With most of the top free agents having found new homes – 12 of our top 15 have signed – the baseball transaction news figured to be light this week. Maybe the Yankees and Cody Bellinger would keep making lovey-dovey eyes at each other across the negotiating table to give us some headlines, but that felt like the only game in town for at least a few days. But just because no one is left to sign doesn’t mean nothing can happen. Out in Queens, the Mets weren’t content to sit pat after signingBo Bichette. They continued their offseason splurge by acquiring Luis Robert Jr. from the White Sox in exchange for Luisangel Acuña and pitching prospect Truman Pauley, as ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported.
I’ve grappled with evaluating Robert innumerable times over the past few years. For a while, he was a yearly feature in our Trade Value series, an electric talent in his early 20s. Then he became an interesting litmus test when talking to team evaluators, as his production dipped but his prodigious tools remained as loud as ever. Finally, as his contract hit the expensive team option phase, I considered him for a list of top free agents, as I have to predict what option decisions teams will make. At every turn, I came away equally impressed and frustrated by Robert’s ludicrous ceiling and subbasement-level floor.
You want a tooled-up center fielder? Robert is your guy. If you click on the “Prospects Report” tab on his player page, you’ll see this short blurb by Eric Longenhagen: “Graduation TLDR: The Vitruvian Outfield Prospect in all facets save for his approach, Robert graduated from prospectdom as one of baseball’s most exciting players.” That Vitruvian Outfield Prospect phrase has stuck with me.
If you made an outfielder in a lab, he’d look a lot like this. Power? Robert has 90th-percentile bat speed and clobbered 38 home runs in his last full season of playing time. He gets the ball in the air, too, all the better to maximize his best contact. Speed? You guessed it, 90th-percentile sprint speed. He’s also among the best defensive outfielders in the game when he’s healthy. He even has a strong throwing arm, though it’s inaccurate at times. If you’re looking for a Gold Glove defender who can hit 40 homers at the hardest outfield spot and swipe 30 bags, he’s one of maybe three players in the entire majors who fits the bill. Read the rest of this entry »
For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the antepenultimate team is the Chicago Cubs.
Batters
ZiPS was a big believer in the 2025 Chicago Cubs, and it was right on point about most of their core talent. The problem, though, was that ZiPS wasn’t right about the Milwaukee Brewers, and though Chicago stayed in the NL Central race for most of the season, Milwaukee’s 14-game winning streak all but settled things by mid-August. Add in a five-game loss to the Brew Crew in the NLDS, and a successful season ended in underwhelming fashion for the North Siders. The Cubs went into the offseason looking to replace Kyle Tucker in the lineup and shore up the rotation a bit.
Generally speaking, the Cubs have a rather boring lineup in one manner: It’s mostly well-established players who are largely in the same roles as last season. Carson Kelly and Miguel Amaya, the latter swapped in for Reese McGuire, will be a competent tandem behind the plate. Dansby Swanson, Nico Hoerner, and Pete Crow-Armstrong will play terrific defense, with PCA adding a bunch of homers at the cost of a rather low on-base percentage. Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki are on the wrong side of 30, but not distressingly so, and the typically B+ corner outfielders will likely put up their typical B+ seasons. One can see why the Cubs felt they could afford to trade Owen Caissie to Miami for Edward Cabrera; he was going to have a hard time finding playing time, and Kevin Alcántara’s defense makes him a more versatile fourth outfielder.
Where there are changes are at third base and designated hitter (by way of Suzuki playing a lot more right field). Alex Bregman is more or less the Kyle Tucker replacement, with a bit less bat and a bit more defensive value. Moisés Ballesteros has a lot of offensive upside, but he’s not really exciting yet as a full-time designated hitter, and Matt Shaw loses significant value as a DH. ZiPS is optimistic about Tyler Austin after a mostly successful six-year run in Japan, though he doesn’t provide a lot of flexibility, as it’s been years since he’s played anywhere but first base. I say mostly successful because he wasn’t particularly durable in NPB, with his most notable — and amusing — injury coming when he smashed his head on the dugout ceiling while changing his jersey.
