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.

Since the last time Josh Bell suited up for the Nationals on August 1, 2022, he has played for four different teams. The Nationals dealt him to the Padres alongside Juan Soto at the 2022 trade deadline. Then he became a free agent and signed a two-year, $33 million deal with the Guardians, only for Cleveland to flip him to the Marlins the following summer. He swam with the Fish for just under a year before it was Miami’s turn to cast him off at the deadline in 2024. Finally, after finishing out this past season with the Diamondbacks, Bell is returning to Washington on a one-year, $6 million contract. That closes the circle on a two-and-a-half-year expedition that took him from the East Coast to the West Coast to the Midwest to the wetlands to the desert and back to the nation’s capital. According to Google Maps, it would take you just over 166 days to walk that journey. Bell, not exactly known for his footspeed, did it in 881.

With the Gold Glover Nathaniel Lowe likely to see most of the playing time at first base, Bell should slot in as Washington’s everyday designated hitter. Bell has primarily played first throughout his career, but his defense has always been lacking, even by the standards of the position. He has never finished a season with a positive DRS, and only once has he finished with a positive OAA or FRV. In 2024, Bell ranked last among all first basemen in DRS and second to last in OAA and FRV, despite playing just 98 games at the position. As long as Lowe stays healthy, which he’s largely managed to do throughout his career, the Nationals won’t need to worry about Bell’s glove at first. Meanwhile, Bell won’t need to worry about the harsh positional adjustment for designated hitters dragging down his overall numbers. A full-time DH who plays all 162 games would finish with -17.5 Def; Bell finished with -17.8 Def in 2024. As long as he sticks at DH, things can’t get any worse.

Of course, that also means Bell’s defensive value won’t get any better. If he’s going to improve upon a replacement-level (-0.1 WAR) 2024 season, he’ll need to do it with his offense. More specifically, he’ll need to do it with his bat. Over the past four years, Bell has been the least productive baserunner in the sport, with -17.6 BsR. His best baserunning season in that span was 2021, when he finished with -3.9 BsR, eighth-worst in the majors. To put that in context, -3.9 BsR is so low that Steamer doesn’t project anyone to finish with -3.9 BsR in 2025. Heck, Steamer doesn’t have anyone else finishing below -2.9, while Bell is projected for -2.3. Bell’s baseline is such an aberration that Steamer refuses to accept it as his (or anyone’s) 50th-percentile outcome. Read the rest of this entry »

I think a lot of us overestimate the significance of geography when predicting where free agents will sign. In Max Kepler’s case, however, we all might have underestimated the role geography would play in his decision. Perhaps it was inevitable that the greatest German-born player in MLB history would head to the state with the greatest German population in the country. Lo and behold, on December 19, the all-time leader in runs, home runs, RBI, and WAR among Deutschland natives agreed to a one-year, $10 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Yet, aside from helping the Phillies pander to their fans in Germantown, it’s a little difficult to see how Kepler fits this team. Entering the offseason, many expected Philadelphia would pursue a right-handed batter to play left field who could split playing time with Brandon Marsh. Instead, they signed Kepler, who bats lefty and hasn’t played left field since his days at Double-A in 2015. What’s more, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has made it clear the Phillies plan to use Kepler as an everyday player, despite the fact that injuries have kept him from playing more than 130 games in a full season since 2019.

Kepler’s limited experience in left field is the least concerning aspect of all this. Whether you look at OAA, FRV, DRS, or Baseball Prospectus’s DRP, Kepler has never been a below-average outfield defender in any season of his career. His strong track record as a right fielder, and his past experience in center, should help him adjust to left. Furthermore, Kepler might benefit from playing a position where throwing isn’t quite as important. Although his arm strength consistently ranks above the league average, he has been worth -3 throwing runs in his career, according to Baseball Savant.

