Jordan Montgomery isn’t likely to pitch for the Diamondbacks again. Brandon Pfaadt could be pitching for them well into the next decade. That’s the upshot of an eventful few days for the Diamondbacks rotation, as Montgomery revealed last week that he would undergo Tommy John surgery and miss the 2025 season, while Pfaadt agreed to a five-year, $45 million extension that includes a couple of additional option years.

For the 32-year-old Montgomery – who was outpitched by Pfaadt and Ryne Nelson in this spring’s battle for the fifth starter job — this is the latest twist in a saga that has largely been an unhappy one ever since he helped the Rangers win the 2023 World Series. He hit the market on a high note after being dealt ahead of the trade deadline for the second straight season; between his time with the Cardinals and Rangers in 2023, he set career bests while posting the majors’ eighth-lowest ERA (3.20) and ranking 12th in WAR (4.3). He capped that with a 2.90 ERA in 31 postseason innings, starting a pair of series-opening combined shutouts against the Rays (ALWCS) and the Astros (ALCS), and chipping in 2 1/3 innings of emergency relief following Max Scherzer’s injury-related exit in Game 7 of the ALCS. Though he was knocked around by the Diamondbacks in Game 2 of the World Series, it didn’t stop Texas from winning its first championship.

Off of that run, Montgomery and agent Scott Boras reportedly set their sights on a contract topping the seven-year, $172 million extension that Aaron Nola signed with the Phillies shortly after the offseason began, but as with Boras’ other high-profile clients that winter, namely Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman, and Blake Snell, the big deal envisioned for Montgomery never materialized, and he lingered unsigned past the start of spring training. He was pursued by the Red Sox — which would have been an excellent fit given that his wife had begun a dermatology residence at a Boston-area hospital in the fall of 2023 — as well as the Rangers, Yankees (who drafted and developed him), and Mets, among others. In the end he settled for a one-year, $25 million contract with the Diamondbacks on March 29, with a $20 vesting option for 2025 based on 10 starts, rising to $22.5 million with 18 starts and $25 million with 23 starts. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not every day that a piece of baseball news makes just about everyone go, “Oh, yay, that’s nice!” but the Mariners pulled it off less than 72 hours before the start of their season. Cal Raleigh is sticking around for the long run.

Raleigh’s new contract runs from, well, now, through the end of the 2030 season, and will pay him $105 million over those six years, plus a $20 million vesting option for 2031. The extension buys out Raleigh’s previous $5.6 million arbitration settlement, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, who was first to report it. Read the rest of this entry »

It might not be long before Captain Kirk is the captain of the Starship Blue Jays. Alejandro Kirk made his MLB debut in September 2020. The only players who have been with the team for longer are Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, both of whom could leave in free agency next winter. If that were to happen, Kirk would become the longest-tenured Blue Jay just days before his 27th birthday. He could end up holding that title for quite some time, too. On Saturday, Kirk and the Blue Jays reportedly agreed to a five-year, $58 million extension. The deal, which begins in 2026, buys out the backstop’s final arbitration season and his first four free agent years, running through his age-31 campaign.

A 23-year-old Kirk burst onto the scene in the first half of 2022. He hit .315, slugged 11 home runs, and walked more often than he struck out over 83 games. His 155 wRC+ ranked sixth among qualified AL batters, far ahead of the next-best catcher. The fact that he was splitting catching duties, and thus DHing on the regular, cut into his overall defensive value, but still, Kirk ranked among the top-10 AL players in WAR. Fans voted him to be the starting catcher for the AL All-Stars, and the honor was well deserved.

