It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. After a sensational contract year — striking out 30% of hitters, posting the lowest walk rate of his career, bedazzling his jewelry cabinet with a World Series ring — Jack Flaherty looked like he was set to make a boatload of money. Days after his 29th birthday, we here at FanGraphs ranked Flaherty eighth among our Top 50 Free Agents, one spot behind his former high school teammate, Max Fried.

Early in December, Fried blew away expectations, inking an eight year, $218 million deal with Yankees. And he wasn’t the only one. Starters from Blake Snell to Luis Severino landed surprisingly lucrative contracts; when Ben Clemens checked in last week on his free agency projections, he noted that he’d under-projected the deals for starting pitchers by about $17 million on average. His takeaway: “Pitchers are getting paid this winter.”

Not all of them, it turns out. As the calendar creeps uncomfortably close to the start of spring training, the youngest available starting pitcher in free agency finds himself without an employer. Every couple weeks, a sparsely sourced rumor about Flaherty bubbles up on MLB Trade Rumors — there’s “mutual interest” with the Orioles, the Tigers have “some interest” in a reunion — but for a large part of the offseason, it’s been silence on the Flaherty beat.

The most substantial of these rumors flowed from the estimable pen of Ken Rosenthal over the weekend. Rosenthal and Will Sammon reported in The Athletic that Flaherty was “open to considering” a “short-term deal” with a “high average annual value.” The hot market for starters and the comparatively cool market for Flaherty suggest that, unlike the rest of the nominal “front-end” starting pitchers at the top of the market, something about him scares teams. All of this leads me to ask: What’s the matter with Jack Flaherty?

One obvious answer is the track record. On some level, teams are going to be somewhat hesitant to commit serious resources to anyone whose last healthy and effective season before 2024 came prior to the pandemic. Rosenthal and Sammon wrote in their report that “teams perhaps want to see Flaherty put together two consecutive seasons of elite performance.” And there are the shoulder issues in 2021 and 2022 that limited him to just 114 1/3 innings over that two-year span.

But I don’t think the track record tells the full story. I think the weak Flaherty market comes down to concerns about his 2024 season itself. Specifically, I think teams are worried about his fastball.

They get there in different ways, but the three pitchers who received $200 million (or thereabouts) contracts this winter all have plus fastballs. Snell throws the prototypical ace four-seamer, averaging 96 mph with 19 inches of induced vertical break. Corbin Burnes’ cutter is one of the signature pitches in baseball, capable of missing bats and neutralizing contact quality against hitters on both sides of the plate. Fried is a bit of a different case — his fastball averaged just 93.9 mph last season — but the shape is totally bizarre relative to his arm angle, resembling Burnes’ cutter from the left side. Fried also throws five other pitches, minimizing the importance of his four-seamer.

Flaherty’s fastball was the slowest of these four primary offerings, averaging 93.3 mph. In September, that dropped all the way to 92.6 mph. At below-average velocities, even a half-tick of heat loss can be brutal. And while the shape of the fastball is unusual — Flaherty throws from a low slot and gets just four inches of horizontal movement, meaning the pitch unexpectedly cuts in a funky fashion — it doesn’t have the sink that allows Fried’s and Burnes’ fastballs to burrow beneath barrels. Also unlike Fried, Flaherty in effect throws just three pitches: his four-seam fastball and the two breaking balls. (He also flashes a changeup and sinker, but last season he used each of those pitches less than 3% of the time.)

Given the mediocrity of his fastball, Flaherty must aim for fine locations. His success can vary. (I want to caveat the following with the fact that the Dodgers have a strong organizational preference for where their pitchers locate their fastballs, which may or may not be the way Flaherty will pitch with a new team.)

I’ll start with his matchups against left-handed hitters, because these were the majority of hitters that Flaherty faced in 2024. After his trade to the Dodgers in late July, the target for his fastball was almost exclusively set up in one location: Low and away.

