Over the past six weeks, prospects from across the league have participated in spring training activity in Arizona and Florida. Some got into big league games, or participated in the Spring Breakout showcase; others have played in minor league games on the backfields for most of the last month. This spring activity has been enough to move the prospect needle for a handful of players. With the last minor league camps set to break today and extended spring training on the horizon, I’ve touched up my Top 100 list from the offseason to reflect relevant changes that players have made, as well as changes to my own thinking about them.

As you read, there are a couple of things to keep in mind, especially if you’re new to FanGraphs prospect stuff. First, the “Top 100” title is arbitrary SEO nonsense; I rank players as deep as I have them graded as 50 FV prospects or better, and as of this update, that’s 114 guys. Second, remember that Future Value is a value grade. The tools and ultimate potential upside of a player matter a lot, as does the length and consistency of a player’s performance track record and their proximity to the majors. There are players who have talent upside better than their FV grade, but if they’re risky for whatever reason, or if they’re in the low minors, I want to reflect that risk/time element in their grade.

Finally, remember that an actualized “50” is an average everyday player at a given position. Not “average” in the sense that I’m averaging every big leaguer who played that position to create a performance baseline. Rather, “average” here means that the player would fall toward the middle of the pack when we’re talking about the top 30-ish players at their position across a multi-year window. That’s a high bar. Really excellent, tenured players tend to occupy their spot on a big league roster for long periods of time. It’s hard for prospects to crack into that All-Star-caliber group, and even harder to sustain some measure of production for six-plus years of team control. Forty- and 45-grade players are good big leaguers, too, and there are many more of them across the pro baseball talent distribution than there are 50s. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball analysts and team managers alike love to remind players and fans that Opening Day rosters are just one of many that each team will feature over the course of the season. And while that’s certainly true, the fanfare of making an Opening Day roster is an accomplishment that doesn’t get topped until players are lucky enough to find themselves as one of the 26 names on a postseason ballclub.

While Thursday’s rosters have already proven themselves to be ephemeral (RIP to Nick Gonzales’ ankle), it’s still a good opportunity to take a look back at how the rosters were constructed. Our Active Roster Breakdown will always be up-to-the-minute with the latest moves, if you’d like to peruse that at any point as rosters evolve throughout the season.

The Guardians’ modus operandi for years has been to build homegrown winners, and it’s unsurprising to see the Cardinals right there with Cleveland in that category considering how little St. Louis did this offseason. Conversely, because Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller keeps trading away their homegrown players, there are only three of them on San Diego’s Opening Day roster.

The teams that turn to free agency most are the ones that either have struggled to produce homegrown talent in recent years or, like the Padres, have traded away the top players in their system. Either way, because they lack capable internal options, they rely on the open market to fill out their rosters.

On the flip side, both Florida teams stayed out of the free agent market almost entirely. Nearly two-thirds of the Rays’ Opening Day roster (17 of 26) were acquired via trade. Meanwhile, the Marlins have been aggressive on the waiver wire since Peter Bendix was hired as president of baseball operations after the 2023 season, and the players they’ve claimed are not just non-roster flotsam; Derek Hill and Otto Lopez are in their starting lineup, Connor Gillispie is their no. 2 starter, and Jesus Tinoco is a key setup man.

Does it portend badly for the Dodgers that they’re the oldest team in baseball by over nine months? Well, no, they’re the Dodgers. But this list does reflect where a lot of teams are in their contention cycles. The Dodgers are in win-now mode, and while they’ll seemingly be in win-now mode in perpetuity, they’ll be doing that with older players. Even so, an aging roster doesn’t necessarily guarantee a winning one. As things stand, the Blue Jays, who have the fourth-oldest roster in the majors, appear to be nearing the end of their contention window. And that window could slam shut entirely if Vladimir Guerrero Jr. — who, at 26, actually brings their average age down — departs in free agency after the season.

Most of the teams on the other end of the age spectrum are either at the start of rebuilds (Marlins, White Sox) or are making progress but aren’t quite ready to contend yet (Nationals, A’s). Their average ages will get older as their roster gains experience and their window of contention opens. The Rays are always going to be young because they typically trade their homegrown players when they get older and more expensive.

