I won’t sugarcoat it for you, friends. It’s a tough time to be a major league starting pitcher. Their ligaments are under threat like never before. Their workloads aren’t far behind. For a variety of reasons, the old style of starting pitcher is quickly headed toward extinction and we’re transitioning to a new way of doing things.

That all seems like the obvious truth. But I decided to go to the data and make sure. As Malice of the Clipse (and yes, fine, Edgar Allan Poe) memorably said, “Believe half what you see, none of what you heard.” I’m not sure exactly where that leaves you, since I’m going to be telling you what I saw, but that’s an epistemological question for another day. Let me just give you the data.

So far this year, there have been 452 games, and thus 904 starts. Starters have completed 4,735 1/3 innings, or 5.24 innings per start, and they’ve thrown an average of 86.2 pitches to get there. They’ve averaged 94.1 mph with their four-seamers, yet despite all that velocity, they’ve thrown fastballs of any type just 54.9% of the time. This isn’t Opening Day starters, or anything of that nature; it’s just whoever has picked up the ball for the first pitch on each side.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re going to spend big on a free agent closer, you should probably shop at the top of the market. That’s what the Astros did this past offseason, shelling out $95 million over five years to bring Josh Hader home. Last season, Hader was unhittable, with a 1.28 ERA in 61 appearances and 33 saves in 38 opportunities.

This year, not so much. His ERA is 6.39, and was over 9.00 on Tax Day. He’s only had two saves, which is partially his teammates’ fault, but Hader has also blown a save and taken a loss. The Astros, meanwhile, have struggled to find spots to use him. He’s had only one save opportunity since the first week of April, including a weeklong stretch in which he didn’t pitch at all. Tuesday night, Hader had his first two-inning regular-season relief appearance since 2019. Not the start either Hader or the Astros envisioned, I think we can all agree. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night, in his 26th game of the 2024 season, Alex Bregman hit his first home run. It didn’t come a moment too soon. Over his first 25 games, Bregman had run a wRC+ of 65. Until this year, he’d never had a stretch of 25 games in a single season in which he’d hit so poorly. Even in his worst season, an injury shortened 2021 campaign, he still finished with a 114 wRC+ and 2.1 WAR. So far this season, Bregman has been worth just 0.2 WAR. A cursory look at Bregman’s numbers over those first 25 games tells a very simple story: zero home runs, .268 SLG, .052 ISO. That’s not just a power outage. That’s a catastrophic grid failure. Only once before has Bregman posted an ISO this low over a 25-game stretch: In 2017, in the 54th through 78th games of his entire career, his ISO was .044. Because he’s been an impact player for so long, it’s easy to forget that Bregman is just 30 years old. It’s not as if Father Time has suddenly caught up with him, and he’ll surely bounce back at some point. But what’s going on right now?

Bregman has always had a somewhat odd offensive profile. As Houston hitting coach Troy Snitker told reporters, “He doesn’t hit for power because he hits the ball harder than most guys; he hits for power because he hits it in the air more than most guys.” In his entire career, Bregman has posted an above-average hard-hit rate just once, and he’s never broken 40%. However, he has impeccable plate discipline and bat-to-ball skills, and he’s constantly pulling the ball in the air. Although he’s recorded an above-average barrel rate just once, he’s never once had a below-average sweet spot rate. If you’re pulling the ball in the air, especially at Minute Maid Park, you don’t need to hit the ball hard enough to qualify for a barrel; you just need to hit it hard enough to get to the Crawford Boxes. Since 2015, Bregman has hit 18 home runs at or below 95 mph, second in all of baseball to Didi Gregorius with 19.

Snitker saw Bregman’s approach as an opportunity. “So with guys like that,” he said, “if you can have any small improvements to how hard the ball is coming off (the bat), he benefits the most, because he’s already getting the most balls out there.” This offseason, Snitker proposed weighted bat training in order to increase Bregman’s bat speed, with the goal of adding just a single mile per hour in exit velocity: “Just his batted-ball profile with 1 mile an hour is worth a lot in production,” said Snitker. Bregman explained that the focus was “trying to move (the bat) as fast as I could.” After four months of training, Bregman said, his bat speed numbers increased significantly without having any adverse impact on his mechanics. Coming into spring training, Bregman said he felt like his swing was “in the best spot that it’s been in years.”

Needless to say, the results have not been there. Bregman’s hard-hit rate is down, as are his average exit velocity and his 50th percentile exit velo. However, his 90th percentile EV is doing just fine and he’s nearly matched his max from last season. It’s not that he can’t hit the ball as hard as he used to; it’s just that he’s not doing it as often.

But it’s not just his contact quality; it’s his entire batted ball profile. Bregman’s groundball rate has exploded while his pull rate has cratered. His pull rate hadn’t been below 42% since his rookie season, but this year it’s at 33.7%. Only once before has he had a groundball rate as high as 40%; this year he’s at 42.7%. Look at his spray charts from 2023 and 2024. There’s so much less in the outfield, especially to the pull side.

