A lot of people think this job is about immersing oneself in the glorious, vibrant culture of baseball. Feeling the sun on your face, schmoozing with athletes, learning the finest intricacies of a children’s game. And it is, to some extent. Some people think this job is about the craft of writing, and ingesting and disseminating knowledge. It is, to some extent. Some people think this job —at least how we do it here at FanGraphs — is about math, the unforgiving exactitude of numbers. And again, it is, but only to an extent.

The more time I spend doing this job, the more I’ve come to believe it’s about the rules. Sometimes literally — once a week I answer a question for our Members Only mailbag, and it usually has something to do with “Why hasn’t anyone thought to do X?” The answer, more often than not: Because they’re not allowed.

So I’ve found myself spending lots of time with two documents: The major league rulebook and the collective bargaining agreement. The latter document is of interest to most fans because of the ways in which it governs transactions. This is where the minimum salary is established, along with the competitive balance tax and rules about arbitration — the minutiae of which made headline news just last week.

Those are the headline details — the big-money sections, literally — that will likely capture the public’s imagination over the next several months. But the CBA is first and foremost a covenant between labor and capital to govern workplace conditions, and it is herein that you’ll find all manner of fascinating tidbits that fans would never notice or care about, but are important to the everyday lives of the players. Read the rest of this entry »

Seldom, if ever, has the baseball world waited on tenterhooks to hear the result of a salary arbitration case, but most arbitration-eligible players are not Tarik Skubal. On this point, the arbitrator seems to have agreed, granting the Tigers left-hander a record $32 million salary for his final year of team control.

Arbitration cases themselves are usually back-page news. The question is not whether a player will return to his previous team, but how much he’ll be paid. Only people who work in baseball and unrecoverable RosterResource addicts care about such things, especially because the club’s offer and the player’s request usually only differ by a small amount. Read the rest of this entry »

The Kansas City Royals are my dark horse team for 2026. They managed not only to make the playoffs in 2024 but also to win a round despite not having anything resembling a playoff-quality offense, and then went a respectable 82-80 in 2025 even after losing ace Cole Ragans to a rotator cuff strain and watching no. 2 starter Seth Lugo start to suffer the effects of age.

Heading into 2026, the Royals have a deep pitching staff and more good position players than they’ve had at one time in at least 10 years. Maikel Garcia and Bobby Witt Jr. are baseball’s best left-side-of-the-infield duo, and Vinnie Pasquantino is pretty good too. If not for the giant sucking maw at second base, the Royals infield would be among the best in the majors.

Still, they could, as ever, use another thumper. Witt is the team’s only truly transformative offensive player, and while Kansas City has bolstered the lineup with the addition of Isaac Collins, it had only four players last season with double-digit home runs. That’s the lowest total in baseball; 27 teams had at least six such players, 16 had eight, and four had 10.

Seems like a team that could really use a gigantic Floridian with 80-grade power. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not going to pretend that you should care about, or even have heard of, Carmen Mlodzinski before now. He’s a spot starter and medium-leverage reliever on a bad team that gets 90% of its national attention when a specific other pitcher is on the mound. And if you’re not watching the Pirates for Paul Skenes, you’re probably watching them for Bubba Chandler or Mitch Keller or (before he got hurt) Jared Jones, and changing the channel when the bullpen comes in.

It’s fine. Life, unlike Skenes, is short. There are many more important players out there than Mlodzinski.

Nevertheless, he’s doing some fun stuff and I’d like to tell you about it. Read the rest of this entry »

Not every team shows up for spring training with a reasonable hope of winning the World Series, but there is a grand, overarching narrative to follow in every camp. For the Chicago White Sox, it’s whether they can achieve an all-Sean-and-Shane starting rotation — they’re currently 60% of the way there.

That might sound like a modest goal, but it’s a lot more ambitious than what they set out to achieve just last year: Avoid losing 120 games. Again. The White Sox will sink or swim (or at least sink more slowly) based on how their young homegrown players perform, but Chicago’s supporting cast is looking relatively OK.

All the more so after this weekend, when the White Sox made two moves: signing free agent outfielder Austin Hays to a one-year contract, and trading for Red Sox pitchers Jordan Hicks and David Sandlin. Read the rest of this entry »

I was thinking about Rob Refsnyder recently for two reasons. First, I think about Rob Refsnyder a lot. I try to be professional in this forum, but everyone has their own sports fan nemeses, and Refsnyder is one of mine.

