For the first time since the Eisenhower Administration, women dreaming of playing baseball professionally in the United States will have the opportunity to see that dream realized with a league of their own.

Last October, the Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) issued its first press release to announce the founding of the country’s only professional women’s baseball league, which is set to launch in the summer of 2026. The league is co-founded by Justine Siegal — who is best known for founding Baseball For All, “[A] girls baseball nonprofit that builds gender equity by creating opportunities for girls to play, coach, and lead in the sport” — and Keith Stein, a businessman, lawyer, and member of the ownership group for a semiprofessional men’s baseball team in Toronto. The league has also brought in former Toronto Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston and Team Japan’s two-time Women’s Baseball World Cup MVP Ayami Sato as special advisors.

Women’s baseball has a long, but unfortunately sparse, history dating back to the late 1800s, when colleges in the Northeast, such as Vassar, fielded teams. Since then, women have largely accrued playing time by representing their country’s national team at the Olympics, playing on barnstorming teams – from the Dolly Vardens in the 1870s to the Colorado Silver Bullets in the 1990s – or by earning roles in leagues primarily created for men, from the amateur ranks to the pros (see Mo’ne Davis, Toni Stone, Lizzie Arlington, and more recently, Kelsie Whitmore, among many others). Aside from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, formed during WWII to fill a void left by the male ballplayers fighting overseas, women in the United States have not had a dedicated professional league.

So after all these years without a league, why now? “The past was the right time,” Stein says in a recent interview with FanGraphs. “Thirty years ago was the right time. Four years ago was the right time. Definitely, definitely, now is the right time.” As evidence, he notes, “There’s now a professional women’s hockey league that’s thriving, a professional women’s soccer league, a professional women’s basketball league. They’re all thriving because of the appetite, the incredible appetite, for women’s sport.” Read the rest of this entry »

This year I had the honor of filling out a Hall of Fame ballot for the fifth time, and as was the case with the previous four, I‘m endeavoring to explain my reasoning. This is something I feel every voter should do. Casting a ballot is a privilege that should demand not only due diligence, but also transparency.

Let’s cut to the chase.

Noteworthy among my 2025 selections is that the holdovers differ somewhat from previous ballots. My most recent Sunday Notes column — I missed last week’s due to a health issue — suggested a few of those changes. As I explained on December 22, my previous ballots all included Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez, but I was seriously considering dropping them and instead voting for two of Félix Hernández, Dustin Pedroia, and David Wright. I did just that. Following no small amount of deliberation, I adopted my colleague Jay Jaffe’s stance that Manny’s and A-Rod’s being suspended after PED rules were put into place is a meaningful distinction. With neither erstwhile slugger having a realistic chance of ever being elected by the BBWAA — another factor in my decision — a strategic change seemed in order.

More on that in a moment. Read the rest of this entry »

As John Oliver would say after pounding his desk on Last Week Tonight while the studio audience claps: “Welcome, welcome, welcome! It has been a busy week.” Or two weeks, if we’re being exact. Anyway, happy 2025 everyone! I hope you all had a lovely holiday season; I certainly did. The Offseason Matrices document has continued to whir as we enter the New Year. Let’s get started. Read the rest of this entry »

After last year’s disappointing follow-up to their 2023 World Series-winning season, the Texas Rangers jumped the first base market in December and improved the rest of their roster in the process. First, at the Winter Meetings, they acquired corner infielder Jake Burger in a trade with the Miami Marlins, a move that gave us one of Michael Baumann’s best headlines: “Everything Is Burger in Texas.”
Burger’s addition made incumbent first baseman Nathaniel Lowe expendable; sure enough, a few weeks after the Burger trade, Texas sent Lowe to the Washington Nationals for left-handed reliever Robert Garcia.

Immediately after moving Lowe, the Rangers added some thump to their lineup with the signing of Joc Pederson to a two-year, $37 million deal with a mutual option for a third season. Altogether, the three moves essentially function as a two-for-one lineup swap, one that should provide more power to this offense, and also come with the bonus of fortifying their bullpen with a solid lefty who has yet to reach arbitration. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sure that Yankees fans are well and truly tired of hearing about Juan Soto. We get it, he likes the other New York team more. So don’t worry, friends. I won’t mention Juan Soto, unparalleled hitting genius, after this paragraph. Sure, the ghost of Juan Soto, signer of the biggest contract in professional sports history, might inform the rest of the moves the Yankees are making. Sure, not signing superstar Juan Soto after his incandescent 2024 season makes all the rest of the team’s moves feel minor. But again, you won’t see the words “Juan Soto” after this instance, so let’s get to the moves the Yankees are making to bolster their team in the aftermath of losing one of the brightest stars in the game.

