Juan Soto wants a Most Valuable Player award. Plenty of players give voice to outsized ambitions during spring training, but at this point in Soto’s career, the goal seems downright reasonable. The future Hall of Famer already has a World Series ring, a batting title, a stolen base crown, a Home Run Derby trophy, and bunch of All-Star nods and Silver Sluggers. Seeing as he’s unlikely to get a Gold Glove (barring some sort of trophy swap situation with Francisco Lindor), an MVP certainly seems like the next box to check. But as great as Soto has been since the moment he debuted for the Nationals in 2018, he doesn’t have a well-rounded game, and I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that his weaknesses might keep him from ever winning an MVP. Now that it’s his stated goal, let’s take a closer look at his chances.

Soto is one of the best and most consistent players in the game. According to JAWS, he’s already the 36th-best right fielder of all time, and he’s still three years too young to be the president (in the Dominican Republic; he’s eight years too young in the USA). Since his first full season in 2019, he’s missed an average of just seven games per season and he’s never put up a wRC+ below 143. In any given season, if you had to pick the player most likely to rack up at least 5.0 WAR, Soto would be your guy. But his game is also incomplete. He’s the second coming of Ted Williams, in ways both good and bad. He’s got the other-worldly plate discipline and the power, but he’s also got the putrid outfield defense.

Soto is well aware of his deficiencies. “I feel like everybody tries to do better than what they did before,” he told Anthony DiComo of MLB.com. “I would definitely love to be better around the bases and better around the outfield. Even hitting, I try to keep my hitting increased. Thank God I’ve been doing well the past couple seasons. I’ve been putting numbers up there, career highs and stuff like that. So I just want to keep doing the same thing. I try to be better year after year.” Read the rest of this entry »

When the Colorado Rockies buy low on a former first-round prospect coming off an abysmal season, the null hypothesis is that the player in question is cooked. The Rockies’ front office might not be the laughingstock it was before the hiring of Paul DePodesta… but it could still be, and even if things are going to change for the better there, it’s going to take a minute to find out for sure.

If the Diamondbacks let Jake McCarthy loose in a my-garbage-for-your-trash trade, the smart money is on Colorado not rediscovering the magic that made McCarthy an enticing prospect a few years ago.

But what if the smart money is wrong? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a big believer in the value of WAR as a statistic. Like any summary stat, WAR is notably imperfect, with its nods to pragmatism, compromises made on philosophical grounds, and the necessary inclusion of many components that are just damn difficult to quantify even if we have a basis to think they’re important. Still, like all good models, even if WAR isn’t right, it can be useful. It gives us a broad estimate of a player’s overall contribution to winning baseball games, and almost certainly provides a far better conception of which individual actions lead to wins than generally existed, say, 50 years ago. But when we’re talking about whether a player is a Hall of Famer, a more malleable concept than what wins the most games, is WAR the right measure to look at? When I think about this question, four people instantly come to mind: Jacob deGrom, Miguel Cabrera, Jack Morris, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Since FanGraphs is a website dedicated to baseball, we’ll start by talking about Mozart. Even people who don’t really listen to classical music, and thus couldn’t tell Gustav Mahler from Rick Mahler, would almost certainly count Mozart among the greatest composers of all time. Why? Well, the first part is obvious: because of his body of work as a whole. But what aspects of that work make him great? I’d submit that it’s the quality of his best compositions, rather than the massive volume of work he produced, that pushes him ahead of his peers.

Mozart is a legend because of his greatest works, such as his last three symphonies, his late 1780s/early 1790s run of operas, and the latter half of his piano concertos — and I could go on! But he also wrote a lot of stuff that just isn’t that good. He was a musical prodigy, but almost all of his early work is interesting because he was very young when he wrote it, not because of its own merits. Composers have always had to pay the bills, and Mozart wrote a huge amount of what was more or less intended to be pleasant background music, no more compelling than the peppy ukulele and xylophone music that seemed to be in every Kickstarter video in 2017. If the hundreds of examples of such work were to simply blink out of existence because someone got a hold of the Infinity Gauntlet, it would change nothing about Mozart’s greatness. Those compositions had value to Mozart in that they enabled him to write the good stuff that is worth remembering, but he’s great because of his peak. Read the rest of this entry »

Jarren Duran enjoyed a breakout season in 2024, making the AL All-Star team, receiving down-ballot support in the MVP voting, and leading the league in several key categories while ranking fifth with 6.8 WAR. Though he remained an above-average player last year, his season didn’t go quite so well, and as the 2026 campaign dawns, his role is among the many questions the Red Sox face this spring.