A slightly different way to look at this is by years of MLB service, which generally correlates with age but not always. For example, the Reds are a little bit older than the league-average team, but they opened the season with 20 players who have fewer than six years of service time. That’s because Cincinnati’s roster includes late bloomers Jose Trevino, Sam Moll, and Ian Gibaut.

Sticking with their youth movement, the Marlins’ most experienced players are Sandy Alcantara and Cal Quantrill, who have a combined 12 years and 60 days of MLB service entering the year. That’s a figure topped by 19 individual players on Opening Day rosters.

Lastly, let’s look at the countries where each team’s players were born.

Specifically, I’d like to highlight the players from the least-represented countries in the majors.

Aruba: Xander Bogaerts (Padres), Chadwick Tromp (Braves)

Australia: Curtis Mead (Rays)

Bahamas: Jazz Chisholm Jr. (Yankees)

Germany: Max Kepler (Phillies)

Honduras: Mauricio Dubón (Astros)

Peru: Jesús Luzardo (Phillies)

South Africa: Rob Refsnyder (Red Sox)

Baseball truly is a global game, and I hope the game continues to grow internationally so that we can have players from more countries in the years to come.

Alan Roden roped baseballs with regularity this spring, helping himself to land not only a roster spot, but also an Opening Day start in right field for the Toronto Blue Jays. Showing signs that he’s ready to take off at the MLB level, the 25-year-old left-handed hitter punished Grapefruit League hurlers to the tune of a 1.245 OPS and a 220 wRC+. He also coaxed six free passes and fanned just four times over his 37 plate appearances.

More than spring training results factored into his first big-league opportunity. Building on a strong 2024 season, split between Double-A New Hampshire and Triple-A Buffalo, Roden has been adding pop to his profile. Previously known more for his bat-to-ball skills than for his ability to clear fences, the erstwhile Creighton University Bluejay is now looking to lift.

Having read of Roden’s efforts to generate more power, I asked him how he’s gone about impacting the ball with more authority.

“I think it’s less of the actual impact that’s better,” Roden told me at Blue Jays camp. “It’s more the shape of the ball off the bat, directionally. The exit velocities are high enough to where if I’m getting in the air to the pull side, it’s going to go. That’s where the damage comes from, hitting the ball with more ideal launch angles.”

Roden has a B.A. in physics, so understanding the aerodynamics of ball flight, and the swing paths that produce results, comes with the territory. Explaining his mechanical adjustments was a simple exercise for the Middleton, Wisconsin native. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, most teams hold some sort of team bonding, social event during spring training. The specifics of the event vary from team to team, but frequently they include renting out a movie theater and showing some cloying, inspirational movie like The Blind Side, Cool Runnings, Rudy, or better yet, a documentary like Free Solo. Regardless of the team’s outlook on the year, the goal is to get the players amped up for the season and ready to compete on the field, even if the competition in question is for fourth place in the division.

But what if instead of taking the clichéd route, teams actually tried to select a movie that fits their current vibe, one that’s thematically on brand with the state of their franchise? They won’t do this because spring training is a time for hope merchants to peddle their wares, even if they’re selling snake oil to sub-.500 teams. But spring training is over now, the regular season has begun, and it’s time to get real. So here are my movie selections for each National League team, sorted by release date from oldest to newest.

If you’re interested in which movies I selected for the American League teams, you can find those picks here. Read the rest of this entry »

The offseason did its best to kill us. It really did. But here we are. Alive. Maybe even invincible. Baseball season has arrived, and we’re here to meet it. But what about your favorite team? Will they live forever? Will they die in a pit? After one day of games (I know, I know, the Dodgers and Cubs have played three), anything is possible. Anything at all. As such, in the thousands of words that follow, I’ve explained how and why each team could win it all, take home the World Series trophy, live forever, usurp the celestial throne and defeat God once and for all. I’ve also explained how and why each team could lose it all, never win another game, trip and fall down the M.C. Escher stairs for all of eternity, die screaming in a frozen void and slowly disintegrate into its elemental particles. Consider these the first and 99th-percentile projections.