Bregman’s line drive rate has cratered. When he hits the ball on the ground, he’s rolling over the it and sending it to shortstop rather than ripping it down the line. His fly ball rate is nearly the same, but when he puts it in the air, he’s often dropping his back shoulder, resulting in a weakly hit ball to right field.

If we combine the contact quality and batted ball profile, the picture becomes more clear. In 2023, Bregman’s hard-hit balls had an average launch angle of 13.6 degrees, and his balls that weren’t hard-hit were at 20. This year, those numbers are 10 and 26.8. As it’s currently constituted, Bregman’s swing just doesn’t seem as optimized as it once was for hard contact in the air. In the launch angle charts below, I’ve highlighted the exit velocities above 80 mph. In 2023, his average EV was that high on just about anything except popups and balls hit straight into the ground. This year, not only is he hitting the ball at optimal launch angles less often, when he does, he’s hitting it softer.

So that’s the bad news. Now let’s look at some reasons for optimism. First of all, it’s still April (or at least it was while I was writing this). Bregman usually starts slow, though not this poorly; his career 110 wRC+ in March/April is his worst of any month. And maybe he just needs some time to get used to his new swing. Second, a big reason for Bregman’s problems is that his line drive rate cratered, and line drive rates are notoriously fickle. Third, Bregman has been seeing tougher pitches this season. Because he succeeds by lifting the ball to the pull side, it’s no surprise that pitchers have always tried to attack him away and down. However, they’ve done a much better job of hitting that outside corner this season. He’s seen more pitches on the edges of the zone and fewer pitches right down the middle than in any previous season. The heat maps below show the location of the pitches he saw in 2023 and 2024.

After looking at these, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that Bregman has made worse swing decisions and had a harder time pulling and lifting the ball. Assuming pitchers don’t remain that precise all season, this could be something that evens out over time.

When a player stops pulling the ball, it also makes sense to check whether they just can’t get around on the fastball anymore, but that doesn’t seem to be the problem. Although he’s had poor results against four-seamers, a pitch he usually crushes, Bregman is both chasing and whiffing against them less often than he did last year. It’s breaking and offspeed stuff that’s giving him fits, and players don’t usually forget how to hit soft stuff after eight excellent big league seasons. That lends credence to the idea that Bregman has merely been struggling with timing issues. That his homer last night came against a changeup should make it all the more encouraging.

Let’s assume that Bregman’s weighted bat work did give him some more power. Maybe we should be encouraged by the fact that his exit velocity hasn’t fallen all that drastically, considering the fact that he hasn’t really been swinging at the right pitches or making the kind of contact he wants. Maybe when he does figure those things out, that extra power will announce itself.

It’s also worth noting that Bregman’s batting stance looks different this season. His stance was slightly closed in 2023, but this year he’s squared up to the pitcher and a little more upright. Additionally, his leg kick is often less pronounced now than it was last season. In the stills below, I captured Bregman at the moment when his knee was at its highest; it’s subtle, but you can see that it’s a bit higher on the left, in 2023. Despite these changes, by the time he gets his foot down, it looks to me like he’s in pretty much the same hitting position that he was last year.

I don’t want to come anywhere near blaming Bregman’s struggles on his new stance or the changes he made to his swing. There are a million things that could be affecting his performance, and it would be facile to seize on the few that I can see or read about in the Houston Chronicle. That said, these are a lot of changes to make to a swing in a single offseason, especially when that swing has been so effective. Maybe Bregman just needs some time to get used to facing big league pitching with this swing, or maybe he needs to consider returning to what was working for him before. After a two-hit perforamnce in Mexico City on Sunday, Bregman noted that he something seemed to click when he tried getting into his load earlier. Either way, things are bound to pick up sooner or later, if for no other reason than that they couldn’t get much worse.

Roughly a month’s worth of the 2024 season is now in the books. The American League East looks great. The Brewers and Guardians are standing up for the Central divisions. The White Sox can only beat the Rays, and the Astros somehow can’t beat anyone. Enough time has passed that I feel confident saying all of those things. On the other hand, it still feels too early to be certain about which players are over- or under-performing. But that doesn’t mean our opinions can’t change a bit. There’s enough data to make some educated guesses, so let’s put on our speculation caps. Yesterday, I looked at four players — two hitters and two pitchers — who have gone up in my estimation. Today, I’m examining the other side of the ledger.

Spencer Torkelson, 1B, Detroit Tigers
Torkelson is going to end up giving FanGraphs analysts whiplash. We loved him as a prospect, then he started slow and we adjusted our expectations down. Then he got hot at the tail end of last year and made a raftload of loud contact; both Dan Szymborski and I were high on him again coming into 2024. Now he’s off to one of the worst starts in baseball, and I’m back out.

