As you’re probably aware, the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLBPA expires this year. Time flies, doesn’t it? The last time this happened, MLB locked out its players — the sport’s first work stoppage since the infamous strike that canceled the 1994 World Series.
The smart money is on there being another lockout next offseason; last time around, both sides did a lot of saber-rattling, but relatively little changed. We got the pre-arb bonus pool and some tinkering around the edges, but there was no salary cap, no abolition of the arbitration system, nothing that I’d describe as revolutionary. The duration of the lockout reflects that assessment; the stalemate lasted long enough to delay the season by a week, but not to cancel any games outright.
Having walked up to the verge of the abyss, peeked over the edge, and retreated, neither capital nor labor reaped a painful object lesson in the reality of all-out labor war. Last time that happened, it scared both sides into détente for 25 years. It seems reasonable to assume that either the players or owners might at least think about tickling the dragon’s tail next winter. Read the rest of this entry »
On Saturday, the eve of his posting window’s closure, 29-year-old Japanese third baseman Kazuma Okamoto agreed to a four-year, $60 million contract with the reigning American League champion Toronto Blue Jays. Okamoto, who made his NPB debut as a teenager, is a career .277/.361/.521 hitter with Tokyo’s Yomiuri Giants. He had a power-hitting breakout in 2018, his age-22 campaign, beginning a six-year streak in which he hit 30 or more annual home runs, including a 2023 season in which he cracked 41 of them. He ranks second in all of NPB with 214 homers since 2019, our first year of NPB data tracking here at FanGraphs. During his 2025 platform year, Okamoto posted an incredible .327/.416/.598 line and career-best 11% strikeout rate, albeit in only 77 games because he sprained his left elbow in an on-field collision that caused him to miss roughly half the season.
Dangerous from top to bottom, lineup depth was the bedrock of a Toronto team that came within inches of winning a World Series, and Okamoto’s balanced contact/power hitting style fits in with the Blue Jays’ baton-passing attack. Pre-existing defensive versatility on their roster — namely, incumbent second baseman Andrés Giménez’s ability to play shortstop — gave them the flexibility to pursue players of virtually any position as a means of replacing free agent shortstop Bo Bichette. Read the rest of this entry »
New Year’s Eve is a great time to agree to an eight-figure contract; you’ve already got champagne handy to celebrate. Congratulations, then, to Tyler Mahle and the San Francisco Giants on killing two birds with one stone.
Mahle is one of baseball’s great “I can fix him guys,” a status reflected in his contract structure: $10 million guaranteed over a single year, with an additional $3 million available in performance incentives. In 2020, the right-hander struck out 29.9% of the batters he faced over the pandemic-shortened season. The following year, he made 33 starts, threw 180 innings, and posted 3.9 WAR. Read the rest of this entry »
Cole Henry could close out games for the Nationals next season. Paul Toboni was noncommittal when I brought up that possibility during the Winter Meetings, yet there are no currently clear favorites to fill the role — not since Washington’s new president of baseball operations swapped southpaw Jose Ferrer to the Seattle Mariners in exchange for Harry Ford and Isaac Lyon in early December. And while the 26-year-old right-hander admittedly lacks ninth-inning experience — just two professional saves — he has attributes suggestive of late-inning effectiveness.
Henry’s 2025 numbers serve as an argument both for and against his assuming the closer responsibilities that Ferrer had inherited when Kyle Finnegan was dealt to Detroit at July’s trade deadline. Over 57 relief outings comprising 52-and-two-thirds innings, he held opposing batters to a .213 xBA while logging a better-than-league-average 25.6% whiff rate. Less encouraging were the 5.34 FIP that accompanied his 4.27 ERA, and the 13.3% walk rate that accompanied his 21.6% strikeout rate. Also notable was his .259 BABIP, but is that a red flag, or is it actually a sign that the Nationals might have stumbled upon their next Tyler Clippard?
Pitching for Washington from 2008-2014, Clippard crafted a 2.68 ERA, a notably higher 3.46 FIP, an 15.8% infield-fly rate, and a .233 BABIP (he also had 34 saves and 150 holds during that seven-year span). Henry’s infield-fly rate this past season was 21.4%, the third-highest mark in MLB among pitchers to throw at least 50 innings. Only Jordan Leasure (26.0%) and Alex Vesia (22.1%) induced a higher percentage of pop-ups.
