Expecting the worst only takes out so much of the sting when it happens. As if the baseball world needed any reminder, the Yankees announced on Monday evening that Gerrit Cole is bound for Tommy John surgery.

This had seemed inevitable since Cole felt discomfort after leaving his start against the Twins on Thursday and went for an MRI. The Yankees and their ace received a second opinion from Dr. Neal ElAttrache, obviously hoping for something along the lines of “Oh wait, that other doctor was reading this upside-down, he’s fine.” What they got was an appointment for surgery on Tuesday in Los Angeles. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve often said when evaluating the prospects of various controversial candidates for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, “forever” and “never” are very long times. Two reports from the last week could put that assertion to the test. According to ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr., commissioner Rob Manfred is considering a petition from the family of the late Pete Rose requesting that he be removed from the permanently ineligible list, which would clear the way for his consideration for election to the Hall. Separately, on Wednesday the institution announced that its board of directors has adjusted the requirements for Era Committee candidates in a way that could eventually strip some of them of eligibility for future consideration — and could be subject to abuse.

Before addressing the Rose matter, which became politically charged after president Donald Trump posted to social media in support of him on February 28, it’s worth unpacking the ramifications of the Hall’s announcement. On February 26 in Orlando, Florida, chairman Jane Forbes Clark met with the 16-member board of directors (which includes Manfred) to address several matters, including the Era Committee process. Starting with the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot for players, which will be voted on at the Winter Meetings in Orlando in December, candidates who don’t receive at least five out of 16 possible votes will be ineligible to appear on the next ballot three years later, when that particular pool of candidates is considered again. Candidates who don’t receive at least five of 16 votes on multiple Era Committee ballots will no longer be eligible for future consideration, period. To these eyes, the first part of that change is reasonable, but the second is unnecessarily heavy-handed and smacks of punishment — punishment merely for landing on a ballot at the wrong time. Read the rest of this entry »

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: This was supposed to be the year for Francisco Alvarez. He had an electric rookie season for the Mets in 2023, putting up 3.0 WAR thanks to excellent framing numbers and a power-heavy approach that balanced 25 home runs with a .209 batting average for a 97 wRC+. Coming into the 2024 season, he was poised to go from breakout rookie to full-blown star, but he got off to a slow start and suffered a torn UCL in his left thumb in April. Alvarez returned in June and took a few days to get going, but put up a 112 wRC+ over his last 78 games and finished the season with 1.9 WAR. He’s now 23 years old, and once again, 2025 was supposed to be the year that he put it all together. Instead, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters on Sunday that Alvarez fractured the hamate bone in that same left hand during live batting practice on Saturday. He’ll have surgery today and be out for six to eight weeks, missing the first month or so of the season.

As the injury affects the meat of Alvarez’s catching hand, it would be reasonable to expect the absence to fall on the longer side of that range. However, Baseball Prospectus’ Recovery Dashboard lists two catchers who fractured their hamate bones early in the season – Francisco Cervelli in 2016 and James McCann in 2022, when he was playing for the Mets – and neither missed more than 44 days. Just to muddle our expectations even more, hamate injuries are thought sap a hitter’s power upon their return, but a 2022 study from Jason Collette reveals no such pattern. As power is the cornerstone of Alvarez’s game, losing it would pretty much crush his offensive profile, but it’s worth noting that, despite the thumb surgery, he actually put up higher max and 90th percentile exit velocities in 2024 than he did in 2023. The injury is obviously unwelcome news, and the last thing Alvarez needs is yet another surgery on his catching hand. Moreover, he’ll lose half of his spring training ramp up and have to jump into major league action after a rehab assignment. Still, this is not normally a major injury and there’s a decent chance that he won’t return in notably diminished form. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve ever lived in a cold climate and had a car that you’re trying to nurse through one more winter because you can’t quite afford to replace it, you know the startup noise. Sort of a squeal on a rumble on a cough. You’re waking your old Ford Explorer from hibernation, and it would rather go back to bed.

