The Blue Jays came into the offseason at a crossroads. With Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette headed for free agency after the 2025 season, the pressure is on: Make the playoffs or go the entirety of their team control years without a single playoff win. (They’re 0-6 in three Wild Card series.) It’s no surprise they were in on Juan Soto, and after coming up short there, they pivoted to the trade market, acquiring Andrés Giménez (and Nick Sandlin) from the Cleveland Guardians in exchange for Spencer Horwitz and Nick Mitchell. The Guardians then sent Horwitz on to the Pirates in exchange for Luis L. Ortiz, Michael Kennedy, and Josh Hartle, all of whom we’ll break down in a forthcoming post.
This trade improves the Blue Jays’ outlook for 2025, and it does so in a way that fits their recent team-building to a T. Two years ago, they added Daulton Varsho and Kevin Kiermaier, perhaps the two best defensive outfielders in baseball, and frequently played them together. They gave Santiago Espinal regular playing time when his defense graded out well, then phased him out in favor of new defensive wunderkind Ernie Clement when Espinal faltered defensively. They used Isiah Kiner-Falefa to patch defensive holes across the diamond until they traded him this past summer. Now they’re adding Giménez, one of the best infield defenders in all of baseball, to the mix.
Last season marked Giménez’s third straight Gold Glove and second straight Fielding Bible award. The voters (full disclosure: I am one of them) didn’t give it to him on reputation. He’s not just a shortstop playing second base; he’s a very good shortstop playing second base. He has the strongest throwing arm of any second baseman and uses it to his advantage, ranging up the middle to make outrageous plays. He has soft hands and quick reflexes. Statcast credits him with 37 runs above average over the past three years, tops in the majors. DRS thinks Statcast is being too modest – it credits him with 59 runs saved, 22 ahead of second place. Read the rest of this entry »
It looks like Nathan Eovaldi made the right decision. So far this offseason, the pitching market has been much hotter than projected, and as the Winter Meetings kicked into high gear in Dallas on Tuesday, that trend continued. The 34-year-old right-hander will not regret for a moment declining his $20 million player option with the Rangers. After signing a two-year, $34 million contract (plus that option) before the 2023 season, Eovaldi will remain in Texas on a brand new three-year, $75 million deal. That $25 million average annual value far outstrips the projections of $16 million by Ben Clemens, $20 million from our readers, and $22 million from MLB Trade Rumors. As Nick Deeds noted for MLBTR, Eovaldi is only the third pitcher in the past 15 years to sign a deal for more than two years that starts in his age-35 season or later.
Speaking of pitchers who are old enough to remember the band the Wallflowers, the Texas rotation features an awful lot of them. Eovaldi rejoins Jon Gray, Tyler Mahle, and Cody Bradford, along with whatever presumably small, magnificent portion of a season Jacob deGrom can provide. If you’re keeping track at home, the average age of those pitchers is 32.28 years. Bradford is the baby, as he’ll be a tender 27 when the season starts. Dane Dunning, who took a step back last season (and turns 30 the week after next), will also be available. The rotation could also get an infusion of youth from Kumar Rocker, who absolutely annihilated the minors and pitched well in three big league starts during the 2024 season, and Jack Leiter, who struggled mightily in nine big league appearances.
That might just be enough starting pitching depth to make it through the season, but – with the exception of free agents Andrew Heaney and Max Scherzer – the Rangers are running back a rotation that finished the season ranked 22nd in WAR and 21st in ERA, FIP, and xFIP. Even in their championship 2023 season, the Rangers ranked just 18th in all four of those metrics. And it’s not as if they’re obviously due for a huge bounce-back year. If that group is going to meaningfully improve, it’ll mean deGrom staying healthy and either Rocker or Leiter making that last big jump, and neither of those propositions is what you’d consider a sure thing. Eovaldi is a proven big-game pitcher with a 3.05 career ERA and a 9-3 record in the postseason. (Of course, if the Rangers hope to avail themselves of that skill set, they’ll need to go out and find approximately one entire bullpen’s worth of relievers, but that’s a conversation for a different day). Read the rest of this entry »
Two days after coming up short in their bid to retain Juan Soto, the Yankees made their first major move of the offseason, landing left-hander Max Fried via an eight-year, $218 million contract. The deal is pending a physical, a nontrivial matter for a pitcher who has made 30 starts just once in the past four seasons while landing on the injured list seven times, though only one of those absences was for longer than three weeks.
