Hello everyone, and welcome to the final mailbag of 2025! I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season.

We are now officially in what my family refers to as the lobe of the year, the week between Christmas and New Year, when a lot of us wind down and spend time with friends and loved ones. It’s a time for relaxing and reflecting. You’ll notice that here at FanGraphs, aside from this mailbag and a few transaction reactions, we are mostly taking it slow. Instead, we’re republishing our favorite FanGraphs pieces of the year. You can check those out here, or as they populate the homepage from now through the end of next week.

In this week’s mailbag, we’ll cover the best players who never received a Hall of Fame vote, NPB posting rules, and Dillon Dingler’s breakout season. Before we do, though, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

As is often the case the week after the Winter Meetings, there has been a flurry of transactions for us to cover at FanGraphs since we got back from Orlando. So many relief pitchers came off the board. The Padres re-signed Michael King on Thursday night while Meg’s Seahawks were staging an absolutely stupid comeback against my Rams; San Diego followed that up yesterday by signing a Korean infielder with the musical name, Sung-mun Song. Earlier this week, the Twins signed Josh Bell to hit in the middle of their order, while the Phillies added Adolis García to replace right fielder Nick Castellanos, who is still technically on the roster but definitely won’t be when the season starts. The two moves inspired Michael Baumann to compare them to babies putting every single thing they see into their mouths. Lovely.

Then, yesterday, two big trades went down. Eric Longenhagen has you covered on the Rays-Orioles swap that sent Shane Baz to Baltimore, while Brendan Gawlowksi analyzed the three-team trade between the Rays, Pirates, and Astros. Of course, there are a number of high-profile free agents still out there, including four of the top five on Ben Clemens’ Top 50 list and six of the top 10.

We won’t be covering any of that in today’s mailbag; you can find all the relevant buzz in Jon Becker’s latest edition of the Matrix Reloaded column. Instead, we’ll answer your questions about the position players with the most WAR who never made an All-Star team, whether baseball should use WPA as pitcher wins, the windup, and more. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Compared to last year, when we saw multiple players sign record-setting contracts, this week’s Winter Meetings were rather tame. That’s not to say it was dull or that nothing happened. Edwin Díaz rejected an offer to re-sign with the Mets for more money because he wanted to pitch for the Dodgers. Kyle Schwarber returned to the Phillies on a five-year, $150 million contract, a massive deal considering he’s a DH who turns 33 in March. Pete Alonso drove from his home in Tampa up to Orlando to meet with several suitors, then signed a five-year, $155 million deal with the Orioles; the Mets, the team for whom he spent his first seven seasons and set the franchise home run record, did not extend him a contract offer. Several smaller moves happened, too. Michael Soroka joined the Diamondbacks on a one-year deal, and Steven Matz signed with the Rays for two years. The Tigers brought back Kyle Finnegan on a two-year, $19 million contract, and the Pirates became the latest team to believe they can fix Gregory Soto, signing him for one year and $7.75 million. The Braves added outfielder Mike Yastrzemski on Wednesday night.

The fun didn’t stop when the Winter Meetings did, though. On Thursday, while most of us at FanGraphs were flying home, the Braves signed reliever Robert Suarez for three years and $45 million. And then on Friday, the Blue Jays and Tyler Rogers agreed to a three-year, $37 million deal, with a vesting option for a fourth year.

We won’t cover those moves, or any of the others that went down this week, in this column. You can find them in Jon Becker’s latest Matrix Reloaded. Instead, today we’ll be answering your questions about players with more All-Star appearances than career WAR, the ABS challenge system, Shohei Ohtani’s World Series Game 3 performance, and more. Before we do, though, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

The Winter Meetings begin on Sunday in Orlando, and as always, the FanGraphs crew will be there covering all the baseball buzz. For that reason, I’ll keep this introduction brief; we’ll have more than enough words for you to read in the week ahead, when the offseason action is bound to pick up considerably.

Three weeks ago, I put out a call for fresh mailbag submissions, and you all delivered the goods. I knew I could count on you! We’ve received so many great questions since then, including the four that we’ll get to in a moment, and so I just wanted to thank everyone for holding up your end of the bargain. Now it’s time for us to do our part and answer them!

Before we do, though, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

As Members of our site, you probably know by now that FanGraphs goes dark on most national holidays, as we were the past two days. We believe our staff deserves to enjoy holidays without having to worry about working, and our readers tend to have plans that don’t involve reading about baseball or staring at statistics on a screen. The exception is when news breaks that would prompt our readers to stop what they’re doing and rush to the site for analysis, such as a major transaction involving a star player. So for a few hours on Wednesday afternoon, as chatter picked up that Dylan Cease was nearing a deal with the Blue Jays, Meg and I both prepared for the possibility that we might need to work a bit on Thanksgiving, especially because the team in question plays in a country that doesn’t observe the holiday on the same day Americans do. Fortunately — ahem, thankfully — Cease agreed to a seven-year, $210 million contract with Toronto in time for Michael Baumann to write up the news and for us to edit and publish it Wednesday night.

The Cease signing was the latest move in what has already been a fairly active offseason. The Cardinals traded starting pitcher Sonny Gray to the Red Sox on Tuesday, two days after the Mets and Rangers made a one-for-one swap of former All-Stars. I learned of the Brandon Nimmo-for-Marcus Semien exchange around 2 AM Central European Standard Time on Monday, after I made the chaotic decision to wake up and watch the Rams-Buccaneers game before what turned out to be a roughly 24-hour travel day from Italy to New York. Following my initial surprise, I couldn’t help but wonder if Nimmo’s former teammate Matt Harvey would once again pitch for Team Italy in the upcoming World Baseball Classic.