Signing Paul Goldschmidt
The Yankees are going to need some offense if they want to replace Jua – whoa, almost broke my own rule right out of the gate. Uh… the Yankees are going to need some offense, period. They were a top-heavy team last year between Aaron Judge and his running mate, name tastefully withheld. Giancarlo Stanton’s playoff surge notwithstanding, the existing roster just didn’t have that much juice beyond Judge. Sure, adding Cody Bellinger was nice, but they needed to do more. Paul Goldschmidt, signed for one year and $12.5 million, is definitely more, it’s just a question of how much after his bummer of a 2024 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Since the last time Josh Bell suited up for the Nationals on August 1, 2022, he has played for four different teams. The Nationals dealt him to the Padres alongside Juan Soto at the 2022 trade deadline. Then he became a free agent and signed a two-year, $33 million deal with the Guardians, only for Cleveland to flip him to the Marlins the following summer. He swam with the Fish for just under a year before it was Miami’s turn to cast him off at the deadline in 2024. Finally, after finishing out this past season with the Diamondbacks, Bell is returning to Washington on a one-year, $6 million contract. That closes the circle on a two-and-a-half-year expedition that took him from the East Coast to the West Coast to the Midwest to the wetlands to the desert and back to the nation’s capital. According to Google Maps, it would take you just over 166 days to walk that journey. Bell, not exactly known for his footspeed, did it in 881.

With the Gold Glover Nathaniel Lowe likely to see most of the playing time at first base, Bell should slot in as Washington’s everyday designated hitter. Bell has primarily played first throughout his career, but his defense has always been lacking, even by the standards of the position. He has never finished a season with a positive DRS, and only once has he finished with a positive OAA or FRV. In 2024, Bell ranked last among all first basemen in DRS and second to last in OAA and FRV, despite playing just 98 games at the position. As long as Lowe stays healthy, which he’s largely managed to do throughout his career, the Nationals won’t need to worry about Bell’s glove at first. Meanwhile, Bell won’t need to worry about the harsh positional adjustment for designated hitters dragging down his overall numbers. A full-time DH who plays all 162 games would finish with -17.5 Def; Bell finished with -17.8 Def in 2024. As long as he sticks at DH, things can’t get any worse.

Of course, that also means Bell’s defensive value won’t get any better. If he’s going to improve upon a replacement-level (-0.1 WAR) 2024 season, he’ll need to do it with his offense. More specifically, he’ll need to do it with his bat. Over the past four years, Bell has been the least productive baserunner in the sport, with -17.6 BsR. His best baserunning season in that span was 2021, when he finished with -3.9 BsR, eighth-worst in the majors. To put that in context, -3.9 BsR is so low that Steamer doesn’t project anyone to finish with -3.9 BsR in 2025. Heck, Steamer doesn’t have anyone else finishing below -2.9, while Bell is projected for -2.3. Bell’s baseline is such an aberration that Steamer refuses to accept it as his (or anyone’s) 50th-percentile outcome. Read the rest of this entry »

With their trade for Garrett Crochet back in early December, the Red Sox indicated their intention to aggressively compete for the AL East crown in 2025. The Yankees missing out on Juan Soto, along with the relative inaction of the Orioles and Blue Jays this offseason, has opened that window for Boston. And the Sox have continued to add talent to their pitching staff, signing Walker Buehler to a one-year deal two days before Christmas. The contract will guarantee Buehler $21.05 million, which also happens to be the exact value of the qualifying offer the Red Sox extended to Nick Pivetta and that the Dodgers declined to offer to Buehler. There’s also a $25 million mutual option for 2026 and as much as $2.5 million in performance bonuses for hitting games started thresholds.

After undergoing his second Tommy John surgery in 2022, Buehler finally returned to a major league mound last May, but he really struggled to find his footing after being sidelined for nearly two full years. A June hip injury limited him to just 16 starts and 75.1 innings, and his 5.38 ERA and 5.54 FIP were easily the worst marks of his career. Despite his summer scuffles, Buehler managed to turn things around during the playoffs. He pitched to a 3.60 ERA across 15 postseason innings, including a gutsy scoreless start in Game 3 of the World Series and the first save of his career in the decisive Game 5.

