At risk of stating the obvious, Luis Arraez doesn’t strike out often. Since 2022, his first full season and the year he won his first batting title, Arraez has struck out 5.5% of the time. Let me put that into context. As of this morning, the Padres have a 6.0% chance to win the NL West. That means they are more likely to upset the baseball-ruining Dodgers than Arraez is to strike out in any given plate appearance. And that might be underselling his skills. In the second half of 2024, he reduced his strikeout rate even further, going down on strikes just five times over his final 57 games. That included baseball’s first 30-game strikeout-less streak in 20 years. Since the 2024 All-Star break, Arraez has struck out in 1.9% of his trips to the plate. Meanwhile, San Diego’s odds of winning the World Series currently sit at 2.2%. A pessimist might use that comparison to demonstrate that the Padres are long shots; 17 teams have a better chance to win it all. An optimist would counter that every time Arraez strikes out, it’s a reminder that the Padres are still World Series contenders. If that’s the way you see it, well, boy did the Padres get one heck of a reminder on Wednesday afternoon. For the first time all season, Arraez struck out.

It was the top of the ninth. The Padres were up 2-1. The inning began with a base hit by Martín Maldonado. That itself is a rare enough event. No other batter in recorded major league history has taken as many plate appearances as Maldonado (3,888) and has such a low batting average (.204) to show for it. Adding to the unlikelihood of Maldonado’s single, the batted ball had a mere .100 expected batting average, a 1-in-10 chance to be a hit. Yet, third baseman Max Schuemann, who entered the game that inning as a defensive replacement, flubbed the play. The ball slipped right out of his glove. As I watched his ill-fated attempt to retrieve the ball, I couldn’t help but think of my 6-year-old self trying to crossover dribble like Allen Iverson. Neither of us had any control of the ball:

With Maldonado on first, Arraez stepped up to the dish. He was already 0-for-4 with three fly outs, a strange enough day for a player who rarely hits fly balls. Since the day of his debut in 2019, Arraez has taken 2,916 plate appearances. Thirty-nine others have taken as many or more plate appearances in that time. None of them has a lower fly ball rate. But I’m getting off track. We aren’t here to talk about fly balls.

The pitcher on the mound was Justin Sterner, who somehow isn’t the A’s player with the closest-sounding name to a current or former Dodgers third baseman. Sterner, an offseason waiver claim from the Rays, has looked sharp so far in seven games for his new team. He entered this contest with nine strikeouts through his first six appearances. His 10th would be his most impressive yet. Arraez took Sterner’s first pitch, an 88-mph cutter on the upper-inside corner, for a strike. The count was 0-1:

Pitch number two was a 94-mph fastball that Arraez sent straight back into the crotch of catcher Shea Langeliers:

Is it funny when a man gets hit in the family jewels? I’ll let you decide for yourself. What I like so much about this moment isn’t the slapstick, but rather the subtle humor of how awkwardly Arraez behaves in the aftermath. One of my favorite bits from the little-known television comedy Friends is the scene where Ross picks up a lamp. That’s the first thing I thought of when I saw Arraez pick up that baseball. Why was his first instinct to pick up the ball as quickly as possible? I’m truly not sure. Was he worried someone would trip on it? Was he trying to hide the weapon? Or did he simply feel a need to do something, and picking up the ball was the first idea that popped into his head? He’s like a well-meaning but clueless husband trying to offer support while his wife is in labor. But instead of running for ice chips, he decided to pick up a baseball.

Arraez’s next move made more sense, as he went to pat Langeliers on the back. However, the consequences of his earlier actions soon returned to haunt him. He was still holding that damn baseball:

It became something of a dance for Arraez, who went back and forth between comforting Langeliers and dealing with the ball. It’s funny to watch because we’ve all been in that position before, facing a situation where we feel like we should help but there really isn’t much we can do. It’s even funnier in juxtaposition to the physical comedy of a man getting bopped in the beans. It’s certainly funnier than the A’s TV broadcaster suggesting they call the catcher “Shea Pain-geliers,” though perhaps not quite as funny as the Padres announcer blurting out, “They call him Langy!” in response to absolutely nothing (unless he was listening to the A’s broadcast). He just seemed to be reading the name plate on Langeliers’ chest protector because, much like Arraez, he wasn’t sure what else to do.