Henry’s arm slot differs from Clippard’s, but his delivery nonetheless plays a role in his ability to miss barrels. Moreover, his slot has dropped since he was drafted 55th overall in 2020 out of LSU. Eric Longenhagen pointed that out earlier this summer: Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, the New York Post’s Jon Heyman reported that Japanese pitcher Tatsuya Imai has agreed to a three-year, $54 million pact with the Houston Astros (ESPN’s Jesse Rogers had the length). The deal includes opt outs after each of the first two years, essentially a “prove it” contract that gives Imai the opportunity to re-enter free agency should he quickly demonstrate that he’s better than the open market seemed to think he was during this posting period. Speaking of the posting system, note that the Astros will also pay Imai’s Japanese club, the Seibu Lions, just shy of $10 million under the current MLB/NPB posting agreement’s formula (20% of the contract’s first $25 million, 17.5% of the next $25 million, and 15% of anything over $50 million). The deal also features $9 million in escalator clauses that kick in as Imai approaches and crosses the 100-inning threshold during his first two seasons, bringing Houston’s total potential expenditure to roughly $73 million.
This deal is shorter and less lucrative than was generally expected by pundits (including yours truly) when it became known that Imai would be posted; Ben Clemens forecast a five-year, $100 million deal, while our median crowdsource estimate was for four years and $64 million before the posting fee. Imai is 27-years-old, he’s coming off of his best pro season after multiple consecutive years of improved strike-throwing, and he checks several of the visual scouting and data analytics boxes you want from a mid-rotation starter. What could be the reason(s) for the discrepancy between our collective expectations and Imai’s actual payday, and where does he fit into Houston’s rotation?
Let’s revisit the background on Imai. He was the Seibu Lions’ 2016 first round pick out of a high school in Utsunomiya City, a metro roughly the size of Tucson that’s about 80 miles north of Tokyo. He spent a year in the minors and then hopped right into the Lions rotation as a 20-year-old in 2018. Throughout his early and mid-20s, Imai was a walk-prone (but effective) starter. He dealt with multiple ailments in 2022 (including a right adductor injury), then took a step forward as a strike-thrower and an innings-eater in each of the next three seasons, becoming one of NPB’s best arms. Across the 2022-25 seasons, Imai halved his walk rate (from the 14% area to 7%), expanded his repertoire, and improved his fastball velocity even as his innings count grew to north of 160 frames. He’s had four consecutive seasons with an ERA under 2.50 (even while he was wild), and in 2025, he posted a 1.92 ERA and 2.01 FIP. Read the rest of this entry »
The Baltimore Orioles continued filling out their rotation last weekend, signing right-hander Zach Eflin to a one-year contract worth $10 million with a mutual option for the 2027 season. Traded to the Orioles from the Rays in 2024, Eflin struggled with injuries last year, throwing only 71 1/3 over 14 starts while putting up a 5.93 ERA and -0.3 WAR.
A first-round pick by the Padres out of a Florida high school in 2012, Eflin finally established himself as a solid mid-rotation starter with the Phillies at the end of the decade after being a part of trades for Matt Kemp and Jimmy Rollins. COVID and recurring patella issues in his right knee plagued him in 2021, resulting in season-ending surgery, and he missed another three months in 2022 with more problems with the same knee. Despite the setbacks, the Rays saw enough to sign him to a three-year, $40 million deal entering the 2023 season. Eflin experienced a minor back injury and tendinitis in his other knee, but that only cost him a handful of innings, and the result was his best and most durable campaign. He set career highs in starts (31), innings (177 2/3 innings), ERA (3.50), FIP (3.01), and WAR (4.9). While his numbers sagged a bit in 2024, Eflin was still a quality pitcher whose name bandied in trade rumors before the deadline. Read the rest of this entry »
One can’t help but imagine the chagrin of Pete Fairbanks’ dermatologist. The fair-haired closer has spent nearly his entire major league career with the Rays, racking up at least 23 saves in each of the past three seasons. And now, instead of leaving the Sunshine State, he’s traveling even farther south to Miami. The 32-year-old Fairbanks has signed a one-year, $13 million deal with the Marlins. He was the last closer available in free agency, and with Ronny Henriquez out for the season due to a torn UCL, Fairbanks will play a crucial role for a Miami bullpen that finished in the bottom 10 in just about any category you can think of. Will Sammon of The Athletic broke the news, while Jeff Passan of ESPN reported the terms, and Mark Feinsand of MLB.com reported that the contract included a $1 million signing bonus and another $1 million in incentives. According to AJ Eustace of MLB Trade Rumors, Fairbanks would also get a $500,000 bonus if he’s traded.
