I’m sure that Yankees fans are well and truly tired of hearing about Juan Soto. We get it, he likes the other New York team more. So don’t worry, friends. I won’t mention Juan Soto, unparalleled hitting genius, after this paragraph. Sure, the ghost of Juan Soto, signer of the biggest contract in professional sports history, might inform the rest of the moves the Yankees are making. Sure, not signing superstar Juan Soto after his incandescent 2024 season makes all the rest of the team’s moves feel minor. But again, you won’t see the words “Juan Soto” after this instance, so let’s get to the moves the Yankees are making to bolster their team in the aftermath of losing one of the brightest stars in the game.

Signing Paul Goldschmidt
The Yankees are going to need some offense if they want to replace Jua – whoa, almost broke my own rule right out of the gate. Uh… the Yankees are going to need some offense, period. They were a top-heavy team last year between Aaron Judge and his running mate, name tastefully withheld. Giancarlo Stanton’s playoff surge notwithstanding, the existing roster just didn’t have that much juice beyond Judge. Sure, adding Cody Bellinger was nice, but they needed to do more. Paul Goldschmidt, signed for one year and $12.5 million, is definitely more, it’s just a question of how much after his bummer of a 2024 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Since the last time Josh Bell suited up for the Nationals on August 1, 2022, he has played for four different teams. The Nationals dealt him to the Padres alongside Juan Soto at the 2022 trade deadline. Then he became a free agent and signed a two-year, $33 million deal with the Guardians, only for Cleveland to flip him to the Marlins the following summer. He swam with the Fish for just under a year before it was Miami’s turn to cast him off at the deadline in 2024. Finally, after finishing out this past season with the Diamondbacks, Bell is returning to Washington on a one-year, $6 million contract. That closes the circle on a two-and-a-half-year expedition that took him from the East Coast to the West Coast to the Midwest to the wetlands to the desert and back to the nation’s capital. According to Google Maps, it would take you just over 166 days to walk that journey. Bell, not exactly known for his footspeed, did it in 881.

With the Gold Glover Nathaniel Lowe likely to see most of the playing time at first base, Bell should slot in as Washington’s everyday designated hitter. Bell has primarily played first throughout his career, but his defense has always been lacking, even by the standards of the position. He has never finished a season with a positive DRS, and only once has he finished with a positive OAA or FRV. In 2024, Bell ranked last among all first basemen in DRS and second to last in OAA and FRV, despite playing just 98 games at the position. As long as Lowe stays healthy, which he’s largely managed to do throughout his career, the Nationals won’t need to worry about Bell’s glove at first. Meanwhile, Bell won’t need to worry about the harsh positional adjustment for designated hitters dragging down his overall numbers. A full-time DH who plays all 162 games would finish with -17.5 Def; Bell finished with -17.8 Def in 2024. As long as he sticks at DH, things can’t get any worse.

Of course, that also means Bell’s defensive value won’t get any better. If he’s going to improve upon a replacement-level (-0.1 WAR) 2024 season, he’ll need to do it with his offense. More specifically, he’ll need to do it with his bat. Over the past four years, Bell has been the least productive baserunner in the sport, with -17.6 BsR. His best baserunning season in that span was 2021, when he finished with -3.9 BsR, eighth-worst in the majors. To put that in context, -3.9 BsR is so low that Steamer doesn’t project anyone to finish with -3.9 BsR in 2025. Heck, Steamer doesn’t have anyone else finishing below -2.9, while Bell is projected for -2.3. Bell’s baseline is such an aberration that Steamer refuses to accept it as his (or anyone’s) 50th-percentile outcome. Read the rest of this entry »

With their trade for Garrett Crochet back in early December, the Red Sox indicated their intention to aggressively compete for the AL East crown in 2025. The Yankees missing out on Juan Soto, along with the relative inaction of the Orioles and Blue Jays this offseason, has opened that window for Boston. And the Sox have continued to add talent to their pitching staff, signing Walker Buehler to a one-year deal two days before Christmas. The contract will guarantee Buehler $21.05 million, which also happens to be the exact value of the qualifying offer the Red Sox extended to Nick Pivetta and that the Dodgers declined to offer to Buehler. There’s also a $25 million mutual option for 2026 and as much as $2.5 million in performance bonuses for hitting games started thresholds.

After undergoing his second Tommy John surgery in 2022, Buehler finally returned to a major league mound last May, but he really struggled to find his footing after being sidelined for nearly two full years. A June hip injury limited him to just 16 starts and 75.1 innings, and his 5.38 ERA and 5.54 FIP were easily the worst marks of his career. Despite his summer scuffles, Buehler managed to turn things around during the playoffs. He pitched to a 3.60 ERA across 15 postseason innings, including a gutsy scoreless start in Game 3 of the World Series and the first save of his career in the decisive Game 5.