Yet, Kirk has never looked like that middle-of-the-order threat since. He produced a 95 wRC+ in the second half of 2022. He followed that up with a 96 wRC+ in 2023 and a 94 wRC+ in 2024. To save you some strenuous mental math, I can tell you that averages out to a 95 wRC+ since the 2022 All-Star break. That means Kirk has been about 5% less productive at the plate than the average hitter, but, to his credit, still 5% more productive than the average catcher. His 10.3% walk rate is great, while his 12.0% strikeout rate is elite. Only seven batters (min. 1,000 PA) have a lower strikeout rate in that span, and none of them boasts a walk rate in the double digits. Unfortunately, the plus power that made Kirk such a complete hitter in the first half of 2022 has vanished: Read the rest of this entry »

The week leading up to Opening Day is extension season. Players want to put aside money discussions when the games start to matter, teams crave cost certainty, and everyone’s packing up from spring training with hope in their hearts; it’s a perfect setting for agreeing to deals. Amid a flurry of other activity, the Cleveland Guardians got in on the act by signing Tanner Bibee to a five-year, $48.5 million extension, with a club option for another year after that.

Let’s get straight to what you came here for, the ZiPS projections:

Those are pretty much what I expected. Through two years in the big leagues, Bibee has been a steady contributor whose best skill is good command. ZiPS projects more of the same for the next five years. That slight decline in innings you see over the course of the projection isn’t really a Bibee thing, it’s a pitcher thing. You just never know when one awkward elbow twinge will cost someone a year, and that’s reflected in declining innings totals over time.

Let’s talk about Bibee the pitcher for a moment before getting into the Guardians. He’s a product of the organization in the Shane Bieber mold, a crafty college arm who added velocity in the Cleveland system and went from fifth-round draft pick to runner-up for the 2023 AL Rookie of the Year award. That velocity doesn’t give him an unhittable fastball or anything like that. But where his fastball was a key sticking point in his pre-professional profile, now it’s just another average pitch. It sits 94-95 mph, touches the upper 90s in big spots, and has decent shape — more rise than run, but not a ton of movement overall.

That might not sound intriguing to you; after all, plenty of major leaguers have fastballs like that. But that’s the revelation here. With a boring fastball, Bibee’s other pitches all play up. He has impeccable command of spinning stuff, to the point where his pitches sometimes bleed together in our classification systems. There’s the hard one, either a cutter or sharp slider depending on who you ask, mid-80s and biting hard glove side. That’s his workhorse pitch, the one he favors in key spots and uses to set up strikeouts. There’s the sweepier version, a few miles an hour slower but with much more horizontal movement. He throws that one as a putaway pitch. Then there’s the curveball, slower still and with big north-south movement. He uses that as a change of pace, only when ahead in the count and largely fishing for strikeouts. The three combine to leave batters off balance and lunging.

That blended breaking ball complex looks a lot like Bieber, who followed a similar trajectory to the majors but then rode it even higher, to the 2020 Cy Young. Like Bieber, Bibee has a changeup to complement the bendy stuff. Bibee’s is loopy, 12 mph slower than his fastball, and most useful against lefties. His arm action disguises it enough that he can throw it to righties, too, and he’s willing to use it late in counts after batters have seen mostly fastballs and sliders.

As was the case with Bibee’s fastball, lots of major league pitchers have pitches that vaguely sound like the secondary stuff that I just described. What sets Bibee apart is his placement of those pitches. His fastball lives up in the zone. He attacks the glove-side edge with his hard slider and mixes locations haphazardly with the loopier breaking balls, alternating between placing them for called strikes and trying to pick out a corner or bounce a curveball. His changeup consistently hits the arm-side edge of the plate. He barely walked anyone in the minors, and that has carried over even against major league hitters.

You’ve seen the ZiPS median forecasts. The upside outcomes? Those will come if Bibee takes the next step with his slider by using it proactively and creatively. I keep comparing him to Bieber because we’ve seen that this exact skill set can produce ace-level seasons if everything breaks right. Maybe Bibee will top out as a three-win true-talent pitcher, but the future is unknowable, and he has the tools to break out to an even higher level than he’s already displayed.

For the Guardians, that present talent level is already mighty valuable. They just made the playoffs with Bibee as their no. 1 starter. They’re one of four contenders in the AL Central this year, again with him as their best option in the rotation. It’s a poor starting rotation, if we’re being honest, but that only makes him more important. It’s not Bibee and a bunch of similar options; it’s Bibee and then a bunch of question marks. Despite only two years in the majors, he’s a rock of stability in a sea of uncertainty.