We won’t be covering any of these moves in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about the best unmade baseball movie, JJ Wetherholt, the marginal value of team runs scored and individual offensive production, and more. Before we do, though, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the World Series is over and we’re two weeks into the offseason, the stockpile of questions for our mailbag is getting a little light. For that reason, I’m putting out a request for fresh submissions. I’m sure that if you’re reading this, you have at least some kernel of a question or curiosity noodling around in your noggin, and we are eager to answer it. As you’ll see from the assortment of topics in this week’s column — ranging from the career earnings potentially lost due to gambling allegations all the way to a hypothetical seven-game series between fantasy and sci-fi characters — we are game for almost anything. To ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, please send us an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.

That said, there are a few questions that we have absolutely no way of answering, even though they are fun and interesting. I’ll include one at the start of this week’s edition and respond to it briefly before we get to the meat of the mailbag.

But first, a quick programming note: I will be on vacation next week, so Meg will be steering the mailbag in my absence. If you have any thoughts about the Seattle Seahawks or the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film Contact, I’m sure she’d love to hear from you as she combs through the emails next week. And, as always, I’d like to remind you all that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. OK, let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Happy first Saturday of the offseason, everyone. To celebrate the occasion, you get two mailbag columns this week! The first ran on Monday and wrapped up a thrilling World Series. In today’s edition, we’ll move on from the Fall Classic and answer your questions about several teams that finished in last place this season. We’ll also cover small-market teams and some of the structures that are in place to encourage them to spend more on their rosters.

The first question we’ll answer today is about a player we’ve featured before in this column. In fact, some are calling him the Patron Saint of the Mailbag, an honor second only to his status as the worst major league player ever.

But before we continue, I’d like to remind you all that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Just after Yoshinobu Yamamoto escaped the bases-loaded, one-out jam in the bottom of the ninth inning to send Game 7 of the World Series into extra innings, I received a text message from my dad that said, “Why did he slide?” The “he” was Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who was thrown out at home by Miguel Rojas on a bang-bang play for the second out of the inning. The throw momentarily pulled Will Smith off the plate, but the catcher reconnected with the dish just before IKF’s front foot touched it. Sliding slows down the momentum of a baserunner, and my dad was arguing that if IKF hadn’t slid, he would’ve been safe and the Blue Jays would’ve walked-off the Dodgers in Game 7. Instead, Los Angeles won it, 5-4, in 11 innings to become the first back-to-back champions in 25 years.

We have no way of knowing for sure, but after watching the replay about a dozen times, I agree with my dad that Kiner-Falefa would’ve been safe had he remained upright and sprinted through the plate, albeit barely. Heck, a bigger secondary lead might have done it, even with his slide. These are the extremely fine margins with which this most glorious and baffling World Series was decided. For fans of the two teams, I’m sure it was excruciating to watch; to me and all the other neutral observers out there, it was an absolute delight.

We’ll be wrapping up our coverage of the World Series throughout the day here at FanGraphs, including in this mailbag. Before we continue, though, I’d like to remind you all that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

I have no idea what Dan Wilson was doing. With the Mariners clinging to a 3-1 lead in the seventh inning of Game 7 of the ALCS, their manager elected to bring in Eduard Bazardo, who’d just thrown two innings the night before, with two on and the top of the Blue Jays order coming up instead of going to his closer, Andrés Muñoz. It took two pitches for the decision to backfire. George Springer turned on the 1-0 pitch from Bazardo, a 96-mph thigh-high sinker over the inner third of the plate, and clobbered it over the left-center field wall. The three-run blast secured the Blue Jays their first American League pennant in 32 years. They’ll face the defending-champion Dodgers in the World Series, which begins on Friday at Rogers Centre.

I’m not going to get into all the chaos from last night’s decisive game here. For more on that, you should check out Eric Longenhagen’s recap. We’ve been covering both the Blue Jays and the Dodgers all postseason, and we’ll continue to do so during the World Series, so be sure to keep coming to FanGraphs throughout the Fall Classic.

A quick programming note before we continue: Our next mailbag will come out after the end of the World Series, whenever that may be. Also, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — About 45 minutes after the “best team” that Aaron Boone has ever managed was eliminated from the playoffs, several of its members sat in the clubhouse drinking a few small beers. The mood was wistful, the somber finality of it all floating through the very same air that less than a week earlier had reeked of celebratory champagne.

They had just lost the American League Division Series to the Blue Jays in four games, and for the most part, it wasn’t all that close. Despite an all-time great postseason performance from Aaron Judge following yet another all-time great regular season from him, New York was thoroughly outplayed by Toronto. Boasting the most annoying opposing lineup in baseball, the Jays peppered pitchers with their all-fields approach and their refusal to swing and miss. Theirs was a Boomer’s more-than-platonic ideal of an offense – they had the lowest strikeout rate (17.8%) and the highest batting average (.265) in the majors this season — but it wasn’t a true throwback. The Blue Jays weren’t dependent on the long ball, but they were more than capable of hitting home runs, as we all saw during the ALDS. As a team, Toronto slashed .338/.373/.601 for a 168 wRC+ across the four games. Yankees pitchers struck out 23.7% of the hitters they faced during the regular season but just 14.9% of the Blue Jays who batted in the series.

“They beat us this series,” Boone said. “Simple as that.”

Yet even as the Yankees accepted their fate, that they had played their last baseball game of the season, they were still trying to understand how it all went wrong. Hadn’t they addressed their shortcomings from a year ago, when they lost to the Dodgers in the World Series? They lengthened their lineup, improved their baserunning, and enhanced their rotation during the offseason, and then ahead of the trade deadline, they made more moves designed to shore up their defense and bolster their bullpen. Some of those deals didn’t pan out, but many of them did. Read the rest of this entry »