Two things have changed my view. First, Torkelson’s approach at the plate has regressed. I’ve generally liked his swing decisions; he looks for something to drive and doesn’t chase breaking balls. But his swing rate in the heart of the strike zone is down meaningfully this year, and he’s not drawing walks at a rate that makes that sacrifice work out for him. If you’re going to be passive over the heart of the plate, you better absolutely crush the ball when you do swing, or at least possess a Soto-level batting eye so that pitchers are either tempting fate or walking you. Right now, Torkelson isn’t doing either of those things. Read the rest of this entry »

When Matt Waldron made his major league debut for the Padres last June 24, it was a noteworthy event. While a few position players had thrown the occasional knuckleball ast a goof after taking the mound for mop-up duty, no true pitcher had thrown one in a regular season game in two years. The last one who had done so, the Orioles’ Mickey Jannis, made just one major league appearance. Mixing his knuckler in with four other offerings, Waldron bounced between the minors and majors for a couple months before sticking around in September. Now he’s a regular part of the Padres’ rotation, and he’s having success… some of the time.

Through six starts totaling 31 innings this season, Waldron owns a 4.35 ERA (111 ERA-) and 4.06 FIP (103 FIP-), which won’t put him in contention for the Cy Young award but is respectable enough to keep him occupying a back-of-the-rotation spot. For what it’s worth, within the Padres’ rotation he’s handily outpitched both Michael King (5.00 ERA, 6.30 FIP), whom the Padres acquired from the Yankees as one of the key pieces in the Juan Soto trade, and Joe Musgrove (6.94 ERA, 6.59 FIP), who last year signed a $100 million extension.

Waldron is striking out a modest 19.7% of hitters but walking just 7.3%; his 12.4% strikeout-walk differential is second best among Padres starters behind only Dylan Cease’s 18.7%, and Waldron’s 1.16 homers per nine sits in the middle of the pack among their starting five (which also includes Yu Darvish) — and a vast improvement on his 1.67 allowed per nine at Triple-A El Paso in 2022–23. He’s done a very good job of limiting hard contact, with his 87 mph average exit velocity placing in the 78th percentile and his 33.3% hard-hit rate in the 75th percentile. Read the rest of this entry »

They don’t have a division lead to show for it, but the Phillies have been one of the top teams in baseball to start the year. Alec Bohm and Trea Turner have carried an above-average offense despite some slow starts from the other usual suspects, and the pitching staff has lived up to its projected excellence, sitting a full win ahead of the field entering play Tuesday. Philadelphia’s substantial investments — from the newly extended Zack Wheeler and the re-signed Aaron Nola to the army of high-leverage bullpen arms — are paying off with interest, with Wheeler leading all NL pitchers in WAR. But sitting just a hair behind him is a teammate who may be having an even finer season: Ranger Suárez.

Suárez first rose to prominence in 2021, a season in which his role transitioned from mop-up reliever to co-closer to the rotation over the course of just a few months. After he recorded a diminutive 1.36 ERA across 106 innings in his breakout year, he earned a permanent spot in the rotation entering 2022. Over his first two seasons as a full-time starter, he’s put up a 92 ERA-, making him a solid mid-rotation arm but a clear step below Wheeler and Nola.

That’s changed this year, as the emergence of Suárez has given the Phillies a third ace to follow up their dominant duo. Case in point: Suárez’s eight-inning, one-run gem on Saturday constituted his worst start in weeks, snapping a 32-inning scoreless streak that included a complete game against the Rockies on April 16. And a quick glance at the numbers shows his superb month was no fluke.

The previous version of Suárez possessed neither plus stuff nor control, instead thriving with a high groundball rate that limited extra-base damage on balls in play. As someone who doesn’t throw hard or spin a hammer breaking ball, improvements to his stuff would need to come from more subtle means than his raw pitch characteristics. If anything, PitchingBot and Stuff+ view his season thus far as a slight step back in that department. But while Suárez hasn’t added a tick to his fastball or learned a new pitch, stronger command and synergy of the pitches he already had have led to big results across the board.

Suárez has a kitchen-sink arsenal, throwing five pitch types with regularity and none more than a third of the time. He most commonly starts hitters off with his sinker, a tumbling seam-shifted wake offering with just 4.5 inches of induced vertical break, which is less than half the league average. It’s doesn’t miss bats, but it has enough run to miss barrels; it’s his best groundball pitch and has a negative average launch angle. It’s also a called-strike machine when Suárez lands it in the zone, which he does about two-thirds of the time.

After getting ahead in the count, Suárez likes to pivot to his curveball and changeup, the latter of which has elevated his performance the most this season. The synergy between any groundballer’s sinker and change is crucial to their success – hitters unsure of what’s coming are more likely to both swing over changeups that dip beneath the zone and watch meaty sinkers go by, both good outcomes for the pitcher. Previously, Suárez struggled to locate his changeup, amassing a -5 run value over his first two years in the rotation. But with a +4 value in just six starts in 2024, it’s clear he’s turned a corner with it.