Arizona Diamondbacks
Why They’ll Win It All: The power of the Double Corbin. In his first full season, Corbin Carroll dragged the Diamondbacks all the way to the World Series. Over his seven seasons, Corbin Burnes’ teams have missed the playoffs just once. And now they’ve joined forces. This is the first team in major league history to feature two Corbins. It will make them invincible. The only thing that could break the spell: trading for Patrick Corbin.

Why They’ll Lose It All: What if something should happen to Ketel Marte? I’m not saying anything will happen to Ketel Marte. I’m just saying that the Diamondbacks are going to worry about it. He’s so valuable to the team. What if he gets hurt? What if he gets tired? What if he gets bored of being amazing at baseball and decides to live the simple life, opening a cute little bed and breakfast out by the lake? The Diamondbacks will be so worried about Marte that they won’t be able to eat. They won’t be able to sleep. They won’t be able to play at all.

Atlanta Braves
Why They’ll Win It All: Atlanta is bounce-back city. Ronald Acuña Jr. got hurt. Spencer Strider got hurt. Matt Olson had a down year. Austin Riley had a down year. Michael Harris II had a down year. Sean Murphy had a down year. Ozzie Albies got hurt and had a down year. That’s a lot of stars with something to prove. This year, they’re back and they’re out for blood.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Exhaustion. Atlanta asks a lot of its players. The starters never get days off. The bench players never get in the game. This year, it will destroy them. The starters will get run down, exhausted, waste away. The bench players will start wondering why they’re even there. They’ll forget how baseball works, forget to show up to the stadium. The pitchers will run excellent FIPs, but when the other team puts the ball in play, it’ll just keep on rolling.

Baltimore Orioles
Why They’ll Win It All: Their adorable apple cheeks. All those young, identical Orioles with rosy red cheeks and wavy hair give the team a tactical advantage. When an opponent comes to the plate, they won’t be able to tell one player from another. Everywhere they look, there’s another bright-eyed, bushy-tailed baby bird ready to swoop in and steal a base hit. They’re one. They’re the same. They’re everywhere. Nowhere is safe. Why even try to hit the ball at all?

Why They’ll Lose It All: Rotation looks a little thin.

Boston Red Sox
Why They’ll Win It All: The Big Three. Roman Anthony, Kristian Campbell, and Marcelo Mayer will lift the Red Sox to heights hitherto undreamt of in Boston — not because Bostonians lack the capacity to dream of greatness, but because greatness of this magnitude, this splendor, is too powerful even to contemplate. In Boston, whenever someone starts talking about this kind of power, people start throwing tea in the harbor.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Garrett Crochet’s elbow. Walker Buehler’s elbow. Lucas Giolito’s elbow. Patrick Sandoval’s elbow. Liam Hendriks’ elbow. Alex Bregman’s elbow. Brayan Bello’s shoulder. Trevor Story’s shoulder. Rafael Devers’ shoulder. Rafael Devers’ other shoulder. Masataka Yoshida’s shoulder. Masataka Yohida’s back.

Chicago Cubs
Why They’ll Win It All: They’re gonna find intelligent life up there on the moon. And “The Canterbury Tales” will shoot up to the top of the bestseller list and stay there for 27 weeks. And I will love you again. I will love you like I used to.

Why They’ll Lose It All: I will never love you like I used to.

Chicago White Sox
Why They’ll Win It All: So here’s the thing. What you have to keep in mind is that… You know, people throw the word impossible around a lot but… Where there’s a will, um, you know, anything can happen? Right? I’ll get back to you.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Sometimes you just get unlucky.

Cincinnati Reds
Why They’ll Win It All: Elly will do it. Elly De La Cruz will lift us to victory on his impossibly large shoulders. He will carry us at the plate, in the field, on the basepaths. Elly will even glide to the mound with those unfathomably long strides when the game is on the line and fire a fastball clear through the catcher’s mitt. “Stee-rike three!” the umpire will shout. Elly will do it.