Throwing arms are like that to some extent. As much as pitchers stay loose and work out all offseason — we no longer live in an age when a pitcher could spend all winter inside a bottle of whiskey, dry out on the train ride to Sarasota, and throw 250 innings without breathing hard — sometimes the body just does not ramp up to game fitness the way you’d expect.

As routine as injury announcements are this time of year, the end of last week was a bloodbath. Three pitchers who were going to end up on a lot of AL Cy Young shortlists — Gerrit Cole, George Kirby, and Grayson Rodriguez — all came down with some flavor of arm ickiness. Any kind of layoff at this point in the calendar can disrupt a pitcher’s ramp-up to the point that it imperils an Opening Day start, and three contenders are now praying that worse news isn’t coming. Read the rest of this entry »

Something might be brewing in Sacramento. The 2024 A’s beat expectations by a mile, though expectations were admittedly muted coming off of a disastrous 2023, and this offseason has seen the club be quite busy. The team’s best player, Brent Rooker, signed an extension that will keep him around through at least 2029, well past when the A’s are scheduled to move to Las Vegas. The pitching staff looks much improved, thanks to the surprise signing of Luis Severino and a trade for Jeffrey Springs. And now last year’s second-best player, Lawrence Butler, has signed a contract extension too:

BREAKING: Outfielder Lawrence Butler and the A’s are in agreement on a seven-year, $66.5 million contract extension with one club option, sources tell ESPN. Butler, 24, broke out as a rookie last year and is seen as a foundational player for the A’s moving forward.

— Jeff Passan (@jeffpasan.bsky.social) 2025-03-07T04:22:52.566Z

A year ago, this contract would have been mind-boggling. Butler debuted in the bigs in 2023 with an uneven two months of work. His minor league track record suggested intriguing upside – he flashed excellent power while climbing the ranks and was only in a position to struggle in the majors because he’d reached Triple-A at age 22 – but like so many A’s, he was a question mark, a talented youngster with some good signs and some red flags.

The A’s started 2024 hot, at least by their standards, but Butler didn’t. After breaking camp with the team, he ran into a huge power outage. Over 121 plate appearances, he managed just two homers en route to a .179/.281/.274 slash line, so the A’s sent him back down to Triple-A. What can you do? Sometimes your 23-year-old who never played above A-ball until a year ago needs a bit of extra seasoning. Read the rest of this entry »

Quinn Priester is poised to take that next step and live up to his first-round pedigree. Opportunity paired with increased octane are among the reasons why. Drafted 18th overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2019 out of Cary-Grove High School, the erstwhile Illinois prep stands a good chance of breaking camp in the Red Sox starting rotation. With Brayan Bello (shoulder) and Kutter Crawford (knee) likely to begin the season the injured list, Priester is well positioned to help fill the void.

The enhanced heater factors heavily into his hoped-for emergence as an established big-league hurler. The 24-year-old right-hander’s two-seamer averaged 93.1 mph last year, and this spring it has consistently been a few ticks higher. In his last outing, Priester topped out at 97.

“The cutter is getting better, but more than anything it’s been the velocity piece,” Priester said of his recent developmental strides. “We’re trying to see that trend upwards, and hold throughout games. I want to be 96-plus with the sinker, and then let everything else complement that pitch.”

Added muscle has contributed to the additional oomph. Acquired by Boston at last summer’s trade deadline in exchange for Nick Yorke, Priester currently carries 220 pounds on his 6-foot-3 frame, 10 more than a year ago. He’s evolving in other ways, as well. Increasingly mature, he’s learning the nuances of his craft. Read the rest of this entry »

The offseason isn’t done until the season starts, but updates to the Offseason Matrices are fewer and farther between with each successive day. There’s just not that much left to happen: A few more players should sign MLB deals, and a few dozen others who were non-roster invitees this spring will find their way onto the main page of the FA Matrix after they make Opening Day rosters. There’ll be a few waiver claims as teams finalize rosters, and maybe some trades of larger significance, but perhaps not. Largely, what you see with teams right now is what you get. So, I figured now is a great time to recap what happened and give you a ridiculous amount of data in sortable tables.