Of course, Buehler was one of the most successful young starters in baseball from 2018–21. Among all qualified pitchers during that stretch, he ranked seventh in WAR, sixth in ERA-, and eighth in FIP-. But postseason heroics aside, 2024 was a pretty miserable year for Buehler. He couldn’t find consistency with his mechanics, and that hip injury seemed to disrupt any progress he was making on that front. He was marginally better after returning from the IL in August and he was able to make a few key adjustments to his mechanics down the stretch — no doubt helping him find some limited success in October — but he entered this offseason as an enigmatic free agent. His early career success was undeniable, but his injury history and disappointing return raised a lot of questions about his ability to contribute quality innings moving forward. Read the rest of this entry »

Sports Info Solutions has been tracking every pitch thrown in Major League Baseball since 2002, and since the beginning, those pitches have been hitting the strike zone less and less frequently. You can check the tumbling year-over-year numbers over on our pitch-level data leaderboard, but if you want to spare yourself a click, I pulled them into the graph below. It paints a damning picture of the command of today’s stuff-over-stamina, throw-it-hard-before-your-elbow-explodes pitchers. Don’t go near this graph if you’re on roller skates:

If you ever feel the need to shake your fist at young pitchers and mutter about loud music and fastball command, this is the graph for you. SIS has documented the percentage of pitches that hit the strike zone dropping from the low 50s to the low 40s over the last 20 years. Combine that with the game’s ever-increasing focus on velocity and stuff, and you’ve got a nice, tidy narrative: today’s pitchers are too focused on throwing hard to know where the hell they’re throwing the ball. However, the truth is a bit more complicated. It’s important to keep in mind that the SIS numbers come from real life human beings who analyze video to track pitches, while the friendly robot that powers Statcast has its definition of the strike zone set in digital stone. Read the rest of this entry »

I think a lot of us overestimate the significance of geography when predicting where free agents will sign. In Max Kepler’s case, however, we all might have underestimated the role geography would play in his decision. Perhaps it was inevitable that the greatest German-born player in MLB history would head to the state with the greatest German population in the country. Lo and behold, on December 19, the all-time leader in runs, home runs, RBI, and WAR among Deutschland natives agreed to a one-year, $10 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Yet, aside from helping the Phillies pander to their fans in Germantown, it’s a little difficult to see how Kepler fits this team. Entering the offseason, many expected Philadelphia would pursue a right-handed batter to play left field who could split playing time with Brandon Marsh. Instead, they signed Kepler, who bats lefty and hasn’t played left field since his days at Double-A in 2015. What’s more, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has made it clear the Phillies plan to use Kepler as an everyday player, despite the fact that injuries have kept him from playing more than 130 games in a full season since 2019.

Kepler’s limited experience in left field is the least concerning aspect of all this. Whether you look at OAA, FRV, DRS, or Baseball Prospectus’s DRP, Kepler has never been a below-average outfield defender in any season of his career. His strong track record as a right fielder, and his past experience in center, should help him adjust to left. Furthermore, Kepler might benefit from playing a position where throwing isn’t quite as important. Although his arm strength consistently ranks above the league average, he has been worth -3 throwing runs in his career, according to Baseball Savant.

Even if it won’t be a major adjustment, it’s not nothing for the Phillies to ask Kepler to re-learn a position after almost 10 years away. It makes me think of the movie line I quote more often than any other. In Moneyball, when Billy Beane tries to convince catcher Scott Hatteberg that he can play first base, Beane asks Ron Washington to tell Hatteberg that’s it not that hard. “It’s incredibly hard,” Washington replies. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 21st consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

In return for their mini-free agent spree after nearly making the playoffs in 2023, the Cincinnati Reds dropped five wins, finishing 2024 with a 77-85 record. It wasn’t as bad as it looked — the team improved its Pythagorean record by five wins compared to the year before — but it felt lousy that only Nick Martinez really shined among their signings. Elly De La Cruz did break out in a massive way — he was a legitimate MVP contender for much of the season — but Matt McLain’s torn labrum and rib injury kept him away from the action.

A look at the depth chart graphic makes it pretty clear where the Reds are strong: Even with some regression toward the mean, De La Cruz is the team’s most important player, and if healthy, McLain will upgrade second base. Continuing the up-the-middle strength is Jose Trevino, recently acquired from the Yankees; he and Tyler Stephenson give the Reds an excellent tandem behind the plate. TJ Friedl in center gets a less exciting projection, but he’s still perfectly serviceable as a starter, and he’s the worst projected player of the up-the-middle quartet. Read the rest of this entry »

Swaddled comfortably beneath the tree of Phillies fans this year was Jesús Luzardo, whom the club acquired from the Miami Marlins on December 22 along with upper-level minor league catcher Paul McIntosh. In exchange, the Marlins received Top 100 prospect and teenage leather-wizard Starlyn Caba, plus A-ball outfield prospect Emaarion Boyd.

The 27-year-old Luzardo, who is under contract for the next two years, has amassed a 4.29 career ERA in 512 innings across parts of six big league seasons. He has been subject to quite a bit of career turbulence since he was a high school senior. He had Tommy John surgery in March 2016; a few months later, the Nationals drafted him in the third round. Then, after just three starts in the Nationals organization, he was traded to the Athletics, along with Blake Treinen, for Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle. With Oakland, Luzardo grew into one of baseball’s top handful of prospects and ranked sixth overall at the start of the 2020 season; the shortened COVID campaign became his rookie graduation year. When Luzardo got off to a rocky start in 2021, the A’s put him in the bullpen, then traded him to Miami at the deadline for Starling Marte.