The third pitch of the at-bat was an 81-mph sweeper in the dirt. It never came close to Arraez, and indeed, he watched it bounce. Yet, seemingly still spooked by what happened on the previous pitch, he made a delayed effort to avoid getting hit. Maybe Arraez thought the ball was going to bounce off Langeliers and hit him in an act of swift poetic justice. That would explain why he shielded his face with his hand as he spun almost 360 degrees to avoid a projectile that did not come anywhere close to his body:

At long last, you’re all caught up on the series of incidents that set the stage for the strikeout. With a 1-2 count, Sterner threw another inside cutter, much like the first pitch of the at-bat. This time, however, he missed his spot badly:

The pitch hit Arraez squarely on his left thigh. Home plate umpire James Hoye called it strike three. The call was correct:

Indeed, there wasn’t anything controversial about it. Even as Arraez stood up and started walking to first base, and even when Mike Shildt came out to discuss the call, I don’t believe either was strong in his convictions. Simply put, it wasn’t close. This wasn’t a case of a batter accidentally bringing his bat around as he tried to avoid a missile hurtling toward him. Arraez began his swing with intention and didn’t even start to pull it back until the ball had already made contact with his body. Some umpires might be holding a grudge against Arraez for disparaging comments he made in spring training, but that’s not what this was. This was a strike:

Throughout his career, Arraez has only swung and missed at 16 of the 930 (1.7%) pitches he’s seen in the waste zone (per Statcast). That’s one-third of the league-average rate. Of the 257 batters who have seen at least 500 waste zone pitches since 2019, only five have a lower swing-and-miss rate than Arraez. It’s not often you’ll see him fail to make contact so miserably. In fact, having watched all 16 of his waste-zone whiffs, I could argue this was the single worst swing decision (category: context neutral) of his career.

Perhaps there was something in the air in Sacramento that day. After all, Maldonado got a hit, and Arraez did not. If that’s not a sign of the apocalypse, I don’t know what is. Supernatural or not, this strange, funny, and painful sequence of events that finally led to Arraez’s first strikeout is exactly why I love writing about baseball.

Oh, and did I mention it was his birthday?

I made a baseball card. Don’t worry about my grade-school-level graphic design skills. It’s not like I’m trying to sell this template to Topps. I just figured that if I was going to use the “guess the mystery player” lead-in, I might as well try to make it a little more visually appealing. So, I made a baseball card. And I’d like you to try to guess the player to whom it belongs:

It’s not Dansby Swanson. It’s not Marcus Semien in an even-numbered year. But those are probably the two best guesses you could make without additional context (such as the headline, but humor me here), which is precisely why I wanted to play this game – and write this article. Here’s how 2024 Swanson and 2024 Semien stack up to my mystery player. Keep in mind, the time frame for the mystery player’s stats is another part of the mystery:

Swanson is a two-time All-Star and a two-time Gold Glove winner. He made $26 million last season. Semien is a three-time All-Star, a two-time Silver Slugger, and a Gold Glove winner. He also made $26 million last season. This mystery player must be pretty good, huh? Read the rest of this entry »

It might not be long before Captain Kirk is the captain of the Starship Blue Jays. Alejandro Kirk made his MLB debut in September 2020. The only players who have been with the team for longer are Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, both of whom could leave in free agency next winter. If that were to happen, Kirk would become the longest-tenured Blue Jay just days before his 27th birthday. He could end up holding that title for quite some time, too. On Saturday, Kirk and the Blue Jays reportedly agreed to a five-year, $58 million extension. The deal, which begins in 2026, buys out the backstop’s final arbitration season and his first four free agent years, running through his age-31 campaign.

A 23-year-old Kirk burst onto the scene in the first half of 2022. He hit .315, slugged 11 home runs, and walked more often than he struck out over 83 games. His 155 wRC+ ranked sixth among qualified AL batters, far ahead of the next-best catcher. The fact that he was splitting catching duties, and thus DHing on the regular, cut into his overall defensive value, but still, Kirk ranked among the top-10 AL players in WAR. Fans voted him to be the starting catcher for the AL All-Stars, and the honor was well deserved.