Though he was chosen by the Padres in the first round of the 2012 draft out of Harvard-Westlake High Schol in Los Angeles, Fried — who will turn 31 on January 18 — has spent his entire eight-year big league career with the Braves, helping them to seven playoff berths, including a 2021 World Series victory; in fact, he helped seal the deal by throwing six shutout innings in the Game 6 clincher against the Astros. After making just 14 starts in 2023 due to a forearm strain that cost him three months and then a blister that limited him to 10 innings (four in the postseason) after September 12, he returned to take the ball 29 times in ’24, throwing 174.1 innings with a 3.25 ERA, a 3.33 FIP, and a 3.64 xERA. While those were his highest marks in each category since 2019, his ERA still ranked fifth among National League qualifiers and his FIP seventh.
Those numbers were not only quite respectable at face value, they were more impressive once you account for his early-season struggles. In his first turn on March 30, Fried retired just two of the seven Phillies he faced while throwing 43 pitches, walking three and allowing three runs before getting pulled. In his second start, against the Diamondbacks on April 6, he yielded six first-inning runs including a leadoff homer by Ketel Marte (who added an RBI double in the same inning) but hung around until the fifth, when he got into a jam and was charged with two more runs. But from that point to the end of the regular season, he posted a 2.82 ERA and 3.26 FIP, and at times he was downright unhittable. Read the rest of this entry »
According to the Billboard Hot 100 charts, the biggest hit of Justin Bieber’s career is “Stay,” a song you either can’t get out of your head, won’t admit you can’t get out of your head, or just don’t realize you can’t get out of your head because you hear it playing everywhere — all the time — but didn’t know the title or artist. Anyway, it seems as if the not-so-subliminal messaging of one Bieber influenced the other. Shane Bieber has decided to stay (oh, ooh-woah) with the Guardians, and he’s hoping the decision proves to be just as lucrative as Justin’s song.
Bieber’s contract is essentially a one-year prove-it deal with the added security of a player option for a second year. The right-hander will earn $10 million for his age-30 season in 2025. After that, he can either exercise a $16 million option for 2026 or take a $4 million buyout and return to free agency. In other words, the player option is really only worth $12 million to Bieber, which means he surely doesn’t intend to exercise it unless things go particularly wrong. After all, he managed to net this contract halfway through his rehab from Tommy John surgery. The Guardians are prepared to pay him $14 million for half a season of work, and reportedly, that wasn’t even his highest offer. It’s safe to say he’s not picking up that option unless he suffers another injury.
So, if Bieber’s plan is to continue his rehab, rebuild his value, and cash in next offseason, it’s easy to understand why he might have taken less money to stay in Cleveland. Not only does he already have a relationship and a rehab plan with the Guardians, but this is an organization with a strong track record for helping pitchers thrive. Just look at Matthew Boyd, who came back from Tommy John this summer and turned a handful of starts with the Guardians into a two-year, $29 million deal with the Cubs. Alternatively, look at Bieber himself. The organization took a fourth-round draft pick (122nd overall) and 45-FV prospect and developed him into a Cy Young winner. It’s hardly surprising that he wants to stick with the same organization as he works his way back from a career-altering injury. The chances that he’ll ultimately receive a big, long-term deal from the Guardians are slim to none, but he’s counting on them to help him get that offer from someone else. Read the rest of this entry »
DALLAS — There’s only so much oxygen available for big-payroll Northeastern teams that are in crisis despite a largely successful 2024 campaign. And the Yankees, as ever, have been sucking up most of the attention. But don’t underestimate the furor that’s been floating around Philadelphia since the Fightins’ ignominious four-game NLDS exit. Dave Dombrowski has been rumored to have his finger in many pots in the first month of the offseason — an Alec Bohm change-of-scenery trade here, a Garrett Crochet blockbuster there — but as of the opening of MLB’s Winter Meetings, nothing had yet materialized.