For parts of the last three and a half years, Luzardo has been one of the better lefty starters in baseball when healthy, and he’s fourth among qualified southpaws in strikeout-to-walk ratio since 2022. But consistent health has evaded him. Luzardo has exceeded 20 starts in a season only once in his entire career. His injuries haven’t always been arm-related, but they still represented a concern for any team that was looking to acquire him. In 2024, he posted a career-low strikeout rate (21.2%), albeit in just 66 2/3 innings. He was shut down with elbow soreness early in the season, and then, back in June, he was shelved for the remainder of the year with a lumbar stress reaction in his back. The second injury likely impacted Luzardo’s trade market at the deadline, which is perhaps part of why Miami waited until after the season to deal him. Five days before the trade, MLB.com’s Christina De Nicola reported that Luzardo is a “full go” for spring training.

While Luzardo will immediately compete with Nick Castellanos for the mantle of “most fun Phillies player name to say with a Delaware County accent,” where he slots into Philadelphia’s rotation is another matter. The depth and quality of the Phillies’ staff means Luzardo is arguably the club’s fifth starter, even though he has front-end stuff. All of Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Ranger Suárez, and Cristopher Sánchez have accumulated more WAR than Luzardo across the last two seasons. Healthy Luzardo has a fastball that sits 94-97 mph, and both his slider and changeup have generated plus swinging-strike rates throughout his big league career, each hovering around 20% (the major league average is about 15% for both). He’s had only one spat of wildness in his entire career (that 2021 season during which the A’s put him in the bullpen) — dating all the way back to his high school underclass days. He has the talent of a no. 2 or 3 starter on a good team, but he hasn’t demonstrated the durability of one.

The Phillies’ rotation is stacked beyond those aforementioned hurlers. Taijuan Walker is still around, the newly signed Joe Ross has lots of starting experience, top prospect Andrew Painter is returning from Tommy John (his innings will be backloaded in 2025), and Moisés Chace is a Top 100 Prospect who might kick the door down. Injuries will likely erode whatever starting pitching surplus the Phillies (or any team) currently have on paper, and at least one starter will fall off the roster each year for the next several seasons. Suárez is in his contract year, Luzardo and Walker have two years left, Wheeler three. They have the young arms to make in-house replacements during that span without losing any quality. Dave Dombrowski, Preston Mattingly, and company have assembled a rotation with the high-end talent to contend now and the depth to sustain it for several years to come.

The Phillies had also fortified their upper-level catching depth with the acquisition of McIntosh. The 27-year-old has plus raw power but isn’t a very good defender. He has allowed stolen bases at an 83% success rate in his minor league career. Incumbent backup catcher and clubhouse mascot Garrett Stubbs is a career .215/.294/.311 hitter who is entering his age-32 season. Fellow mask-wearing munchkin Rafael Marchán, who is currently the third catcher on the Phillies’ 40-man roster, is a good contact hitter and fair defender, but he has dealt with several injuries during the last three years and lacks any modicum of power. The 5-foot-9 switch-hitter will turn 26 in February and is out of minor league options. McIntosh and recently signed Payton Henry, a 27-year-old bat-first minor leaguer who is now on his fourth org in four years, both bring an offensive element that the Phillies have been lacking from the backup catcher’s spot for several years. Their additions perhaps signal that the Phils are at least considering a bit of a sea change behind J.T. Realmuto and might allow these four to compete for a roster spot during camp and throughout 2025.

In exchange the Marlins received 19-year-old shortstop Starlyn Caba and 21-year-old outfielder Emaarion Boyd. Caba has a chance to be the best shortstop defender in all of baseball at maturity. He is an unbelievable athlete with ridiculous body control, range, and a big arm for a 5-foot-9 guy. He’ll make the occasional overzealous throw that misses first base entirely, but he is otherwise a complete and sensational shortstop. Despite his age, he is basically a lock to be a special defensive player at arguably the most important position on the field.

Caba has also shown great plate discipline and above-average contact ability in the lower minors. He’s a career .252/.398/.304 hitter across two minor league seasons and spent the last six weeks of 2024 at Low-A Clearwater while he was still just 18 years old. Caba has accumulated many more walks than strikeouts during that span and his granular contact data (5% swinging strike rate, 93% in-zone contact, 87% overall) is exceptional, especially for such a young switch-hitter. He does not, however, have a huge offensive ceiling. Caba is four inches shorter than Zach Neto and his bat speed is only fair. There isn’t going to be big power here; in fact, it’s likely Caba’s lack of power will somewhat dilute the performance of his OBP and contact skills — he tends to keep infielders busy. A career similar to that of Jose Iglesias is fair to hope for Caba, while Andrelton Simmons (who had a more meaningful power peak) feels like the absolute ceiling. That’s a good prospect. Caba has existed toward the back of the Top 100 list for the last year and will continue to rank there this offseason.

