This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon.

With Ben Lindbergh serving jury duty, Meg Rowley is joined by Baseball Prospectus editor-in-chief Craig Goldstein. The pair discuss the perils of hotel pillows and showers, then turn their attention to the 2026 All-Star Game, how the in-person experience compares to the TV one, and the challenges of making it a fun event relative to the Home Run Derby. Then Craig offers his thoughts on the CBA negotiations and Rob Manfred’s approach to communicating (38:58), before he and Meg discuss a few of the things they are looking forward to (and one thing they’re dreading) about the season’s second half, including the White Sox, good teams playing well, a potentially weird deadline, and Pete Crow-Armstrong.

Audio intro: El Warren, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Josh Busman, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to the Five and Dive episode where Craig discusses the Rays
Link to Craig on the weird deadline ahead
Link to Steven Goldman on the All-Star Game
Link to Jake Mintz on the All-Star Game Sandlot tribute
Link to Jayson Stark on the AL’s All-Star pitching dominance
Link to Andy McCullough on the All-Star Game
Link to Michael Baumann on Philly as the haters’ All-Star Game
Link to Katie Woo on Jordan Walker
Link to Ben Clemens on Dillion Dingler
Link to Davy Andrews on Pete Crow-Armstrong
Link to Ryan Blake on Lance McCullers Jr. Trade
Link to Dan Szymborski on an AL team with a losing record making the postseason

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1:10	Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

1:11	Jay Jaffe: Hey hey, Happy Opening Day!

1:11	Dan Szymborski: And I’ll be here for more than expected as I my brother-in-law is already home from his procedure, so I don’t have to spend part of Opening Day wrangling a six-year-old and a four-year-old

Read the rest of this entry »

After an offseason marked by some funky free agent contract structures, a few big trades, and a bunch more handwringing over the Los Angeles Dodgers, the 2026 season is upon us; we made it. And on this, the morning of Opening Day (sorry, Netflix), we engage in our annual tradition of asking our staff to open themselves up to public ridicule by trying to predict the year ahead in baseball. Some of these predictions will prove to be prescient; others will make their forecaster feel a little silly. Such is the prognostication business.

I asked our staff to predict the playoff field, as well as the pennant and World Series winners, and the individual award recipients. Twenty-five of our writers from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs weighed in. Here are the results. Please note that the tables at the end showing the full writer ballots are sortable. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past week and a half, we’ve published our annual season preview, ranking the league’s players by position and team based on a blend of our projections (a 50/50 split between ZiPS and Steamer) and our manually maintained RosterResource playing time estimates courtesy of Jason Martinez and Jon Becker. If you happen to have missed any of those installments, you can use the navigation widget above to catch up.

Today, I’m going to summarize the results. We’ll look at some tables and pick out a few interesting tidbits in a moment, but first, as I do every year, I’ll remind you that this exercise captures a snapshot of how we project teams to perform now. Teams aren’t static. Since we began publishing our rankings, top prospects Kevin McGonigle (no. 5), JJ Wetherholt (no. 12), and Carson Benge (no. 21) made their respective Opening Day rosters, while no. 1 overall prospect Konnor Griffin was sent down to get a bit more seasoning in the minors. Nationals outfielder Dylan Crews, the second overall pick in the 2023 draft and a former top prospect, was optioned to Triple-A Rochester. And a number of notable pitchers hit the injured list, including Spencer Strider, whose strained oblique will no doubt complicate his efforts to regain his 2023 form. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the 2026 positional power rankings! As is tradition, over the next week and a half, we’ll be ranking every team by position as we inch closer to Opening Day next Thursday. As I note every year, this is something of a funny exercise. You read FanGraphs regularly, after all — a fact for which we are very grateful — and are well-versed in the various signings, trades, and injuries that have occurred over the offseason. You know that Kyle Tucker is now a Dodger, that the Blue Jays signed Dylan Cease, that the Cardinals traded away most of their veterans, and that the injury bug has bit much of the Braves rotation. And yet, you’re still keen to know more about the game and what it might look like between now and October. The positional power rankings are our answer to that impulse.

This post serves as an explainer for our approach to the rankings. If you’re new to the exercise, I hope it helps to clarify how they are compiled and what you might expect from them. If you’re a FanGraphs stalwart, much of this will be familiar, but I hope it’s a useful reminder of what we’re up to. If you have a bit of time, you’ll find the introduction to last year’s series here. You can use the navigation widget at the top of that post to get a sense of where things stood before Opening Day 2025, a spring that saw a number of players who had signed record-setting free agent deals report to their new teams.

Unlike a lot of sites’ season previews, we don’t arrange ours by team or division. That is a perfectly good way to organize a season preview, but we see a few advantages to the way we do it. First, ranking teams by position allows us to cover a team’s roster from top to bottom. Stars, everyday contributors, and role players alike receive some amount of examination, and those players (and the teams they play for) are placed in their proper league-wide context. By doing it this way, you can more easily see how teams stack up against each other, get a sense of the overall strength of a position across baseball, and spot the places where a well-constructed platoon may end up having a bigger impact than an everyday regular who is good rather than great. We think all of that context helps to create a richer understanding of the state of the game and a clearer picture of the season ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s your chance to vote for the 2026 SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards winners.

The SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards will recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the preceding calendar year. Nominations were solicited by representatives from SABR, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, and Sports Info Solutions.

To read any of the finalists, click on the link below. Scroll down to cast your vote.