You might not recognize one of the stats in the above table. JOtZ% doesn’t roll off the tongue like BABIP or xwOBAcon, but it stands for “Just Outside the Zone” percentage – a region I defined as outside the rulebook strike zone but in Statcast’s shadow region. The changeups that are thrown just a few inches off or below the plate are the ones most likely ones to draw chases, making JOtZ% a decent indicator of command. In 2022 and ’23, Suárez often missed too low when throwing changeups – directionally correct in hitting his spots, but so low that no hitters were fooled into thinking they were sinkers. By more consistently finding the few inches directly beneath the strike zone, his JOtZ% shot up, and the results followed.

Most hurlers of his archetype struggle to find an out pitch, but Suárez may have two lethal offerings in the bank. In addition to his better-commanded changeup, his already-good curveball creates an enviable package of secondary stuff. He most commonly uses his curve in 0-2 and 1-2 counts as he fishes for strikeouts, often throwing it in the dirt with success. While his changeup’s success relies on pinpoint accuracy, Suárez’ curveball indiscriminately takes down opponents regardless of location thanks to its excellent two-planed break, with over a full foot of drop and sweep compared to a pitch thrown without spin.

Across the league, Suárez is one of just four starters (along with Tanner Bibee, Jack Flaherty, and Jared Jones) with a 19% swinging strike rate or higher on two separate pitches, which makes it no wonder he’s on pace for a career-high strikeout rate. But Suárez gets his whiffs much differently than his competitors do. One of the best indicators of pure stuff is in-zone whiff rate, the number of hittable pitches that batters come up empty on. High-octane aces like Wheeler, Gerrit Cole, and Spencer Strider top the leaderboards over the past few seasons, as do Bibee, Flaherty, and Jones this year. But while his 27.8% strikeout rate is in the top quartile of pitchers, Suárez’s zone-whiff rate sits in just the 8th percentile.

You could look at Suárez’s struggles to earn whiffs on strikes as a sign that his numbers are unsustainable, but I disagree – because what he lacks in in-zone dominance he more than makes up for by controlling the area outside of it. Because most out-of-zone pitches are taken for balls, the median pitcher loses about two runs of value per 100 they throw. No wonder we consider pitches thrown outside the zone to be mistakes. Except, that’s not the case for Suárez.

Suárez is one of just two starting pitchers in the league to create positive value by throwing outside the strike zone. He uses his non-strikes purposefully, each one carefully placed in an attempt to generate a swing from the batter. Data-driven models are a fan of his approach, with his 108 Location+ ranking sixth in the league. So far, it’s worked wonders for his ability to induce weak contact, shattering his previous bests in wOBA, groundball rate, and barrel rate while leading qualified starters in xERA.

More importantly, Suárez’s out-of-zone pitches don’t just keep the ball on the ground; they also miss bats entirely. He throws his curveball and changeup — his two best pitches at getting swings and misses — in the zone just a third of the time; most offerings that earn so many swinging strikes land in the zone far more often than that. Out-of-zone whiff rate is often thought of as a consequence of good stuff rather than great command – the leaderboard over the past few seasons closely resembles the one for strikeouts – but better command can also boost it. Suárez has improved his out-of-zone whiff rate by five percentage points this season, a year-over-year improvement that ranks in the 91st percentile.

All these whiffs on pitches outside the zone are also allowing Suárez to pitch deeper into games. Over his first two years as a starter, he wasn’t exactly known for volume; he would often get into deep counts, which led to a high walk rate and an average of fewer than 5.5 innings per start. Six starts into the new season, he’s bumped that average to 6.8 innings per start without a significant change in pitch count in part because he’s getting more swings on pitches outside the zone. He’s increased his strike rate from 62% to 66% while slashing his walk rate by more than half. More length from him will be a welcome development on a roster that is, for now, rostering just seven (all single-inning) relievers to accommodate a six-man rotation.

We often think of the pitchers with the best command as the ones who dominate within the strike zone – those with the highest zone rate, those who can hit their spots within it, and those who can limit walks — but Suárez shows us that command is different than control (which is something Jon Becker pointed out in his Top of the Order column Monday). Command is about throwing pitches in the spots that induce weak contact, generate whiffs, and befuddle hitters into making poor swing decisions. Suárez’s improved command has taken him to the next level, and he’s done it with a new approach outside the zone.

It’s easy to take a totally nihilistic view of pitching prospects in general. You’ll get your hopes up over a 13-strikeout start at the College World Series, twiddle your thumbs as innings limits and service time shenanigans delay the path to the majors by two years, and be left scratching your head when the pitcher’s UCL gives out anyway, just two months after his big league debut. Next thing you know, you’re watching a 29-year-old, whose coming was once as breathlessly anticipated as the Messiah’s, toodle around for 140 lackluster innings a year.

Such a viewpoint would be facile, the type of cynicism that, to quote the author Joe Klein, “passes for insight among the mediocre.” But baseball fans come by their pessimism honestly; as anyone who’s read a Nick Hornby novel knows, nothing fosters obnoxious nihilism like repeated heartbreak.