I’m actually not quite sure what happens with Shaw, who appears to have been musical chaired out of a significant role by the Bregman and Austin signings. I don’t know just how seriously the Cubs consider him a supersub. Swanson and Hoerner were both durable in 2025, so we didn’t get any sneak peeks at how the Cubs truly felt about Shaw’s ability to play the middle infield when the rubber meets the road.
I wonder if the Cubs will be particularly active with non-roster invitations over the next month; ZiPS doesn’t see a great deal in the way of reinforcements in the high minors. Guys like Scott Kingery are probably far too high in the ZiPS WAR rankings than the Cubs ought to be comfortable with.
Pitchers
ZiPS sees the Cubs as having a very deep rotation that’s also very deep in unexcitement. There’s certainly some upside here, especially in Edward Cabrera, but ZiPS largely views the team as having a whole lot of broadly average starting pitching options. The good news here is that if Justin Steele has any setbacks, ZiPS likes the team’s replacement options. Even with especially bad luck in the injury department, the computer thinks Javier Assad will be adequate — it has him with an ERA considerably lower than his FIP, though some of that is thanks to the stellar Cubs defense — and that Ben Brown and Jordan Wicks would both be far more acceptable as starters if called into duty than they’ve shown so far. Heck, if Colin Rea or even Connor Noland were forced into starting some games, that wouldn’t be an apocalyptic scenario for the Cubs.
While deep in meh, ZiPS is more enthusiastic about the Chicago bullpen. Now, as was the case with Assad, some of the bullpen’s projected sufficiency comes down to the defense behind it, but ZiPS largely sees these relievers as having ERAs below four, and generally well below that line. ZiPS especially likes Hunter Harvey, Daniel Palencia, and the relief version of Porter Hodge. In the case of Hodge, remember the rule not to freak out about one-year home run totals for otherwise competent pitchers. The only prominent relievers ZiPS looks at with a bit of a side eye are Ethan Roberts and recent signee Jacob Webb.
All in all, the Cubs look like a team with a win total in the low 90s. The only negative of that projection is that ZiPS feels similarly about the Brewers this time around. We won’t know the end of this story for another nine months.
Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.
Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.
Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.
As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on Bluesky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.
Mason Barnett doesn’t profile as a front-of-the-rotation starter, but he does project to provide solid innings for a major league staff. A 25-year-old right-hander who made his MLB debut with the Athletics at the end of August, Barnett is currently viewed by Eric Longenhagen as “a big league starter who has demonstrated durability [and] is a no. 4/5 on a good team.” Our lead prospect evaluator anticipates assigning him a 45 FV when our 2026 A’s list is published in the not-too-distant future.
The Kennesaw, Georgia native was originally in the Kansas City system. Drafted 87th overall by the Royals in 2022 out of Auburn University, Barnett was subsequently traded to his current club in the 2024 deadline deal that sent Lucas Erceg to America’s Heartland. With his time down on the farm now mostly complete, Barnett will head into the forthcoming campaign having logged a 6.85 ERA and a 4.88 FIP over five starts comprising 22 1/3 innings in his initial major league opportunity.
Longenhagen has assigned a 40/45 on the righty’s command, and it was that aspect of his game that Scott Emerson emphasized when I asked him about Barnett toward the tail end of last season.
“Barnett, interesting guy,” said the longtime Athletics pitching coach. “Very good competitor. Throws strikes with his fastball, which has some cut-ride. He’s got a good developing changeup. He spins the ball really well and has both the sweeper and the curveball. For me, a lot of it with Barnett is his being able to execute his pitches inside the strike zone when he needs to, and then being able to make them chase outside of the strike zone when he’s ahead in the count. He’s one of our guys who needs to learn to command the ball better.”