Yet, Kirk has never looked like that middle-of-the-order threat since. He produced a 95 wRC+ in the second half of 2022. He followed that up with a 96 wRC+ in 2023 and a 94 wRC+ in 2024. To save you some strenuous mental math, I can tell you that averages out to a 95 wRC+ since the 2022 All-Star break. That means Kirk has been about 5% less productive at the plate than the average hitter, but, to his credit, still 5% more productive than the average catcher. His 10.3% walk rate is great, while his 12.0% strikeout rate is elite. Only seven batters (min. 1,000 PA) have a lower strikeout rate in that span, and none of them boasts a walk rate in the double digits. Unfortunately, the plus power that made Kirk such a complete hitter in the first half of 2022 has vanished: Read the rest of this entry »

The 2024 season was a strong year for catchers. Altogether, they produced 13.2% of all position player WAR, their largest piece of the pie in 10 years. Their collective 91 wRC+ was also the highest it has been in a full season since 2014. I’d posit that had something to do with starting-caliber catchers taking the field a bit more often, rather than ceding significant playing time to their backups. After watching teams cut back on catcher playing time for several years, we’re finally starting to see that trend reverse a bit. Read the rest of this entry »

Michelle Yeoh is one of the greatest actors working today. How do I know that? It’s not her 40-year career, the 50-plus films on her résumé, or the Academy Award in her trophy case. No, it’s the fact that she was cast in the film adaptation of Wicked, one of the most beloved musicals on the planet, despite having no previous vocal training or singing experience. She told director Jon M. Chu as much before she agreed to join the cast: “You know Jon, I don’t sing.” With all due respect, it shows.

If you haven’t already seen Wicked, well, you should hurry up, because the Oscars are on Sunday. At the very least, take a listen to “The Wizard and I,” in which Yeoh sings alongside Broadway star and Academy Award nominee Cynthia Erivo. Their pairing is the vocal equivalent of the “unfinished horse drawing” meme. Yet, within the context of the entire film, Yeoh makes it work. Her acting is so strong, her portrayal of Madame Morrible so complete and convincing, that by the end of the movie, it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role. She might have a dark blue slider bar in the Vocal Runs Above Average section of her Cinema Savant page, but her overall performance was well above replacement level.

There are surely some passionate musical theatre fans who took umbrage at the casting of a non-singer in a singing role. I don’t count myself among them. I think there is something wonderful about the idea that someone can use their strengths to overcome their weaknesses. It’s nice to know a person doesn’t have to be skilled at every part of an activity to be altogether successful. On that note, here’s what it looks like when professional baseball player Josh Bell tries to run: Read the rest of this entry »

The great Irish writer Seamus Heaney often spoke of the good that poetry could do, both for individuals and the world at large. To that point, he once lamented in jest that “poetry can’t be administered like an injection.” Admittedly, I stumbled upon that quotation by accident, deep within an internet rabbit hole I tumbled down while researching the American baseball pitcher Andrew Heaney. (Sometimes I forget to search for more than just a last name.) Nevertheless, I was so taken with Seamus Heaney’s message that I felt inspired to inject his words into my writing and analysis today.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
-From “Digging” (1966)

On Thursday, the Pirates and Heaney – Andrew, to be clear – agreed to a one-year, $5.25 million contract for 2025. After two years with the Rangers, the veteran left-hander will slot into Pittsburgh’s rotation for his age-34 season.

A first-round pick by the Marlins in 2012, Heaney spent three seasons in their organization. He climbed to the summit of Miami’s top prospect list in 2013 and made his big league debut the subsequent summer. Following the 2014 season, he was the headlining prospect in a fascinating trade with the Dodgers that brought Dan Haren, Dee Strange-Gordon, and Miguel Rojas to the Marlins in exchange for Heaney, as well as future Dodgers stalwarts Enrique Hernández and Austin Barnes, and catcher-to-pitcher convert Chris Hatcher. Hours later, the Dodgers flipped Heaney to the Angels for Howie Kendrick. At the time, Kendrick was coming off a 4.6-WAR season for the reigning AL West champions, just to offer some sense of how highly the Angels must have valued Heaney. Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels were the busiest team in baseball during the first month of the offseason, signing Yusei Kikuchi, Travis d’Arnaud, Kyle Hendricks, and Kevin Newman, and trading for Jorge Soler. Then, after a quiet period throughout December and January, they returned to action last week, agreeing to a one-year, $5 million pact with Yoán Moncada. He will reportedly take over for Anthony Rendon as their primary starter at third base.

