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 »

Another day, another Met out the door. Jeff McNeil, who to this point had spent his entire 13-year professional career in the Mets organization, is now an Athletic. The 33-year-old second baseman and outfielder is headed to Sacramento (or, to use the Athletics’ official branding, Parts Unknown), in exchange for 17-year-old pitching prospect Yordan Rodriguez. The Mets will pay down $5.75 million of the $15.75 million due to McNeil in 2026, and if the A’s decline McNeil’s club option for 2027, Steve Cohen will cover the $2 million buyout.

At the time of the trade, McNeil was the Mets’ active leader in games played, plate appearances, and hits. If you want a sense of how the Mets’ offseason is going, here’s a fun fact. In the past 30 days, the franchise has had four active leaders in those categories: Brandon Nimmo, who was traded to Texas just before Thanksgiving; then Pete Alonso, who signed with the Orioles during Winter Meetings; then McNeil; and now Francisco Lindor. All that upheaval without playing a single game.

All told, 16 of the 63 players who suited up for the Mets in 2025 have departed since the end of the season. Come February, “Meet the Mets” might be more than a song. They’re going to have to spend the first week of camp wearing name tags and doing icebreakers. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all through Fenway, every fan was insistent: “Get a first baseman, today.” Or, well, probably not – why would there be fans at Fenway when there are no games, anyway? Why Christmas week in particular? Why did they construct their sentence awkwardly to suit a rhyme scheme? But forget about how hard it is to open an article – or at least how hard I’ve made it seem with this one. There’s a trade afoot! The Red Sox have acquired first baseman Willson Contreras from the Cardinals in exchange for right-handed starter Hunter Dobbins and righty pitching prospects Yhoiker Fajardo and Blake Aita, as Jeff Passan first reported.

In a free agent market awash in slugging first base/DH types, Contreras flew under the radar this offseason. Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso were the top names at the position, and both secured the deals befitting that status. The Red Sox were clearly interested in adding some offense, particularly in the infield, and were linked to both sluggers before they signed elsewhere. But there are more ways to improve your team than on the open market, and a pivot to Contreras soon followed. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies made the playoffs in 2025. The Royals nearly did, and certainly hope to play in October in 2026. Teams like that rarely line up on trades, what with both sides aiming to do the same thing and all. But rarely isn’t the same as never. Philadelphia and Kansas City found something they agree on other than their taste in Super Bowl matchups (last year’s every year, naturally), coming together on Friday to swap relievers: Matt Strahm is heading to Kansas City in exchange for Jonathan Bowlan, as Robert Murray first reported.

Trades are all about two teams with mismatched goals. Who would trade a superstar? A team that isn’t competing at the moment and isn’t one or two players away from changing that. Who would let go of a promising outfield prospect? A team that’s set in the outfield and light on the mound. This trade is two playoff contenders trading relievers, so most of those considerations don’t apply. But there’s still a mismatch in goals and resources here; you just have to look a little more closely.

The Phillies bullpen boasts an embarrassment of riches. Jhoan Duran, the closer, is one of the best in the business, a lockdown reliever you can set and forget in the ninth inning. José Alvarado missed most of the 2025 season thanks to a suspension and injury, but he’s an excellent late-inning option in his own right when available, and he should be back at full strength in the upcoming year. It doesn’t stop there; the team recently signed Brad Keller, who broke out as a dominant single-inning option in 2025. Even without Strahm, that’s a fearsome top trio of relievers, perhaps the best in the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

Some rough edges need to be smoothed out, but Cam Collier could be contributing to the Cincinnati Reds offense in the not-too-distant future. Assigned a 45 FV by Eric Longenhagen, the 21-year-old corner infielder is coming off of a 2025 campaign in which he put up a 123 wRC+ over 396 plate appearances across three levels (primarily Double-A). Among the few downsides was a dearth of dingers — he went yard just four times — but that presents as a blip as opposed to a barometer. Our lead prospect analyst grades Collier’s raw power as above average.

I broached the power outage when I talked to Collier during his stint in the Arizona Fall League, where he concluded his campaign with the Peoria Javelinas. He’d hammered 20 homers with the High-A Dayton Dragons in 2024, so why so few of them in his third full professional season?

“I’ve tried to not think about it too much,” replied Collier, whom the Reds drafted 18th overall in 2022 out of Chipola College. “This year, I wanted to really get back to being a hitter. I wanted to have consistent good at-bats, and while that didn’t produce as many homers, it produced a lot more base hits. I was happy with that.”

The stat sheet reflects some of his targeted strides. After batting .248 with a 25.0% strikeout rate in 2024, Collier improved to .279 with an only-incrementally-higher 26.3% K-rate against a higher level of competition. Moreover, the exit velocities he produced when he squared up the baseball were impressive — which remained the case in the desert. At 113.1 mph, Collier had the hardest-hit ball in the Fall Stars Game.

I had read reports that his exit velos and hard-hit rates were plus, so I brought that up as well. Was it perhaps a little counterintuitive that his slugging percentage (.384) and home run totals were as low as they were? Read the rest of this entry »

World Baseball Classic managers were made available to the media during the Winter Meetings, and I took that opportunity to ask Chinese Taipei’s Hao-Jiu Tseng about some of the best arms in Taiwan. I had specific pitchers in mind, but opted to begin with an open-ended question rather than cite any names. The response I got was likewise non-specific.

“I hope all pitchers from our team can be known by all baseball fans,” Tseng told me via an interpreter. “There are so many young pitchers. Most of them are still playing at the minor league level, but this tournament can help them improve their skills and experience, and someday grow into great players at a top level.”