… And this is why you move the left field wall back in. On Saturday, the Orioles jumped into the free agent market looking for upside, inking two veterans who, when they’re at their best, have the ability to rival the most fearsome sluggers in the game.
Outfielder Tyler O’Neill, who bashed 32 home runs over just 113 games with the Red Sox, signed a three-year, $49.5 million deal that will make him an Oriole through his age-32 season. Catcher Gary Sánchez, who turned 32 just last week, signed a one-year, $8.5 million deal. Both players are right-handed batters with multiple 30-homer seasons under their belts, which is to say that until the Orioles announced a few weeks ago that their left field wall would no longer be located way the hell out in Towson, both might have seriously considered passing on an offer to play in Baltimore and watch all their would-be home runs die in the left fielder’s glove. (Honestly, I’m mostly joking here. O’Neill and Sánchez have enough power that they’re among the small cohort of players who didn’t really have to worry about Walltimore.)
I don’t know the name for this phenomenon, but I’m guessing everyone has experienced it at some point. You hear something enough times, and you start to repeat it without really thinking critically about it. My example: the breakeven stolen base rate. I’ve heardthattermsomanytimes over the years, often in connection with whether teams were stealing too much or not enough, that I incorporated it into my thought processes like it was my own.
But then someone asked me why the optimal stolen base success rate was around 70%, and I realized that I’d been wrong. It was a bolt-of-inspiration kind of moment – you only need to hear the counter-argument once to re-assess your old, uncritically assumed thought. Why should teams keep stealing so long as they’re successful more than 70% (ish) of the time? I couldn’t explain it to myself using math.
The other side of the coin, the notion that teams should be successful at far better than the breakeven rate in the aggregate, is incredibly easy to understand. There’s a difference between marginal return and total return. Consider a business where you’re making investments. Your first investment makes $10. Your next one makes $8, and then $6, and so on. You could keep investing until your business breaks even – until you make a negative $10 investment to offset that first one, more or less ($10+$8+$6+$4+$2+$0-$2-$4-$6-$8-$10). But that’s a clearly bad decision. You should stop when your marginal return stops being positive – when an investment returns you $0, you can just stop going and pocket the $30 ($10+$8+$6+$4+$2+$0). Read the rest of this entry »
DALLAS — The collision of human mortality and baseball immortality is a jarring one that has resonated throughout the history of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and Sunday night’s announcement of the voting results of the Classic Baseball Era Committee was yet another reminder. Four years after dying of cancer at the age of 78, and three years after falling one vote short for his second straight ballot, Dick Allen finally gained entry. Also elected was 73-year-old Dave Parker, who has been rendered frail while waging a very public battle with Parkinson’s Disease in recent years.
The two sluggers were the only candidates from among a slate of eight elected by the 16-member committee, which met on Sunday at the Winter Meetings here in Dallas. The panel was charged with considering candidates from an overly broad swath of the game’s history. By definition, all eight candidates made their greatest impact prior to 1980, but weighing the merits of John Donaldson, who pitched in the major Negro Leagues from 1920–24 (and for Black baseball teams predating the Negro Leagues as early as 1915), against the likes of Parker, whose major league career ran from 1973–91, is a nearly impossible task, particularly within the limitations of a format that allows each voter to choose a maximum of three candidates from among the eight.
Parker, who had fallen short on three previous Era Committee ballots, received the most support from the panel, totaling 14 votes out of 16 (87.5%), while Allen received 13 (81.3%). Tommy John received seven (43.8%) in his fifth Era Committee appearance. The other five candidates — Ken Boyer, Donaldson, Steve Garvey, Vic Harris, Luis Tiant — each received less than five votes, according to the Hall.
To these eyes, Allen was the most deserving of the non-Negro Leagues candidates on this ballot. In a 15-year-career with the Phillies (1963–69, ’75–76), Cardinals (’70), Dodgers (’71), White Sox (’72–74), and A’s (’77), he made seven All-Star teams; led his league in OPS+ three times, in home runs twice, and in WAR once; and won NL Rookie of the Year and AL MVP awards (’64 and ’72, respectively) while hitting 351 homers and batting .292/.378/.534. Among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances, his career 156 OPS+ is tied with Hall of Famer Frank Thomas for 14th all time.