As a reminder, the offseason document currently includes only free agency and trades, meaning that all of the dollar figures in the below tables correspond to free agent spending only, not payroll added via trades or extensions. For example, the extensions that Lawrence Butler (seven years, $65.5 million) and Brent Rooker (five years, $60 million) signed with the A’s this offseason aren’t included. If you’re curious about how these deals impact their full financial picture, head on over to the RosterResource payroll pages, where you’ll find that the two extensions bring the team’s luxury tax payroll to about $115 million for 2025. As extensions are the Offseason Matrices’ one big blind spot, I plan on including those next offseason!

Before diving in, here are the notable players still on the free agent market who have at least decent odds of securing last-minute MLB contracts: Read the rest of this entry »

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 second 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 Central divisions, beginning with the five in the AL Central before moving on to their counterparts in the NL Central. Each division is sorted by the current Depth Charts projected win totals.

Minnesota Twins: Take Mickey Gasper seriously
Faced with big questions at first base, the Twins made just about the least interesting move possible, signing Ty France to a cheap one-year deal. Over the last two seasons, France has put up 0.4 WAR in 1,200 plate appearances, but Minnesota seems content to run him out there in at least a timeshare with Jose Miranda. Instead, what the Twins should do is let Mickey Gasper take the majority of the playing time at first against righties, with Miranda getting the nod against lefties. Of course, the Twins probably won’t get rid of France after signing him to a guaranteed deal, but Gasper offers positional flexibility and should be on the roster anyway. In addition to first base, he also has experience at second, third and catcher. While in the minors with the Red Sox last year, Gasper posted a 165 wRC+ across 380 plate appearances, with a 179 mark over his 204 PA at Triple-A. Those numbers are more than good enough for him to deserve a chance in the majors.

Detroit Tigers: Do something weird with Javier Báez
If not for his salary, Javier Báez probably wouldn’t be guaranteed a place on this roster based on his production over the last two seasons. I think his inability to make contact is here to stay, so the Tigers are going to have to take him for what he is now instead of the player they thought they were signing three offseasons ago. At this point, he’s nothing more than a short-side platoon partner for shortstop Trey Sweeney, but if he’s going to be on the roster anyway, the Tigers might as well try some things with him. Why not get weird and give him some bullpen innings this spring? Báez has always had a strong arm, so if he’s down with the idea, maybe this is another way to justify his presence on the roster. After all, that two-way player designation is a thing now! Sure, it’s unlikely that Báez would transition into a usable relief pitcher at age 32, but the team doesn’t have much to lose here. At the very least, Detroit should give Báez reps in a super-utility role, but I like dreaming big, or at least dreaming odd. I’ve always felt spring training was the time for teams to embrace their weird impulses because it’s the only time they can truly experiment with their major league roster.

Kansas City Royals: Give Drew Waters a fair shake at a starting corner outfield job
The Royals missed an opportunity to upgrade their corner outfield positions this winter, but that doesn’t mean they should run it back with the group they had last year. Drew Waters certainly didn’t excel with a semi-regular role for a long stretch in 2023, but his wRC+ of 81 that year wasn’t much different from the 85 mark that MJ Melendez posted in 2024, and Melendez’s rough line came in three times as many plate appearances. Maybe Melendez has more offensive upside, but that isn’t enough of a reason for Kansas City to keep running him out there in left field, where he is a defensive liability. Waters is the more well-rounded player, and even if he doesn’t improve at the plate, his defensive value should make up for at least some of his lack of offense. Moreover, both players are 26, so this isn’t an age-related thing. Playing Waters in left doesn’t mean the Royals should give up on Melendez altogether; there will still be opportunities to get him plate appearances without having him wear a leather glove.