Why They’ll Lose It All: TJ Friedl will bunt too much. He’ll come to the plate 650 times and bunt 653 times. (He’ll borrow Spencer Steer’s bat and jersey and sneak in an extra three bunts as an imposter.) The grass in front the plate will be worn down into nothing. Friedl will reach base 23 times. He’ll have two RBI. Terry Francona will legally adopt him.

Cleveland Guardians
Why They’ll Win It All: The same weird reason they did so well last season, I guess.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Bo Naylor will be sad. He’ll miss his brother Josh Naylor, who used to be his teammate but is now just his brother who lives in a whole other state, in a whole other region, in a whole other time zone. Who is Bo Naylor if not the brother of Josh Naylor? Who will eat breakfast with him? Who will carpool with him? Who will chuck him playfully on the chin and say, “Uh-oh, looks like somebody forgot to tie their cleats nice and tight,” then lace them up the way mom always taught? The sadness will permeate the locker room. The players will spend all day thinking about their own siblings, far away in their own cities and states and countries. They won’t realize until it’s too late that brotherhood was all around them, waiting to be discovered.

Colorado Rockies
Why They’ll Win It All: The Rockies have finally figured out the way to take advantage of their unique environment: altitude training. They’ll be the fastest, best-conditioned team in baseball. They’ll never get tired. They’ll steal 20 bases a game. They’ll track down every last ball in the outfield. They’ll win the second game of every double header, 45-0.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Mountain men are strong and hardy. They live rough. They ride all night. They drink from streams and sing mountain songs. Unfortunately, they rarely play baseball, which leaves them unprepared for all the baseball to come.

Detroit Tigers
Why They’ll Win It All: They’ll play like tigers. They’ll slash. They’ll claw. They’ll pounce. They’ll also have Tarik Skubal.

Why They’ll Lose It All: They’ll play like tigers. They’ll be endangered due to deforestation and poaching. They’ll be alone and scared. They’ll wonder why they, of all teams, don’t wear pinstripes. Tarik Skubal will develop a blister.

Houston Astros
Why They’ll Win It All: Jose Altuve will turn out to be the greatest defensive left fielder in the history of baseball. He’ll vacuum up everything in sight. He’ll play so shallow that he can charge seeing-eye grounders and nail the runner at first. He’ll leap 20 feet to rob home runs that were destined for the Crawford Boxes, then land ever so softly on the warning track like nothing happened. Eventually Astros will realize they don’t even need a center fielder. They’ll move Altuve to left-center and play every game with five infielders. They’ll give up just 13 singles after the All-Star break.

Why They’ll Lose It All: With the University of Houston Cougars charging through the NCAA tournament, the team will get swept up in March Madness. They’ll paint their faces red. They’ll watch every game. They’ll get that Capital One credit card or bank account or whatever it is that Charles Barkley and Samuel L. Jackson are selling. They’ll roll baskets into the batting cages and the bullpen. They’ll shoot hoops all day long and forget to practice baseball entirely. It will turn out that Jose Altuve spent his whole life playing second base rather than left field for a reason.

Kansas City Royals
Why They’ll Win It All: Bobby Witt Jr. will wheel a blackboard into the clubhouse, don a tweed jacket, and patiently teach every player on the Royals how to play like Bobby Witt Jr. As his teammates sit in rapt attention, looking away only to jot down notes in the monogrammed notebooks he handed out beforehand, he’ll calmly explain how to run as fast as Bobby Witt Jr, how to hit the ball as hard as Bobby Witt Jr., how to plant your feet in the hole and launch a missile that knocks the first baseman’s glove clean off his hand like Bobby Witt Jr. The Royals will never lose again.

Why They’ll Lose It All: All the protestors shouting, “No kings!” will finally shake the resolution of the Royals. They’ll feel conflicted about representing the idea of monarchy at a time like this. They’ll call their representatives and demand better. They’ll march in the streets. They’ll be the change they wish to see in the world. They’ll never put on those jerseys again.

Los Angeles Angels
Why They’ll Win It All: Mike Trout. Mike Trout. Mike Trout will arise triumphant.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Mike Trout will have a knee thing.