This contract extension buys out either one or two years of free agency, depending on the club option. The value is almost exactly in line with what he’d expect to make in arbitration, plus a reasonable rate for the free agency year(s). This isn’t some outrageous bargain; it’s just two sides agreeing to tamp down volatility.

You can imagine some ways that this deal could end up making Bibee a lot more money than he otherwise would’ve received. Mainly, that’d be because of a future injury: As a fifth-round pick, Bibee never received a huge signing bonus, and he wasn’t due to hit arbitration (and bigger salaries) until 2026. That means he would’ve earned a raise pending health, but “pending health” is a scary phrase for pitchers. By signing this deal, he removed that risk. Now, there are no possible outcomes where Bibee doesn’t end up rich for life.

The Guardians, on the other hand, are getting future cost certainty. Not so much in the arbitration years – the terms of his extension roughly match what ZiPS would expect for those payouts. But let’s put it this way: The Guardians don’t sign big deals in free agency. They haven’t signed a marquee free agent on the open market in 20 years, since they added peak Kevin Millwood before the 2005 season. Those two years of free agency represent something the Guardians have no other way of obtaining – extra team control of very good players.

The Cleveland model has been remarkably successful for a long time now. It’s about constantly remaking the team even while the current version excels, finding new key players to replace the old key players while José Ramírez keeps the tempo. The Guardians deal in two currencies: talent and years. They’re adept at finding talent. Their budget and approach limit them on the years side of things.

In other words, Cleveland is always balancing competing now with competing in the future, and the limiting factor is usually how many years of good players the team has in hand. This extension addresses that directly by adding to the number of years that Bibee will be around, and adding in a way that the franchise can stomach financially. This deal won’t make the Guardians better in 2025, and it won’t even save them money in the immediate future. But now they have one more good player for at least one more year, at a price that makes sense for both sides. They’re in the business of sustainability, and this deal is perfect for their purposes.

Something might be brewing in Sacramento. The 2024 A’s beat expectations by a mile, though expectations were admittedly muted coming off of a disastrous 2023, and this offseason has seen the club be quite busy. The team’s best player, Brent Rooker, signed an extension that will keep him around through at least 2029, well past when the A’s are scheduled to move to Las Vegas. The pitching staff looks much improved, thanks to the surprise signing of Luis Severino and a trade for Jeffrey Springs. And now last year’s second-best player, Lawrence Butler, has signed a contract extension too:

BREAKING: Outfielder Lawrence Butler and the A’s are in agreement on a seven-year, $66.5 million contract extension with one club option, sources tell ESPN. Butler, 24, broke out as a rookie last year and is seen as a foundational player for the A’s moving forward.

— Jeff Passan (@jeffpasan.bsky.social) 2025-03-07T04:22:52.566Z

A year ago, this contract would have been mind-boggling. Butler debuted in the bigs in 2023 with an uneven two months of work. His minor league track record suggested intriguing upside – he flashed excellent power while climbing the ranks and was only in a position to struggle in the majors because he’d reached Triple-A at age 22 – but like so many A’s, he was a question mark, a talented youngster with some good signs and some red flags.

The A’s started 2024 hot, at least by their standards, but Butler didn’t. After breaking camp with the team, he ran into a huge power outage. Over 121 plate appearances, he managed just two homers en route to a .179/.281/.274 slash line, so the A’s sent him back down to Triple-A. What can you do? Sometimes your 23-year-old who never played above A-ball until a year ago needs a bit of extra seasoning. Read the rest of this entry »

Geraldo Perdomo is not leaving Arizona any time soon. On Monday night, Mike Rodriguez reported that the Diamondbacks and their switch-hitting shortstop had agreed to a contract extension, which is for four years and $45 million, includes a club option for a fifth season, and starts in 2026, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. The 25-year-old Perdomo has just over three years of big league service time, so the deal will buy out his final two arbitration seasons and at least the first two years after he would’ve reached free agency. Perdomo was an All-Star in 2023, and he put up 2.0 WAR in 2024 despite an April knee injury that limited him to 98 games. He’s now set to spend the entirety of his 20s providing the Diamondbacks with a throwback blend of solid shortstop defense and an absolute refusal to swing the bat.