Meanwhile, the Padres are waking from an even longer hibernation. While the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, and Giants have been hard at work improving their rosters this winter, the Padres have been quiet. Their only notable move prior to February was re-signing catcher Elias Díaz. On Friday, they finally broke their silence and added not just one, but two major league free agents: Connor Joe and Jason Heyward. The two are expected to share duties in left field. Joe will earn a guaranteed $1 million on his one-year deal. The terms of Heyward’s contract, while presumably quite similar, have not yet been reported.

Angels Sign Yoán Moncada

We should have seen this coming. Back in December, the Angels reportedly expressed interest in a trio of third basemen on the offseason trade market: Nolan Arenado, Eugenio Suárez, and Alec Bohm. They were also linked to a pair of big-name free agent sluggers entering their age-30 seasons: Pete Alonso and Anthony Santander. So, of course, the Angels found a way to get the best a mediocre approximation of both worlds.

Moncada has had a career trajectory that few, if any, can relate to. There was a time when his star was so bright that he was often mentioned in the same breath as fellow international phenom Shohei Ohtani. Even as a teenager, he looked like such a stud that the Red Sox shattered international signing precedent to give him a $31.5 million bonus, which cost them another $31.5 million in penalties. Less than two years later, he was such a highly regarded prospect that some wondered if the Red Sox made a fatal mistake by trading him to the White Sox for Chris Sale.

Of course, Moncada wasn’t the first prospect to garner so much hype, nor was he the first top prospect who failed to reach his full potential. What makes him so interesting is that he did discover his ceiling – he just couldn’t stay there. In 2019, his age-24 campaign, Moncada played 132 games, swatted 25 homers, swiped 10 bases, and produced a 139 wRC+ en route to a 5.2-WAR season. That’s the kind of player the Red Sox thought they were signing when they gave him a record-setting bonus. That’s the kind of player the White Sox thought they were acquiring when they gave up one of the greatest starting pitchers of this generation to get him.

Sad to say, Moncada has never been that kind of player again. Everyone has a theory about the cause of his decline, from long COVID to the deadened ball, but regardless of the explanation, the fact of the matter is that Moncada was not able to make a consistent impact for the White Sox from 2020-24. His bat dropped off a cliff in 2020. He bounced back to post 3.7 WAR in 2021, but after that, injuries and underperformance became the defining themes of his late 20s. From 2022-23, he put up an 86 wRC+ and just 2.0 WAR over 196 games.

Moncada got off to a nice start in 2024, slashing .282/.364/.410 over the first two weeks of the season before a left adductor strain forced him to the injured list. Although he was initially expected to return in July, his rehab was put on pause for six weeks in the summer, first due to whatever on earth “anticipated soreness” is and later because he was oh-so-vaguely “still kind of feeling something.” He finally got back to Chicago in mid-September, after tearing up Triple-A on a rehab assignment, only to sit on the bench for the worst team in modern baseball history.

The White Sox had a dozen more games to ride out and roughly 450 plate appearances to fill. And yet Moncada appeared in just one of those games and took just one of those trips to the plate. If you blinked at the right moments, you might not have realized he ever came off the injured list at all. Over those final 12 games, White Sox batters produced a 70 wRC+ and -0.6 WAR. Their designated hitters went 9-for-50 with a 49 wRC+. Their third basemen were even worse, going 4-for-44 with a -2 wRC+. Yet, the only work the White Sox offered Moncada was a 12th-inning pinch-running gig against the Angels on September 18. He struck out the following inning in his only plate appearance of the month. Nonetheless, he somehow finished the season as the most productive offensive performer on the team, because of course he did:

All that to say, Moncada’s performance in 2024 can’t tell us much about what to expect from him in 2025. Could he be the 5.2-WAR player we saw in 2019, or even just the 3.7-WAR player we saw in 2021? I mean, sure, I guess. He’s done it before, and he won’t even turn 30 until May. But Moncada put up 2.2 WAR over 208 games from 2022-24, and that’s the kind of player our Depth Charts projections expect him to continue to be in 2025 (1.3 WAR in 118 games). ZiPS is a little higher on him, while Steamer is a little lower, but ultimately, we’re talking about a slightly-below-average everyday player – if he can stay on the field enough to play every day. For many teams, that wouldn’t be enough to crack the starting lineup. For the Angels, however, Moncada could be a nice addition.