A handful of times per start, Flaherty tried to climb the ladder, aiming for swinging strikes at the top of the zone. But in the three starts I watched in full, he almost always targeted his fastballs low and away when facing lefties.

Now, as the plot below of his fastball location to lefties shows, his execution wasn’t perfect. Aiming a baseball is really hard. But I’d venture to say that it was pretty good — he hardly yanked any of his fastballs to the glove side, and most of his misses drifted harmlessly off the plate. In any case, the plot tells a clear story: Flaherty was looking to paint with his fastball rather than challenge hitters over the plate.

This sort of nibbling quality with the fastball is perhaps not what teams want to see from their high-paid free agent starter. Snell, Burnes, and even Fried to some extent can throw fastballs with a large margin for error. Flaherty’s margins are thinner.

This is especially true against right-handed hitters, where his glove-side command is not as good. Against righties, Flaherty also frequently targeted low and away. But as the plot below of fastballs to righties shows, Flaherty doesn’t have the same level of command to the outer edge of this side of the plate. Note the lack of dots in that low-away corner compared to the yanked misses off the plate:

To lefties, Flaherty has the luxury of his misses generally drifting off the plate for balls. When he misses his target to righties, however, the miss tends to drift middle-middle. And when you’re missing middle-middle with 93-mph four-seamers, it’s generally not going to turn out well for you. (This might explain part of Flaherty’s reverse splits last season.)

When executed well, the low-and-away target serves an important function — it sets up his two nasty breaking balls, a harder gyro slider at 85 mph and a loopier knuckle-curve at 78 mph. As this pitch plot shows, these two pitches blend together in a deceptive manner, forcing hitters to guess which one is coming:

Flaherty is at his best when he’s mixing in the low fastballs with the two breakers right below the zone. Check out this two-pitch sequence to Ryan O’Hearn. He nails his 0-0 target to get ahead:

On 0-1 — the perfectly executed fastball fresh in O’Hearn’s head — Flaherty buries a curveball right below the previous location, getting O’Hearn to swing way over the pitch:

After a couple of breaking balls in the dirt, Flaherty punches O’Hearn out on a high fastball. With hitters laser-focused on the bottom of the strike zone, that occasional late-count high heater leads to a ton of whiffs. It’s a pretty combo when it works.

But if Flaherty falls behind, there just isn’t a great option to induce weak contact. When the early-count fastball execution is less than perfect, he tends to back himself into a corner. And when he’s forced to come over to the plate with the heater, he can be vulnerable to the long ball. Just ask O’Hearn:

If Flaherty’s fastball velocity remains in that 92-93 range, it will likely be a tradeoff between giving up a few too many walks due to nibbling (as he did early in his career) or risking extra-base damage by coming over the plate.

So, yes, there are reasons to be concerned about Flaherty. But overly fixating on his fastball risks ignoring his upside.

That two-breaking-ball attack works against both righties and lefties; when he gets ahead in the count, there’s almost nobody better. That strikeout rate is no illusion. So the question becomes: How can Flaherty reliably get ahead of hitters?

One option is pitching backwards. Flaherty’s fastball usage in 0-0 counts is roughly 50%. (On the plot below, red represents the four-seamer, gold represents the slider, and blue represents the curveball.) Given the frequency of his slider usage in 3-1 and 3-2 counts (50% and 44.8%, respectively) it follows that he has the confidence to throw it for a strike when he needs it. Mixing in more breaking balls in early counts could take some pressure off the four-seamer.

Flaherty could also use his sinker more often. If his problem at present is mostly with right-handed hitters, the sinker could give him a weak-contact option and a pitch that he feels comfortable throwing on the inner-half of the plate. Notably, the sinker grades out fine by stuff models — PitchingBot, for example, gives it a 56 on the 20-80 scale.