Boyd is less a surefire prospect and more of a flier. He signed out of a Mississippi high school for just shy of $650,000 back in 2022 and had an average 2023 before stumbling in 2024 as High-A pitchers took advantage of his tendency to chase. Boyd is fast, lanky, and projectable, and he’s a fantastic rotational athlete with above-average bat speed. He had exciting early-career contact performance, but that has dipped closer to average as he’s climbed into the mid-minors. A plus runner, Boyd lacks the feel and technical skill to play a competent center field right now. He has mostly played left field despite wheels that allowed him to steal an inefficient 56 bases in 2023 — he was caught 18 times. He’s raw on both sides of the ball but toolsy enough to be considered a potential late-blooming prospect.

Much of Miami’s value in this return is tied up in Caba, which runs counter to its otherwise volume-driven trade tendency so far under GM Peter Bendix. In most of the several seller-style trades the Fish have made since he was hired, they’ve gotten back several pieces. However, Boyd is a such low-probability proposition that one might consider this effectively a one-for-one swap: two years of Luzardo for a potential everyday shortstop who is likely still roughly a half decade away from establishing himself in the big leagues. While I like Caba as a prospect, this is perhaps an underwhelming return for someone of Luzardo’s talent, but a reasonable one for someone of Luzardo’s actual production.

Every story written about the Mets this offseason starts with Juan Soto, but pretty much all of them immediately introduce a caveat: “They’ll also need to sign more pitching.” And it’s true! The Mets, as constituted after signing Soto, had a fearsome top of the lineup and a mystery box of a pitching staff. But they also had money, which can be exchanged for goods and services, and now they’ve given that money to Sean Manaea, who signed a three-year, $75 million deal to return to Queens last week.

Manaea was comfortably the team’s best starter in 2024. He signed a one-year prove-it deal that valued him somewhere between a swingman and a fourth starter, and he delivered the goods, to the tune of a 3.47 ERA over 181 innings of work. He got even better in the second half, adopting a new cross-fire delivery and changing the shape of his fastball for the better. A down postseason hardly put a damper on his year; the 2024 version of Manaea fulfilled the promise he’d shown since breaking into the majors in 2016.

The question, then, is whether he can do it again. There’s plenty of reason to believe he can. Manaea’s fastball plays much better from a low slot, and he misses enough bats to run an above-average strikeout rate even without a true wipeout pitch. He also got his walk rate under control in the second half of the year, which has long been a sticking point in his game. It’s not so much that Manaea’s wild, but at his best, he was running walk rates around 5%, and that number had ballooned into the 8-9% region in recent years. After changing his delivery in late July, he walked only 6.2% of opposing batters. He’s never going to strike out a gaudy number of guys, but if he isn’t issuing free passes, his stuff keeps hitters off balance and results in a lot of easy innings even without strikeouts. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been dark here at FanGraphs for a few days, so admit it — you’re desperate to read anything right now. How about a roundup of analysis on three pitchers that went off the market right before our holiday hiatus?

Griffin Canning, Michael Soroka, and Patrick Sandoval all fit somewhere between the back of their new team’s rotation or the front of its starter depth; each received deals commensurate with those expectations. If the going rate for a fourth starter these days is something like $15 million AAV (Alex Cobb got one year and $15 million, Matthew Boyd got two years and $29 million), this trio is probably one tier below that.

Do these three signings, grouped together, mean anything in particular? Probably not. Each year, the starter/reliever binary grows blurrier, and perhaps someday, every pitcher will throw exactly three innings and the distinction will disappear completely. Perhaps each of these signings brings us closer to that day; Soroka, in particular, seems best served to go through a lineup once and then head out on his way. For various reasons, the expectation for all of these pitchers should be somewhere in the 80- to 120-inning range for the 2025 season. But for now, no further trends will be drawn. Without further ado, here is the lowdown on the three hurlers.

Griffin Canning

Canning drew some attention on the pitching nerd internet earlier this year due to the remarkably unremarkable shape of his fastball. The image below is courtesy of Max Bay’s dynamic dead zone app:

the deadest zone. cc: @choice_fielder https://t.co/3pkdXbfXhA pic.twitter.com/krJWXKN4yN

— Alex "Oxlade" Chamberlain (@DolphHauldhagen) October 31, 2024

Because Canning throws his fastball from a roughly league-average arm angle (45°), a league-average release height (5.8 feet), and with league-average ride (16.2 inches of induced vertical break), the pitch — in theory! — moves on a trajectory that hitters expect. (I say “in theory” because, as Remi Bunikiewicz pointed out, Canning does a great job hiding his fastball during the windup, complicating any perceptive analysis.)

This fastball was the bane of Canning’s existence in 2024. He did qualify for the ERA title, something only 57 other pitchers could claim they did, but his 5.26 FIP was worst among those qualified starters, and his strikeout rate was third worst. That strikeout rate dropped nearly eight percentage points from 2023 to 2024, and the performance against his fastball explained essentially all of that drop. The whiff rate on Canning’s three other primary pitches stayed virtually the same; on the fastball, the percentage of swings that resulted in misses went from 28% in 2023 to just 14% in 2024.

