If the winter is a time for dreams, the spring is a time for solutions. Your team may have been going after Juan Soto or Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani, depending on the offseason, but short of something going weird in free agency (like the unsigned Boras clients last year), if you don’t have them under contract at this point, they’ll be improving someone else’s club. However, that doesn’t mean that spring training is only about ramping up for the daily grind. Teams have real needs to address, and while they’re no doubt workshopping their own solutions – or possibly convincing themselves that the problem doesn’t exist, like when I wonder why my acid reflux is awful after some spicy food – that doesn’t mean that we can’t cook up some ideas in the FanGraphs test kitchen.

This is the first piece in a three-part series in which I’ll propose one way for each team to fill a roster hole or improve for future seasons. Some of my solutions are more likely to happen than others, but I tried to say away from the completely implausible ones. We’ll leave the hypothetical trades for Bobby Witt Jr. and Paul Skenes to WFAN callers. Also, I will not recommend the same fix for different teams; in real life, for example, David Robertson can help only one club’s bullpen. Today, we’ll cover the 10 teams in the East divisions, beginning with the five in the AL East before moving on to their counterparts in the NL East. Each division is sorted by the current Depth Charts projected win totals. Read the rest of this entry »

Austin Adams threw a higher percentage of sliders than any pitcher in baseball last season. In 56 relief outings comprising 41 1/3 innings, the 33-year-old right-hander relied on his signature offering 73.8% of the time. The heavy usage wasn’t an outlier for Adams. Since breaking into the big leagues in 2017, his 77.2% slider percentage is tops among hurlers to throw at least 100 innings.

His overall numbers have been solid. Pitching for five teams, including the Athletics last year, Adams has a 4.10 ERA, a 3.98 FIP, and a 31.6% strikeout rate over 155 2/3 career innings. He’s challenging to square up consistently, and he’s held opposing batters to a .199 batting average. Command has been the fly in the ointment, and not just because of his higher-than-ideal 13.9% walk rate. Adams plunked 13 batters last season, and in 2021 with the Padres, he outlandishly logged 24 HBPs in 52 2/3 frames.

Now in big league camp with the Red Sox after signing a minor league deal in January, Adams sat down to talk about his slider(s) at Boston’s spring training facility in Fort Myers.

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David Laurila: You throw a ton of sliders. Why?

Austin Adams: “The reason I throw so many sliders is because I enjoy having a job in baseball. It’s my best pitch. I try to take each one of my pitches, individually, in a vacuum. For me, it’s not necessarily about setting things up. I’m not saying that’s not a thing. What I’m saying is that it’s harder to quantify. My highest-graded pitch is my slider — metrically it’s a really good pitch — so I’m going to throw it the majority of the time. It’s what gives me the best opportunity to get outs.”

Laurila: What are the metrics on your slider? Read the rest of this entry »

When David Appelman announced on Monday that we were adding college stats to our player pages and leaderboards, more than one person reached out to congratulate me personally. I had nothing to do with the conception or implementation of this blessed happening, but it is true: FanGraphs having college stats could not be more up my alley.

I wanted to play around with the new leaderboard, but this early in the season, there’s little to be gleaned. No pitcher has made more than four starts; no team has played more than 14 games. And most of the action we’ve seen so far has been nonconference throat-clearing, mismatches between blue bloods and mid-majors. The numbers will tell, but not for another few weeks.

So I decided to go back to the roots of the sabermetrics movement. Our college leaderboards might not have all the latest fancy Statcast stuff, but we’ve got FIP and K% and all sorts of things you wouldn’t take for granted if you’ve ever had to calculate a pitcher’s WHIP by hand on the back of a box score in a MAC press box. When we got all that stuff in the pro game, what did we do with it?

That’s right, relitigate award voting. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2024, after an injury to Kodai Senga, Jose Quintana was the Mets’ Opening Day starter, facing the Brewers. Now, after a list of injuries that’s way too long for an introduction paragraph, Quintana will be joining the Brewers rotation. On Monday, the Brewers and the 36-year-old left-hander agreed to a one-year deal worth $4.25 million. Robert Murray of FanSided reported the deal, and MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand broke the contract terms. As the Mets signed former Brewer Frankie Montas in December, the two teams are effectively performing their own second-hand pitcher swap.