It’s also not impossible that some of his velocity could return. Maybe he no longer can regularly dial up 95-96 mph as he did in his early 20s, but it’s also possible that his late-season swoon can be chalked up to his posting his highest innings total in five years. In the range of velocity that he sat in the later months of the season, every half-tick is crucial, but if he can consistently live at 93-94 mph with the ability to touch 96, that softens many of the concerns.

Concluding this article definitively is challenging. On the one hand, the skittishness of the clubs is perfectly understandable. But plenty of contending teams need starting pitching, and an industry-wide fear of Flaherty’s weaknesses could cost clubs their chance to add someone who just performed like one of the best hurlers in the game.

Not every out is created equal. Take this fly out from Corbin Carroll, for example:

A lot of things can happen when you make an out with the bases loaded. You could strike out, leaving every runner in place. You could hit into a double play, an inning-ending one in this case. You could ground out some other way, or hit an infield fly. But Carroll’s here was the most valuable imaginable; with one out, he advanced every single runner, including the runner who scored from third.

Mathematically speaking, you can think of it this way. The average out that took place with the bases loaded and one out lowered the team’s run expectancy by a massive 0.61 runs in 2024. That’s because tons of these outs were either strikeouts (bad, runner on third doesn’t score) or double plays (bad, inning ends). But Carroll’s fly out was far better than that. It actually increased the run expectancy by a hair; driving the lead runner home and moving the trail runners up a base is exquisitely valuable.

That’s not the only way this could have gone. Consider a similar situation, a groundout from Aaron Judge:

Like Carroll, Judge batted with a runner on third and fewer than two outs. In this situation, the average out is bad, lowering run expectancy by 0.514 runs. But Judge’s was obviously worse. It cost the Yankees all the expected runs they had left in the inning, naturally, which added up to just a bit more than 1.15. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a Milwaukee Brewers fan, you probably know the volume and quality of Colin Rea’s work the past two seasons. Last season, only 58 pitchers qualified for the ERA title, and Rea was among them. Over the past two seasons, Rea is second among Brewers pitchers in starts, innings, wins, and strikeouts, trailing only Freddy Peralta in those categories.

If you’re not a Brewers fan, you might have seen the news that Rea signed with the Cubs and thought, “Oh, is this guy the Padres tried to trade with a torn UCL? Is he back from Japan?”

In an offseason defined by the scarcity of starting pitching, it’s a bit jarring to see a starter sign for one year and $5 million. Especially one who just threw 167 2/3 innings in 2024. There aren’t enough of those guys in the entire league for every team to have two. Roughly 15 times as many people summited Mt. Everest in 2024 as qualified for the major league ERA title. And Rea got just $5 million? What gives? Read the rest of this entry »

The Blue Jays came into this offseason with one glaring need: relievers. Now, that’s not to say that they don’t need help elsewhere. The bottom of their lineup is thin. They’re probably a starter short of an optimal rotation, particularly given how uncertain Alek Manoah’s future looks. But they’re a playoff hopeful, and they had the worst bullpen in baseball in 2024 – 3.1 wins worse than the White Sox, if you can believe it. So the bullpen had to be priority number one, and voila:

OFFICIAL: We’ve signed All-Star RHP Jeff Hoffman to a 3-year deal ??

Welcome Back, @Hoff_23! pic.twitter.com/A1tN8zOGjV

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) January 11, 2025

Jeff Hoffman might not be a household name, but he’s been one of the best relievers in baseball since joining the Phillies in 2023. He’s racked up 3.6 WAR in that time, but reliever WAR can get weird with the leverage adjustments, so let’s put it this way instead: He’s sixth in ERA and third in FIP over the last two years. His strikeout rate hovers around 33.3%, and he walks a thoroughly normal number of hitters. In other words, this doesn’t look like a fluke, and he’s not getting paid like a fluke, either. His deal is worth $33 million over those three years, with $6 million in available incentives. Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, I’ve been very interested in analyzing hitters who make a living off crushing everything in the upper third of the strike zone. As the rise of four-seamers up in the zone has turned that area into a hole for more hitters (especially in terms of whiffs), having someone in the lineup who excels in that area is very valuable. As I perused the leaderboards looking for the best hitters in the upper third, I had an expectation that most, if not all, of them would either have a very flat swing or be on the shorter side with shorter arms. It’s a simple story. If your swing is flat, you’re on plane with the pitch. And if you’re a shorter player or have shorter levers, you should be able to get on plane with pitches in the upper third very quickly.