A drop in velocity appears to be the main culprit for the decline in performance. The four-seamer averaged 94.7 mph in 2023; that dipped to 93.4 mph in 2024. Could a 1.5-mph difference in velocity be the entire explanation? I’m inclined to think that the answer is mostly yes. But it’s also possible that the decline in slider quality impacted batter performance against his fastball. Canning’s death ball slider dropped three fewer inches relative to 2023, reducing the separation between his fastball and his primary out pitch against right-handed hitters.

Could a reduced role help Canning return to his prior form? These considerations could be part of the plan. The Mets employ something like eight starters; Canning sits outside the favored five. Assuming perfect health, it’s likely that they will deploy him in two- or three-inning bursts, perhaps allowing him to get back to that mid-90s velocity on the heater. Even in a swingman role, the $4.25 million contract makes good sense — with fewer workload responsibilities, it doesn’t feel unreasonable to expect Canning to deliver something like a 4.00 ERA over 100ish innings. And if injuries do strike the rotation, he can stretch out to a starter’s workload. Either way, there’s a role to play in this era where quality innings can be difficult to come by, especially in the late summer months.

Michael Soroka

Soroka exploded after a midseason move to the White Sox bullpen. As a reliever, Soroka struck out 39% of the hitters he faced, which would’ve ranked second in all of baseball.

Curiously, this wasn’t a case of Soroka ramping up the stuff over 15-pitch spurts. Unlike those pitchers topping the strikeout leaderboards — Mason Miller, Edwin Díaz, Josh Hader — Soroka did it mostly in chunky multi-inning appearances. Soroka pitched 36 innings out of the bullpen; all but 5 2/3 of them came in appearances that spanned two innings or more. In those slightly shorter appearances — he averaged nearly five innings per appearance as a starter and 2 1/3 as a reliever — the strikeout rate somehow tripled.

After moving full-time to relief work, Soroka added 1.5 mph to his four-seam fastball. But the four-seamer isn’t anything special; instead, at 94 mph with dead zone-ish movement, it’s mostly there to set up the slider, which generated nearly a 42% whiff rate.

What’s so special about the slider? It isn’t the velocity — it averages just 82.2 mph, well below the average for major league sliders. But its shape is distinct. There are slower curveballs that resemble the movement profile, but outside of Bryan Abreu, nobody really throws a slider with the combination of depth and sweep that Soroka manages to get. Starting May 18, when Soroka shifted to a bullpen role, the slider averaged -4.5 inches of induced vertical break with 5.2 inches of sweep, moving sharply on two planes.

But averages obscure the full truth. Soroka can also manipulate the pitch to move in a variety of break patterns. Look at the range of movement profiles on his slider, seen in yellow on his pitch plot below:

Soroka can firm it up, throwing it more like a gyro slider at 84 mph with zero inches of induced vertical break:

But he can also bend it like a curveball, dropping over 10 inches more than his firmest sliders:

(Look at poor Spencer Torkelson there — I think he was expecting the gyro.)

Between the identical frequency of the fastball and slider, the distinct two-plane movement profile, and the diversity of potential shapes, Soroka had batters swinging and missing more than almost any pitcher in baseball.

Evidently, the Nationals, who gave Soroka $9 million on a one-year deal, plan to use him as a “starter.” Given his usage patterns as a reliever, I’m not exactly sure what that means. I would expect that the Nationals will tell Soroka to let it loose for 60 or so pitches, just as he did in Chicago, and he’ll take on 12 or 13 hitters in a game. Like Canning, I think Soroka will end up closer to 90 innings than 180, letting his best stuff cook in outings that sit somewhere between a one-inning shutdown reliever and a starter trying to turn the lineup over three times.

Patrick Sandoval

Sandoval, who signed a two-year, $18.25 million deal with the Red Sox, is a perfect fit for their “no fastballs” organizational philosophy. This guy hates four-seamers now — they made up just 16% of his pitches in his injury-shortened 2024 campaign, by far a career low. Regardless of batter handedness, Sandoval mixes in all six of his pitches, but he works them in differently depending on whether he’s facing a righty or lefty. A plurality of his pitches to righties were changeups; to lefties, Sandoval spammed his slider and sweeper over half the time.

As one would expect with a pitcher who throws all that junk, Sandoval struggles to get the ball in the strike zone. He ran a 10% walk rate last year; even in his excellent 2022 campaign, in which he racked up 3.7 WAR, his walk rate was above 9%. The walks are just part of the package with Sandoval, but the hope is that at his best, he can pitch around them, striking out enough hitters and staying off enough barrels with his diverse pitch mix and refusal to throw anything straight.

Sandoval is likely to pitch the fewest innings of this trio in 2025. He tore his UCL and was shut down in mid-June before undergoing Tommy John surgery, so he’ll miss a big chunk of the upcoming season. When he returns, it figures that he will assume a traditional starter’s workload, though following the Walker Buehler signing, Boston’s rotation looks pretty packed. Ultimately, this deal is mostly a 2026 play, with some nice depth for the end of next year as a bonus.

Conclusion

None of these guys is too exciting. All of them have stanky fastballs. But each has a reason to believe that he might contribute surplus value on a modest deal. In the end, that’s what a minor pitcher signing is all about.