At a time when the Red Sox are trying to figure out their primary infield alignment — Will newly acquired Caleb Durbin play second or third? Will Marcelo Mayer man the other spot from the start, or begin the year in the minors after an injury-shortened rookie season? — they’re also sorting through their outfield options. The situation is more or less the same as it’s been since last June, when Roman Anthony, the no. 2 prospect on our preseason Top 100 Prospects list, was called up to squeeze into an outfield capably manned by Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela, and Wilyer Abreu, with platoon assistance for the last of those from Rob Refsnyder. The trade deadline came and went without either Abreu or Duran being moved despite numerous rumors, and injuries to Abreu, Refsnyder and then Anthony (who suffered a season-ending oblique strain in early September) simplified manager Alex Cora’s juggling, though not for the betterment of the team. Boston won 89 games and claimed a Wild Card spot, but without Anthony and enough healthy starting pitchers, the Red Sox were bounced out of the first round by the Yankees.

Refsnyder departed for the Mariners in free agency, but the other four outfielders are back and healthy. The Red Sox also have an expensive platoon designated hitter, Masataka Yoshida, further crowding the picture, and last year’s Opening Day second baseman Kristian Campbell — who entered the 2025 season seventh on our Top 100 and inked an eight-year, $60 million extension just a week into his big league career — is working out in center field, as well. Having too many good players isn’t a bad problem to have, but it can become one when questions about playing time, contract statuses, and trade rumors get relentless. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, Chris Sale no longer has to do what he does under the cloud of a one-year contract. On Tuesday, the Braves announced they’d signed their soon-to-be 37-year-old ace to a one-year contract extension with a team option for 2028. The deal represents a huge raise. Sale is making $18 million this year – the team option year at the end of the two-year extension he signed back in 2024 – and the new extension will pay him $27 million in 2027. If the Braves pick up the 2028 option, they’ll pay him $30 million. No word of a buyout for that final year has been reported, and the announcement included no mention of a 1% donation to the Atlanta Braves Foundation.

Even though the Braves are not getting the kind of discount you associate with a contract extension, this seems like a no-brainer for them. Yes, they’re paying ace prices for the age-37 (and possibly age-38) season of a pitcher whose injury history includes a Tommy John surgery and five variations on the word “fracture.” But Sale really is an ace, and his performance has showed no signs of dropping off. Since he arrived in Atlanta in 2024 (and for the sake of Red Sox fans, I won’t mention how he got there), Sale has a 25-8 record with a 2.46 ERA and 2.33 FIP. He’s struck out nearly a third of the batters he’s faced, and he won the Cy Young award in his first season with the team. In 2025, his four-seamer averaged 94.8 mph. That’s above average, especially for a left-handed starter, and especially for someone with a funky sidearm delivery, and especially when you factor in the bump in effective velocity due to the above-average extension from his 6-foot-6 frame. That’s a lot of especiallys making Sale’s velocity play up, and it’s reassuring to know that it has looked pretty stable in recent years.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alek Manoah was emerging as one of the best young pitchers in baseball when I first talked to him for FanGraphs in April 2022. Pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays at the time, he boasted a record of 12-2 and 3.05 ERA across 23 starts dating back to his major league debut the previous May. And he was only getting better. By season’s end, the burly right-hander not only was 25-9 with a 2.60 ERA, but he also had allowed just 221 hits over 308 1/3 innings across 51 career starts. A star in the making at age 24, he finished third in that year’s American League Cy Young Award voting.

As Blue Jays fans know all too well, things proceeded to go south. The Homestead, Florida native stumbled through a tumultuous 2023 in which his command and velocity dipped, and things got even worse the following year. Burdened by shoulder and elbow woes, Manoah ended up having surgery to repair his ulnar collateral ligament in June 2024. Recovery wasn’t exactly smooth. He tossed just 38 1/3 innings last season, none of them in the majors.