The first pitcher he mentioned when I followed up was Wei-En Lin, a 20-year-old left-hander in the Athletics system who was featured here at FanGraphs back in August. The second was the hurler I was most interested in hearing about
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“Jo Hsi Hsu pitches in the [Chinese Professional Baseball League], ”Tseng said of the recently-turned-25-year-old right-hander, who had a 2.05 ERA and 120 strikeouts, with just 78 hits allowed, over 114 innings for the Wei Chuan Dragons. “He is a posted player this offseason. Right now he is eligible to negotiate with foreign clubs. He possibly will transfer his contract to Japan or America. He is the ace of the CPBL. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pirates, Rays, and Astros came together on a three-team trade on Friday. In the move, Pittsburgh acquired Brandon Lowe, Jake Mangum, and Mason Montgomery from Tampa Bay. The Bucs sent Mike Burrows to Houston, who in turn dealt Jacob Melton and Anderson Brito to the Rays. Multi-teamers are always complicated, and I find it most helpful to break these down team by team.

Pittsburgh Pirates

Acquires: 2B Brandon Lowe, OF Jake Mangum, LHP Mason Montgomery

Loses: RHP Mike Burrows

The motivation for the Pirates here is obvious, as they entered the offseason with a dire need to convert their pitching surplus into a few bats. The Pirates scored 583 runs this past season, the fewest in baseball, and only Colorado saved their collective 82 wRC+ from bringing up the rear in that category, as well. At the same time, the team’s pitching development pipeline is humming. Paul Skenes is the best pitcher in the NL, and Mitch Keller is a solid mid-rotation starter behind him.

From there, the Pirates have plenty of rotation candidates. Burrows, Braxton Ashcraft, Carmen Mlodzinski, Thomas Harrington, and Bubba Chandler all started games this year. Another potential starter, Hunter Barco, clambered ashore from the banks of the Allegheny late this season, and Jared Jones will presumably return from Tommy John surgery in 2026 and be in the mix, too. It’s enviable depth and ripe for a resource exchange. Pittsburgh started that process earlier this winter, flipping Johan Oviedo to the Red Sox for outfielder Jhostynxon Garcia, and really kicked things into gear with this move. Read the rest of this entry »

Orioles fans have had “Frontline Starter” on their Christmas list since the departure of Corbin Burnes, and though Friday’s acquisition of Shane Baz is perhaps the gift equivalent of asking for a Ferrari and getting an Acura, it adds a proven element to the middle of an Orioles rotation that still feels like it will be anchored by Kyle Bradish and Trevor Rogers.

To acquire the 26-year-old Baz, who is coming off a 2-WAR season, the Orioles had to part with a prospect potpourri made up of a pair of 2025 draftees (Coastal Carolina catcher Caden Bodine and high school outfielder Slater de Brun), a Competitive Balance Round A pick in next year’s draft, upper-level starting pitcher prospect Michael Forret, and speedy 22-year-old outfielder Austin Overn. It’s an enormous, high-volume return for one player and helps the roots of the Chris Archer trade tree anchor deeper into the game’s soil. I’ll talk more about each prospect, the comp pick, and the way this trade impacts both clubs’ farm systems later in the post. But let’s start with the most immediately consequential piece of the deal: Shane Baz.

Baz has been famous since his junior year of high school, when he emerged as one of the better pitching prospects in the 2017 draft. He was selected by Pittsburgh in the middle of the first round and traded as the Player to be Named in the Archer deal a little over a year later. The pandemic and persistent injuries (there were some near-misses as well) slowed Baz’s ascent through the minors and prevented him from working more than 81 innings in any single season until literally 2025. The Rays doggedly deployed him as a starter despite his injuries and early-career command woes, and they were rewarded with something of a breakout this year, as Baz ate 166.1 innings across 31 starts. He posted a 4.87 ERA, but hurricane damage to Tropicana Field meant that he pitched his home games in a minor league park with the hitter-friendly dimensions of Yankee Stadium; his xERA, which controls for defense, quality of contact, and the hitting environment, was 3.86. Read the rest of this entry »

Already an appealing addition based on cool name factor alone, Korean infielder Sung-mun Song put himself on the MLB radar with a late-20s breakout for the KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes. The 29-year-old was posted by Kiwoom last month on the heels of back-to-back .900+ OPS seasons that saw him crank 45 total home runs, and FanSided’s Robert Murray was the first to report that Song’s hard work has achieved the purest form of recognition our society can offer: money.

The Padres have reportedly reached an agreement with Song on a three-year deal, which The Athletic’s Dennis Lin says is for around $15 million total. Since San Diego is sort of pot-committed to this Manny Machado character as its everyday third baseman, Lin reports that Song is expected to bounce around the infield, filling in only occasionally at his primary position and appearing at second and first base more often. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Diego Padres have re-signed starting pitcher Michael King to a… let’s just call it a three-year deal worth $75 million for now, though the particulars are somewhat more complicated.

Good for the Padres, getting their Christmas shopping done on time; not all of us are so organized. I also can’t remember if I’ve already used the joke about how a reunion between King and the Friars is the opposite of Becket, the 1964 film starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. These are confusing times.

Especially for the Padres, who have been one of baseball’s more chaotic teams in the 2020s, shipping massive talents in and out with little warning and little regard for the long-term future. King came to San Diego in one of the more famous examples of this behavior: the trade that sent Juan Soto to the Yankees in 2023.

That all-in attitude — even when the Padres were selling in the short term, it was to set up another major push in the medium term — was assumed to have a shelf life. Especially after the death of popular owner Peter Seidler, whose largesse enabled GM A.J. Preller to satisfy his inexhaustible thirst for making deals. Read the rest of this entry »