Allen accrued just 1,848 hits, and so he joins 2022 Golden Days honoree Tony Oliva as the only post-1960 expansion era players in the Hall with fewer than 2,000 hits. The marker has served as a proxy for career length, for better or worse, and in doing so has frozen out players whose careers were shortened for one reason or another, as well as those who built a good portion of their value via on-base skills and defense. BBWAA voters have yet to elect one such player, though Andruw Jones (1,933) is climbing toward 75%, and Chase Utley (1,885) made a solid debut on the 2024 ballot.
Not a particularly adept defender, Allen bounced from third base to left field to first base while traveling around the majors. He accrued his most value while playing third; he’s 17th in both WAR (58.7) and JAWS (52.3) at the position, slightly below Boyer (62.8 WAR, 54.5 JAWS), who had the advantage of a much less controversial career.
Allen’s career was shortened by what seemed to be a constant battle with the world around him, one in which the racism he faced in the minor leagues and in Philadelphia played a major role. Six years after governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard in order to prevent the court-ordered desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, the Phillies sent the 21-year-old Allen to become the first affiliated Black professional baseball player in the state. Faubus himself threw out the first pitch while picketers carried signs with slogans such as “Don’t Negro-ize baseball” and “N***** go home.” Though Allen hit a double in the game-winning rally, he was greeted with a note on his car: “DON’T COME BACK AGAIN N*****,” as he recounted in his autobiography, Crash: The Life and Times of Dick Allen.
The Phillies themselves — the NL’s last team to integrate, 10 years after Jackie Robinson debuted — were far behind the integration curve, as was Philadelphia itself. Allen quickly became a polarizing presence, covered by a media contingent so unable or unwilling to relate to him that writers often refused to call him by the name of his choosing: Dick Allen, not Richie.
Allen rebelled against his surroundings. As biographer Mitchell Nathanson wrote in God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen, “He refused to pander to the media, refused to accept management’s time-honored methods for determining the value of a ballplayer, and, most explosively, refused to go along with and kowtow to the racial double standard that had evolved within Major League Baseball in the wake of the game’s integration in 1947.”
Allen struggled for support during his 1983–97 run on the BBWAA ballot, never reaching 20%, and he similarly lagged in the voting of the expanded Veterans Committee from 2003–09. However, thanks in part to a grassroots campaign by former Phillies groundskeeper Mark Carfagno, he received a fresh look from the 2015 Golden Era Committee and fell just one vote short of election. The change in Era Committee formats meant that his case wasn’t scheduled to be reconsidered until the 2021 Golden Day Era Committee ballot, but the COVID-19 pandemic led the Hall to postpone that election. In a cruel blow, Allen died of cancer on December 7, 2020, one day after his candidacy would have been considered. Crueler still for his family, he again fell one vote short when the committee finally met in December 2021. Thus his election is a bittersweet moment, one that would have been greatly enriched by his being able to enjoy it.
Whatever quibbles there are to be had with the election of Parker, we can be grateful he’s still around to savor it. A five-tool player whose power, ability to hit for average, and strong, accurate throwing arm all stood out, he spent 19 years in the majors with the Pirates (1973–83), hometown Reds (’84–87), A’s (’88–89), Brewers (’90), Angels (’91), and Blue Jays (’91). He hit 339 homers and collected 2,712 hits while batting .290/.339/.471 (121 OPS+) and making seven All-Star teams, and at his peak, he was considered the game’s best all-around player. In his first five full seasons (1975-79), he amassed a World Series ring (in the last of those years), regular season and All-Star MVP awards, two batting titles, two league leads in slugging percentage, and three Gold Gloves, not to mention tremendous swagger and a great nickname (“The Cobra”).