Quintana’s deal, such as it is, makes it the big-money transaction of the offseason for the Brewers. It’s definitely not enough to make fans forget about owner Mark Attanasio’s recent comments: “Is my job to win a World Series,” he said, “or is my job to provide a summer of entertainment and passion and a way for families to come together?” (Not that it’s the purview of this particular article, but the answer to both questions, of course, is yes.) Until yesterday, Milwaukee’s priciest addition was a $1 million deal for reliever Tyler Alexander, but the team’s biggest move of the offseason is still the one that sent closer Devin Williams to the Yankees in exchange for one year of lefty starter Nestor Cortes and infield prospect Caleb Durbin. Christmas only comes once a year in Milwaukee. Read the rest of this entry »

A cynic would say that Giancarlo Stanton is in midseason form. On Saturday, the Yankees officially announced that the 35-year-old slugger will open the season on the injured list due to recurring issues with both elbows. He’s not the only prominent Yankee who’s out of the picture — or at least doubtful — for the Opening Day roster, as Luis Gil will be sidelined for a good chunk of the season due to a strained latissimus dorsi, and DJ LeMahieu has suffered an apparent left calf strain, with its severity and prognosis to be determined by an MRI on Tuesday.

The most notable injury, if not the most impactful one, is Stanton’s. Two weeks ago, just before the team’s first full-squad workout, manager Aaron Boone said that the slugger was “dealing with some elbow stuff… akin to tennis elbow” in both arms, adding that it was an issue he dealt with last year as well. Tennis elbow, formally known as lateral epicondylitis, is a condition caused by overuse of the muscles and tendons in the elbow, particularly by a repetitive twisting of the wrist (think swinging a tennis racket… or a bat). The tendons that join the forearm muscles on the outside of the elbow suffer microscopic tears and don’t heal fully, leading to irritation and pain. With Stanton having not swung a bat since mid-January due to pain and the risk of exacerbating the problem, and in spite of anti-inflammatory medication, team doctors have moved on to a more aggressive approach. Last week, while traveling to New York for a private matter, Stanton received platelet-rich plasma injections in both arms in order to promote healing.

The injections rule out Stanton for the Yankees’ March 27 opener against the Brewers in New York. Beyond that, his timeline is unclear, but assuming a few weeks of recovery from the PRP shots, a few more to ramp up to full game activity, a rehab assignment, and a couple extra weeks of padding because Stanton isn’t the world’s fastest healer, the math suggests an April return is unlikely. That said, I wouldn’t recommend parsing Aaron Judge’s words — “I want a healthy G in the middle of the season” — too literally just yet. Read the rest of this entry »

There is more to Zebby Matthews’ game than an elite strike-throwing ability, though he certainly possesses that. As our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen put it last summer, the 24-year-old Minnesota Twins right-hander “has barely walked anyone the last half decade.” That wasn’t an exaggeration. Matthews issued one free pass every nine innings as a collegian, and his walk rate over 205 1/3 minor league frames is a Lilliputian 2.7%. Called up to the big leagues last August, he proceeded to walk just 11 batters in 37 2/3 frames. That works out to 2.63 batters per nine innings, or nearly two more walks per nine than he had in the minors last year, but don’t get too hung up on the small-sample spike.

Besides, as I mentioned up top, there is more to Matthews than what has garnered him the most attention. Displaying better stuff than many give him credit for — his heater sits comfortably in the mid-90s — the 2022 eighth-round pick out of Western Carolina University logged a 30.5% strikeout rate last year in the minors, and in the majors that number was 27.8%. Still rookie eligible and with a chance to break camp in the Twins’ starting rotation, Matthews is the organization’s top pitching prospect.

Matthews discussed the development of his underrated arsenal prior to a recent spring training game.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with your pitches. What is your full repertoire?

Zebby Matthews: “I have a four-seam fastball that has some decent carry on it, a cutter, a gyro slider, a curveball, and a changeup.”

Laurila: How much carry do you get on your fastball? Read the rest of this entry »

Many years ago, there was a bar in Columbus, Ohio. It’s since been closed and razed after its owner, a serially corrupt lobbyist who later served time for his role in “a food service bribery scheme,” went to jail for owing some $300,000 in back taxes. When I was a young man, my friends and I would descend on this bar once a week in order to wreck house at pub trivia under our collective nom de guerre: Gorilla Bizkit.