Cleveland Guardians: Stretch out a reliever for short starts
The Guardians look to have a terrific, deep, exciting bullpen, but the rotation doesn’t have that same rizz. Am I using that word right, fellow kids? I talked more about starter-reliever ambiguity with the Orioles in the first part of this series, but it’s relevant here for Cleveland, too. Triston McKenzie is no sure thing, and Shane Bieber isn’t likely returning until midseason, so another starter would be a nice thing to have. Since the Guardians don’t like to spend money, I won’t give them one of the remaining inning-eaters still available in free agency. Instead, I’ll pitch the idea of stretching out one of their relievers to start some four-inning specials. The deep bullpen gives them both the opportunity to lose someone and cover for a starter with a light workload, even by 2025 standards. Hunter Gaddis broke out in the bullpen in 2024, but he was one of their least dominant relievers in terms of punching out batters. Gaddis isn’t exactly a failed starter, because he hasn’t gotten enough run in that role, but he has refined his approach and become a better pitcher during his time in the bullpen. He’s now throwing more first-pitch strikes than he ever did in the minors. If he can keep that up, he’ll probably be the team’s best option for this starter-lite role.

Chicago White Sox: Embrace riskiness on offense
The White Sox have no hope of making a playoff run, so they have nothing to lose by taking chances with their roster. And right now, their lineup is full of veteran role players who don’t offer them much future value. Guys like Mike Tauchman, Michael A. Taylor, Austin Slater, Andrew Benintendi, and Joey Gallo won’t be around by the time this team is ready to contend again, and Chicago probably won’t be able to flip them for much at the trade deadline. So what’s the point in giving them regular playing time? Instead, the White Sox should be chasing upside right now, even if that upside comes with risk.

At this point in the offseason, the Pale Hose won’t find high-upside hitters on the free agent market, but they have plenty of them in their farm system. Really, the White Sox should be extremely aggressive with their prospects and non-prospect minor leaguers this spring, and give them as many opportunities as possible to snatch a starting spot away from the veterans. Let Chase Meidroth push Lenyn Sosa; offer Bryan Ramos every chance to knock Miguel Vargas permanently off the hot corner. Even less-heralded guys like Cal Mitchell, Andre Lipcius, or the recently outrighted Zach DeLoach have a better chance of one day contributing to a good White Sox team than Benintendi or Slater do.

Chicago Cubs: Explore a trade for Germán Márquez
ZiPS is highly optimistic about the Cubs entering 2025, but that’s largely due to a very bullish outlook on the bullpen, rather than a great deal of sunshine radiating over the pitching staff. The Cubs feel like a team that could use one more starting pitcher, with our Depth Charts having them just ahead of the Cardinals for the worst projected rotation in the NL Central, and ZiPS liking them only slightly better.

My inclination here was to effect a reunion with Marcus Stroman, but the Luis Gil injury seems to have put the kibosh on that. With that no longer an option, I’d love to see the Cubs swing a deal with the Rockies for Germán Márquez. A legitimate Cy Young contender at one point, Márquez has seen his last two seasons more or less wiped out due to elbow problems. That means there’s real risk, but as Michael Baumann wrote last week, Márquez’s velocity is back, and there’s a great deal of upside here if he’s healthy, similar to Jack Flaherty entering 2024. If there’s room for Márquez to make his hard sinker a larger part of his game, there are few better places to allow some extra grounders than in front of Nico Hoerner and Dansby Swanson.

Milwaukee Brewers: Trade with the Nats for Andrés Chaparro
The Brewers love low-key additions, and one player who fascinates me at the moment is Andrés Chaparro, a former “sorta” prospect with the Yankees and Nationals. He destroyed Triple-A pitching last year, but Washington’s additions of Nathaniel Lowe and Josh Bell complicate his path to playing time. The Brewers already had Rhys Hoskins when they signed Mark Canha this offseason, meaning it might be tough for Chaparro to make the Opening Day roster as a first baseman, but at the very least he would be an interesting Triple-A stash. ZiPS is probably overrating Chaparro in projecting him to be an adequate defender at third base, but the probabilistic location-based system that ZiPS uses for minor leaguers thought he took a big step forward last year, and this methodology frequently spots some surprisingly solid fielders. I don’t think the Nats would ask for much in return, and Milwaukee ought to be adding anyone who could at least theoretically play third base, especially now that the team appears to have soured on Tyler Black at the position.