A 14th-round draft pick out of Cincinnati’s Courier Tech High School — he fell from the first or second round due to multiple knee injuries that ended his pursuit of football, his favorite sport — Parker debuted with the Pirates in July 1973, just seven months after the death of Roberto Clemente. He assumed full-time duty as the team’s right fielder a season and a half later, and appeared to be on course to join the Puerto Rican legend in Cooperstown, but cocaine, poor conditioning, and injuries threw him off course. While he recovered well enough to make three more All-Star teams, play a supporting role on the 1989 World Series-winning A’s, and compile hefty career totals while playing past the age of 40, his game lost multiple dimensions along the way.
Parker debuted with just 17.5% on the 1997 BBWAA ballot and peaked at 24.5% the next year, but only one other time in his final 13 seasons of eligibility did he top 20%. In appearances on the 2014 Expansion Era ballot and ’18 and ’20 Modern Baseball ones, only in the last of those did he break out of the “received less than X votes” group; he got seven (43.8%) that year.
Because his defense declined to the point that he was relegated to DH duty, Parker ranks just 41st in JAWS among right fielders (38.8), 17.9 points below the standard. Still, this is not Harold Baines Redux. While Baines collected 2,866 hits — and might have reached 3,000 if not for the two players’ strikes that occurred during his career — he never put up much black ink or finished higher than ninth in MVP voting, spent the vast majority of his career as a DH, and ranks 77th in JAWS among right fielders (30.1). He was never close to being considered the best hitter in the game, let alone the best all-around player. His 2019 election was a shock, and a result that felt engineered given the makeup of the panel.
As I noted in my write-up of Parker, the contemporary whose case bears the most resemblance to his is that of Dale Murphy, for as different as the two were off the field — and you can’t get much further apart than the distance between Parker’s drug-related misadventures and Murphy’s wholesome, milk-drinking persona. A two-time MVP, Murphy — who fell short on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball ballot and will be eligible again next year — had a peak that’s vaguely Hall-caliber, but he’s ranks 27th in JAWS among center fielders, 14.4 points below the standard, because myriad injuries prevented him from having much value outside that peak.
I had Allen atop my list as the most deserving non-PED-linked position player outside the Hall. While I was lukewarm on Parker, it’s impossible not to feel some amount of empathy for his hard-won wisdom — his autobiography Cobra: A Life in Baseball and Brotherhood, written with Dave Jordan, is frank and poignant — and his battle with Parkinson’s, not to mention his prominent role in raising money to fight the disease. Again, it is far better that he is alive to enjoy this honor than to have it granted posthumously, as would have been the case for Tiant, who died in October at age 83. Boyer died in 1983 at age 52. John is 81, Garvey 75. For as tiresome as it may sometimes feel to see their candidacies reheated every three years or so, one can understand the desire to honor them while they’re alive — but then again, the same goes for the candidates they’re crowding off the ballot.
The most frustrating aspect of this election is how little traction the two Negro Leagues candidates had, as they were the top returning members from the 2022 Early Baseball ballot, with Harris — the most successful manager in Negro Leagues history — having received 10 votes (62.5%) and Donaldson — a legendary pitcher who spent most of his playing years barnstorming endlessly out of economic necessity — getting eight (50%). The 16-member panel did include two bona fide Negro Leagues scholars in Larry Lester and Leslie Heaphy. However, in my opinion and those of many Negro Leagues experts, it would be far better for a full panel of such researchers and scholars to consider these candidates and the unique and difficult context of their careers without having to battle for attention and space with much more famous players from a relatively recent past.
Appointed by the Hall’s board of directors, this ballot’s 16-member committee consisted of Hall of Famers Paul Molitor, Eddie Murray, Tony Perez, Lee Smith, Ozzie Smith, and Joe Torre; major league executives Sandy Alderson, Terry McGuirk, Dayton Moore, Arte Moreno, and Brian Sabean; and veteran media members/historians Bob Elliott, Steve Hirdt, and Dick Kaegel as well as Heaphy and Lester. In contrast to years past, this group had far fewer obvious connections to candidates, with Torre having played with Allen in St. Louis in 1970, Alderson serving as the general manager of the A’s when they traded for John in mid-’85 and Parker in December ’87, and Sabean in the scouting department of the Yankees when John had his second go-round with the team starting in ’86. [Update: As readers have pointed out, I missed that Perez and Parker were teammates in Cincinnati from 1984–86, and Molitor and Parker were teammates in Milwaukee in ’90.] Where both the 2023 and ’24 Contemporary Era Committees (the latter for managers, executives, and umpires) had just three media members/historians, this one had five.