That story is mostly true, but it wouldn’t be baseball if there weren’t an exception or two. Here is the list of the top 10 hitters against pitches in the upper third by xwOBA in 2024. I used a 15-hit minimum to ensure my focus was on the players who have had success with batted balls in this area:

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 Chicago White Sox.

Batters

What can you say about Chicago’s 2024 season? The White Sox lost 121 games, which is just five fewer games than the Dodgers have lost in the last two years. If there’s good news about 2025, the team is likely to win more games — and probably quite a few more — if merely by happenstance. For a major league team to lose 120-plus games, something magical has to happen, with so much more going very, very wrong than the fates suggested was in order. I’m fairly confident the White Sox will win more games this year than last, and ZiPS projects a 20-win improvement, which would be quite impressive for most teams.

But is that a good thing? Looking at the lineup as it currently stands, I’m not quite so sure. One of the amazing things about the 2024 White Sox is that they didn’t enter the season looking to dramatically rebuild. As far as I can tell, this was a franchise that thought it was a going to be at least mildly competitive in a weak division. But when you look at the current depth chart, it doesn’t really resemble what you’d expect to see from an organization drastically changing directions. The Sox have added some competent role players, but they’re older types who are best cast as capable contributors on a good team, not starters on a team trying to build on ruin. Josh Rojas, Mike Tauchman, and Austin Slater can bolster a contender, but if any of them get the playing time they’re currently allotted on our Depth Charts, it suggests a team without any ideas. A third year of Andrew Benintendi starting doesn’t do much to disspell that impression, and if Andrew Vaughn actually has any upside remaining, it doesn’t like seem the White Sox have any idea of how to find it. Read the rest of this entry »

Charlie Morton met with the Baltimore media over Zoom a few days ago, and as would be expected, the 41-year-old right-hander was equal parts thoughtful and engaging. That’s who Morton is. Much for that reason, I made it a point to join in on the session.

His response to a question from Matt Weyrich was classic Morton. The Baltimore Sun scribe asked the introspective veteran of 14 big-league seasons if he sees himself as a role model and/or mentor for a comparably inexperienced staff.

“I’d love to say that I have the answers,” replied Morton, whom the Orioles inked to a one-year deal worth $15 million. “I don’t. I think that, as an individual, you fit in in different ways with different groups of guys. I’m not going to be the same guy that I was with the Rays, in the clubhouse. I’m not going to be the same guy I was with the Astros or the Braves. Each person in those rooms, they’re just a piece of that larger puzzle. While I am the same person, there are different factors that direct you towards behaving a certain way… the value to a person, in the clubhouse, is the human being that they are.”

As much as baseball is in his blood, Morton is a family man. In August 2023, shortly before his 40th birthday, I asked him how much longer he could continue to defy Father Time and excel against baseball’s best hitters. He told me that he doesn’t think about it that way. Rather, he viewed it as “When am I going to go home?” Blessed with a wife and kids, Morton has pondered walking away from the game he loves for several years running. As the 2024 campaign was winding down, he once again thought there was “a really good chance [this] was going to be my last year.”

That’s he’s continued to perform well enough to not have the decision made for him is a big part of his story. Going from “Ground Chuck” to a pitcher who misses bats helped allow that to happen. Echoing what he told me back in 2017, his first season with the Astros, Morton related to the Baltimore beat writers that his career-altering transformation took place upon his arrival in Houston.

