out until mid May or later — the team doesn’t appear ready to add another starter from outside the organization.

As the Pirates’ turn from Quintana (who pitched for them in 2022) to Heaney illustrates, teams in search of starters at this late stage still have multiple options from among the current crop of free agents, and they’re somewhat interchangeable, unlike last year, when two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell and 2023 postseason stud Jordan Montgomery didn’t sign until mid March (though the latter’s deal hasn’t work out very well). The starters I’m highlighting in this companion piece to my position player roundup are guys who can eat significant innings at the back of a rotation, while the relievers have plenty of late-inning experience. In contrast to the position player piece, where I tried to connect the dots to potential employers either based on previous reporting or spitballing, here I’ll note that most teams besides the Dodgers could use another fourth- or fifth-starter option or a bullpen arm, and where these guys land could depend upon the injuries that befall pitching staffs before Opening Day. Help is just a phone call away. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another edition of my weekly chat. I’m back from my Salt Lake City ski trip with my daughter (now a beginning intermediate skier!).

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday, I published a roundup of the top position players remaining on the free agent market. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/still-on-the-shelves-part-i-top-remaining-…

12:02

Jay Jaffe: The companion piece, on pitchers, is in the editorial pipeline as we chat and should go live soon.

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Speaking of my daughter, she spotted a new species of squirrel in our backyard this morning: the Brooklyn Pizza Squirrel https://bsky.app/profile/jayjaffe.bsky.social/post/3liyvdf5ux22l

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Pitter patter, let’s get at ‘er…

Read the rest of this entry »