Los Angeles Dodgers
Why They’ll Win It All: Ball don’t lie.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Actually, ball lies all the time. Ball is both disingenuous and capricious. Ball laughs in the face of expected stats and advanced ERA estimators. Mendacious ball cannot be trusted.

Miami Marlins
Why They’ll Win It All: They’re the strongest, fastest fish in the sea.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Old man.

Milwaukee Brewers
Why They’ll Win It All: Their job is to win the World Series.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Their job is to provide a summer of entertainment and passion and a way for families to come together.

Minnesota Twins
Why They’ll Win It All: The universe owes them this. For one glorious season, the baseball gods will smile on Minnesota once again. Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis will get healthy and play like gods. Matt Wallner and Trevor Larnach will slug 100 home runs. It will turn out that if you let Edouard Julien face left-handed pitching, he’s still a pretty good hitter.

Why They’ll Lose It All: The home run sausage has been sitting in a dark corner of the clubhouse for the last five months, waiting. It has grown limbs. It has grown sentient. It has grown strong. It has not grown a conscience.

New York Mets
Why They’ll Win It All: Juan Soto will rub off on Jose Siri. Simply by playing next to Soto, Siri will finally learn plate discipline. He will spit on breaking balls below the zone. He will lay off the high ones. He will see your splitter and raise you a shuffle. He will be the total package at the plate. His defense will also fall off a cliff, but it won’t matter much.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Jose Iglesias took all the vibes with him to San Diego. The Mets will be vibeless. Zero vibes. The locker room will descend into chaos. The players will turn on each other. They will hack one another to pieces. The streets of Flushing will run red with the blood of Brett Baty. Juan Soto will still put up 5.2 WAR.

New York Yankees
Why They’ll Win It All: Losing Juan Soto hurts. Losing Gerrit Cole and Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt hurts. But this place has still got good bones. You’ve still got Aaron Judge. Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt could turn it around. Jasson Domínguez and Anthony Volpe could achieve their potential. This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

Why They’ll Lose It All: First the players grow beards. That’s good – let guys be themselves. But then the beards grow unkempt. They’re long and scraggly. They’re down to their chests. The road jerseys just read NE[beard]RK. They’re getting tucked into uniform pants. No one can even see their feet. Paul Goldschmidt goes to scoop a ball in the dirt, comes up with nothing but beard, and it takes him two days to untangle the webbing. Aaron Judge slips on one of those high-performance stroopwafels, hits his head, and gets retrograde amnesia.

Philadelphia Phillies
Why They’ll Win It All: Zack Wheeler will grow tired of depending on others and coming up just short. He will pitch on three days rest all season. He will throw 400 innings and strike out the world. During Game 5 of the NLCS, Rob Thomson will walk out to the mound with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 11th inning. When Thomson reaches for the ball, Wheeler will hook the manager’s arm and fireman carry him back into the dugout. He’ll then return to the mound and retire the side.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Sometimes the other team will hit the ball to right field.

Pittsburgh Pirates
Why They’ll Win It All: At 4:07 PM Eastern on April 4, the date of the Pirates’ home opener, an F-15 Eagle will perform a flyover at PNC Park. Paul Skenes will be in the cockpit. He will ditch, and as the fighter plane crashes screaming into the Allegheny, Skenes will float lightly down to the turf, stow his parachute, and strike out everyone in the building. His posture will make grown men weep. The Pirates will never lose again.

Why They’ll Lose It All: The Pirates will trade Paul Skenes while his trade value is at its highest. In return, they will receive several packs of flavorful, brightly-colored chewing gum.

[REDACTED] Athletics
Why They’ll Win It All: It will turn out that Oakland really was holding back the Athletics all these years. All those horrible people who loved the team and begged them to stay, who organized and boycotted and protested, who chanted and cheered and wept, who waited in line for a spoonful of dirt from the warning track after the final game at the Coliseum? It turns out they were the problem. Finally free from the burden of expectations, of familiarity, of love, the A’s will ruthlessly mow down the competition.

Why They’ll Lose It All: The Athletics will be unmoored. They will have no home, no sense of place, no identity at all. They’ll miss Oakland. They’ll constantly forget when it’s their turn to bat because they’re incapable of wrapping their heads around the idea that they could ever be the home team. They’ll never win a game in Sacramento.