From about 2015 to 2020, Rendon was one of the few third basemen one might have picked over Moncada. The latter was a future superstar, but the former was already playing at that level. These days, Rendon is one of the few third baseman upon whom Moncada is, more likely than not, a meaningful upgrade. Here’s how the two compare according to several projection systems:

Saddled with unfair expectations as a teenager, Moncada has developed a bit of a reputation as a prospect bust. The truth, however, is that he was worth every penny the Red Sox paid him; they used him to get Sale, and Sale helped them win a World Series. What’s more, he gave the White Sox 13.8 WAR over parts of eight seasons and contributed to the team’s first two playoff runs since 2008. Overall, he provided Chicago about $110 million in value (using a simplistic $8 million per WAR estimate) while earning just a little over $70 million in salary. Perhaps he didn’t become everything he could have been, but he gave both of his teams more than he took. He can do the same for the Angels in 2025.

Padres Sign Jason Heyward and Connor Joe

On Opening Day in 2023, Juan Soto stood in left field for San Diego. The following season, the Padres braced for what could have been the worst downgrade since The Fresh Prince recast Aunt Viv. Jurickson Profar, he of the lowest WAR in baseball the year prior, was Soto’s replacement. The Friars dropped from first to 30th on our left field positional power rankings. Yet, things sometimes have a funny way of working out. Against all odds, the 2024 Padres had the top left fielder in the National League, according to WAR, for the second year in a row.

Unfortunately, the Padres then found themselves looking to replace their All-Star left fielder for a second consecutive winter. This time around, their solution is a platoon of the lefty-batting Heyward and the righty-batting Joe. And you know, for what it’s worth, both Heyward and Joe have better projections now than Profar did entering 2024:

To be crystal clear, those projections say far more about Profar’s remarkable 2024 season than they do about either Heyward or Joe. They do not suggest that Heyward and Joe this year are likely to outperform Profar last season. Nor do they suggest that either one of them has more upside than Profar did at this time last year. Heyward was an All-Star caliber player in his early 20s, and to his credit, he has enjoyed multiple bounce-back seasons over the past several years. Indeed, he is only two years removed from a strong 2023, when he put up a 120 wRC+ and 2.3 WAR in 124 games with the Dodgers. However, his 38th-percentile xwOBA that year suggested he was due for regression, and regress he did. Over 87 games with the Dodgers and Astros, he produced a 94 wRC+ and just 0.8 WAR in 2024. While the Padres are surely hoping to get something like the 2023 version of Heyward, a repeat of his 2024 is far more likely. He’s already 35 years old (he’ll turn 36 in August), and I’m more convinced by his overall 91 wRC+ and .301 xwOBA from 2021-24 than I am by his brief resurgence in 2023.

Joe is three years younger than Heyward but has never shown anything close to Heyward’s All-Star ceiling. In fact, he has never even had a year as strong as Heyward’s 2023. (There’s a reason the Pirates non-tendered Joe rather than pay his projected $3.2 million arbitration salary.) All things considered, Joe’s production over the first four proper seasons of his career has been pretty similar to Heyward’s declining performance in the same time frame. Joe has been the more consistent hitter, but Heyward makes up the difference as a better baserunner and outfield defender:

Heyward is used to working in a platoon; since 2021, only 12.9% of his plate appearances have come against left-handed pitchers. Joe, on the other hand, could benefit from less exposure to opposite-handed hurlers. He has a career 107 wRC+ against lefties and a 91 wRC+ against righties. His managers in Colorado and Pittsburgh made an effort to shield him from right-handed pitching, but they haven’t had enough quality options to use him in a genuine platoon role; 38.2% of his career plate appearances have come against lefties. Excluding his eight-game cup of coffee with the Giants in 2019, when 14 of his 16 plate appearances came against lefties, he has never had a season in which the majority of his plate appearances have come with the platoon advantage.

Are the Padres such a team to change that? They should be, although that is contingent on their making further additions. Ideally, Heyward would take the bulk of the work in left field, health allowing, while Joe would handle the short side of the platoon. However, the Padres might need Joe for more than just outfield duties – and more than just a platoon role. Considering his defensive success at first base (5 DRS, 2 FRV in 170 career games), and the massive hole San Diego has at designated hitter, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Joe playing plenty of first with Luis Arraez as the DH. Joe’s projected 95 wRC+ (per Steamer) against right-handers would be pitiful at first base, but the Padres don’t currently have many better options for either first base or DH — whichever position that Arraez is not occupying. The only player on their 40-man roster with a higher projected wRC+ against righties who isn’t already penciled into the lineup at a different position is Tirso Ornelas, a prospect who has yet to make his MLB debut.