“They had a little board room and a projection screen with charts and graphs, and they were suggesting to me to throw pitches in locations where I would get no swings, or a swing-and-miss,” explained Morton, who has enjoyed markedly more success since revamping his pitching style. “For seven years with Pittsburgh, I was trying to get the ball on the ground with three pitches or less, and now they’re telling me, ‘Don’t let them hit it’… you’re not relying on the fate of where the ball is going, you are relying on your stuff.”

Which brings us back to where he’s going now, which is Baltimore and at least one more season on a big-league mound. Morton admitted to having been on the fence as to whether he even wanted to hear if there were any offers this winter, but when the Orioles called, the situation sounded right. Not only would he be getting a chance to pitch for a legitimate World Series contender, it would “work logistically with myself and my family.”

When Morton does finally decide to “go home,” saying goodbye to the game will come with a heavy heart. Given the way he approaches life, it will also come with a healthy dose of reflection.

“I don’t know about the desire to play baseball going away,” said Morton, who had a 4.19 ERA and a 4.46 FIP over 165-and a -third innings with the Atlanta Braves in 2024. “I don’t think that will ever happen. I think it’s just a recognition that it’s time.”
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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Ben Zobrist went 10 for 25 against Andy Pettitte.

Manny Ramirez went 14 for 24 against CC Sabathia.

Adam Jones went 16 for 41 against Mark Buehrle.

Jimmy Rollins went 4 for 11 against Francisco Rodriguez.

Ian Kinsler went 6 for 18 against Fernando Rodney.

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Several people have asked me why I put a checkmark next to Andy Pettitte’s name, and not next to Mark Buehrle’s, on my Hall of Fame ballot. Here is a brief explanation:

Pettitte had 68.2 fWAR, four seasons with a fWAR of five or higher, a 3.74 FIP, and 256 wins, Buehrle had 52.3 fWAR, one season with a fWAR of five or higher, a 4.11 FIP, and 214 wins. Pettitte also has the more robust postseason resume. (The degree to which postseason should be valued — ditto win totals — is obviously subjective. Nonetheless, each is part of a player’s résumé.) With all due respect to Buehrle — an accomplished pitcher who made five All-Star teams and was awarded four Gold Gloves — I feel that Pettitte is the more deserving of the two, As for whether I should have voted for both, the 10-player limit is an obstacle. My voting for Buehrle in the future remains a possibility.

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Who was better, Félix Hernández or Jon Lester? The latter becomes Hall-eligible in two years — King Felix debuted this year and got my vote — so I asked that question in a Twitter poll. The results weren’t close. Lester received a paltry 16.7% of the votes cast, while Hernández got a whopping 83.3%. Given their respective numbers — put up in nearly the same number of innings — as well as their awards and honors, I expected a closer race.

Hernández went 169-136 with a 117 ERA+, a 3.52 FIP, and 54.0 fWAR. Lester, who pitched for better teams, went 200-117 with a 117 ERA+, a 3.78 FIP, and 46.2 fWAR.

Hernández was a six-time All-Star, won a Cy Young Award, a pair of ERA titles, and threw a perfect game. Lester was a five-time All-Star who won three World Series rings (two with the Red Sox, one with the Cubs). His Fall Classic résumé includes a 4-1 record and a 1.77 ERA, while his overall postseason ERA was 2.51 over 154 innings. He also has an LCS MVP to his credit.

Will Lester get my vote when he becomes Hall-eligible? That’s yet to be determined. He has a valid argument, regardless of whether his career is deemed as impressive as Félix’s.

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I also ran a poll asking which of Derek Jeter or Ichiro Suzuki was better. I won’t bother to cite any of their numbers — what the first-ballot Hall of Famers did over of the course of their careers is well known — but I will pass along the results.

Ichiro garnered 79.1% of the votes cast. Jeter received just 20.9%. Make of that what you will.

