The Chicago Cubs got their offseason into gear Monday morning, with the reported signing of veteran left-handed pitcher Matthew Boyd to a two-year contract worth $14.5 million per year, plus incentives. Hey, Boyd is a name people know, and he had that one really good year a while back, didn’t he? There’s got to be a reason the Cubs are handing out a multi-year deal for almost $30 million to a pitcher who made eight starts in 2024, hasn’t broken 80 innings in a season since 2019, and turns 34 before the start of spring training.
It’s always nice when something works out perfectly, right away. At the trade deadline, the Dodgers insinuated themselves into a three-way deal with the White Sox and Cardinals, acquiring Michael Kopech and Tommy Edman in exchange for infielder Miguel Vargas and a smattering of minor leaguers. Edman, who hadn’t played an inning all year to that point because of a wrist injury, was of little use to the Cardinals and zero use to the White Sox, so Los Angeles was able to acquire him on the cheap.
The wrist healed; the former Stanford standout debuted in late August, posted a 98 wRC+ in 37 regular-season games, then played every inning of the Dodgers’ successful World Series run. He started games at both center field and shortstop, hit .328/.354/.508 with five stolen bases in 16 appearances, and went home with NLCS MVP honors.
So you’d understand why both sides would want to run it back. On Friday night, the Dodgers announced that they and the 29-year-old Edman had agreed to a contract extension. This five-year, $72 million deal supersedes the final year of Edman’s previous two-year contract, worth $9.5 million. Should this partnership continue to bear fruit through the end of the decade, the Dodgers have a $13 million club option for 2030 as well. Read the rest of this entry »
The Cleveland Guardians are a pretty tightfisted organization. They spend infrequently, frugally, and deliberately. So I was amused when, some three weeks ago, they jumped to re-sign backup catcher Austin Hedges to a one-year, $4 million contract. That’s roughly 4% of what the Guardians spent on player payroll in total this past season — and on a backup catcher?
Now, Hedges is one of the league’s best defenders, at the position where defense is of the utmost performance. And by all accounts he’s the best clubhouse guy since Spanky from The Little Rascals. But he’s the worst hitter in the league. That’s not an exaggeration; Hedges hasn’t posted a wRC+ over 50 since 2018, and in his past two seasons he hasn’t broken 25.
Since 2019, Hedges is hitting .171/.234/.273. Of the 364 players who have taken 1,000 or more plate appearances over that time, Hedges is dead last in wRC+ by a huge margin. Jackie Bradley Jr. is in second-to-last place with a wRC+ of 67; Hedges is at 39. (Which speaks to how far you can get in baseball if you’re an elite defender and everyone likes you.) Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, I wrote about Paul Goldschmidt’s prospects in free agency, but didn’t speculate on a landing spot for the 2022 NL MVP. Not to worry — when the FanGraphs Bluesky account recirculated the piece on Monday, the public weighed in. One respondent thought the Yankees made sense, and while I don’t think the fit is ideal for either player or club, the underlying logic is reasonable enough. And here I’ll add my own spin on a potential Goldschmidt-Yankees partnership: It sure feels like the Yankees love old first basemen.
In 2024, 34-year-old Anthony Rizzo and 35-year-old DJ LeMahieu combined for 548 plate appearances and 1017 2/3 defensive innings at first base for the Yankees. (All ages in this piece are relative to the standard June 30 cutoff date unless otherwise specified.) That’s 81.5% of the Yankees’ playing time by plate appearances and 70.0% by defensive innings. Over the past five years, Yankees first basemen have the highest average age in the league. Since Don Mattingly turned 30 in 1991, the Yankees’ most-used first baseman has been in his age-30 season or older in 28 of 34 seasons. In 12 of those seasons, the Yankees’ most-used first baseman has been 33 or older, including in 2023 and 2024.
This year’s free agent class features a recent — as in the past two years — MVP. He’s playing the same position he has his entire career and has suffered no recent major injuries: 151 games played in his MVP campaign, 154 in each of the two that followed. And yet interest in this legend of the game is expected to be limited.
On the Top 50 free agents list, Ben Clemens ranked him 41st, which is third at his own position and lower than eight — EIGHT! — relief pitchers. I don’t know why I’m being coy about this player’s identity, actually, because presumably you can see the headline and header image and already know I’m talking about Paul Goldschmidt. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been working at FanGraphs long enough — more than two full years now — that I’ve started to build a track record. By that I mean that when I get something right, I can go back and gloat about it.
In February 2023, I wrote about Rangers outfielder Adolis García: A power-over-hit player who struggled to get on base and did not play a premium position. Some years ago, I was at a Starbucks a couple blocks from my house when I saw someone who looked like an ex-girlfriend of mine a few tables away. On further reflection, I don’t think it was really her, but I packed up my computer, downed my macchiato, went home, and never came back. You can never be too careful.
I would ordinarily avoid players like García with even greater alacrity. Nevertheless, I reasoned that the Rangers, having invested much more heavily in pitching than hitting, needed their right fielder to be at his best if they hoped to achieve anything in 2023. And García had made very good contact the previous season, but had not been rewarded accordingly. So despite my trepidation regarding his overall skill set, I predicted that García would take a step forward. Read the rest of this entry »
The best-case scenario for a sports team owner is rare, but clear: A local businessman runs the team as a community institution. Rather than an absentee landlord, the owner should be a community leader. That’s the vision new Orioles owner David Rubenstein is selling. During the playoffs, rather than sequestering himself in a luxury box, Rubenstein sat in the stands, among the people. OK, he was right by the home dugout, so he was among the richest subset of the people, but it’s good optics.
The players at the top of the market usually determine the shape of free agency. A team in need of offensive help in the outfield isn’t going to drop $100 million on Anthony Santander until it knows Juan Soto is no longer available. And Santander probably wouldn’t sign anyway. His agent would want to try to squeeze an extra few million out of a team that, having missed on Soto, needed desperately to go home with something.
A year ago, Shohei Ohtani held up the free agency deluge, and everyone reacted like he’d gotten to the front of a long line at Starbucks and had no idea what he wanted to order. (I mocked the public opprobrium then, but having stumbled into that simile I get it now. Everyone hates the Starbucks lollygagger.) Then Scott Boras, who usually waits out the market anyway, took even longer than usual to find homes for his top three clients. So free agency didn’t get going in earnest until mid-December, and stretched into March.
Of course, that’s only the top of the market. Every year, there’s a flurry of activity that starts only days after the end of the World Series, including some fairly big names changing teams. Read the rest of this entry »
On Wednesday, I wrote about one of my favorite topics: The impact of sabermetrics on the practice and analysis of baseball. Specifically, in this case: How MVP voters behave in the post-Fire Joe Morgan era. And for those of you who got to the end of that 2,000-word post and did not feel sated, there’s good news! This was not the question I actually set out to answer when I started kicking the topic around.
Welcome to Part 2.
The very name of the MVP award invites voters to consider the value of a certain player’s contributions. For nearly 100 years, that was a tricky proposition. How do you weigh differences in position, in playing style, park factors, hitting versus pitching versus fielding versus baserunning? It’s enough to boggle the mind. Read the rest of this entry »