Author’s Note: Sunday Notes is off this week due to a health scare — I’m now home recovering — so my annual Best Quotes compilation is being bumped back from the 31st to fill the void. As always, thanks for reading.

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In 2024, I once again had an opportunity to interview numerous people within the game. Many of their words were shared in my Sunday Notes column, while others came via an assortment of Q&As, feature stories, and my Talks Hitting series. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations, with the bolded lines linking to the pieces they were excerpted from.

———-

“When you say hitting, I’m assuming that you mean striking the ball. There is so much that goes into the striking of the baseball. There are a lot of moving parts mechanically [and] mentally that culminate into the perfect storm of creating that compression between the barrel of the bat and the ball.” — Triston Casas, Boston Red Sox first baseman

“When you’re not hitting… I mean, who likes being bad at something? Hitting is hard. So, it’s fun, but you have to embrace the struggles. As a hitter, you know you’re going to struggle. You’re also going to not struggle.” — Julio Rodríguez,, Seattle Mariners outfielder

“The guy I talked to about doing it was doing some analytics stuff and video scouting for us at the time. It was [current Reds GM] Nick Krall. I loved talking with Nick before he was the big dog. I mean, there was the manager getting some information from one of the lowest guys on the totem pole. I think the talk shows probably would have died if I told them who I was getting information from.” — Jerry Narron, former Cincinnati Reds manager

“How much should you really value analytics versus guys who go out on the field and get outs consistently? If a guy has Stuff+ metrics that are off the chart — this guy shouldn’t get hit — but the hitters tell you different, versus a guy that maybe has below-average stuff but he goes out and carves every time out. Which matters? You have to be able to pitch.” — Tarik Skubal, Detroit Tigers pitcher

“I’m a heavy supination pitcher. When I drop down and throw that supinated pitch, it creates the seam shift for everything — the two-seam and the changeup. I didn’t know about any of this until I got with [Bannister] in spring training. He kind of showed me how it worked.” — Logan Webb, San Francisco Giants pitcher

“I wanted to throw it back in the day, in the minor leagues with the Giants, but I was fresh from being drafted and they said, ‘Save that for when you need it, maybe when your stuff starts slowing down a little bit.’ I was like, ‘All right. Cool. Whatever.’” — Zack Wheeler, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher

“I’m not into French Impressionism as much as, say, modern abstract. That’s one that I like, but I wouldn’t say I’m pigeonholed into one genre. I’ll see something and be, ‘Man, I really like that,’ or maybe it’s, ‘I think that’s a little overrated.’ I guess that’s just like any of us when it comes to art.” — Dylan Cease, San Diego Padres pitcher

“I think it would be disingenuous for any scouting director, or front office, to say that they don’t pay attention to mock drafts by respected third-party publications, especially as you get closer to the draft. Now, do we rely on our internal data to make draft decisions? Yes, of course.” — Dan Kantrovitz, Chicago Cubs VP of Scouting

“One of the reasons we maybe walked past an Aaron Judge… I mean, our evaluations were really strong, but the fact that he struck out so much in college was a bit of a red flag. I think we learned a little bit from that. At the same time, guys who strike out generally strike out.” — Eric Kubota, Oakland Athletics Scouting Director

“Tim Wilken once said to me, ‘Don’t laugh at mine and I won’t laugh at yours.’ Another one he would always say is, ‘Once you see a guy good, don’t go back.’ But there I was in Philly and Mike [Trout] was right down the road playing. So I went to see again and the look wasn’t as clean.” — Tom Allison, Los Angeles Dodgers special assignment scout

“D-Train. He was another competitor, a plus competitor and a good athlete for a big guy. Unconventional delivery, right? He had the big leg kick, almost up over his head; probably not the type of mechanics that you would teach, but it worked for him.” — Mike Redmond, Colorado Rockies bench coach

“Green light. If I gave him a red light and told him not to go, I don’t know what the hell would happen. He’s got a green light even when he’s got a red light. He doesn’t care. He’s running.” — Kevin Cash, Tampa Bay Rays manager

“There are a handful of games where I’ve felt that way, like, ‘Man, this is a really good baseball game going on.’ When you come out on the bad end it kind of sucks, but you try to have that appreciation for ‘That was a really good one.’” — Aaron Boone, New York Yankees manager

“I don’t have good hop. My four-seam performs like it has hop, but it actually doesn’t have it. I throw it from… I like to call it ‘throwing it from the basement’ as opposed to throwing from above your head. That’s where you find the vertical approach that is more down to up.” — Spencer Arrighetti, Houston Astros pitcher

“If all you’re looking for is ‘stuff,’ you’re completely misunderstanding the game. Eventually the game will either force you to understand it, or you’re just going to be out of the game. You have to understand the art of pitching.” — Chris Bassitt, Toronto Blue Jays pitcher

“I think that as the baseball world evolves with technology, you kind of see what’s important and what’s not. I’ve kind of followed that path. For me, it’s not ‘I don’t think this is important,’ but more so ‘This happens because of this.’” — Rhett Lowder, Cincinnati Reds pitcher

“Their stuff is off the charts. Jones has a chance to be really, really good. His pitch mix, his velocity, his athleticism. And then Skenes came as advertised with some of the more dominant combinations that you’ll face from a young pitcher.” — A.J. Hinch, Detroit Tigers manager