Contemporary Analysis

• Ryan Blake, “The Batter’s Eye at T-Mobile Park: A New Perspective,” Lookout Landing, May 8, 2025
• Hannah Keyser, “How Fast Should Your 12-Year-Old Throw?” New York Times, August 21, 2025
• Maddie Landis, “Baseball’s Gatekept Pitching Metric: Inside Vertical Approach Angle,” Talk Sox, September 7, 2025
• Michael Rosen, “How Much Do Trail Runners Matter? An Investigation,” FanGraphs, September 8, 2025
• Stephen Sutton-Brown, “Understanding Swing Processes Through Bat and Pitch Tracking,” Baseball Prospectus, September 22, 2025

Contemporary Commentary

• Davy Andrews, “Unfuzzing the Strike Zone,” FanGraphs, January 3, 2025
• Michael Baumann, “Jhoan Duran and the One True Split-Finger Fastball,” FanGraphs, September 17, 2025
• Ben Lindbergh, ”If Pitches Are Fixed, Baseball Is Broken,” The Ringer, November 10, 2025
• RJ McDaniel, “Wearing the Hat,” Baseball Prospectus, September 17, 2025
• Richard Staff, “The Secret Brotherhood of the Phantom Ballplayers,” Defector, July 21, 2025

Historical Analysis/Commentary

• Benjamin Alter, “Josh Gibson’s Place in History: A Statistical Analysis,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Spring 2025
• R.J. Anderson, “What MLB’s salary cap history can tell us about the upcoming CBA negotiations,” CBS Sports, December 1, 2025
• Steven Goldman, “Every Day They Burn the Book,” Baseball Prospectus, April 3, 2025
• Jay Jaffe, “Never is a Long, Long Time: Permanent Ineligibility and the Hall of Fame,” FanGraphs, March 10, 2025
• David Roth, “Octavio Dotel Made a Life in Baseball,” Defector, April 10, 2025

John Dewan Defensive Analysis

• Zach Crizer, “Evolution in the Outfield: Is Center Field Morphing Into a Defensive Specialist Position?” Opta Analyst, March 24, 2025
• Daniel R. Epstein, “Stand in the Place Where You Are,” Baseball Prospectus, May 5, 2025
• Dan M. Kahan, “Fielding Before and After Baseball’s Great Transformation,” Journal of Sports Analytics, Volume 11, 2025

Voting will be open through 11:59 p.m. MST on Friday, February 6, 2026.

Mobile or Safari users, click here to access the survey

Results will be announced and presented at the SABR Analytics Conference, February 27-March 1, 2026, in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more or register for the conference at SABR.org/analytics.

Hello, and welcome to the mailbag! Matt Martell is taking some well-deserved
vacation, so I’m piloting things in his stead. This week saw the hot stove flicker to life. The Mariners re-signed Josh Naylor to a five-year, $92.5 million deal, which inspired Davy Andrews to relaunch the We Tried tracker. The Orioles and the Angels got together on a surprising challenge trade, swapping Grayson Rodriguez and Taylor Ward, while the Braves brought back Raisel Iglesias on a one-year, $16 million contract, then traded utility infielders with the Astros, acquiring Mauricio Dubón in exchange for Nick Allen.

It was also a week that saw a variety of roster-related deadlines come and go. Teams had until Tuesday to protect eligible prospects from the Rule 5 draft by adding them to their 40-man roster, while Friday brought the non-tender deadline. Tuesday also saw four players accept a qualifying offer. Brandon Woodruff, Trent Grisham, Gleyber Torres, and Shota Imanaga will return to their prior teams on one-year contracts worth $22.025 million, removing them from the free pool. As Michael Baumann noted in his piece on the subject, that breaks the previous record of three players set in 2015; 144 qualifying offers were extended to pending free agents in the first 14 years of the system, with only 14 accepted.

We’ll cover every major signing and trade in the weeks ahead, but this week’s mailbag isn’t focused on transactions. Instead, we’ll contemplate a player who underperformed in 2025, the relative volatility of relievers and starters, and a controversial Hall of Fame case. 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 »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent seasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract crowdsourcing project, with the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2025-26 free agent market.

In recent years, we’ve added a few features to these ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor league contract, or won’t receive one at all. If there is a player option, team option, or opt out in a player’s contract, you’ll be able to indicate whether you think he will remain with his current team or become a free agent. Numbers are prorated to full season where noted. The projected statistics and WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2026 ZiPS projections.

Below are ballots for eight of this year’s potential free agents — in this case, a group of players who began their pro careers in affiliated ball before transitioning to NPB or the KBO, and who could eye a return to MLB this winter. For more detailed scouting information, be sure to read their reports on The Board, as well as Eric Longenhagen and James Fegan’s recent piece on the players who could be coming over from Asian pro leagues this offseason. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent seasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract crowdsourcing project, with the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2025-26 free agent market.

In recent years, we’ve added a few features to these ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor league contract, or won’t receive one at all. If there is a player option, team option, or opt out in a player’s contract, you’ll be able to indicate whether you think he will remain with his current team or become a free agent. Numbers are prorated to full season where noted. The projected statistics and WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2026 ZiPS projections.

Below are ballots for eight of this year’s potential free agents — in this case, a group of foreign pros from NPB and the KBO who may be posted this winter. For more detailed scouting information, be sure to read their reports on The Board, as well as Eric Longenhagen and James Fegan’s recent piece on the players who could be coming over from Asian pro leagues this offseason. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent seasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract crowdsourcing project, with the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2025-26 free agent market.

In recent years, we’ve added a few features to these ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor league contract, or won’t receive one at all. If there is a player option, team option, or opt out in a player’s contract, you’ll be able to indicate whether you think he will remain with his current team or become a free agent. Numbers are prorated to full season where noted. Unless otherwise indicated, the projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2026 Steamer600 projections.

Below are ballots for eight of this year’s potential free agents — in this case, a group of pitchers who have options or opt outs associated with their current contracts. Not all of them will actually reach free agency, but in the event they do, we’re interested in gauging their next contract. Read the rest of this entry »