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One more on the Hall of Fame:

I’m of the opinion that Firpo Marberry deserves a plaque in Cooperstown. The first MLB pitcher prominently utilized as a “closer,” Marberry led the American League in saves six times, and in appearances another six times. Moreover, he did so while also serving as a starter. Playing primarily for the Washington Senators — the right-hander also took the mound for the Detroit Tigers, and very briefly the New York Giants — Marberry logged a 148-88 won-lost record, 101 saves (B-Ref has him with 99), and a 116 ERA+ across the 1923-1936 seasons . His best year was 1929, when he went 19-12 with 11 saves while starting 23 games and coming out of the bullpen 26 times. His top saves totals were 22, 16, and 15, those in seasons where no other hurler reached double digits.

Given his body of work and pioneer status, Frederick “Firpo” Marberry would be a worthy Hall of Famer.

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A quiz:

Cal Ripken Jr. drew 1,129 walks, the most in Baltimore Orioles history. Which Oriole has drawn the second most walks? (A hint: He is the franchise’s all-time leader in reaching base via HBP.)

The answer can be found below.

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NEWS NOTES

Bob Veale, a left-hander who won 120 games while pitching primarily for the Pittsburgh Pirates in a career that spanned the 1962-1974 seasons, died on January 7 at age 89. A flame-throwing Birmingham, Alabama native who made a pair of NL All-Star teams, Veale led the senior circuit with 250 strikeouts in 1964.

Felix Mantilla, a native of Isabela, Puerto Rico who spent the first six of his 11 big-league seasons with the Milwaukee Braves, died on Friday at age 90. An infielder/outfielder, Mantilla had his best year in 1964 when hit 30 home runs with the Boston Red Sox. Two years earlier, he was in the starting lineup when the New York Mets played their first game in franchise history.

Brian Matusz, a left-hander who pitched in 280 games for the Baltimore Orioles, and in one game for Chicago Cubs, from 2009-2016, died earlier this month at age 37. No cause of death has been reported.

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The answer to the quiz is Brady Anderson, who walked 927 times as an Oriole. His franchise-most HBP total was 148.

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A random obscure former player snapshot:

Ray Culp was a shrewd trade acquisition for the Red Sox in November 1967. Less than two months after losing the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals, Boston received the 26-year-old right-hander from the Chicago Cubs in exchange for Bill Schlesinger and a PTBNL (Al Montreuil), a nondescript duo whose combined careers comprised all of six games and one hit in a dozen at-bats. Culp’s career was far more distinguished. At his best in his first four Boston seasons — this before arm woes entered the equation — the Elgin, Texas native went 64-44 with a 3.34 ERA over 937 innings. All told, Culp won 122 games pitching for the Cubs, Red Sox, and initially the Philadelphia Phillies, from 1963-1973.

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS

NPB’s Seibu Lions signed a pair of players who saw action in MLB this year. Right-hander Trey Wingenter made a smattering of appearances with the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, while Tyler Nevin played in 87 games for the Oakland Athletics.

Hiroto Takahashi is working to add a two-seamer to his repertoire (per Yahoo Japan). The Chunichi Dragons right-hander went 12-4 with a 1.38 ERA, and just 107 hits allowed in 143-and-two-thirds innings, this past season. Takahashi turned 22 in August.

Alex Wells is 5-1 with a 1.56 ERA over 52 innings for the Australian Baseball League’s Sydney Blue Sox. The 27-year-old southpaw made 13 appearances with the Baltimore Orioles across the 2021-2022 seasons.

Brennon McNair is slashing .254/.361/.574 with a circuit-best 11 home runs in 145 plate appearances for the ABL’s Brisbane Bandits. The 21-year-old infielder/outfielder in the Kansas City Royals organization had a .660 OPS last year with the High-A Columbia Fireflies.

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What has been the best game of your life? I asked that question to a number of players this past season, originally for a standalone piece that ran in early June, and subsequently for inclusion in a handful of Sunday Notes columns. Pittsburgh Pirates reliever Colin Holderman was among those to share his memories.