Even if it won’t be a major adjustment, it’s not nothing for the Phillies to ask Kepler to re-learn a position after almost 10 years away. It makes me think of the movie line I quote more often than any other. In Moneyball, when Billy Beane tries to convince catcher Scott Hatteberg that he can play first base, Beane asks Ron Washington to tell Hatteberg that’s it not that hard. “It’s incredibly hard,” Washington replies. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to show you a short video compilation I made. Can you figure out what these seven baserunning plays from the 2024 season have in common?

Admittedly, there’s a red herring among those video clips. One of them focuses on Bobby Witt Jr. stealing third base, but what I really wanted to highlight was Vinnie Pasquantino stealing second behind him. Here’s a better angle than what’s available on MLB Film Room:

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According to the Billboard Hot 100 charts, the biggest hit of Justin Bieber’s career is “Stay,” a song you either can’t get out of your head, won’t admit you can’t get out of your head, or just don’t realize you can’t get out of your head because you hear it playing everywhere — all the time — but didn’t know the title or artist. Anyway, it seems as if the not-so-subliminal messaging of one Bieber influenced the other. Shane Bieber has decided to stay (oh, ooh-woah) with the Guardians, and he’s hoping the decision proves to be just as lucrative as Justin’s song.

Bieber’s contract is essentially a one-year prove-it deal with the added security of a player option for a second year. The right-hander will earn $10 million for his age-30 season in 2025. After that, he can either exercise a $16 million option for 2026 or take a $4 million buyout and return to free agency. In other words, the player option is really only worth $12 million to Bieber, which means he surely doesn’t intend to exercise it unless things go particularly wrong. After all, he managed to net this contract halfway through his rehab from Tommy John surgery. The Guardians are prepared to pay him $14 million for half a season of work, and reportedly, that wasn’t even his highest offer. It’s safe to say he’s not picking up that option unless he suffers another injury.

So, if Bieber’s plan is to continue his rehab, rebuild his value, and cash in next offseason, it’s easy to understand why he might have taken less money to stay in Cleveland. Not only does he already have a relationship and a rehab plan with the Guardians, but this is an organization with a strong track record for helping pitchers thrive. Just look at Matthew Boyd, who came back from Tommy John this summer and turned a handful of starts with the Guardians into a two-year, $29 million deal with the Cubs. Alternatively, look at Bieber himself. The organization took a fourth-round draft pick (122nd overall) and 45-FV prospect and developed him into a Cy Young winner. It’s hardly surprising that he wants to stick with the same organization as he works his way back from a career-altering injury. The chances that he’ll ultimately receive a big, long-term deal from the Guardians are slim to none, but he’s counting on them to help him get that offer from someone else. Read the rest of this entry »

Enlightenment era poet Alexander Pope famously wrote, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” His words imply that angels are the opposite of fools. If that’s true, I wonder if it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for angels to give rushing in a try every once in a while. Could that be precisely what Perry Minasian is thinking?

Including the piece you’re reading right now, the FanGraphs staff has written about four trades and three free agent signings this November. Five of those seven transactions have involved the Angels. It started with the first major trade of the offseason: Before the Dodgers even held their parade, the Angels flipped Griffin Canning to the Braves for Jorge Soler. Then they signed free agents Kyle Hendricks, Travis d’Arnaud, and Kevin Newman. Along the way, the Halos also picked up Scott Kingery and Ryan Noda, and dropped Patrick Sandoval (among others) ahead of the non-tender deadline.

On Monday morning, the Angels continued getting an early start on the offseason – this time in more ways than one. At 5:38 AM PST, news broke that they had agreed on a three-year, $63 million deal with left-hander Yusei Kikuchi. I’m imagining the news came out so early in the morning because Kikuchi is in Japan right now, and given Kikuchi’s well-known sleep schedule (and the 17-hour time difference), Minasian only had a brief window in which both he and his top target were awake. Like MacGyver racing to deactivate a time bomb, Minasian cut the right wire just in time and successfully negotiated the biggest free agent deal of his Angels tenure. Read the rest of this entry »