Perdomo got a cup of coffee in 2021 and played his first full season in 2022, running a 59 wRC+ that limited him to just 0.3 WAR. In 2023, he earned an All-Star nod on the back of a torrid, BABIP-fueled start that saw him with a 200 wRC+ on May 3. He quickly came back to earth, but ended up running a 117 wRC+ in the first half and a 74 wRC+ in the second half, for an overall mark of 98 and 2.3 WAR. Perdomo missed just over two months due to a torn meniscus in 2024, but he put up a 101 wRC+ and his second straight two-win season. Essentially, he’s been a bit better than league average for two seasons now, and that was enough to convince Arizona to lock him down for the entirety of his prime. Perdomo and the Diamondbacks had already avoided arbitration by agreeing on a $2.55 million salary for 2025, and the new deal will add a $5 million signing bonus to that. He’ll receive a $5 million salary in 2026, then $8 million in 2027, $11 million in 2028, and $13 million in 2029. The Diamondbacks also have a $15 million club option for 2030, with a $3 million buyout should they choose not to exercise it. There are also incentives for a top-10 finish in the MVP voting.

That’s a pretty big commitment, even bigger when you consider the fact that the Diamondbacks have shortstop Jordan Lawlar, whom Eric Longenhagen just ranked our 14th overall prospect. Let’s talk about why the Diamondbacks feel Perdomo is worth extending, even if it means blocking the best prospect in their system.

Personally, I think Perdomo is one of the most fascinating players in the game. He came up as a glove-first shortstop prospect, and he certainly looks the part, but the advanced defensive metrics have been split on his performance for his entire career.

For his first two seasons, DRS thought he was costing the Diamondbacks runs. Then in 2024, the season when he missed time due to a major leg injury, it thought he was one of the best shortstops in baseball. Statcast has pretty much seen him as neutral throughout his three-year career, while DRP thinks he’s been great with the exception of 2023. Clearly, though, the Diamondbacks believe in his defense.

On offense, Perdomo is just plain weird. I know I summarized his overall offensive performance earlier, and those numbers are pretty standard – he’s been right around league average for two straight seasons – but it’s important to understand how he got to those numbers. For starters, Perdomo cannot stop bunting. Over the past three seasons, Perdomo has laid down 66 bunts, the most in baseball. His 33 sac bunts are also the most in the game; only three other players have even reached 20. His 15 bunt hits rank eighth, but among the 61 players with at least six bunt hits over that period, his 23.8% bunt hit rate ranks dead last. Even more damning, he leads baseball with 52 foul bunts. According to Baseball Savant, those fouls have cost the Diamondbacks four runs. That’s the worst number in baseball.

The bunting is genuinely a problem, but it fits perfectly with Perdomo’s overall approach at the plate, because that approach could be best summed up as “Try with all your might to avoid swinging.” Perdomo is one of the most passive players in all of baseball. Our database goes back to 2002, and since then, Perdomo’s 39.2% swing rate ranks 48th out of the 1,129 batters with at least 1,000 plate appearances. That puts him in the fifth percentile. Over the past three seasons, it’s the sixth-lowest mark in the game. Perdomo is the exact kind of player whom Robert Orr’s SEAGER metric was built to expose. In 2024, SEAGER had him in the 77th percentile in terms of selectivity, but it put him in the second percentile in terms of taking hittable pitches. In other words, Perdomo’s unwillingness to swing at strikes is way more extreme than his ability to lay off balls.