MacKenzie Gore was the high schooler with the big leg kick and unreal velocity for a lefty. Then he was arguably the top pitching prospect in baseball. Then he was trade fodder — but still a key component of the deal that brought Juan Soto from Washington to San Diego. And in 2023, Gore was fine. He made 27 starts, threw 136 1/3 innings, and posted a 4.42 ERA. Did he look like a future Cy Young winner? No. Was this worth giving up on Soto and risking sending the franchise into a tailspin? No. But he was competent in a big league rotation, and not all pitching prospects even achieve that. Read the rest of this entry »

Roughly a month’s worth of the 2024 season is now in the books. The American League East looks great. The Brewers and Guardians are standing up for the Central divisions. The White Sox can only beat the Rays, and the Astros somehow can’t beat anyone. Enough time has passed that I feel confident saying all of those things. On the other hand, it still feels too early to be certain about which players are over- or under-performing. But that doesn’t mean our opinions can’t change a bit. There’s enough data to make some educated guesses, so let’s put on our speculation caps. Here are four players — two hitters and two pitchers — who have risen in my estimation over the last few weeks. Tomorrow, I’ll follow up with four players who have gone the other way.

Elly De La Cruz, SS, Cincinnati Reds
I already thought De La Cruz had the potential to be one of the best players in baseball before the season started. Quite reasonably, though, I was worried about the downsides. A guy who struck out 33.7% of the time last year is always risky, and that’s particularly true given how he did it. He swung more often than league average at balls and less often than average at strikes; he also made less contact than average. You can have one of those three things be true, or maybe even two of three if you make up for it elsewhere, but three of three? Yikes. Read the rest of this entry »

Spending money can be a lot of fun, but spending someone else’s money is even better. And that’s exactly what we’re doing today!

About a month into the season is typically when I look at some of the players who are prime extension candidates and the possible deals they might work out with their teams. As usual, the contracts here are not necessarily what I would offer the players or what they will get, but what the mean, cold-hearted projections think would amount to a fair agreement. For each player, I’ve included their ZiPS projections with the latest model updates.

Elly De La Cruz, Cincinnati Reds (Nine years, $192 million)

It’s going to be a long time until Elly De La Cruz is eligible for free agency, but if the Reds wish to signal to the fans that the best players they develop will be in Cincinnati for longer than their middle arbitration years, ownership is going to have to make a real commitment to one of them at some point. And who is a better option than De La Cruz? I would have said Matt McLain a few months ago, but his major shoulder surgery makes it a risky time for both team and player to come to a meeting of the minds on a future dollar figure. De La Cruz still has issues making contact, but his plate discipline has continued to improve since his debut. He’s drawing a lot more walks this year and he’s actually been better than the average major leaguer at not chasing pitches. And with better plate discipline should come more power because a greater percentage of his swings will come against pitches that he can actually drive.

As you can see below, he wouldn’t need to exceed his 50th percentile projections for home runs by much to secure a 40/40 season. In fact, after hitting his eighth home run of the year Monday night, De La Cruz is currently on pace for 45 homers and an absurd 101 steals this season — and he still has a lot of polishing left to do. He’s also showing he’s far from a defensive liability at shortstop, even though a healthy McLain is still probably preferable there. This contract buys out some of De La Cruz’s early free agency years and gives him a big wad of guaranteed dough.

Corbin Burnes, Baltimore Orioles (Eight years, $210 million)

If you’ve been following my work for a while now, you surely know I’m an Orioles fan. And like many other Baltimore fans, I remember the moment when I became unhappy with the ownership of the late Peter Angelos. My feelings toward him soured because of how he and the Orioles handled their free agent negotiations with Mike Mussina. After Moose had previously taken a hometown discount, the O’s assumed he would continue to pitch for them at a below-market rate, and as a result, they lowballed him the next time he was eligible for free agency. He declined, leading to the second-best pitcher in team history finishing his career wearing Yankee pinstripes and ensuring that his Hall of Fame plaque wouldn’t have an ornithologically correct bird on the cap.

While I still think the team should lock up Grayson Rodriguez long term, it’s far more urgent< for the O’s to extend Corbin Burnes, given that he hits free agency after the season. No better pitcher will be available this winter, and nobody in the minors anywhere, for any team, is a safe bet to be better than Burnes over the next five or six years. New owner David Rubinstein has said all the right things, and he made a nice gesture when he bought everyone at Pickles a round of drinks, but the best way to show that he’s serious about building a perennial contender is to not let his team’s ace sign elsewhere. Given the O’s have just about nothing in the way of financial obligations, there’s no reason not to extend him. If that means paying more than that figure above, so be it.