The Era Committee process is an imperfect one, and by some measures these were imperfect candidates. If they weren’t, they probably wouldn’t have been relegated to Era Committee ballots in the first place, though not necessarily through their own fault. The voting results won’t please everyone, but hopefully even critics of the process can see some value in Sunday’s result.
For a month or so every year it seems, Danny Jansen looks like Babe Ruth. The only season out of the past four in which he hasn’t put up a 20-game stretch with a wRC+ over 200 was 2023, and he was pretty awesome in 2023 anyway; he posted a 115 wRC+ overall that year, while playing the most offensively-challenged position in the sport, no less. So in some ways, the Rays might have just signed the best offensive catcher in baseball:
@JeffPassan tweetedCatcher Danny Jansen and the Tampa Bay Rays are in agreement on a one-year, $8.5 million contract that includes a mutual option for a second season, sources tell ESPN. Jansen, who has played in Toronto and Boston, remains in the AL East. On it: @ByRobertMurray and @TBTimes_Rays.
Of course, when it comes to overall production, they absolutely didn’t. Jansen was white hot to start the year in 2024 – and then ended the season with an 89 wRC+, going from target deadline acquisition to backup in the process. And while he has indeed hit well when healthy, he gets hurt a lot. Across those aforementioned four seasons, he’s accumulated only 1,078 plate appearances. He hit the IL twice in 2021, twice again in ’22, twice yet again in ’23, and then missed the start of the ’24 season rehabbing from the last ’23 injury.
So maybe Jansen is secretly an amazing hitter – or maybe it’s a miracle that he can even still play baseball. Either of those could be true, and of course the truth is likely somewhere in between. The Rays are famously good at discerning where in the “somewhere in the middle” players lie, and as such, they feel like a natural home for Jansen.
Finding catchers who can both hit and field is nearly impossible. The Rays haven’t particularly prioritized them in the draft, and they certainly haven’t gone out of their way to trade for or sign marquee catchers. That’s how they ended up with Ben Rortvedt (career wRC+: 70) as their primary catcher in 2024. In 2023, that role went to Christian Bethancourt (career wRC+: 71). In 2022, Bethancourt backed up Francisco Mejía (career wRC+: a scintillating 86, though with poor defense). Read the rest of this entry »
A year ago, Juan Soto was the buzz of baseball’s Winter Meetings. It wasn’t because of anything he had agency over, though. The San Diego Padres were reportedly looking to trade him, and they eventually did. This year, Soto is the story again. But instead of waiting to see what his fate is, he’ll get to choose. Or maybe I should say that he did choose, because as Jon Heyman first reported, Soto signed a 15-year, $765 million dollar deal to join the New York Mets.
Presumably, you aren’t reading this article with no background knowledge of who Soto is. Still, I want to give you a refresher, because Soto is such a delightful player. He’s your favorite hitter’s favorite hitter. He has the best batting eye in baseball, and it’s not close. His sense of the strike zone is so good that it feels like he’s dictating the terms rather than the pitcher, one of very few hitters in baseball who gives that impression. He’s perennially one of the best in the game when it comes to avoiding swinging and missing, and he walks nearly a fifth of the time because pitchers are too afraid to challenge him.
Why are they too afraid? Because he’s also one of the best power hitters in baseball. He launched 41 homers and 31 doubles in 2024. He’s hit 201 home runs in his career, seventh-best in the majors over that span. His worst seasonal line was in 2022… when he hit .242/.401/.452 while getting traded mid-season. “Worst” is all relative, though; it was the ninth-best offensive line in the majors that year. Soto is so good offensively that despite being known for patience first and power second, he’s actually 11th in the league in batting average since debuting. He’s just good at every facet of hitting. Read the rest of this entry »
