I don’t think J.T. Realmuto ever got enough credit for his remarkable season in 2022. It was easily the finest performance of his career. With 22 home runs, 21 stolen bases, and a 128 wRC+, in addition to his typical Gold Glove defense and trademark durability, he produced a personal-best 6.5 WAR, claimed All-MLB First Team honors for the second time and finished seventh in a stacked NL MVP race.

What made his 2022 season so impressive were the demographics of it all. We’re not talking about a center fielder in his 20s; Realmuto’s 6.5 WAR was the highest for a regular catcher age 31 or older since Javy Lopez in 2003. As a matter of fact, only four catchers have ever put up more WAR in a single season after their 31st birthday: Lopez, Gary Carter, Roy Campanella, and Josh Gibson.

That same year, Realmuto also became the first backstop to qualify for the batting title in seven consecutive seasons since Jason Kendall in 2009. Only seven other catchers have accomplished that particular feat in the divisional era (1969-present): Jorge Posada, Mike Piazza, Carter, Lance Parrish, Ted Simmons, Johnny Bench, and Thurman Munson. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to college baseball conference realignment. For those of you who missed the first class, here’s a quick summary: The people who run college football are drunk with power, and are tearing up decades of geographical and cultural alignment in order to chase the biggest TV deals they can get. Good for them. Unfortunately the rest of college sports — perhaps the whole of American higher education, less those Ivy League dorks whose personal grievances become national news — is merely a vestigial appendage of the Football Bowl Subdivision.

The realignment of 2023-24 leaves two important questions to be answered, one urgent, the other existentially important. The urgent question: What happens to Oregon State and Washington State, the two schools left without a chair by Pac-12 collapse? This question is arguably more important for baseball than it is any other sport, as Oregon State is a national powerhouse. The important question: Can the ACC hold it together, or is it too bound for a Pac-12-type implosion?

We got some clarity on both of those questions this week, as Oregon State and Washington State found a new partnership with the WCC (though not for baseball), while Florida State is taking its first step toward leaving the ACC. Read the rest of this entry »

For the past decade, the joke around Mets pitchers has been that they spend more time injured than active. There’s no shortage of examples; Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard spring to my mind first, but Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander dealt with injuries in their time in Queens, too. Edwin Díaz just missed the 2023 season. Zack Wheeler never quite lived up to his potential when he was there, and injuries were a key reason why. Matt Harvey, Seth Lugo, Steven Matz — heck, here’s a story from 2017 about the Mets’ injury woes, which were already a trope before their recent woes.

In that sense, Coleman Crow is the platonic ideal of a Mets pitcher. He joined the organization in June, part of the package the Angels sent to New York in exchange for Eduardo Escobar. At the time, he hadn’t pitched since late April thanks to an elbow injury. His first notable decision as a Met was to get Tommy John surgery for that elbow; he’s now tracking for a return at the very end of next year, or potentially in 2025. He’s been a Met for roughly six months and thrown exactly zero pitches for them in that time.

Or maybe I should have said: he was a Met for roughly six months. On Wednesday, the Mets traded him to the Brewers in exchange for Adrian Houser and Tyrone Taylor, ending his tenure with the team. You think Harvey was often injured? Crow dialed it up to an entirely different level, albeit in the minors. It’s the kind of performance we might not see again for a while. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Semi-Rebuilding Team Signs Solid Players. Last time, we saw the Kansas City Royals sign Michael Wacha and Hunter Renfroe. This time, we’re headed 800 miles east, to Pittsburgh, because the Pirates are our next feature. In the past week, they’ve added Martín Pérez and team legend Andrew McCutchen on one-year deals.

The McCutchen signing is the more interesting of the two to me – and also one that felt inevitable since the conclusion of last season. McCutchen enjoyed a resurgent 2023 in Pittsburgh, his first year back after a five-year, four-team odyssey that he embarked on after leaving before the 2018 season. He walked more, struck out less, stole more bases, made solid contact more frequently; if you can dream it, he did it better last year than he had in his previous peregrinations.

The result of that improvement was a 115 wRC+ and a .256/.378/.397 slash line, heavy on on-base and light on homers (12, the lowest he’s posted in a healthy season). Early in the season, it looked like that performance might be a key part of a Pirates playoff berth. But the team faded in the second half, and McCutchen’s season ended on September 4 when he partially tore his Achilles tendon legging out a double. Read the rest of this entry »

TJ Hopkins got traded on Tuesday. For what? Either cash or a player to be named later, we don’t know yet. And it probably doesn’t matter that much. Hopkins was something like the seventh outfielder on a .500 team last year, and he only got into 25 games. The Reds had already DFA’d him last week to make room for Austin Wynns — hardly a stop-the-presses moment in and of itself — so the Giants are sending along either money or a minor leaguer or a tasteful floral arrangement in order to make sure they don’t get jumped in the waiver line.

Cards on the table: I probably would not know who Hopkins was if he had not played four seasons at South Carolina. He was a ninth-round senior sign in 2019, and despite solid minor league numbers (he hit .300/.400/.500 at Triple-A last season), he was 26 before he made the majors. Good for him, to be clear. In a ranking of major league accomplishments of recent Gamecock players I didn’t think had a shot at playing in the big leagues, Hopkins is probably no. 4, behind Whit Merrifield, Taylor Widener, and Jonah Bride.

Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that Hopkins, modest though his major league accomplishments to this point may be, is legitimate major league outfield depth. And the Giants clearly wanted him; they’re giving him a 40-man roster spot, and they’re sending Cincinnati a muffin basket in order to make sure nobody else gets him. The thing is, the Giants already have a ton of outfielders. Read the rest of this entry »

Craig Breslow is restructuring the Red Sox pitching program. Hired in October to replace Chaim Bloom as Boston’s Chief Baseball Officer, the 43-year-old erstwhile reliever is doing so in multiple ways, and that includes having effectively cloned himself with a Twin. Earlier this month, Boston’s new top executive lured Justin Willard away from Minnesota to be the team’s Director of Pitching — the same role Breslow held in Chicago when he worked to revamp the Cubs’ pitching development process just a few years ago.

That Breslow’s approach is largely data-driven and comes with an adherence to bat-missing qualities is a big reason why Willard was brought on board. Much like the Yale graduate who hired him, Willard — a former college hurler with an MBA from Radford University — is both well-versed in analytics and an advocate of arsenals rife with plus raw stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Ben Clemens broke down the trade that sent Tyler Glasnow to the Dodgers, as well as the extension that Glasnow signed soon afterward. In this article, our focus is the conditional option at the very end of the contract. Before the 2028 season, the Dodgers have a $30 million team option. If they decline to exercise it, Glasnow has his own $21.5 million player option. When I read about the structure of the options, my first thought was to wonder why this doesn’t happen all the time. Here’s how Ben interpreted the situation:

“It seems likely to me that one of those two will be exercised; in my mind, it’s a five-year, $135 million deal with a $10 million kicker if he’s pitching well in year four. The circumstances where neither side exercises their option just feel much less likely than one side or the other being an obvious yes.”

I was inclined to agree. It is sort of like a performance bonus: Pitch well and we’ll bring you back for $30 million, but if you don’t, then you’ll be back for $21.5 million. The $8.5 million difference is a lot of money, but it’s also small enough that, depending on the market and their own particular health and performance, a player might not be certain that they’d make it up in free agency. It might just be easier and safer to stick around. The more I thought about it, though, the more wrinkles I saw. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, the Padres had a clear approach to the offseason. They came in badly needing innings, but with a decorated and devastating lineup – particularly after they signed Xander Bogaerts to add to their shortstop treasure trove. They did have a few holes, though, so they shopped in volume for complementary bats and mid-rotation arms. Their two preferred pitching targets: Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha. Clearly, the Royals were taking notes.

That’s right: After signing Lugo earlier this month, the Royals turned around and inked Wacha to a two-year, $32 million pact last week. They also addressed some of their outfield deficiency by signing Hunter Renfroe to a two-year, $13 million deal of his own. Both contracts feature player opt-outs for the second year. By sheer number of major league deals signed this offseason, the Royals are now lapping the field. Read the rest of this entry »

Jed Bradley had just walked away from baseball when I featured him here at FanGraphs in May 2017. Six years removed from being a first-round draft pick, and seven-plus months after making the last of his half dozen big-league pitching appearances, the southpaw had decided that he “wasn’t happy doing it anymore, and life is too short to do something that doesn’t make you happy.” At age 26, Bradley set out to write the next chapter in his life.

Term papers followed, but so too did one last attempt to resurrect what had once been a promising career. Despite a still-balky shoulder that had factored into his farewell, the erstwhile 15th-overall pick couldn’t help but give the game he loves another shot.

“I had every intention of moving on with my life and never looking back,” recalled Bradley, who has since earned a law degree and is now a corporate attorney. “I re-entered college at Georgia Tech — the first time in over two decades I was outside of baseball entirely — and the hiatus lasted approximately three months before I found myself watching old World Series games on Youtube and following the latest trade rumors. Soon I was researching the efficacy of stem cells on shoulder injuries. I ended up flying to south Florida for stem cell injections, and from there I was driving to rehab sessions after classes trying to get my arm back in shape.”

Bradley graduated from business school, but the corporate world would have to wait. Armed with last-hope inspiration, he spent that summer on the mound for the New Britain Bees of the independent Atlantic League. Read the rest of this entry »

The top prospect designation is a curse as often as it is a blessing. The same goes for the star rookie label, and Gary Sánchez knows it well. While he has established himself as a serviceable big league catcher over the past six years, he still plays in the shadow of his star-making rookie and sophomore campaigns. And though he’s had his ups and downs, he’s been a solid player in the years following his lone Silver Slugger season. Since 2018, he ranks 10th among active catchers with 8.6 WAR; since 2021, he’s 14th with 4.6. Yet his reputation remains that of a disappointment. His struggles are amplified, and his successes are overlooked.

Sánchez went unsigned during the 2022–23 offseason, finally earning a minor league deal with the Giants on the second day of the regular season. After a month at Triple-A, he opted out of his contract, signing a new minor league deal with the Mets shortly thereafter. And although he did make his way onto New York’s active roster, his stay in the majors was brief; after three games, he was designated for assignment. It wasn’t until late May, when the Padres scooped him up off waivers, that Sánchez finally found a path to regular playing time.

Yet it’s not as if he had a terrible season the year before. In 2022, he ranked sixth among primary catchers in games played and 20th in innings behind the dish. By our calculation, he was worth 1.3 WAR, 22nd among catchers. That didn’t turn any heads, but 1.3 WAR was more than 12 teams got from the catching position in 2022. And it’s not as if he was due for regression. Despite his low .290 wOBA, he had a .321 xwOBA — slightly higher than league average, and significantly better than average for a catcher. While his power numbers were down, he tore the cover off the ball, posting hard-hit and barrel rates in the 92nd percentile. Heading into his age-30 campaign, his 50th percentile ZiPS projection for 2023 was 1.7 WAR. If you presume a win is worth about $8 million in free agency, that projection translates to $13.6 million on a one-year deal. Read the rest of this entry »