“I was at Heartland Community College, it was one of our first games of the year, and we were playing Walters State,” Holderman told me at PNC Park in late September. “I went eight innings, and I think I struck out 12. I also went 3-for-4 with two homers, one of them a go-ahead homer in the eighth. They were the No. 1 team in the country for junior college, and we were No. 2, so it was a pretty big matchup. That put us on top of the leaderboard. It’s something I think about often, so that would probably have to be my best overall game.”

The right-hander considers an immaculate inning he threw against the Tampa Bay Rays on May 4, 2023 his “biggest big-league moment.” It was his first immaculate inning at any level, and he turned the trick throwing “one sinker, the rest were cutters and sweepers.”

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

At CBS Sports, Mike Snyder addressed a number of false Hall of Fame narratives, including the misguided belief that the Hall is getting watered down.

Baseball America gave us minor league park factors for 2024 (subscription required).

Baseball America surveyed evaluators on the current state of scouting (unlike most BA articles, this is not behind a paywall).

The Kansas City Royals had Brent Rooker on their roster late in the 2022 season, only to lose him to the Oakland Athletics via the waiver wire. Max Rieper wrote about the ill-fated decision to cut Rooker loose, at Royals Review.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Justin Verlander is 24-24 with a 4.42 ERA in his career against the Cleveland Indians/Guardians. The 24 losses are his most against any team. The most losses Verlander has against any other club is 14, against the Chicago White Sox.

Clayton Kershaw is 11-0 with a 2.03 ERA in 17 career starts against the New York Mets. He is 4-7 with a 2.73 ERA in 17 career starts against the Philadelphia Phillies.

In 1968, Baltimore Orioles left-hander Dave McNally went 22-10 with a 1.95 ERA over 273 innings. He had a 5.3% walk rate and a .202 BABIP-against.

Melvin Mora had a three-year stretch (2003-2005) with the Orioles where his average season included a .312/.391/.513 slash line, 23 home runs, a 142 wRC+, and 5.1 WAR.

Juan Marichal and Brooks Robinson were elected to the Hall of Fame on today’s date in 1983. Robinson was on the ballot for the first time. Marichal was on the ballot for the third time.

On today’s date in 1982, the Minnesota Twins selected Kirby Puckett third overall in the January phase of the MLB draft out of Triton College. The first two picks were Kash Beauchamp, by the Toronto Blue Jays, and Troy Afenir, by the Chicago Cubs.

Players born on today’s date include Nigel Wilson, an outfielder who had three hits in 35 at-bats while playing for the Florida Marlins, Cincinnati Reds, and Cleveland Indians across parts of the 1993-1996 seasons. The Oshawa, Ontario native had far more success in Japan, logging 37, 33, and 37 home runs in his three full seasons with NPB’s Nippon Ham Fighters.

Also born on today’s date was Togie Pittinger, a right-hander who went 115-113 pitching for the Boston Nationals and Philadelphia Phillies from 1900-1907. The Greencastle, Pennsylvania native won 27 games in 1902, then lost an NL-worst 22 games the following year. His 1903 season also saw him surrender the most earned runs, hits, home runs, and walks. Pittinger did hit his only career home run that year, going yard against left-hander Luther Taylor, who won 116 games after signing with the New York Giants out of the Kansas School for the Deaf.

Happy Friday, everyone! I have good news, mostly for my editor: This will be shorter than the massively long two-week update from last Friday. The bad news, however, is that Justin Verlander makes for a less compelling featured photo than Corbin Burnes, so I appreciate that you clicked on this article anyway. Let’s fill you in on what’s new with the Matrix. Read the rest of this entry »

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 Toronto Blue Jays.

Batters

The AL East team that entered 2024 with the highest projected floor turned out to have… the lowest actual floor in 2024. Curse you, probability! The rotation disappointed last year, and a wide swathe of the starting lineup either underperformed or got injured, and in some cases, both. Read the rest of this entry »