Keep in mind that SEAGER was meant to assess a player’s ability to do damage, and, well, that’s just not Perdomo’s game. He runs some of the lowest contact quality numbers in baseball. However, he makes tons of contact. Not only that, but over the past two seasons, he’s run a foul rate of nearly 43%, one of the higher marks in the game. It’s nearly impossible to get him to swing and miss, even when he swings and doesn’t put the ball in play. So even though pitchers attack the zone like crazy, he runs excellent walk and strikeout rates. If I’m making it sound like every single part of Perdomo’s game is at one extreme or another, well, yeah, that’s pretty much how it is. His Baseball Savant sliders are either bright red or bright blue. He’s all patience, no power. He’s the rare player who runs an incredible squared-up rate but an unimpressive line drive rate. Because Perdomo puts tons of balls in play, he’ll always have the chance at posting a great BABIP and putting up a three- or four-win season, but unless he decides to try attacking the ball, there’s not much ceiling here.

I am so, so curious to see what it would look like if Perdomo were to start attacking the ball. He’s still young, and I really do think it’s possible that he has the capacity to be more than an average hitter. I’m sure the Diamondbacks remember clearly how well it worked out when he was pulling everything in sight at the beginning of the 2023 season, and maybe they’ll try to help him become that player again. Still, I don’t think we should expect that going forward. I think the Diamondbacks are paying for floor rather than ceiling. However he gets there, if Perdomo keeps performing like a two-win player, the contract will work out well for both sides. If he can remain a solid defender and a league-average bat, he’s a really useful player, even if he pushes Lawlar to third base. In the meantime, we all get to enjoy watching Perdomo live at the extremes in order to perform right at the mean.

Are there any Oakland Athletics fans reading this? If so, don’t worry, your team is doing its usual nonsense, there’s nothing to see here. You’re lucky they left, don’t feel so bad, those last few years can’t take away all the good times. You can go ahead and skip this one, great article, hooray. Now that that group is gone, and we’re left with Sacramentonians, new A’s fans, more general fans of the sport, and perhaps Vegas residents, let me say this: The A’s signing Brent Rooker to a five-year, $60 million extension is awesome, and I love it.

Rooker was a rare bright spot on a dismal 2023 A’s squad. Then he was downright excellent on the green-shoots-of-hope 2024 team, compiling 5.1 WAR, even with the punishing positional adjustment that comes from DHing, thanks to a scorching .293/.365/.562 batting line. That line is even better than you might think, coming as it did in the cavernous Coliseum, and it didn’t look fluky.

Rooker hits the stuffing out of the ball. He finished eighth in barrels per batted ball in 2024, just ahead of certifiably enormous guys Oneil Cruz, Kyle Schwarber, and Marcell Ozuna. He also elevates the ball more frequently than any of that crew. The two are intertwined, obviously, but any time you’re hitting rockets like the 2024 versions of Schwarber and Ozuna, you’re doing something right. You could hardly do better from scratch if you were trying to come up with an ideal power hitter; a vicious swing (78th-percentile bat speed) that frequently puts the ball in play at profitable launch angles (86th-percentile sweet spot rate) means plenty of barrels (97th percentile) and 39 homers even in a park that suppresses righty power mightily. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s always nice when something works out perfectly, right away. At the trade deadline, the Dodgers insinuated themselves into a three-way deal with the White Sox and Cardinals, acquiring Michael Kopech and Tommy Edman in exchange for infielder Miguel Vargas and a smattering of minor leaguers. Edman, who hadn’t played an inning all year to that point because of a wrist injury, was of little use to the Cardinals and zero use to the White Sox, so Los Angeles was able to acquire him on the cheap.

The wrist healed; the former Stanford standout debuted in late August, posted a 98 wRC+ in 37 regular-season games, then played every inning of the Dodgers’ successful World Series run. He started games at both center field and shortstop, hit .328/.354/.508 with five stolen bases in 16 appearances, and went home with NLCS MVP honors.