San Diego Padres
Why They’ll Win It All: Luis Arraez will finally get curious about this “slugging” thing everyone keeps talking about. He’ll watch one YouTube video of Ken Griffey Jr. and decide to hit 65 home runs. But he won’t. He’ll hit 75.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Having a team full of shortstops will finally backfire for the Padres. Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, and Jake Cronenworth will all finally get fed up with playing out of position. One day in April, they’ll all walk out to short and simply refuse to yield. Xander Bogaerts won’t know what to do. Mike Shildt will run out to short and beg the five shortstops to disperse. They won’t budge. The Padres will allow a BABIP of .750. Every time a ball is hit to short, they’ll race after it and fall all over each other in a heap. Cronenworth will launch a flying tackle at somebody. Merrill will bite somebody. Tatis will crumble like a sand castle.

San Francisco Giants
Why They’ll Win It All: Patrick Bailey will frame his way to victory. He will present every pitch so beautifully that the home plate umpires can’t even see it for the tears in their eyes. The Giants won’t walk a batter all year. They’ll only fall behind in the count six times. After they coast to the championship, Major League Baseball will be forced to intervene. They’ll implement a full robot strike zone before the 2026 season. Patrick Bailey will slip away into Redwood National Park, never to be seen again. But sometimes, when the park rangers are making the rounds alone late at night, they’ll swear they hear the sound of a ball hitting a catcher’s mitt. They never hear an umpire call the ghostly pitch a ball.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Buster Posey will inspire the Giants. They’ll take quality-at bats. They’ll hit the ball the other way. They’ll advance the runner and sacrifice and execute the hit-and-run. They’ll master the fundamentals. They’ll play the game the right way. They’ll score 36 runs all season.

Seattle Mariners
Why They’ll Win It All: Now that he knows he’s sticking around for a while, Cal Raleigh will take matters into his own hands. On April 10, the Mariners have the day off at home in Seattle, and Raleigh will roll up to T-Mobile park with two truckloads of construction buddies and a cooler full of cold ones. They’ll tear down the crooked batter’s eye and construct a perfect new one by dinner time. The Mariners will have the best offense in baseball.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Raleigh’s buddy Gary will get the proportions wrong when he’s mixing the concrete. In May, the batter’s eye will start tilting forward ever so slightly. By June, it will be listing wildly. The Mariners will put in a work order, but they won’t pay for an expedited repair. In July, the batter’s eye will finally collapse into center field in the middle of a game with a terrifying whomp, coming just inches short of driving Julio Rodríguez straight into the turf like a croquet peg. Rodríguez will refuse to play the outfield ever again. The Mariners will install a new, even more crooked batter’s eye and have the worst offense in baseball. Gary will never forgive himself. Raleigh will never forgive him either.

St. Louis Cardinals
Why They’ll Win It All: Nolan Arenado has been listening. He heard everything you said about him. His dwindling production. His shrinking range. His — outrage of outrages — merely average arm strength. He’ll prove you wrong if it’s the last thing he does. He’ll rebuild this team all by himself, one spiteful dinger, one vintage diving stop at a time.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Yeesh, I don’t know. Nolan Arenado’s not looking so hot anymore.

Tampa Bay Rays
Why They’ll Win It All: Everyone else in the division will get hurt. The Yankees’ two remaining starting pitchers will get frostbite from the cold tub. Boston’s outfielders will go in for a big group hug after a victory and they’ll squeeze so tight that they dislocate all their shoulders. Charlie Morton, Kyle Gibson, and Tomoyuki Sugano will all throw their backs out looking under the couch for the TV guide. The Blue Jays’ bruised psyches will never recover from their Opening Day beatdown. The Rays will waltz to a title.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Whither the dome? How can the Rays play outside, in sunlight, in moonlight? How would that even work? How do you catch a ball that hasn’t dodged six different catwalks? The Rays outfielders will never figure it out.