The numbers back that up. Barnett had a 10.8% walk rate (as well as a 17.3% strikeout rate) in his big league cameo, while in Triple-A those numbers were 11.9% and 22.8%. But, while concerning, it’s not as though he can’t throw strikes or miss bats. In 2024, he punched out Double-A batters at a 28.5% clip, and walked them at a more-acceptable (albeit still not great) 8.7% over 133 innings of work. Like Longenhagen and Emerson, Barnett also recognizes the need to improve his strike-throwing. Read the rest of this entry »
Mark J. Rebilas and John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images
I try not to be a stick in the mud. I really do. But I was poking around in RosterResource recently, and I saw something that gave me a headache. Edwin Díaz, who wore no. 39 with the Mariners and Mets, had to pick a new number with his new team, as the Dodgers had retired no. 39 for Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella.
Over the weekend, Ha-Seong Kim’s whirlwind offseason took a jarring tumble. After opting out of his contract with the Braves (really his contract with the Rays, which the Braves assumed after they claimed him off waivers), he turned around and signed a one-year, $20 million deal to remain in Atlanta. But disaster struck when he slipped on a sheet of ice and tore a tendon in his right middle finger. That injury required surgery that will sideline Kim for four to five months, including roughly the first two months of the regular season.
This will be the second straight season where Kim misses significant time due to injury. In late 2024, he tore his labrum on a pickoff throw, then injured his hamstring and later his calf while rehabbing, costing him the first half of 2025. He then hit the IL twice with back injuries last year. In all, he managed just 191 plate appearances and looked understandably rusty.
That star-crossed sequence has to raise questions about the future course of Kim’s career. How could it not? It’s not so much that any of these injuries are devastating on their own, but this much missed playing time over two-plus years of his prime is no laughing matter. Last year, he never hit his stride after a late start. This year, it’s fair to expect more of the same. Even without knowing how Kim’s injured finger might affect him upon his return, our projection systems have him down for a below-average offensive line. Read the rest of this entry »
Last year was my 10th year as a member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, so while I’ve voted regularly in the end-of-year awards — nine times out of 10, in fact — this was my first opportunity to cast a ballot for a Hall of Fame election. I’m a huge believer in transparency when it comes to the voting for awards; every time I cast a ballot, I discuss my underlying reasoning at length. Because there is a lot of leeway and wiggle room in the official Hall of Fame election rules, votes come down to the interpretation and philosophy of the individual voters. For that reason, I wanted to take some space to discuss the philosophical decisions I made to determine who ended up with checkmarks on my submitted ballot. This isn’t really an analysis of the individual candidates; for that, you should consult Jay Jaffe’s extensive series, where he goes deep into each player’s career and legacy.
I’ve attached a picture of my ballot. Not the best one in the world since I cut off a few words of my obnoxious, meaningless “signing statement,” but since I sent my ballot off a month ago, there won’t be a better photo forthcoming! Unlike the year-end awards, which are conducted through Google forms, the Hall of Fame balloting process is old school. You physically open an envelope that contains a sheet of paper — made of these things called “trees” — and check boxes yourself before returning the whole thing through the good ol’ U.S. Mail. Thankfully, the whole exercise came with a pre-addressed, postage-paid envelope, as I don’t physically appear to be the owner of any envelopes or stamps. I will also note that I am aware that I have the penmanship of a seven-year-old. My handwriting has always been atrocious.
Anyway, you’ll notice that I voted for the maximum 10 players, and from the signing statement, you’ll see that I would have voted for 12 players if given the opportunity. In recent years, the BBWAA has issued proposals to the Hall of Fame to expand the number of players we’re allowed to vote for and to make all ballots public, but those requests have been turned down.
I’m not necessarily a Small Hall or Big Hall guy, but I do think it is important to keep the Hall consistent. What a Hall of Famer is is determined by who the Hall of Famers are. The obvious, inner circle players like Henry Aaron and Lefty Grove are a small minority of the Hall of Fame. What the Hall of Fame does have is a ton of guys like Ted Lyons and Waite Hoyt and Pee Wee Reese and Goose Goslin, those mid-range Hall of Famers who, if they were on today’s ballots, would be derided as Hall of Very Good Candidates by the extreme section of the Small Hall crowd. There’s this idea that modern inductees have watered down the Hall of Fame when, in fact, what the Hall is drowning in is endless inductees from baseball’s supposed Golden Age. Here’s my updated chart of the yearly percentage of position player plate appearances by future Hall of Famers:
Now, the final ruling hasn’t yet been handed down on those 1990s players, but just because the Veterans Committee exists to catch players who fall through the cracks doesn’t strike me as a good reason to let players fall through those cracks. I find the moral value of a great honor is diminished if the honoree has to wait an indefinite amount of time, or even worse, does not live long enough to receive it. It’s an absolute shame that Ron Santo and Dick Allen died without knowing that their careers would ultimately be recognized with baseball’s most prestigious honor. And with baseball’s increasingly illogically designed Eras Committees, it’s going to be harder to catch the BBWAA’s misses.