So you’d understand why both sides would want to run it back. On Friday night, the Dodgers announced that they and the 29-year-old Edman had agreed to a contract extension. This five-year, $72 million deal supersedes the final year of Edman’s previous two-year contract, worth $9.5 million. Should this partnership continue to bear fruit through the end of the decade, the Dodgers have a $13 million club option for 2030 as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Excuse us while we adjust our Top 50 Free Agents list. Coming off their first postseason appearance since 2015, the Royals have decided to keep the band together. On Sunday, the team announced that Michael Wacha has signed a three-year contract with a club option for a fourth year. Royals starters ran a 3.55 ERA in 2024, second only to the Mariners. Their 16.7 WAR trailed only the Braves. Now that Wacha is locked up long-term, Kansas City is set to return eight of the nine pitchers who started a game for the team during the 2024 season, led by ace Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, and Wacha. The only exception is midseason acquisition Michael Lorenzen, who has entered free agency.

Wacha joined the Royals as a free agent before the 2024 season, inking a two-year, $32-million deal with a player opt-out. After running a 3.35 ERA and putting up a career-high 3.3 WAR, he was all but certain to exercise that opt-out. Instead, the 33-year-old is set to stay in Kansas City through at least 2027, his age-35 season. He’s also guaranteed to roughly double his career earnings to this point. The deal guarantees Wacha a minimum of $51 million and could be worth as much as $72 million. According to Mark Feinsand, Wacha will earn $18 million in the first two years. In 2027, he’ll have a base salary of $14 million, with performance bonuses that could push it to $18 million. If the Royals exercise their 2028 option, Wacha’s salary will feature the same 14/18 structure. If they decline the option, they’ll pay him a $1 million buyout. As Anne Rogers reported, five of the 10 largest contracts in franchise history now belong to players on the current roster. Wacha joins Lugo, Bobby Witt Jr., and Salvador Perez, who appears on the list twice thanks to two separate extensions, in that club.

The 2025 season will be the first since 2019 in which Wacha doesn’t pitch for a new team. He came up in 2013 and pitched for the Cardinals until 2019, then signed a succession of one-year deals with the Mets, Rays, and Red Sox. In 2023, Wacha signed with San Diego on a convoluted one-year deal that featured a club option for two more years (which the Padres declined), and player options for three more years (which Wacha declined). Read the rest of this entry »

At this time last year, the Phillies faced a good deal of long-term uncertainty about their rotation. Aaron Nola was a free agent after the season, Zack Wheeler would follow a year later, and the only pitcher with a guaranteed contract past the 2024 season was Taijuan Walker. This time around, their rotation once again leads the league in WAR, but much of that future angst has been alleviated. The Phillies re-signed Nola and extended Wheeler during the offseason, and now they’ve locked up left-hander Cristopher Sánchez, a 2023 sensation who has remained one this season, for at least four more years, with two club options that could keep him around the through 2030 season.

The 27-year-old Sánchez, whom the Phillies acquired in a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays for Curtis Mead back in 2019, has a 2.67 ERA/2.49 FIP over 15 starts this season. That’s good for 2.6 WAR, fourth best among National League pitchers. Sánchez will receive a guaranteed $22.5 million over the next four seasons, buying out all of his possible years of arbitration, plus a $2 million signing bonus. Not bad for someone who had just one full year of service time entering 2024. The two club options come with a $1 million buyout each for 2029 and ’30, bringing the minimum value of the deal to $22.5 million. If the Phillies pick up those two options, for $14 million and $15 million, respectively, and if Sánchez secures top-10 finishes in the Cy Young voting during those option years, his salaries could increase to $16 million for 2029 and $19 million for ’30. That puts the maximum total value of the extension at $56.5 million over six years.

If you didn’t see Sánchez coming, you’re definitely not alone. Mead went on to become one of Tampa Bay’s top prospects – he was still ranked fourth in the Rays’ system and 32nd overall in our preseason prospects rankings – while Sánchez came back from the COVID layoff struggling against Triple-A hitters. Changeup pitchers with command issues generally aren’t highly regarded, and neither Sánchez’s cup of coffee in 2021 nor his larger carafe in 2022 suggested a pitcher who would become a key part of a top rotation a year later. The Phillies certainly weren’t confident in him entering 2023; he had lost weight over the offseason, and the team intended to give him only a single spot start in April after a White Sox doubleheader messed up the rotation’s rest days. From a story from last August by Matt Gelb of The Athletic:

Rob Thomson was transparent with Sánchez: This was one start, and one start only. Sánchez, who had missed most of spring training with various injuries, later said he appreciated the manager’s honesty. He knew where he stood.