If San Diego is going to beat its 33.2% playoff odds without making any major additions, it will need someone to step up to replace its most productive hitter from 2024. If that hero exists, it almost certainly won’t be Heyward or Joe. Instead, that production will need to come from Fernando Tatis Jr., Xander Bogaerts, Manny Machado, or, in a best-case scenario, some combination of all three. Still, Heyward and Joe are proven big league players, and there’s no doubt the Padres needed more of those on their roster. And hey, you never know. It’s not so long ago we were saying the same thing about Profar.

With a 115 wRC+, the 2024 Orioles were the best offensive team in franchise history, outperforming even the most dominant Baltimore lineups from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Their 115 wRC+ was also good for second in the AL last season, trailing only their pennant-winning division rivals in New York. A couple thousand miles away, the Diamondbacks also finished with a best-in-franchise-history 115 wRC+. That wRC+ was good for second in the National League, trailing only Arizona’s World Series-winning division rivals in Los Angeles. How’s that for symmetry?

On Tuesday, the Birds and the Snakes continued to parallel one another, at least as far as their lineups are concerned. In the afternoon, the Orioles announced they had signed righty-batting outfielder Ramón Laureano, reportedly to a one-year, $4 million deal. Not long after, the D-backs confirmed they had re-signed righty-batting outfielder Randal Grichuk, reportedly for one year and $5 million guaranteed. Both deals also come with options for 2026. Laureano’s is a $6.5 million team option, while Grichuk’s is a $5 million mutual option with a $3 million buyout. His salary for 2025 is technically only $2 million, with that buyout making up the rest of his $5 million guarantee. There was a time when both Laureano and Grichuk were promising, multi-talented, everyday players. These days, however, they’ve each become role players with two primary jobs: handle a part-time gig in the outfield and hit well against left-handed pitching. That should be exactly what the Orioles and Diamondbacks ask them to do in 2025. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2023, Jurickson Profar was quite possibly the worst full-time player in Major League Baseball. In 2024, he was one of the best. Slashing .280/.380/.459 while playing half his games at the pitcher-friendly Petco Park, Profar finished with a 139 wRC+, sixth best among qualified NL batters. Despite his mediocre baserunning (-0.8 BsR) and poor defense (-8 DRS, -6 FRV), his bat carried him to a 4.3-WAR season. Still, he entered free agency in a tricky position. He’d be looking for a suitor who’d put much more stock in his recent phenomenal performance than the long, uneven period that came before it. On Thursday, the Braves emerged as one such team. Deciding that Profar’s pros far outweighed his cons, Atlanta inked the veteran outfielder to a three-year, $42 million contract.

In hindsight, this contract and pairing feel so predictable that I could have pre-written this article weeks ago. When it comes to projecting Profar’s future performance, the error bars are wide. We’re talking about a player who was released by, of all teams, the Colorado Rockies in 2023 and found himself starting for the NL All-Stars less than a year later. Yet, projecting his contract turned out to be surprisingly easy. Ben Clemens predicted Profar would sign for three years and $45 million. MLB Trade Rumors predicted Profar would sign for three years and $45 million. Kiley McDaniel of ESPN predicted Profar would sign for three years and $45 million. The median projection from our contract crowdsourcing exercise? Yep, three years and $45 million. As divided as this country might be, we could all agree on one thing: Profar would sign a three-year deal with an AAV close to $15 million. Lo and behold, the Braves will pay him $14 million per annum through 2027.

Three years and $42 million is the same contract both Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Jorge Soler signed last offseason, and very close to the three-year, $43.5 million deal Mitch Haniger signed the winter before. In other words, it’s the going rate for a corner outfielder in his early 30s with something like a two-win projection but All-Star upside. Profar might have a wider range of outcomes, but his median projection is right in that window. If he reverts to the version of himself that we saw in 2023, the Braves will soon regret his contract. If he keeps up his 2024 performance, his salary will look like a bargain. Ultimately, however, Profar only has to be the player he was in 2018 (107 wRC+, 2.2 WAR), 2020 (113 wRC+, 0.9 WAR), or 2022 (110 wRC+, 2.4 WAR) for this deal to pay dividends. That’s exactly the kind of player Steamer thinks he’ll be in 2025: Read the rest of this entry »