Bo Bichette, Toronto Blue Jays (Seven years, $151 million)

Let’s be clear, despite his uncharacteristic struggles so far this season, I think Bo Bichette will command more than $151 million, and while the Blue Jays may balk any amount greater than that figure, they should still be willing to pay him whatever it takes to keep him around for the bulk of his career. Because of his position and his consistency (again, his first month of this season notwithstanding), Bichette has emerged as the best scion of a baseball family in Toronto, and time’s running out to extend bounty hunter Boba Chette before he hits free agency after the 2025 campaign. I actually think he’ll age better than ZiPS does, at least offensively. Either way, shortstops get super expensive if you wait until they hit the open market. That means that now’s the time for the Blue Jays to extend him if they’re going to keep him, even if that means going over this projected offer to ensure he doesn’t reach free agency.

Alex Bregman, Houston Astros (Four years, $101 million)

The Astros have been able to let some of their offensive contributors walk in free agency — Springer and Carlos Correa among them — mainly because they’ve had pretty solid replacements coming up at the same time, such as Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Tucker, and Jeremy Peña. There’s no similar player on the horizon who can take the place of Alex Bregman. And with Houston already reeling with its pitchers, it would be a lot to ask the front office to fill a gaping hole at third base as well.

Max Fried, Atlanta Braves (Six years, $150 million)

Atlanta has a knack for being able to survive epidemics of pitcher injuries in ways that are fascinating if you’re a fan of the team and maddening if you root for another one. But with Spencer Strider already out for the rest of this season after undergoing internal brace surgery for his damaged elbow, can Atlanta really afford to let Max Fried and Charlie Morton depart this offseason? I like what Reynaldo López has done this season, but you don’t really want to go into 2025 counting on his continued success, Chris Sale’s health, and a full recovery from Strider following his second UCL procedure? The Braves reportedly offered six years, $162 million to Aaron Nola; how could they not make a similar offer to Fried, a similarly valued pitcher who has been a large part of their recent success? Now, all reports I’ve heard suggest Fried’s not keen on discussing an extension during the season, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t change his mind if Atlanta gives him a good reason to do so.

Josh Naylor, Cleveland Guardians (Four years, $80 million)

Since the start of the 2002 season, the Guardians have received 10,109 plate appearances from first basemen not named Jim Thome, Carlos Santana, or Josh Naylor. Those 57 hitters have combined to hit .253/.324/.426 for 7.7 WAR, or about 0.5 WAR per 600 plate appearances. This is a franchise that has struggled to find solid fill-in first basemen, so it’s hard to imagine the Guardians would be able to find an an adequate replacement if Naylor walks after 2026. And this is hardly a blockbuster deal; it’s similar to what Kyle Schwarber got from the Phillies coming off the best season of his career (2.7 WAR in 2021). Naylor’s not a superstar, but he’s in his prime years. That should be enough incentive for the Guards to pay for him to stick around, and so long as the deal is fair, the fact that Josh’s younger brother Bo also plays for Cleveland might make him more inclined to stay.

Jackson Merrill, San Diego Padres (Seven years, $95 million)

Jackson Merrill has one of the odder long-term projections according to ZiPS, which expects him to have a long, stable plateau rather than a period of significant growth followed by a steady decline (at least in the years covered below). But ZiPS is increasingly coming around to his reputation as a good bad-ball hitter, and his batting average projections have improved considerably since the winter. Merrill looks to be a solid player, and he’s one the Padres may need toward the end of their long-term deals with infielders Xander Bogaerts, Manny Machado, and Jake Cronenworth.

Pete Alonso, New York Mets (No offer)

Pete Alonso is rightfully a very popular player in New York, and I’ve always had a soft spot for the Polar Bear, both because homers are fun and because ZiPS was in on him very early when he was a prospect (everyone likes looking smart). And with his free agency imminent, this would be a suitable time to extend him on a long-term contract. The problem is, the more I look at the situation, the harder it is for me to think of a scenario in which he and the Mets could come to terms on a deal unless one party was willing to come out of the negotiation feeling very unhappy. ZiPS suggests a four-year, $70 million contract, and I can’t imagine Alonso feeling anything but insulted by an offer like that. I think given Alonso’s place in the organization and the hiccups in the development of Brett Baty and Mark Vientos, the Mets would be willing to pay Alonso more than a projection suggests, but I can’t see them offering him Freddie Freeman or Matt Olson money, either. Because the basic fact is that Freeman and Olson are more well-rounded players than Alonso, who has one amazing dimension. Just to illustrate, below Alonso I’ve included the projections for Freeman and Olson over the next six years.

Alonso projects to be slightly worse than them in the short term and then to be similar in the later years, though that’s likely because he is younger than them. Plus, by the end of 2024, the other players’ contracts already will have covered two additional prime seasons from Olson and three from Freeman. I don’t think any pending free agent has a bigger gulf than Alonso does between the perceived value of his past and the expected value of his future, and as such, this has contract boondoggle written all over it, as big as it was with Kris Bryant a couple years ago. I don’t envy the Mets for the decision they have to make with Alonso, because letting him go, trading him, and keeping him all feel like poor options.

One day earlier this season, a seasoned big league reliever took stock of his career.