Before the call ended, Brian Kaplan had a question. He is the team’s assistant pitching coach and director of pitching development. The Phillies had outlined an offseason plan for Sánchez, a lanky lefty from the Dominican Republic, and it went haywire. Sánchez was supposed to add bulk. But a long illness sapped him of strength. He lost more than 15 pounds. It compromised him in the spring when he failed to make an impression while the Phillies scrambled to fill the back of their rotation.

In truth, Sánchez didn’t dominate for Lehigh Valley last year, either, but he did accomplish one goal the team set out for him; by the summer, he had gained 25 pounds. That coincided with a small window of opportunity to grab the fifth spot in the rotation. The Phillies had used Matt Strahm in the role early in the season, but they were worried about his innings count. Dylan Covey had gotten a couple starts but was bombed by the Braves in his most recent one, and Bailey Falter, who had been in the rotation earlier, was in the minors and out with a neck injury. So Sánchez got the nod on June 17 against the A’s; he went four scoreless innings and allowed one hit. His tumbling changeup — which looks like the world’s least erratic forkball — clicked, and he never gave the Phillies a reason to boot him from the rotation. Even the acquisition of Michael Lorenzen didn’t cost him his job. The Phillies happily went with a six-man rotation rather than deprive themselves of Sánchez’s services.

Over the first half of this season, Sánchez has proven that his performance last year was no fluke. He’s now been up for a full calendar year, throwing 175 1/3 innings with 157 strikeouts with a 3.08 ERA across 31 starts. He surely won’t continue his rate of home run avoidance (just one allowed this season), but even if his home run rate were to regress heavily toward the mean and cause his ERA to jump to the low 3.00s, he’d still worthy of his rotation spot.

So, what’s the projection look like? Suffice it to say, ZiPS was not very excited about him coming into 2023.

That’s not disastrous; with those numbers, he would’ve been a competent spot starter/long reliever. But it wasn’t even a shadow of what he’s accomplished in the last year. So let’s spin up his current, much sunnier projection. How sunny? Let’s just say Tom Glavine pops up in the top 10 on his comps list and leave it at that.

Most teams would be ecstatic to have this projection from their no. 2 starter. From your no. 4, this is like waking up one morning and finding out that your garden hose somehow makes its own IPA. Based on these numbers, ZiPS projects Sánchez to be worth $27.3 million over the four-year extension, making this a decent value from the point of view of the Phils. The deal becomes even better for Philadelphia when you look at the option years; ZiPS projects Sánchez’s value for 2029 and ’30 to be worth a combined $41 million in free agency, $11 million more than the base value of those years if the Phillies pick up his options.

That leaves Ranger Suárez as the only key member of the rotation who might not be around long term. He’s set to hit free agency after the 2025 season, and considering his excellence this year, he probably won’t come cheap if the Phillies try to extend him; a six-year deal would cost them $135 million, according to ZiPS. Having Sánchez around until the end of the decade at such a generous rate could provide Philadelphia the flexibility to dole out more money to keep Suárez.

Before we go, I’ve been looking for an excuse to project the Phillies rotation, so I’m not letting this opportunity slip away! Using the innings allocation in our depth charts, ZiPS currently projects Phillies starting pitchers to accumulate 8.6 more WAR over the rest of the season, which would give their starters a combined 22.7 WAR for the entire 2024 campaign. Here’s how that compares to the best starting staffs in the five-man rotation era, which I’m somewhat arbitrarily starting in 1980:

That’s quite rarified air. Based on these projections, the Phillies would finish the season with baseball’s best rotation in more than a decade, since the 2013 Tigers. And with the Sánchez extension coming on the heels of the deals for Nola and Wheeler, Philadelphia has the chance to keep this party going for several more years.