Texas Rangers
Why They’ll Win It All: Jacob deGrom will finally take something off his fastball for the sake of his health. It’ll sit a mere 97 mph. He’ll still strike everybody out, but he’ll never get tired. He’ll lead the league in starts, innings, wins, complete games, and shutouts. He’ll only pitch five games against NL teams, but he’ll dominate them so thoroughly that he’ll win both Cy Young Awards.

Why They’ll Lose It All: Jacob deGrom will finally take something off his fastball for the sake of his health. It’ll sit a mere 94 mph. He’ll get rocked. He’ll try pitching even slower. That won’t work either. To blow off some steam, he’ll attempt a hilarious prank on his fellow starting pitchers. It will go wrong. Three of them will be decapitated.

Toronto Blue Jays
Why They’ll Win It All: The wise, old pitching staff will prove they’ve still got it. Max Scherzer, Kevin Gausman, and Chris Bassitt will turn back the clock and finish one-two-three in the Cy Young voting. Young Bowden Francis will start wearing reading glasses and quoting Mad About You just to try to fit in with his elders.

Why They’ll Lose It All: The ongoing extension negotiations between Ross Atkins and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will tear the team apart. Every morning for months, the front office will announce to reporters that they’ve made a new, more generous offer to Guerrero. Every afternoon, Guerrero will tell reporters that the offer was so pathetically insignificant that he can’t bear to speak of it. In early May, the beat writers will quit one by one as they run out of euphemisms for the words “negotiation,” “deferral,” and “chump change.” The players will be so wrapped up in the negotiations that they’ll forget that they’re even supposed to be playing baseball.

Washington Nationals
Why They’ll Win It All: James Wood and Dylan Crews will be everything they’re cracked up to be and more. James Wood will be Juan Soto, but bigger. Dylan Crews will be James Wood, but smaller. Keibert Ruiz will remember to swing hard. MacKenzie Gore will ride his slider to the promised land.

Why They’ll Lose It All: The Nationals will discover The National. They’ll grow obsessed. They’ll listen to nothing else. Their own internal monologues will take the form of Matt Berninger’s restrained, close-mic’ed but distant vocals. In the pop of the catcher’s mitt and the crack of the bat, they’ll hear nothing but Bryan Devendorf’s dry snare drum, hopscotching impossibly high in the mix. To the Nationals, every love song will be a tale of tragic, star-crossed love. There will be no way out. They’ll spend the season waiting for the crescendo to come, because it feels like the crescendo just has to be coming. It has to be coming. Any second now. Any second now the build will come and it will be glorious. It will never come.

Matt Chapman came in at no. 3 when our 2015 Oakland Athletics Top Prospects list was published in February of that year. Assigned a 45 FV by our then lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel, Chapman had been drafted 25th overall out of Cal State-Fullerton the previous summer. Playing most of his initial professional season in the Low-A Midwest League, the 21-year-old third baseman swatted five home runs and put up a modest .672 OPS over 202 plate appearances.

What did Chapman’s 2015 scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what McDaniel (now with ESPN) wrote and asked Chapman to respond to it.

———

“A standout hitter and pitcher for Fullerton that didn’t have much first-round buzz for reasons I didn’t understand.”

“He was thinking like I do,” Chapman replied. “I thought I was a little underrated. Obviously, the A’s took a chance on me and it all worked out. But that’s funny, because I thought I had all the tools. I just wasn’t getting the love.”

“Chapman, has an 80 arm and has been into the high 90s on the mound, but is mostly an arm-strength guy with a short track record of pitching.” Read the rest of this entry »

Man for man, the quality of starting pitching will never be higher all year than it is on Opening Day. And there were some good performances. Framber Valdez shut out the Mets and their brand-new Juan Soto for seven innings. Zack Wheeler shoved for six innings in a no-decision for the Phillies. Nathan Eovaldi struck out nine with no walks and three hits in six innings of a no-decision for the Rangers. Sean Burke, believe it or not, allowed only three hits in six scoreless frames for the first-place White Sox!

But the best performance on this Day of Aces came from a pitcher most people wouldn’t consider worthy of the title: MacKenzie Gore. The 26-year-old lefty was once the best pitching prospect in the game, but expectations settled down some. Around this time last year, I was happy he’d developed into a reliable mid-rotation starter.