The move represents a reunion with president of baseball operations Peter Bendix, who previously served as Tampa Bay’s general manager. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Fairbanks made it clear that Bendix’s role with the Marlins was part of their appeal. “To hear all the things that he’s been doing over his tenure down in Miami, from what I’ve heard previously to what I have now, how much things are changing and how much he has been attempting to put his stamp on things. I felt like that made it a pretty easy choice, and I am excited to see the direction that he takes.” (Hat tip to Kevin Barral of Fish on First, who published this quote and the others you’ll read in this article.) Fairbanks also noted that moving just a four-hour drive away from Tampa is a boon because he and his wife are expecting their third child “basically on Opening Day.” This is the first All-Star break baby we write in 2026, but I can assure you that it won’t be the last. Read the rest of this entry »
The composition of the Minnesota Twins’ projected starting lineup caught my eye while I was perusing Roster Resource during the Winter Meetings. Not only were all but two of the nine position players homegrown: each of those seven was drafted in either the first or second round. Byron Buxton (first round in 2012) is the oldest of the bunch, while Luke Keaschall (second round in 2023) is the youngest and most recent.
Where do the Twins rank among MLB clubs in terms of homegrown position-player starters taken in the first two rounds? According to Jon Becker, who along with Jason Martinez keeps Roster Resource running like a well-oiled machine, the Minnesotans top the list. Moreover, while the Baltimore Orioles have six, and three other clubs have five, the rest have notably fewer. Fully half of the 30 teams have no more than three, including the Houston Astros, Miami Marlins, and Toronto Blue Jays, who have none.
My colleague provided me with some other roster-construction breakdowns as well, but before we get to those, let’s hear from Minnesota’s president of baseball operations. I asked Derek Falvey what the aforementioned seven-of-nine says about his organization. Read the rest of this entry »
This framing device will eventually lose its White Sox trappings, but they’re initially connected just because the South Siders were linked to O’Hearn early in the offseason, before they pivoted from a reliable and proven big leaguer to an attention-grabbing international signing. Murakami has a deeply volatile profile with significant bust potential, but a famed home run hitter and two-time MVP of NPB picking a relative MLB backwater is intriguing not only for beleaguered White Sox ticket sales employees, but also for outlets like this one that observe the league at large. How the talents of a legendary Japanese slugger with apparently bottom-of-the-scale contact ability translate to MLB is fascinating, whereas pondering whether a 32-year-old hit-over-power first baseman like O’Hearn can keep a later-career breakout going is more the usual fare. Even for the largest position player free agent signing in Pirates franchise history, O’Hearn is newsworthy mostly in terms of how well he might fill a short-term need for a role player. Read the rest of this entry »
I got sick last week. So did my wife. We canceled our plans. We spent the weekend horizontal. We watched TV. On Sunday morning, I woke up and found my wife on the couch watching A League of Their Own. I did what anyone does when they catch a glimpse of the greatest baseball movie of all time on television. I sat down and watched the rest of it.
I’m still kind of sick. My wife is still fully sick. A League of Their Own is still on my mind. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the scouting report that Rockford Peaches catcher Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) delivered to pitcher Ellen Sue Gotlander (Freddie Simpson) with two outs and the tying run on first in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7 of the World Series in Racine. I had useful thoughts, and we’ll get to those in a moment. First, though, we’re going to wade through some useless thoughts. I beg you to humor me, because I am about to critique the baseball strategy in a perfect movie. I told you I’m sick.
There’s nothing wrong with making a mound visit in a big moment, giving the pitcher a break and reminding them of the scouting report. But the batter was Hinson’s sister Kit Keller (Lori Petty), who spent nearly the entire season with the Peaches, then faced them throughout the Series, including three times alone in Game 7. There’s no way Ellen Sue needed a refresher on that particular scouting report. Then, there’s the scouting report itself. “High fastballs,” Dottie said. “Can’t hit ‘em, can’t lay off ‘em.” It was right on the money, but they didn’t have to follow it on every single pitch, did they? Once they’d jumped ahead 0-2, did it never occur to Dottie or Ellen Sue to waste a breaking ball in the dirt in order to reset Kit’s eye level? I don’t care who’s at the plate; you can’t throw the same pitch to the same spot three times in a row and expect to get away with it. Read the rest of this entry »