Even so, I don’t think that all of the players who are better than the worst Hall of Famers should be in the Hall. There are lots of pitchers better than Jack Morris and Rube Marquard who still would not get a Hall of Fame vote from me. If we voted in everyone better than Tommy McCarthy, who was essentially the 19th Century Juan Pierre, the Hall would have quite the influx of outfielders. But all 12 players I wanted to vote for in this election were players I felt were better than the bottom quartile of Hall of Fame inductees, meaning that if they were inducted, they would at least be part of the Hall’s large middle class.
One of the most convincing arguments Bill James ever made about the Hall of Fame came when he introduced the concepts of career value and peak value as different kinds of greatness. The Hall’s record of recognizing peak value is very spotty, and while Sandy Koufax, one of the best examples of peak value, was given his due, players like Johan Santana have frequently gotten the shaft. But when we talk about greatness, how good a player was at his best seems to be very important information. Miguel Cabrera would not have attained the 3,000-hit or 500-homer career milestones if he had retired after the 2016 season at age 33, but did anything that happened after 2016 really enhance his greatness on an abstract level? After 2016, he was mostly a DH who hit .262/.329/.381 and averaged nine home runs a year. Cabrera’s peak is what makes his career great, after all.
And that is why I checked the boxes for David Wright and Dustin Pedroia. Wright was healthy enough for about a decade to play full time, and over that period, he was perhaps the top third baseman in the majors.
Cabrera has the edge in WAR, and he had a better postseason record, but he also wasn’t a full-time a third baseman during this period. (He’s second among first basemen in the same years). It’s worth mentioning that Wright received more playing time during his 10-year peak than a lot of the competition, but he also had one of the highest WAR rates over that decade. He’s not the undisputed best third baseman during that span, but he certainly has a strong case for that title. That peak is enough for me. The case for Pedroia is similar.
Neither Wright or Pedroia is a slam-dunk candidate, but each is just over my foggy line.
I’m probably not going to get out of here without discussing how I consider performance-enhancing drug use or general rulebreaking/bending. Even more so than performance, there’s a lot of room for philosophical differences here, so let me emphasize that even though I personally feel that my stance is the best one — after all, why would I not go with what I think is best? — I certainly can’t objectively claim that it’s the right one. Let’s start with the text of the Hall’s so-called character clause, which is actually only just one sliver of a sentence:
Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.
Based on my knowledge of baseball and the Hall of Fame’s history, both in practice and when the rules were being discussed, I function under the belief that we’re talking sportsmanship and character related to their baseball-related life, not so much as a person on a wider level. The rules of the game are pretty important, and so I consider breaking baseball’s rules to be a demerit on a player’s permanent record. In this case, I believe PED rulebreaking to be something I am dutybound to consider after the summer of 2004, when steroid testing was first implemented. I don’t have the same feeling about pre-2004 PED use. Some people cite former commissioner Fay Vincent’s early 1990s memo about steroids as a reason not to vote for PED users in the pre-testing era, but as Vincent himself noted in an interview with Bernie Miklasz, he issued the memo only to make a statement. He pointed out that he didn’t have the power to implement any such rules against PED use without MLBPA approval.
“I sent it out because I believed it was important to take the position that steroids were dangerous, as were other illegal drugs,” Vincent said. “As you know, the union would not bargain with us, would not discuss, would not agree to any form of a coherent drug plan. So my memo really applied to all the people who were not players.”