That’s not what he pitched like against Wheeler and the Phillies on Opening Day. In two trips through the order, Gore struck out 13 batters, allowing only a single baserunner, who was erased on a stolen base attempt. Gore set a new Nationals/Expos franchise record for strikeouts on Opening Day, and became just the 10th pitcher in major league history to strike out 13 or more batters in an Opening Day start for any team. Read the rest of this entry »

For the Tampa Bay Rays, it was the fearsome power of nature; for the Athletics, the whims of a greedy doofus. But while the cause may vary, the outcome is the same: Both teams will play all 81 of their home games this season in minor league parks. The A’s will set up shop at Sutter Health Park, also known as the home of the Triple-A River Cats; the Rays’ address is now George M. Steinbrenner (GMS) Field, the erstwhile environs of the Single-A Tampa Tarpons. (The River Cats will share custody, while the Tarpons will move to a nearby backfield.)

This is suboptimal and sort of embarrassing for the league. But it does present a compelling research question: How will these parks play? According to the three-year rolling Statcast park factors, the Oakland Coliseum and Tropicana Field both qualified as pitcher-friendly. The Coliseum ranked as the sixth-most pitcher-friendly park, suppressing offense 3% relative to league average, while Tropicana ranked as the third most, suppressing offense around 8%. Where will Sutter Health and GMS Field settle in?

I started by looking at how each park played in their previous minor league season. Over at Baseball America, Matt Eddy calculated the run-scoring environment for each ballpark in the 11 full-season minor leagues. Eddy found that Sutter Health ranked as the most pitcher-friendly Pacific Coast League park by far in 2024, allowing 31% fewer runs than the average PCL park. GMS Field played closer to neutral compared to its Florida State League peers, but it did significantly boost home runs, particularly to left-handed hitters. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year on Opening Day, I ask the FanGraphs staff to predict the season’s award winners, playoff field, and eventual World Series Champion. Those predictions tend to be heavily influenced by our playoff odds, projections, and prospect rankings, and while I appreciate the instinct to lean on data to make our guesses more educated, the results can feel a little chalky at times. That’s why this year, I’ve asked our writers to make another prediction — a bold prediction. One that might be a little spicy, or perhaps a little silly. A prediction that eschews the obvious, but is still grounded in reality, even if only by one foot. Twenty-five of our writers across FanGraphs and RotoGraphs answered the bell, including me. Will any of these predictions prove to be correct? Who knows! Let’s watch 2,430 games and find out. – Meg Rowley

The Marlins Will Be the First Team Ever With Fewer Than 20 Starting Pitcher Wins

In 2023, the A’s went 50-112, the worst record in baseball. Just 20 of those 50 wins were credited to their starting pitchers, tying a record set by the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. Excluding 2020, that’s the fewest starting pitcher wins for any team in AL/NL history since 1888, when the NL moved to a 140-game season. In 2025, the Marlins will break the 20-win barrier.

Starter decisions have been in decline for a while. In the modern era, five of the six teams with the fewest starter wins played in this decade (my sincerest apologies to the 1981 Mets; I promise Dwight Gooden and Ron Darling are coming soon). Accelerating the trend is the continued proliferation of something we don’t yet have a name for: the opposite of the super team. Somebody will break the 20-win barrier and soon. Read the rest of this entry »

The Vernal equinox was last week, but we all know that today, Opening Day, marks the real end of winter. As I’ve done for the last two decades, I’ve had ZiPS crunch the numbers and generate projected standings for the upcoming season. Now, we just wait for reality to destroy all those neat little projections. But first, a quick reminder of methodology.

The big change here is that ZiPS now does include spring training performance. The data is weighted significantly less than regular season performance, but one should treat projections as a constantly moving thing, not one static unchanging number. Every baseball thing has some potential to change a player’s outlook; just because data is harder to use doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. So check out some projections such as Jac Caglianone, Cam Smith, and Spencer Schwellenbach to see some of the players who got significant spring boosts. Read the rest of this entry »