His once-prosperous Toronto tenure also came to an end, as did a brief stint with another organization. Claimed off waivers by the Atlanta Braves in late September, Manoah subsequently signed a free-agent deal with the Los Angeles Angels in December. He is now in the early stages of what might be deemed the Alek Manoah Reclamation Project. Read the rest of this entry »

As baseball, like a bear, emerges from hibernation, the Milwaukee Brewers graced us with a delightful little token:

Would you let The Miz throw a fastball at your head? pic.twitter.com/5Ekr848IdD

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) February 24, 2026

That’s Brewers right-hander Jacob Misiorowski knocking an apple off a teammate’s head from 60 feet, six inches away. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring training is underway and rosters are getting filled up. We’re now down to the part of the offseason where veterans whose recent performances have left them unable to find a guaranteed spot sign minor league deals with non-roster invites. Today we’ll break down the signings of Rhys Hoskins with the Guardians, Michael Conforto with the Cubs, and Thairo Estrada with the Orioles. All three have seen their production drop off over the past two years, but all three have a viable path toward sticking on the roster or even landing a starting spot.

We’ll start in Cleveland, where Hoskins will receive $1.5 million if he makes the roster. This move makes plenty of sense, but it’s important to note that the Guardians aren’t as desperate for a player like him as they would have been in years past. From 2021 to 2023, the only team with fewer than their 454 home runs was the Pirates (441). Cleveland’s 82 wRC+ against left-handed pitching was also the second-worst mark in baseball over that period. Back then, adding a big right-handed slugger who strikes out and hits homers would have been just what the doctor ordered. However, the Guardians are in a different spot right now. Over the past two years, they’ve ranked right around the middle of the league in home runs overall and in wRC+ against left-handed pitching. This is still a good fit, but Hoskins is no longer the slam dunk he would have been a couple years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

Time waits for no man, except Jordan Lawlar, who’s been on the cusp of major league stardom for about four years.

The skinny on Lawlar as a prospect — where he topped out at a 60-FV grade in 2024 and 2025 — is that he carries the potential for plus power and plus shortstop defense with a plus-plus run tool. That’s a lot of pluses for an up-the-middle position, which is why the Diamondbacks spent a top-10 pick on him out of high school in 2021.

He played well enough to make Arizona’s playoff roster on the run to the 2023 NL pennant (though he didn’t play much, going 0-for-2 with a walk), and the two full seasons since have seen Lawlar’s path blocked both by his own injuries and the emergence of Geraldo Perdomo as a bona fide star. Read the rest of this entry »

What are teams paying for a win in free agency? Earlier this month, I answered a FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag question about that very issue, outlining a rule I’ve been using in formulating my contract predictions. I left my explanation loose and vague because it was one of four questions in a mailbag, but to give you the general gist, I think about free agent salaries on a graduated scale, with role players being paid less per win above replacement than superstars. Today, I’d like to back up my argument with a bit more mathematical rigor.

One of the benefits of writing for FanGraphs is that smart baseball thinkers read the site. I woke up last Monday to a direct message from Tom Tango, MLB’s chief data architect. Tango had a few suggestions for further research, a method for adjusting past years of data for current payroll situations, and even a link to a discussion of the cost of a win with Sean Smith. Smith, better known as Rally Monkey, is the creator of Baseball Reference’s calculation of WAR – when you see rWAR, that actually stands for Rally WAR, not Reference WAR. In other words, I got help from some heavy hitters.

With Smith’s excellent article on free agency as a guide, I built my own methodology for examining the deals that free agents receive and turning them into a mathematical rule. I took every starting pitcher and position player (relievers are weird and should be modeled differently due to leverage concerns) and noted their projected WAR in the subsequent season, as well as the length and terms of their contract. I excluded players who signed minor league deals, were projected for negative WAR, or whose contract details were undisclosed. To give you a sense, applying this approach to the 2025-26 offseason leaves us with 89 players, from Kyle Tucker all the way down to Jorge Mateo. Read the rest of this entry »