In other words, Fay Vincent banned Pat Gillick and Dan Duquette from using steroids.
So I consider Barry Bonds’ testing positive for amphetamines in 2006 as a black mark on his résumé, as I do with Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez for failing PED tests. But I also view each black mark as merely a factor to be weighed in a Hall of Fame case, not as a binary “they cheated, so they’re out” scenario. In my eyes, Bonds, A-Rod, and Manny are all worthy Hall of Famers, and a little bit of dirt in their story doesn’t tarnish the tale.
On the other hand, I would not have voted for Pedroia or Wright if they had been found to have broken those rules. I did not vote for Ryan Braun, because I think his performance was on the wrong side of the dividing line, but even if he had a slightly longer peak, I still would not have checked his box because of his situation. I don’t really care about the efficacy of the cheating when it comes to a player’s Hall of Fame case; it makes no difference to me if Carlos Beltrán and the other members of the 2017 Astros actually benefited from their electronic sign-stealing operation. Rather, what matters is that banging on a trash can to relay signs that were stolen in real time via a video camera is a blatant form of cheating. Yet, once again, when considering the totality of Beltrán’s career, he easily belongs in the Hall of Fame, even with the banging-scheme demerit.
Now, I wanted to vote for 12 players, but I could only vote for 10. So, I asked myself: What is the purpose of the checkmarks on a Hall of Fame ballot? I view it as getting deserving players into the Hall of Fame. There are three ways that a single voter can impact a player’s chances of making it to Cooperstown: 1) if a vote helps a player reach the 75% threshold required for induction, 2) if a vote allows a player to exceed the 5% mark necessary to remain eligible for future BBWAA elections, and 3) if a vote adds to the percentage of ballots cast in favor of a player from the previous year, thereby building that player’s momentum of support. The last one is kind of weird, but it does seem to be the case that a number of voters wait for the bandwagon to be rolling behind a player before they get on for the ride, so I have to take that into consideration, too.
Ultimately, my final decision came down to the following question: Which two votes of my desired 12 would be the least impactful at getting a deserving player in the Hall of Fame? I concluded those to be for Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez. There was no chance that my vote would get either of them over 75%, keep them over 5%, or build enough momentum for them to eventually get elected. Most baseball writers have already made up their minds about how they will vote for players who used or likely used PEDs, and there aren’t enough new voters in any given year to make a difference. A-Rod and Manny are not Hall of Famers right now because they used steroids, not because writers are unsure about their baseball merit.
So, that’s my ballot, right or wrong. It’s OK to disagree with me — this would be a boring job if everyone agreed with me — but as I said at the top, I feel it’s my responsibility to you, the readers, to explain why I vote the way I do.
“I’ve talked to Byron [Buxton] and other players through this offseason already about ways we can get better as a team,” Twins President of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey told reporters back in November at the GM meetings. The answer was in response to a report that Buxton’s loyalty to the Twins may waiver if he felt they were entering a rebuild, as Minnesota’s behavior during last season’s trade deadline suggested. Falvey went on to insist that the team intends to add, not subtract, and it seems the term rebuild is taboo among Twins spokespeople.
Falvey is lying. I say this with no inside information, malice, or even judgement. MLB organizations operate within a system where this particular lie is not only acceptable, but also encouraged. Because “we’re not rebuilding; we’re trying to get better” is a corollary to a larger lie — that all teams are trying their hardest to win.
What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon? — Friedrich Nietzsche
Though this quote is often attributed to him, Nietzsche never actually said it. However, it does seem to offer a reasonably accurate distillation of his beliefs. And if we all agree that he did say it, then by his own logic, it must be true. Likewise, teams have decided to hold to the line that they’re all trying to win, and since they’ve all agreed, it falls to fans to take the lie as truth, along with all the subsequent lies necessary to support the original lie. Read the rest of this entry »
Before we get started, I need you to promise to hold on until the end here. I have buried the lede. The crux of this article is in the last two graphs, all the way at the bottom. I put them there on purpose because I want the data to tell you a story, so I need you to see this story through to the end. I think it’s worth it.
