At this time last week, the Mets were celebrating their signing of Bo Bichette. Up until that point, though, their offseason was largely being viewed as a letdown as they assembled an oddly shaped roster. Earlier this winter, they watched as Edwin Díaz spurned them for the Dodgers, let Pete Alonso walk and then signed Jorge Polanco to play first base, and missed out on Kyle Tucker. Sure, they upgraded at second base with the Marcus Semien trade, but doing so required them to part with Brandon Nimmo, who was coming off a year in which he hit a career-high 25 home runs and posted 3.0 WAR. They decided to replace that production with 23-year-old Top 100 prospect Carson Benge, who had a 53 wRC+ in 103 Triple-A plate appearances last season, as the big spoon of a platoon in left field. They also reinforced their bullpen with two of the more inconsistent members of the 2025 Yankees’ relief corps, Devin Williams and Luke Weaver. These weren’t bad moves, to be clear. Williams especially is a strong bounce-back candidate; Polanco is a quality player, though his entire experience at first base consists of one defensive plate appearance; and Semien fulfills the team’s desire to get better defensively. But they were a bit puzzling given that the Mets’ greatest areas of need were another impact bat, a center fielder, and a frontline starting pitcher.

As it turns out, adding Bichette was just the first in a trio of acquisitions to address those major roster holes. Late Tuesday night, the Mets traded for center fielder Luis Robert Jr., who is coming off two straight seasons of injuries and poor performance but is still a tantalizing talent and just 28 years old. “If you made an outfielder in a lab, he’d look a lot like this,” wrote Ben Clemens about Robert after the trade. Then, on Wednesday, they swung a swap with the Brewers for All-Star right-hander Freddy Peralta to anchor their rotation. They had to give up two of their top prospects to get him, but as Davy Andrews noted in his column on the trade, “the Mets are trying to win this season, and now that he’s not in Milwaukee, David Stearns has the luxury of leaving tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow.”

We won’t be answering any questions about the Mets or any of the other big recent transactions, such as Cody Bellinger’s re-signing with the Yankees or the Rangers’ trade for MacKenzie Gore, but we will be talking about the other big baseball topic of the week: the Hall of Fame. We’ll also discuss the best left-on-left hitters of all time, the aesthetic potential of the Colorado Rockies, and what to expect from Foster Griffin with the Nationals. 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 »

Never let anyone tell you that there are no rebounds in baseball. That’s utter nonsense, and it is our responsibility to say so. If you need evidence to support your rebuttal, just look at what happened this past week in free agency.

Since our last mailbag ran, Alex Bregman signed a five-year, $175 million contract to play for the Cubs after opting out of the deal he signed last February with the Red Sox. The Cubs knew they weren’t in the running to re-sign Bregman’s former Astros teammate, Kyle Tucker, so they instead beefed up their lineup with the third baseman. In response to missing out on Bregman, Boston bounced back with someone completely different, agreeing to a five-year, $130 million deal with left-handed starting pitcher Ranger Suárez, phormerly of the Phillies, who had spent much of the first half of January courting Bo Bichette, whose long-time team, the Blue Jays, had their sights set on Tucker, the top-ranked free agent of the offseason. It seemed that Tucker was choosing between Toronto and the Mets, and was nearing a decision, when at the last minute the Dodgers swooped in with a four-year, $240 million offer that Tucker simply couldn’t turn down. Spurned by Tucker, the Mets splurged on Friday, snatching up Bichette for at least one season (the deal can max out at three years and $126 million) before Philadelphia could do it. Not long after, the Phillies phinally phigured they should stop playing the phield and instead rekindle an old phlame; they re-signed catcher J.T. Realmuto to a three-year, $45 million contract.

For those of you keeping score at home, the Cubs rebounded from Tucker with Bregman; the Red Sox rebounded from Bregman with Suárez; the Phillies rebounded from Suárez and Bichette with Realmuto; and the Mets rebounded from their failed pursuit of Tucker with Bichette. That leaves the Blue Jays as the one team still looking for a rebound. Tune in next week to find out if they turned to Cody Bellinger to help them get over Tucker. We won’t be covering baseball’s newest hit Realmutality TV series for the remainder of today’s mailbag. If you want to go behind the scenes of all the drama, all the tea is linked in the quick recap above, or you can go deeper by reading Jon Becker’s latest Matrix Reloaded column. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about the most exciting potential World Baseball Classic matchups, the WAR value of Edwin Encarnación’s parrot, and an alternative universe in which the PCL teams joined Major League Baseball back in the late 1950s. 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 »

Exciting news, everyone! In just about a month’s time, pitchers and catchers will be reporting to their respective spring training sites, with the rhythms of the game beginning once again. And with the start of mitts popping and best-shape-of-my-life boasting, the hopes and fears of baseball to come will be renewed.

Until then, we have plenty of things to give us Certified Baseball Sickos our fix. Four of the top five and six of the top 10 players on Ben Clemens’ Top 50 Free Agents rankings remain unsigned, including a trio of former Astros teammates in Kyle Tucker, Alex Bregman, and Framber Valdez. Also coming soon: the results of the 2026 Baseball Hall of Fame election, which will be announced on January 20. As always, Jay Jaffe has been covering the ballot top to bottom with his indispensable series of player profiles.

We’ll talk a little bit of Hall of Fame today, but through the lens of the best pitchers who never received a Hall of Fame vote. Also in this mailbag, Michael Baumann digs into Chandler Simpson, Davy Andrews looks at whether inducing popups is a skill for pitchers, and Dan Szymborski explains which types of players have the widest variance in their ZiPS projections. Before we continue, 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 »

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a relaxing and enjoyable lobe of the year; now it’s back to reality. As you return to your usual routines and start counting down to Opening Day, rest assured that all of us at FanGraphs are here to provide you with the same entertaining and informative baseball coverage that you’ve come to expect.

Speaking of the coming season, there are still plenty of star free agents left unsigned, including four of the top five and six of the top 10 on Ben Clemens’ Top 50 rankings, so it’s bound to be an eventful two-month lead-up to spring training.

In this week’s mailbag, we’ll answer your questions about the pitchers with the most WAR who never made an All-Star team, why the Hall of Fame matters, the Marlins, and Rickey Henderson’s 1982 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 »

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 »