“I’ve probably held a million baseballs in my life. I mean, as a person who holds a lot of balls — for lack of better words — I can tell you very minuscule details that are different. I have to. Think about how precise we have to be with throwing them, how much we have to spin and locate.” — Marco Gonzales, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher

“My basketball game was somewhat similar to my baseball game. I kind of did the right things. I knew what to do. I knew where to go. I averaged around 15 points in high school. It was [a big school]. We had over 2,000 kids. There are a lot of big schools in Georgia.” — Dansby Swanson, Chicago Cubs shortstop

“I love to play soccer. I love to watch soccer. I played until I was 15, I want to say, right before I signed to play professional baseball. I got a lot of goals. Number 9 [traditionally the number worn by strikers/center forwards]. Both feet.” — Eugenio Suárez, Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman

“I’m a left-knee-down guy, and I go to two feet if a runner steals. Growing up, and even now, you find people who don’t understand why catchers are on one knee. It allows you to be in better positions to pull strikes and get in front of balls. It makes catching a lot easier, overall. — Kyle Teel, Boston Red Sox catching prospect

“I never got the half-ass award, but I did have a big one. You know those big green Physio Balls you work out with? Danny Jansen and I were in the cage before a game, and he kicked one to me. I swung at it with my bat, and when I hit it, the bat came back and gave me 11 stitches above my eye. It knocked me out.” — Rowdy Tellez, Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman

“When the elevator doors open, Bruce Kimm, the Braves manager is there. He had knots, shiners, black eyes. I said, ‘Man, I didn’t know we got you that good.’ He looked like he’d been hit by Mohammed Ali 25 times. I felt bad. But yeah, that team got in a lot of fights.” — Doug Glanville, ESPN broadcaster

“You can’t fix hop. That’s ‘pow!’ You can fix dip. What I mean by dip, the ball is going at their feet; it’s going down. You can fix that type of stuff. But you can’t fix hop. Hop just has that in it.” — Ron Washington, Los Angeles Angles manager

“I’d had one home run all year, and then in our three-game conference tournament I had three, including two in the championship. And again, I pitched seven innings. I was Shohei Ohtani that day. That’s the way I like to think of it.” — Zack Littell, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher

“A fly ball gets hit down the right field line, and the kid starts running. Then he stops at the line. He reaches into foul territory, trying to catch the ball like a football guy trying to stay in bounds. The ball landed out of his reach, foul. In the dugout, we were like, ‘What just happened?’” — Fredi Gonzalez, Baltimore Orioles bench coach

“Growing up, I knew every batting average. I could tell you the starting lineup for probably every team in the big leagues. Even coming up [as a player], watching the game the way I did, that was the case. Getting into coaching, I could tell you every coach on every team as well. There’s a lot more turnover now.” — Bob Melvin, San Francisco Giants manager

“We got in on Wednesday night and Boston was playing Baltimore on Thursday. So, I bought a ticket in the center field bleachers and floated around, watching the game. I wanted to realign my perspective and watch as a fan.” — Logan O’Hoppe, Los Angeles Angels catcher

“[After I retire], it will probably be tough watching just as a fan. That’s the hard part. The game is always so much easier sitting on the couch. I’ll try to keep the perspective of a player, knowing how hard this game really is, but at the end of the day, I’ll be sitting at home wondering what I’d do with this hitter. That’s always going to be in me.” — Kyle Hendricks, Chicago Cubs pitcher

“We get calls on a lot of our players and we have to listen. We have to hear the conversation… What we tell every team is, ‘Listen, we’re open to being creative.’ We can’t rule anything out before we hear it, no matter who the player is.” — Derek Falvey, Minnesota Twins president of baseball operations

“I was like, ‘I get stuck, because internally I feel like I have the ability to be crafty, but it’s also my nature to just be a power pitcher. That’s my competitor, my inner competitor. That’s kind of what fuels my fire.” — Garrett Crochet, Chicago White Sox pitcher

“A lot of the time I’ll throw a pitch and it gets misclassified; a certain pitch will be called something else. I’m still the same pitcher — I’m fastball, slider, curveball, changeup, sinker — but sometimes the slider gets a little bit cutter-y and sometimes it gets a little bit sweeper-y. That’s kind of been the case my whole career.” — Max Fried, Atlanta Braves pitcher

“We get the kinematic sequencing, the front leg blocking, the horizontal abduction — the AB deduction of the elbow — pelvis rotational speeds. Every biomechanical piece out there. Our biomechanist gives me a good report on each guy, what they’re doing stride length, stride width, whether they’re landing closed or more open.” — Scott Emerson, Oakland Athletics pitching coach

“You’ve got outliers. You’ll see [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto go out deep before a start. At our park, he went from the foul line all the way to the right field bullpen, which is maybe 240 or so, He may have gone further if he had space. Trevor Bauer used to go foul pole to foul pole. Gerrit usually won’t go past 100-120.” — Matt Blake, New York Yankees pitching coach