Last Tuesday, Ben Clemens wrote an article titled, “They Don’t Make Barrels Like They Used To.” Sadly, it was not a scathing takedown aimed at the shoddy craftsmanship of modern-day coopers. It documented the steady decrease in the value of barrels over the course of the Statcast era. In 2025, barrels were worth roughly 250 fewer points of wOBA than they were in 2015. That’s a staggering loss – the entire career wOBA of Pepe Frias up in smoke – and Ben broke down several culprits for the theft, along with one other factor: intention. “Tell hitters that barrels get them paid,” Ben wrote, “and they might start to change their behavior in a way that produces less valuable barrels, squared up to center field or in other ways that are easier to produce but less likely to land safely.” He attributed this to Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to become a good measure.”
This law has a sports-specific corollary that you’re probably familiar with. I’ve previously referred to it as the Competitive Advantage Life Cycle in the context of catcher framing:
Teams realize the immense value of a skill.
An arms race ensues as they scramble to cultivate it.
The skill becomes widespread across the league.
Since the skill is more evenly distributed, it loses much of its value.
The second we gained the ability to calculate the value of catcher framing, everybody started working on it. The terrible framers either got better or got run out of the sport. Players who were excellent at framing but worse at other parts of the game suddenly found more playing time because their skills were appreciated. Lastly, as the average framing level rose, the rest of the league started catching up to the very best framers. This graph is three years old now, but it shows that convergence very clearly.
The terrible framers are gone, and the great framers don’t stand out as much as they used to. Everybody’s a bit closer to the new, tougher standard, so framing is more important than it’s ever been, but also less valuable. All this got me thinking about one of the oddest measurement tools we have these days: pitch modeling. Read the rest of this entry »
Franklin Arias has a bright future in Boston. Signed out of Venezuela in 2023, the 20-year-old shortstop is the top position-player prospect in the Red Sox system thanks to plus tools on both sides of the ball. A slick-fielder — Eric Longenhagen has described him as an incredibly polished defender for his age” — Arias possesses a line-drive stroke that produced a 109 wRC+ across three levels last season. And while that number may not jump off the page, it stands out when put into context: the Caracas native not only played the entire year as a teenager, he finished it in Double-A.
The degree to which he can boost his power profile will go a long way toward determining his ceiling. Currently more contact than pop, Arias went deep just eight times in 526 plate appearances. At a listed 5-foot-11, 170 pounds, he is by no means built like a bopper.
Red Sox farm director Brian Abraham brought up that aspect of Arias’s game when I asked him about the young infielder earlier this week.
“He’s a guy who makes really good swing decisions,” Abraham said of Arias, who posted a 10.1% strikeout rate and a 5.3% swinging-strike rate in 2025. “He puts the bat on the ball and can drive it to all fields. We’re looking to see him add size and strength so that he can really impact the ball pull-side in the air.
“It’s definitely in there,” added Abraham. “We’ve seen flashes of it, it’s just a matter of him being able to do that on a consistent basis. As a young player who is continuing to grow and get bigger, I think it will come out the more he is able to hit the ball out front and drive it to the pull side. Right now I would say that he is a contact hitter with occasional power, and that the power can be more consistent than it has been.”
Not surprisingly, Arias echoed Abraham’s thoughts when addressing his near-term development goals. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, that’s a relief. On Friday afternoon, the Phillies, spurned by Bo Bichette, got swept up in the tidal wave of hot stove transactions, agreeing to a three-year, $45 million deal (plus $15 million in incentives) to keep J.T. Realmuto in Philadelphia, according to Ken Rosenthal and Matt Gelb of The Athletic. You may have your qualms about rebounding from a rejection by signing a catcher three years into his decline phase for another three years, but consider what other options the Phillies had, and then consider how weird it would have felt to watch Realmuto playing in another uniform after all this time. It’s probably too many years, and that’s not great, but look at everything else that’s going on in the world right now and realize how much nicer it is to spend a moment thinking about something that’s merely not great.