St. Louis Cardinals: Start talking about non-Arenado trades
The Cardinals are coming off one of the quietest offseasons I ever remember from them, with nearly all their effort this winter going toward a Nolan Arenado trade that hasn’t materialized. St. Louis seems to have accepted that Arenado will be its starting third baseman come Opening Day, but that doesn’t mean the team should turn off its phone. There are other trades to make. Free agency has few treasures remaining, and I’d argue that this is a seller’s market. Only handful of teams lack a realistic shot at the postseason in 2025, and I’d argue that the Cardinals should be considered among that group, even if the playoff odds say otherwise. Put it this way: If they were truly determined to contend this year, they would’ve made more of an effort this winter to improve their roster. Sonny Gray and Brendan Donovan are players that contending clubs would probably be eager to acquire if they were available.

Cincinnati Reds: Talk megadeal with Elly De La Cruz
The Reds have basically no long-term contracts bogging down their payroll, as Hunter Greene is the only player with a guaranteed deal past 2026. They haven’t made a splash in free agency to bolster their roster of cheap talent, but instead of pocketing that money saved, they should invest it in their spectacular shortstop to make sure they can keep his utter awesomeness around for the 10-15 years. Yes, Elly De La Cruz is a Scott Boras client, and Boras clients tend not to sign extensions, but that doesn’t mean the Reds shouldn’t try to work out a deal, especially now when his free agency is a long way off.

Pittsburgh Pirates: Release Andrew McCutchen
There’s nothing wrong with saying goodbye when it’s time. It was fun to see Andrew McCutchen back in Pittsburgh and be reminded of what a wonderful player he was from 2009 to 2015, good enough that I’ll have to ponder sometime in the early 2030s whether his peak was enough to make my Hall of Fame ballot. But the decision to re-sign him for $5 million for 2025 was a terrible one because using the DH spot for a no-upside 38-year-old with no defensive value is a waste of resources. I think the Pirates are far better off using those plate appearances to give Jack Suwinski a clearer bounce-back chance or to serve as a friendly home for Henry Davis at some point this season if they haven’t already given up on him. No, the Pirates won’t actually do this, but they really should. The $5 million is gone no matter what, and the Pirates are a team that actually could make the playoffs if they had a better lineup.

If you were looking for differences between collegiate and professional baseball, you wouldn’t have to try very hard to find them. One of my favorites is the value and frequency of the hit-by-pitch.

College hitters get plunked more often than big leaguers for three reasons: First, college pitchers have worse command, as a rule, than their professional counterparts. Second, while the quality of play is high in college baseball, it’s not quite high enough to weed out all the weirdos. So you’ll get guys with no nerve endings in one of their arms who are quite happy to trade a welt for a free trip to first base. Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s Padres lineup may not be made entirely out of current and former shortstops, but on Wednesday, they added one to the fold. Jose Iglesias, who revived his career with the Mets last season in impressive fashion while also scoring an unlikely pop hit with “OMG,” has agreed to a minor league deal with the Padres, one with a non-roster invitation to their major league camp.

Iglesias headed last week’s roundup of prominent position players still on the free agent market. That’s a particularly funny sentence to write, not only since this spring hasn’t exactly offered the second coming of the Boras Four, but because Iglesias (who did hire Scott Boras to represent him this past offseason) wasn’t in the majors at all in 2023 after playing with six different teams over the previous six seasons. Nonetheless, I led my overview with the 35-year-old infielder because his 2.5 WAR — a career high, accumulated in just 85 games — was tops among the group and because the arc of his 2024 season was so compelling.

Coincidentally enough, during Iglesias’ absence from the majors in 2023 he spent about six weeks with the Padres’ Triple-A El Paso affiliate. This came after he’d signed a minor league contract with the Marlins and gone through spring training with them; he opted out a few weeks into April without ever playing a regular season game within their organization. From there, he signed that minor league deal with the Padres, hitting .317/.356/.537 in 28 games at El Paso. He opted out twice to test the free agent waters but didn’t catch on elsewhere, and played his last game of the season on June 7. Read the rest of this entry »