He has spent five years in the majors, handling his share of high-leverage innings and generally performing well. This coming fall, he is set to reach a magic number: six years of major league service, earning him the right of free agency for the first time in his career. He will hit the open market still in his prime, hoping to land a trifecta that he’s so far been denied – the ability to choose his employer, garner a long-term commitment and earn a salary determined by open competition for his services.

He’s not looking forward to it.

“You talk to some of your buddies that are in it and it’s a miserable experience,” the reliever told me recently, “because you don’t know where you’re going to go, no team wants to give you the value you think you’re worth, and you’re like, ‘Am I going to have a job? Where am I going to go? What am I going to do?’”

He is hardly alone. This spring, I’ve spoken to a number of players who are set to reach six years of service by the end of the 2024 season. They range from some of the best players at their positions to journeymen just hanging on, and all were granted anonymity so they could speak freely about approaching such a consequential milestone. For many, it will have taken a decade or more – of minor league seasons, of call-ups and send-downs and other detours – to finally have the ability to exert some control over their careers.

And they have mixed feelings about it.

They watched this past winter as standout players like Cody Bellinger, Blake Snell and others were forced to settle for pillow contracts rather than long-term guarantees. Juan Soto will make his bag this offseason, but after seeing the open market shun a two-time Cy Young winner and a former MVP, players on the verge of free agency can’t help but wonder how rudely it might treat them. Some are well over 30 years old, meaning they’ll reach free agency at ages for which teams are typically loath to pay. They’re hoping for the best, but several say free agency seems something less than it’s cracked up to be.

“Free agency this year was really strange,” said one hitter. “Super strange.”

“For the first time in a while,” said another, “it’s just not as clear what free agency can present to a player.”

“You feel like you’ve reached this part of your career where it’s a thing to celebrate,” said a pitcher, “and then you start to wonder, ‘Well, what am I going to be celebrating? What is this going to look like?’”

To reach this point requires mettle. Players have weathered meager minor league salaries, sudden employer changes and punishing arbitration hearings. Most players never get this far, but the ones who do are told they’ll be rewarded for completing the journey. The closer you get, though, the more a question begins to nag.

What if the promised land sucks?

…

When you’re a rookie, none of this seems real. The glow of the big leagues is intoxicating, and it’s easy to get drunk on the promise of a long and storied major league career. A rookie’s mind is either too overwhelmed to consider a possible business decision six years down the road, or too naïve to treat it as anything other than a fait accompli. You assume you’ll get there because nothing has yet told you it might not happen.

Or, more accurately, that it probably won’t.

“To bank on anything for six years,” said a pitcher, “is crazy.”

By the time players reach five years, they’ve inevitably learned this lesson. Almost all have struggled and been sent down. Some have been taken on and off the 40-man roster. Several have been waived or traded and had to start over, proving themselves to a new team. All the while, they’ve watched as a brutal process of attrition filtered out many of their teammates.

“It’s a long time to get to that free market,” said one player. “A high percentage of guys don’t make it past a year, and most guys don’t make it past three years.”

No one knows this better than a major league reliever. The ones I spoke to for this story all underscored just how fungible their position is. “If you’re down for a couple months, it’s just, ‘All right, see ya.’ We’re expendable,” said a middle reliever. Sometimes, said another, that means pitching “on a night you might be a little banged up” because the other choice may be pitching for nobody. “There’s really no room for error,” said a third. “You have to bring it every day.”

Though starting pitchers and everyday players enjoy a greater measure of certainty, laboring without a guarantee of future employment is kind of the gig. Reaching arbitration after three years provides a welcome bump in pay – “You always hear the saying, ‘Take it to ‘traish,’” said one reliever – but the process can be brutal. An arbitration hearing can amount to an hours-long critique of a player’s value, often in disagreement over just a few hundred thousand dollars. And even though it represents a player’s first real chance to advocate for his own value, much remains out of his control.

Performance in a player’s last pre-arb year carries outsized evaluative weight, locking them into a rough pay scale no matter how much they improve in future years. “I would have liked to have a better platform year,” said one hitter. At least you can control your platform year; there’s little influence to exert over others at your position in your service class. “If you get a guy who takes a bad deal from a team because he doesn’t have a good agent, or he doesn’t have any leverage and he just feels like he needs to take whatever deal gets offered,” said a pitcher, “the whole market gets reset.”

Still, that bad deal is at least guaranteed under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Going to a hearing can be a matter of principle for players, but as many learned this spring, it exposes them to more risk. Some were alarmed that the Giants could cut an established player like J.D. Davis and pay him just a fraction of the salary he’d just won in a hearing; while negotiated one-year contracts for arbitration eligible players are fully guaranteed under the most recent CBA, that provision does not guarantee contracts reached through a hearing. There are no guarantees, it shows, until they’re written into your contract.

“At any time, the team can be done and decide to non-tender you,” a hitter said. “It still feels like you’re playing every year for your job the following year. It’s an incredible amount of stress. Nobody’s sitting here asking people to feel bad for us. But it makes it hard to let the best version of yourself show up every day when you’re constantly feeling like you’re playing for job security.”