When the Mets signed Juan Soto in December, he was, technically speaking, filling the hole that Jesse Winker left behind. Of course, that’s a bit like buying the Batmobile to replace an expired bus pass. Winker’s greatest strength is drawing walks, and Soto’s career walk rate makes Winker’s career walk rate look like Jeff McNeil’s career walk rate. Still, the point stands. The Mets lost one lefty-batting corner outfielder to free agency and replaced him with another. Yet, on Thursday afternoon, they re-signed Winker anyway. His one-year, $7.5 million contract is fairly straightforward, but the ramifications for New York’s roster could be much more complex.

Poor baserunning, miserable defense, and frequent injuries have limited Winker throughout his career. All the same, his bat was a major asset for the Reds from 2017-21. In just over 1,500 plate appearances with Cincinnati, he slashed .288/.385/.504 with a 132 wRC+. While he thrived at Great American Ball Park, he made his mark outside of that hitter’s haven, too, producing an .845 OPS and 126 wRC+ on the road. He made the All-Star team in his final season with the Reds, batting .305 with 24 home runs in 110 games, good for a career-best 3.2 WAR.

The next two seasons, however, marked a period of steep decline for Winker. Playing for the Mariners and Brewers, he managed just 0.7 WAR in 2022 and -0.8 in 2023. His agent might point out that back, neck, and knee injuries hampered his performance in that time, as did some bad luck on balls in play; his xwOBA was nearly 30 points better than his wOBA, while his BABIP was more than 50 ticks below his average from the previous five years. Even so, it would have been more than fair to worry about his future as a major leaguer after his dismal 2023 campaign. Entering 2024, his ZiPS projection was a mere 0.4 WAR in 415 plate appearances, and he was forced to sign a minor league contract with the Nationals less than two weeks before spring training began.

Back to full health, Winker rebounded in Washington. While he wasn’t a power threat like he’d been in his Reds heyday, he knocked 18 doubles and 11 home runs, giving him a middle-of-the-pack .162 ISO. His BABIP was back up above .300, and his 14.0% walk rate ranked fifth among qualified batters (as of his final day with the Nats). All in all, he put up a 125 wRC+ and 1.2 WAR in 101 games.

This was enough to pique the Mets’ interest ahead of the trade deadline. However, after Washington sent him to New York, Winker wasn’t the productive hitter that the Mets thought they were getting when they acquired him. Well, at least not during the regular season, when Winker was little more than replacement level with his new team. All the more disappointing, he was set up to thrive with the Mets: He had the platoon advantage almost every time he came to the plate. While Washington used him as an everyday player, New York shielded him from southpaws; he faced just four left-handed pitchers over the final two months of the season. Nonetheless, his 97 wRC+ with the Mets was much closer to his career mark against lefties (88) than righties (129).

The problem was rooted in Winker’s approach at the plate. With the Nationals, he ran that aforementioned 14.0% walk rate and struck out just 22.2% of the time. After the trade, he lowered his strikeout rate to 17.1%, which might’ve been a good thing, except that his walk rate also dropped way down, to 7.8%. With the Mets, Winker swung more often and made more contact, especially on pitches in the strike zone. His Z-Swing% (per Statcast) jumped from 60.5% to 70.4%, while his Z-Contact% jumped from 85.5% to 91.2%. This wouldn’t have been a problem if he crushed many of those extra balls he put in play, but, naturally, he did not.

So, why did Winker suddenly change his approach at a time when things were going well? I’d posit the Mets noticed that he was holding back on too many hittable pitches over the first four months of the season and let him know that was the case after the trade. According to Robert Orr’s calculations from his Damage leaderboard, Winker was better than the average hitter at identifying hittable pitches every year from 2020-23. Yet, with the Nationals this past season, his Hittable Pitch Take rate put him in the bottom third of the league. After he started swinging at more strikes with the Mets, he rose back up to the 66th percentile. The problem, however, was that he sacrificed another critical skill in the process. Winker’s selectivity rate — Orr’s metric that shows how often a player avoids swinging at bad pitches — fell from the 73rd percentile as a National to the 35th percentile as a Met. All that is to say, Winker swung at more good pitches, but he also swung at more bad ones, and he didn’t do enough damage against good pitches to compensate for his lack of production against the bad ones. Ultimately, his hard-hit and barrel rates were lower with the Mets than they were with the Nationals, as were his wOBA and xwOBA on contact.