Before we dive into the here and now, let’s take this chance to remind ourselves just how special a career Realmuto has had. He debuted with the Marlins in 2014 and blossomed into a star in 2017, combining excellent defense with a great bat and an exquisite baserunning prowess unbefitting a backstop. (He currently ranks 23rd all-time among catchers with 104 stolen bases. If we limit ourselves to 1901 and later, he moves up to 11th.) Such things were never meant for Miami. In February 2019, after he’d put up two four-win seasons and earned an All-Star nod and a Silver Slugger, the Marlins traded him to Philadelphia for a blockbuster package that netted them 2.0 total WAR and $250,000 in international bonus pool money. Realmuto got even better the next season.
From 2017 to 2022, Realmuto wasn’t just the best catcher in baseball; there was an ocean between him and the rest of the competition. He led all catchers with 28.2 WAR. Yasmani Grandal, in second place, had just 19.6. Of the 207 catchers who played during that stretch, Grandal and future Hall of Famer Buster Posey were the only ones whose WAR total Realmuto didn’t double. Over that stretch, he tops our leaderboards at the plate, on the basepaths, and on defense, and nobody else is even close. Realmuto has earned two Gold Gloves, two Silver Sluggers, three All-Star nods, and MVP votes in two seasons. He has a career 104 wRC+ in the playoffs. It’s great that the Phillies have held onto him. He’ll reach 200 career home runs in Philadelphia. He’s the team’s longest-tenured position player, ahead of Bryce Harper by roughly a month and trailing only Aaron Nola on the pitching side. He’s a grinder, the heart of a Phillies team that has been at the top of the league for years now. Still, you know the problem as well as I do.
It’s not 2022 anymore, and Realmuto has got so, so many miles on his knees. He has caught at least 125 games seven different times, and led the league in innings caught in three of the last four seasons. He ranks seventh in innings caught since 2002. Two of the guys ahead of him played through their age-39 seasons. One is a manager now.
Realmuto started looking human in 2023, and he missed a couple months due to a meniscectomy in 2024. Over the past three years, he’s run a perfectly average 100 wRC+. That’s still plenty good for a catcher, but it dropped to 94 in 2025, and advanced numbers like DRC+ have him even lower. Although he hit the ball just about as hard as ever, his bat speed took a very scary dive from the 70th percentile in 2024 to the 47th in 2025, and his barrel rate followed suit. Realmuto once feasted on four-seamers, but over the past three seasons, he’s put up negative run values against them. He started struggling with cutters in 2024 and sinkers in 2025, meaning he now struggles against any kind of fastball.
He has combined this weaker bat with poor framing numbers, and despite still possessing plenty of speed, he’s even started to take on water in the baserunning department. Put it together, and Realmuto has recorded almost exactly 2.0 WAR in each of the past three seasons. Despite all the doom and gloom I just laid on you, that’s not just a useful player, it’s an above-average catcher.
It makes Realmuto the best option behind the plate on the Phillies roster, ahead of Rafael Marchán and Garrett Stubbs. Likewise, it made Realmuto the top-ranked catcher on our Top 50 Free Agents list, where he came in at 30th overall. Wouldn’t you rather have him than Danny Jansen or Victor Caratini, who ranked 38th and 39th? In 2025, you definitely would, but projections pegged Realmuto for a two-year deal with an average annual value of $13 million. Instead, he’s making $15 million for an extra year, which will be, once again, the age-37 season of the guy who already ranks seventh in innings caught this century. Still, there was no better catcher on the trading block, and unless the Tyrell Corporation has started manufacturing them while I wasn’t paying attention, we’ve now exhausted all the ways by which a baseball team can get its hands on a baseball player.
Everything makes sense here. The Phillies are a win-now team that’s already above the highest luxury tax threshold. It’s hard to blame them for holding onto the best catcher available to them, especially when he’s a guy they love – a guy they and their fans are capable of appreciating far more deeply than anybody else is – for a year and a few million dollars more than would be ideal. Three years is not forever, and Realmuto now has an excellent chance at ending his career as a Phillie. It’ll be OK. Try to enjoy your weekend.