Back in 2012, Refsnyder — then a University of Arizona Wildcat — was the Most Outstanding Player of the College World Series, in part because he went berserk in the two-game final against South Carolina: 4-for-6 with two walks and a home run. He drove in the winning run in Game 1 and scored the winning run in Game 2. My beloved Gamecocks were denied a third straight national championship and haven’t been back to Omaha since. I’ll die mad about this series, and I’ll never forgive Refsnyder in particular.

I did not, however, expect to still be writing about Refsnyder — then a punchy, athletically unremarkable second baseman — in 2026. The previous year’s College World Series MOP, Scott Wingo, was an 11th-round pick; he never came close to making the majors and has spent the past decade as a college assistant coach. (He was most recently in the news in 2024 as the Home Run Derby pitcher for Alec Bohm.) Read the rest of this entry »

The San Francisco Giants, with their unique front office leadership and unconventional manager, have gone the traditional route. “Acquire Harrison Bader” is a tried-and-true team-building strategy for a would-be contender; the former Florida Gator is on his way to his seventh organization in the past four-and-a-half years.

The Giants, unlike Bader’s previous employers, seem interested in keeping him around long enough to unpack all his furniture: Bader’s new contract is for two years and $20.5 million.

Regardless of any analysis to follow, this move makes the Giants stronger in 2026. Bader is a legitimate center fielder who’ll relieve the defensive pressure on the freshly emancipated Jung Hoo Lee (who’s stretched in center) and Heliot Ramos (who’s stretched at any position that requires him to wield a glove). Guys who can play center field comfortably and have a clue at the plate are harder to find than you’d think — especially in free agency — and the Giants got one. Read the rest of this entry »

I try not to be a stick in the mud. I really do. But I was poking around in RosterResource recently, and I saw something that gave me a headache. Edwin Díaz, who wore no. 39 with the Mariners and Mets, had to pick a new number with his new team, as the Dodgers had retired no. 39 for Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella.

He’s choosing no. 3. Díaz actually made his new number public back in December, but I’d missed the news. Good thing; it would’ve ruined my Christmas. Too many pitchers are wearing single-digit numbers these days, and it has to stop. Read the rest of this entry »

The stove is piping hot, my friends.

Just over 12 hours after Kyle Tucker’s bombshell signing with the Dodgers, Bo Bichette is also on the move. To the New York Mets, on a three-year, $126 million contract with opt-outs after each of the first two seasons. A shortstop throughout his career to this point, Bichette is expected to play third base for the Mets, who have a pretty solid incumbent shortstop already.

Bichette and the Dodgers had been in discussions over a short-term, high-AAV deal like the one Tucker ultimately signed, but Bichette, like most free agents, seemed to be interested in a contract with more term and overall value, but a lower annual salary. Back in August, I made a case for Bichette to cash in by pitching him as Trea Turner, but slow. And when America went to bed on Thursday, the smart money was on Bichette signing with the Phillies, who had already invested $300 million in Original Recipe Turner.

The Mets were reeling from Tucker’s rejection, amidst mortifying vagueposting from Steve Cohen. (Seriously, if you’re worth more than $500 million, you should not be allowed on social media.) But credit to Cohen and David Stearns, who suddenly found themselves with $220 million earmarked for Tucker, and no Tucker to spend that money on. They not only grabbed the next-best bat left on the market, in so doing they put a finger in the eye of their division rival. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know why, but I’ve spent more time thinking about the Miami Marlins than any other team this winter. It started when the Marlins came to the end of the season with a not-terrible 79-83 record — three games better than the Braves! — with some interesting pieces looking forward.

Then two Marlins showed up on my search for the next Geraldo Perdomo. Then I kind of talked myself into Miami being one lucky free agent signing from competitiveness — just like in 2002. But it turns out they’re not even making a token effort to spend. Then they traded from their surplus of pitchers to beef up their anemic lineup, which seemed like an OK compromise to make at the time even though it thinned out their greatest strength.

But then the Marlins thinned that rotation out even further, shipping Ryan Weathers to the Yankees for four prospects. So now the Marlins are in a position where Janson Junk is back in their presumptive Opening Day rotation. How fortuitous, because I’d been meaning to write about Junk for a while. Read the rest of this entry »