“It’s like a one-seam gyro spin that catches. It’s a bigger horizontal break than a regular gyro slider. It’s not depth-y, but shoots to the left pretty good. A sweeper is going to have side spin. Gyros have bullet spin. A gyro sweeper is bullet spin, but with one seam… one seam that catches. A seam-shift gyro.” — Seth Lugo, Kansas City Royals pitcher

“Those guys have pop. They can hit it farther than me. Colton Cowser. I joke around with him. ‘Bro, you’re a skinny dude. You crush the ball. Wow. How do you do it?’ I don’t have that kind of pop. But I can hit in the game.” — Anthony Santander, Baltimore Orioles outfielder

“Even though you’re 0-for-20, you’re still going to put the cleats on. You’re going to go out there thinking, ‘OK, today it shifts. I’m going to go 10 for my next 10.’ So, yeah, hitting is fun. It’s always fun.” — Tre Morgan, Tampa Bay Rays first base prospect

“I kind of took [Kodai] Senga’s grip a little bit. It’s like a mix of Senga and [Kevin] Gausman. I have the horseshoe rotated here [on the ring side of the middle finger] and then the other one kind of splits between the lace. I actually found it on a Tread video on YouTube.” — Bryce Miller, Seattle Mariners pitcher

“You see guys from my slot throwing sinkers and it’s predictable. You know which way it’s going to move. But with a four-seam from my slot, it’s not predictable. You don’t expect the ball to move that way, and that’s where hitters kind of get messed up with it.” — Tayler Scott, Houston Astros pitcher

“I don’t think I’m a guy who can throw one pitch and say, ‘Here it comes, try to hit it.’ Statistically, I don’t know that I actually have a best pitch.” — Tyler Holton, Detroit Tigers pitcher

“We’re not allowed to have cell phones, but if somebody comes out to the ‘pen late, we’ll be asking, ‘Hey, what did so-and-so do?’ or whatever. We can also maybe ask a fan or a security guard, ‘Hey, what’s going on with the Cowboys game?’” — Chris Martin, Boston Red Sox pitcher

“The kick change… basically, you kick the axis of the ball into that three o’clock axis. You kind of get that saucer-type spin to get the depth that a guy who could pronate a changeup would get to. You’re not using a seam-shift method. You’re not truly pronating. It’s kind of this cheat to get to that three o’clock axis.” — Davis Martin, Chicago White Sox pitcher

“I truly try everything. I catch one knee, catch two knees, left knee up, left knee down, both knees down. I’m trying it all. I’m figuring out what works best for me. But I can catch however. I’ll use all three in the same game.” — Ethan Salas, San Diego Padres catching prospect

“Growing up, I kind of had a natural, sweet lefty swing, As I kept getting bigger I had to keep working at it, working with my coaches back home, working on trying to stay short. Consistency is the biggest key, especially for a guy my size.” — Bryce Eldridge, San Francisco Giants, first base prospect

“In the 2024 baseball universe, our starters are pretty optimized. And I think there is a distinction between optimized and maxed out. We’re not looking to max out and get every possible pitch out of our starters, we’re looking to optimize the performance of our team.” — Justin Hollander, Seattle Mariners GM

“I think the line between starter and reliever is blurring… I don’t think it will be hard to replicate what we did last year if we choose to pursue that nontraditional pitching strategy of a reliever starting a game, then a starter-type pitching the bulk innings, and then relievers coming in at the end of a game.” — Scott Harris, Detroit Tigers president of baseball operations

“At times there have been pursuits of bat speed and bat speed development programs. There have also been feedback loops related to swing decisions and quality of approach. Ultimately, we are emphasizing the things that we want to value. At the end of the day it’s about run creation.” — Ross Fenstermaker, Texas Rangers GM

“To me, hitting is not so much about swinging. Obviously, you have to swing to hit the ball, but swinging isn’t hitting. Hitting is making the right decision. It’s knowing the pitcher. It’s knowing what the situation calls for. The swing comes last.” — Mark Loretta, San Diego Padres special assistant

“For a young kid reading this, my message would be to not try to be anything you’re not. If you’re a contact guy, don’t try to hit home runs. Be yourself, knowing that the best you can do is the best you can do.” — Colt Emerson, Seattle Mariners infield prospect

“With Fenway, they wanted you to use the Monster. They were working a lot on airside, pull stuff with me. That just wasn’t the type of hitter I was. Trying to do that, the power output never really went up. What happened is the swing-and-miss went up, and the hit-ability went down a little bit.” — Nick Yorke, Pittsburgh Pirates infielder

“Philosophically, we pride ourselves on the ability to co-design with our athletes. Our hitters have a say in their development. We’re not dictating to them what they need to do… As an organization and a department, we’re data-informed, but we’re not data-driven.” — Brenton Del Chiaro, Milwaukee Brewers assistant director of player development

“We take that crystal ball and try to incrementally improve it, decision after decision after decision… We never think we have this thing figured out. We’ve kept notes from prior meetings — 5, 10, 15 years ago — and they’re terrible. The goal for five years from now, if I’m fortunate enough to still be here doing this, is that we look back at our thoughts on what makes sense today, and think we’re idiots.” — Erik Neander, Tampa Bay Rays, president of baseball operations