Of course, Buehler was one of the most successful young starters in baseball from 2018–21. Among all qualified pitchers during that stretch, he ranked seventh in WAR, sixth in ERA-, and eighth in FIP-. But postseason heroics aside, 2024 was a pretty miserable year for Buehler. He couldn’t find consistency with his mechanics, and that hip injury seemed to disrupt any progress he was making on that front. He was marginally better after returning from the IL in August and he was able to make a few key adjustments to his mechanics down the stretch — no doubt helping him find some limited success in October — but he entered this offseason as an enigmatic free agent. His early career success was undeniable, but his injury history and disappointing return raised a lot of questions about his ability to contribute quality innings moving forward. Read the rest of this entry »

Sports Info Solutions has been tracking every pitch thrown in Major League Baseball since 2002, and since the beginning, those pitches have been hitting the strike zone less and less frequently. You can check the tumbling year-over-year numbers over on our pitch-level data leaderboard, but if you want to spare yourself a click, I pulled them into the graph below. It paints a damning picture of the command of today’s stuff-over-stamina, throw-it-hard-before-your-elbow-explodes pitchers. Don’t go near this graph if you’re on roller skates:

If you ever feel the need to shake your fist at young pitchers and mutter about loud music and fastball command, this is the graph for you. SIS has documented the percentage of pitches that hit the strike zone dropping from the low 50s to the low 40s over the last 20 years. Combine that with the game’s ever-increasing focus on velocity and stuff, and you’ve got a nice, tidy narrative: today’s pitchers are too focused on throwing hard to know where the hell they’re throwing the ball. However, the truth is a bit more complicated. It’s important to keep in mind that the SIS numbers come from real life human beings who analyze video to track pitches, while the friendly robot that powers Statcast has its definition of the strike zone set in digital stone. Read the rest of this entry »

I think a lot of us overestimate the significance of geography when predicting where free agents will sign. In Max Kepler’s case, however, we all might have underestimated the role geography would play in his decision. Perhaps it was inevitable that the greatest German-born player in MLB history would head to the state with the greatest German population in the country. Lo and behold, on December 19, the all-time leader in runs, home runs, RBI, and WAR among Deutschland natives agreed to a one-year, $10 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Yet, aside from helping the Phillies pander to their fans in Germantown, it’s a little difficult to see how Kepler fits this team. Entering the offseason, many expected Philadelphia would pursue a right-handed batter to play left field who could split playing time with Brandon Marsh. Instead, they signed Kepler, who bats lefty and hasn’t played left field since his days at Double-A in 2015. What’s more, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has made it clear the Phillies plan to use Kepler as an everyday player, despite the fact that injuries have kept him from playing more than 130 games in a full season since 2019.

Kepler’s limited experience in left field is the least concerning aspect of all this. Whether you look at OAA, FRV, DRS, or Baseball Prospectus’s DRP, Kepler has never been a below-average outfield defender in any season of his career. His strong track record as a right fielder, and his past experience in center, should help him adjust to left. Furthermore, Kepler might benefit from playing a position where throwing isn’t quite as important. Although his arm strength consistently ranks above the league average, he has been worth -3 throwing runs in his career, according to Baseball Savant.

Even if it won’t be a major adjustment, it’s not nothing for the Phillies to ask Kepler to re-learn a position after almost 10 years away. It makes me think of the movie line I quote more often than any other. In Moneyball, when Billy Beane tries to convince catcher Scott Hatteberg that he can play first base, Beane asks Ron Washington to tell Hatteberg that’s it not that hard. “It’s incredibly hard,” Washington replies. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 21st 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 and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

In return for their mini-free agent spree after nearly making the playoffs in 2023, the Cincinnati Reds dropped five wins, finishing 2024 with a 77-85 record. It wasn’t as bad as it looked — the team improved its Pythagorean record by five wins compared to the year before — but it felt lousy that only Nick Martinez really shined among their signings. Elly De La Cruz did break out in a massive way — he was a legitimate MVP contender for much of the season — but Matt McLain’s torn labrum and rib injury kept him away from the action.

A look at the depth chart graphic makes it pretty clear where the Reds are strong: Even with some regression toward the mean, De La Cruz is the team’s most important player, and if healthy, McLain will upgrade second base. Continuing the up-the-middle strength is Jose Trevino, recently acquired from the Yankees; he and Tyler Stephenson give the Reds an excellent tandem behind the plate. TJ Friedl in center gets a less exciting projection, but he’s still perfectly serviceable as a starter, and he’s the worst projected player of the up-the-middle quartet. Read the rest of this entry »