One of the recurring theme rounds for this trivia game was called “Paxton or Pullman?” The host would give the title of a movie, and each team would have to say whether the film featured Bill Paxton, Bill Pullman, both, or neither. I remember Paxton-Pullman confusion being a minor internet meme back in humanity’s digital golden age, when we — green and callow as a budding flower — saw fit to spend our days determining whether a hot dog was a sandwich. (Among other questions of great teleological import.) Read the rest of this entry »

I got my start in baseball writing as a Cardinals blogger. That’s only natural – I’m a Cardinals fan. My dad grew up in St. Louis and passed it on to me. I’m still a fan, though certainly less than I was before I started writing about the sport as my full-time job. But whether you’re looking at it through the lens of a fan or just as an analyst, the trajectory of this always-competing, never-quite-dominant team has been fascinating to watch.

I had a strange feeling while watching the Redbirds last year. I kept wondering, “Why is this team full of old guys?” Ever since the 2011 World Series win, Albert Pujols’ first finale in St. Louis, the team always seemed full of young, devil-magicky contributors. An average Cards roster had a few recognizable stars plus a bunch of young guys you’d never heard of who were way better than you initially realized. Matt Carpenter and Michael Wacha were unexpected stars in 2013. Carlos Martínez and Kolten Wong came on strong. After a few years of missing the playoffs despite interesting young contributors (Tommy Pham, Randal Grichuk, Luke Weaver), the 2019 Cards coalesced around Jack Flaherty, Tommy Edman, and Paul DeJong.

You’ve heard of all of those players, of course, but at the time, they were young up-and-comers. The Cardinals never seemed to be old despite running out Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright year after year. Those guys were a key veteran core, helping to spread the team gospel to the young horde backing them up. But even with those old hands running things, my view of the Cards as a youthful outfit was correct. From 2013 through 2018, St. Louis’ roster was younger than average every year. Then they were ever so slightly older than league average in 2019 and again in 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

There isn’t much for a baseball writer in the dull days of late February. Someone added a new pitch? The pitching nerds are all over it. Somebody else set a new career high for exit velocity? I’m not sure that merits more than a tweet and/or skeet. Statistically responsible baseball writers have long concluded that attempting to find signal in the noise of spring training stats is a futile exercise.

Thankfully, Effectively Wild came to my rescue. On Episode 2288, Ben and Meg discussed the peculiar case of Justin Verlander, who is pitching in the Cactus League for the first time in his career. After allowing a home run off a hanging slider, he sought consolation from his new teammate, Logan Webb.

“I was told not to overconcern yourself with pitch shapes here and the movement of the ball because it’s tough,” Verlander told Maria Guardado of MLB.com after his start. “It’s my first spring training in Arizona, so everyone was like, ‘Hey man, it’s a little different out here.’ I’ve heard it from everyone. But I think you still need to be honest with yourself.” Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday in Clearwater, Florida, Kyle Schwarber was spotted doing something he hadn’t done in awhile: playing first base. Not only did he work out at the position with Phillies coach Bobby Dickerson in the morning, he manned the spot for five innings during the team’s Grapefruit League game against the Yankees in the afternoon. He didn’t field any grounders, but he made three putouts on throws from second baseman Kody Clemens.

For the first time since 2021, Kyle Schwarber records a putout at First Base. pic.twitter.com/IKKeeRhq7F

— Phillies Tailgate (@PhilsTailgate) February 27, 2025

According to The Athletic’s Matt Gelb, it was the first time Schwarber played first base in a game since Game 6 of the 2021 American League Championship Series. He was a member of the Red Sox at the time, acquired from the Nationals in a July 29 trade and given a crash course at the position while rehabbing from a right hamstring injury. Up to the point of the trade, Schwarber’s post-high school first base experience consisted of two games in the Cape Cod League in 2013 and a single-batter cameo in extra innings with the Cubs in ’17. (He swapped places with Anthony Rizzo just before a game-ending wild pitch.) He went on to play 10 regular season games at first for the Red Sox, starting nine of them, and then made nine more starts at the position in the postseason. Read the rest of this entry »