This raises another question: Why would the Mets want Winker back if their efforts to improve his approach went so poorly? Perhaps they think he just needs a little more time to reap the rewards. After all, 129 plate appearances is nothing. Aaron Judge was still hitting below the Mendoza Line with an OPS in the mid-.700s by his 129th plate appearances last season. Thankfully for our purposes, we have an easy way to increase the sample size of Winker’s 2024 season with the Mets: Include the playoffs, as Winker took an additional 32 plate appearances in October. He continued to swing at strikes at a similar rate, but he used those swings to record several big hits, including two triples and a home run. He also drew seven walks, compared to just four strikeouts. If you combine those numbers with Winker’s regular season stats as a Met, you get a 10.6% walk rate, a 16.1% strikeout rate, and a .341 wOBA. Even more promising is his .353 xwOBA, notably higher than his .335 xwOBA with the Nationals. All of a sudden, it makes a lot more sense why the Mets decided to keep this guy around.

It’s far too soon to say if Winker’s new approach will work in a larger sample size. Still, it’s not hard to see why the Mets think he’s worth a longer look. In a best-case scenario, he could be an even more productive hitter than he was overall in 2024. And if this new approach doesn’t befit him going forward, he doesn’t have to be anything more than the hitter he was in Washington to be valuable on a one-year, $7.5 million deal. After all, the Mets will continue to shield him from left-handed pitching, and his track record against righties is strong:

So, that’s Winker. But this signing is an iceberg – and ironically, it’s the rare kind of iceberg that isn’t so good for a polar bear. At first glance, this is just a 1.0- to 1.5-WAR player signing a short-term deal commensurate with his talents. Yet, there’s a lot more to it than what you see on the surface. When SNY’s Andy Martino first reported the Winker signing, he added that the Mets are now preparing for life after Pete Alonso. Indeed, while no one could argue that Winker is a direct replacement for the All-Star first baseman, there is a connection between this signing and the Mets’ possibly giving up on Alonso if you follow the trail of dominoes far enough.

With Soto, Brandon Nimmo, Jose Siri, and Tyrone Taylor to man the outfield, the Mets are likely to use Winker as their primary DH against right-handed pitching. However, he can still play the corner outfield if he needs to; he spent 95 games on the grass last season, including 27 with New York. So, in the event of an injury to one of the team’s other outfielders, Winker can fill in. That means the Mets are less likely to ask McNeil to play the outfield in 2025. Instead, he can ideally play second base almost every day. As long as McNeil is covering the keystone, the Mets won’t need any of their young infielders at second base, therefore allowing Brett Baty, Luisangel Acuña, and Ronny Mauricio to focus their efforts on third. If just one of them, or some combination of the three, can competently cover the hot corner, Mark Vientos will be able to play first base full-time. Long story short, Winker improves the outfield depth, which indirectly improves the infield depth, which should allow Vientos to formally replace Alonso at first.

Another aspect to the iceberg is how this all affects Starling Marte, whose Gold Glove years are long behind him. In 170 games in the outfield over the past two years, he has accumulated -13 DRS, -14 OAA, and a -12 FRV. Meanwhile, neither ZiPS nor Steamer sees him as much more than a league-average bat. As a righty hitter, he could theoretically platoon with Winker at DH. After all, he posted an impressive 141 wRC+ against left-handed pitching last year. Yet, even with the platoon advantage, Marte might not be a strong enough hitter to warrant the reps. While he has had positive platoon splits the last three years, he had reverse platoon splits every year from 2014-21. In other words, he’s hardly a guaranteed lefty masher. On the contrary, ZiPS projects him for a .698 OPS against lefties and a .713 OPS against righties in 2025. Even if the Mets were willing to give a roster spot to the short side of a DH platoon, Marte probably wouldn’t be that guy.

The final component of the iceberg is what the Mets do next. Steve Cohen’s pockets are already deep, but if the Mets aren’t going to give Alonso a multi-year contract, and if they can get someone to take on any of Marte’s remaining salary, they’ll only have more to spend. With a projected payroll still $49 million below last year’s final tally and a luxury tax payroll still $17 million below the top penalty threshold, the Mets remain major players to watch as the offseason rolls on.