No wonder the game has seen a run of young players agreeing to early-career extensions that are both lucrative and team-friendly. They land life-changing money and no longer have to trek the long and narrowing path to free agency. Though the players union stresses the importance of setting a player’s value on the open market, few who have had to grind just to reach five years begrudge anyone who took an early payday.

“Before approaching this personally, guys turning down big numbers, I flinched at it,” said one hitter. “I always understood the narrative that as a union, as an association, we have to move the needle for the wave of players after us. I get that. But it was hard for me to see early in my career because I felt like so much needed to happen between now and then.”

These players are much closer now, but a lot still could happen to derail them. If they struggle, they could be designated for assignment and released or outrighted to the minors before crossing the six-year threshold. If their team falls out of the playoff picture, a trade becomes more likely, uprooting players and their families in the middle of the year. An injury – an ever-present risk, especially for pitchers – would guarantee them service time but tank their value at the worst possible moment.

Then, even if they survive that final gauntlet to reach the open market, they may get their asses kicked. Players feel strongly that it shouldn’t be that way – “It’s hard to get there, and if you do, you should get paid for it,” one pitcher said – but they’re also pragmatists who know better than to stand on stubborn principle. If the open market isn’t going to treat you well, because you’re too old or because your position is too expendable or because teams just don’t want to spend money that particular winter, then maybe a team-friendly extension in the hand is worth more than a lucrative deal in the free-agent bush.

“It would be silly and a little bit irresponsible,” said one hitter, “to not take that into account.”

…

This isn’t to say free agency has lost all its luster, of course. “Agency” is the key part of the term. Not all free agents will get paid, at least not as much as they’d hope, but all of them will get to choose.

For so long, players don’t have that luxury. In what other profession can someone go a decade or more without having any choice about where to work? The current system has been codified in the CBA for decades – and was even more restrictive before the players organized – so it may be easy to take its effects for granted. But not when you’re on the precipice of finally being able to make decisions about your own career.

“It’s crazy. I’ve had zero say where I’ve been for 14 years,” said one pitcher. “To have the opportunity is probably what players look forward to the most.”

They’d like to get paid, too, either in free agency or earlier in their careers. To that end, the players offer varying solutions, some more attainable than others.

Everyone would like a shorter runway to free agency – “Maybe two years of league minimum and two years of arb,” said one hitter – although the players as a whole might not like the concessions the owners would demand to secure such an overhaul. Those who have been closer to the bargaining process know that. “Everybody would love to get to free agency sooner,” said a hitter who says he keeps up with the union’s efforts. “Is it realistic? I don’t know.”

The latest CBA did do more to funnel money to pre-arbitration players, raising the minimum salary and establishing a bonus pool to be distributed among top performers. One pitcher noted most of the players receiving that money are the uber-talents who are already likely to be offered lucrative extensions or land large free-agent deals, but others pushed back on such criticism. “More can always be done,” a hitter said. “But I do think the system is pretty good.” Another wouldn’t change a thing, despite having been released at one point in his arbitration years. Reaching six years is supposed to be hard. “The system in place, it’s been there for a while and a lot of guys have gone through it,” he said. “Like everything in the game, you’ve got to earn it.”

One solution that generated discussion amidst the sluggish spring was the idea of a signing deadline. The union has never advocated for such a measure publicly, and Scott Boras, the game’s most powerful player agent, has lambasted it as a giveaway to ownership; it’s perhaps telling that commissioner Rob Manfred was the one to float the idea. Still, with players having watched their colleagues hang on the open market deep into March, their curiosity about the benefits of a deadline hasn’t evaporated.

“That’s the thing I’ve been hearing mostly,” a pitcher said, “and it seems like there’s maybe some traction there.”

Even if a deadline wouldn’t be sound policy – teams can choose to not spend rather than embroil themselves in a bidding war, but free agents can’t realistically take their talents to another professional league – its lingering popularity demonstrates how much the specter of this past winter clouds the minds of players approaching free agency for the first time. They want the right of free agency, but they want it to be worth it. They don’t want to sit at home for months wondering where they’ll play, only to settle for a short-term deal that lands them in the exact same predicament a year later. No one wants to join the Boras Four.

Still, as poorly as those free agent forays went, those players still got to choose their employer. That’s what players covet as much as anything. “You used to hear this all the time as a player, that the goal was free agency,” said one pitcher. He offers an amendment to that, though: “Six years is the goal, but six years while still having more than one team interested in you is the goal.”

That pitcher is a reliever, one who knows that even at his best, he’s likely to live the rest of his career off one-year deals. But if a player is good and lucky and happens to time the market just right, it’s possible to fully grasp that brass ring. Not every free agent cashes in, but some do.

“I imagine if you’re coming off finishing six and having a good year,” said one hitter, “it’d be pretty fuckin’ cool.”