I spend a lot of time saying the word “April.” It’s a convenient excuse to wave away any notion of changing my mind drastically on a player after two or three weeks of the season. But April isn’t actually meaningless, and as we head toward June, we’re already nearly a third of the way through the season. A lot of the stuff we’ve seen isn’t just a rough patch or a freak BABIP, but career trajectories changing, and that has consequences for the players and their teams. One of the most common questions about players I get in chats is some variation of “What does ZiPS think now?” I can’t answer them all, mainly because “doughy middle-aged nerd talks to his magical baseball box for an hour” sounds like the worst episode of Black Mirror ever. That said, because I do full in-season runs of ZiPS in the middle of every month, now seems like a good time to get some projectionist changes of heart for the overachieving and underperforming players.

So whose changing fortunes are most likely to lead to changed destinies? Well, to get an idea of which trajectories have changed the most, I took the current 2026 projected numbers for each player and compared them to the 2026 ZiPS projections from before this season began. We’ll start with the good news, because I’m a Baltimore native and an Orioles fan, so I need something sunny first. These are park-neutral projections, and I eliminated anyone who is projected as below replacement level, since we’re focusing on major league-relevant players. Today, we’ll cover the position players before moving on to the pitchers tomorrow.

Here are the players whose 2026 ZiPS projections have improved the most since the beginning of this season, sorted by the greatest gains in projected WAR:

Coming into the season, Jonathan Aranda looked merely like a decent option through his prime years, a player whose employer didn’t quite trust his glove to stick at second and third or his bat to produce enough for him to play first base. He always hit hard, however, and he’s taken that to a new level this year, with a hard-hit percentage that blew through the 50% threshold and has peeked into the high 50s. As a result, Aranda has put up a 162 wRC+ across his first 43 games and 160 plate appearances this year. No, he’s probably not going to keep his batting average above .300, but he’s elite at smashing baseballs and has just enough plate discipline to leverage that skill. He’s not scheduled to reach free agency until after the 2029 season, so he may be Tampa Bay’s longest fixture at first base since Carlos Peña.

A thumb injury ruined Jordan Lawlar’s 2024 season, but his early performance in Triple-A this year eliminated any lingering concerns that the injury would hinder his play. In fact, Lawlar was mashing PCL pitchers so hard that the Diamondbacks basically had no choice but call him up, even though they didn’t have a clear full-time starting job for him. Because of Andy Pages’ disappointing power production in the majors last year, ZiPS dropped off his bandwagon after hanging out there for several years. But now that Pages has nine homers in 44 games this season, the computer is quietly trying to sneak back on.

I was asked recently if Geraldo Perdomo’s contract was the biggest steal for a team this year. I said no, but only because the biggest steal is almost always a star who has less service time than Perdomo has now. Nobody will mistake Perdomo for prime Giancarlo Stanton, but the Arizona shortstop is hitting for more power than he ever has in the majors. Combine that sudden pop with his arguably Votto-esque pitch recognition and elite contact skills, and Perdomo now looks like an extremely valuable offensive talent. With a .309 BABIP, he’s not even getting lucky!

It appears that Wilyer Abreu is going to outproduce his breakout season from 2024. Between him and Jarren Duran, you have to give the Red Sox an unbelievably high stat for Turning Fourth Outfielder Types Into Stars in the upcoming RPG FanGraphs Advanced Dungeons & Data. OK, that does not actually exist, but if you bother David Appelman enough maybe it will! Jacob Wilson is a shockingly retro type of player, in the best possible way, and as long as he doesn’t get tempted to be more aggressive at the plate, he should be able to contact his way to stardom.

I’m fairly surprised that Iván Herrera got so much of a boost considering he missed more games with a bone bruise this season than he has played, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that he’s OPSing 1.299. Kyle Stowers has given the Marlins a pretty good thumper, and after some uncertainty back in March, ZiPS now gives him a legitimate chance to be a starting first baseman for a while.

Going down the rest of the list briefly, I’m convinced that Trent Grisham’s revival has to do with mustache power. Fernando Tatis Jr. is finally back hitting at his pre-suspension levels, and while Tyler Soderstrom has slumped a bit over the last few weeks, ZiPS is more bullish on him than it was previously. I have no idea what Spencer Torkelson is going to do from here on out in the majors, to the extent that I’m wondering if I should try leaving him out of the projections next year and hope nobody notices. Shoot, I said the quiet part out loud.

Some may be surprised to see Pete Crow-Armstrong this low. Truth is, ZiPS was already astoundingly high on him coming into the season, basically projecting him to be an All-Star in 2025. He’s been better than that, but there was simply less room for his projection to jump.

Now, let’s move on to the players whose projections have dropped the most, sorted by the greatest declines in projected WAR.

Admittedly, I am taking Marcus Semien’s decline very personally. I got a lot of pushback from ZiPS projecting him as a top-10 rest-of-career shortstop entering the 2015 season. Since analysts like being right, I’ve felt vindication that he’s been a damn good player over the last decade. Since the start of 2015, among players FanGraphs classifies as shortstops, he’s had the sixth-most WAR in baseball. But everything comes to an end, and it’s looking like that day is rapidly approaching for Semien, as middle infielders in their mid-30s who collapse don’t tend to have particularly strong second winds.

Statcast is kinder to Bryan Reynolds than reality, and while ZiPS expects his power to bounce back as a result, it doesn’t think his batting average will return to previous levels. Trout’s decline in OPS+ is actually larger than that of Semien or Reynolds, but because ZiPS doesn’t know how long Trout will be out with his knee injury, it actually is projecting him to take a handful more plate appearances next year thanks to his staying healthy throughout April. Trout has underwhelmed at various times during the injury phase of his career, but never like this; he was downright awful in April.

Tyler O’Neill and Vinny Capra both enjoyed some Opening Day heroics, but neither has done much since. It’s not good to see Yordan Alvarez on this list, but ZiPS was already starting off at a very high place for him. So despite his projected decline, he’s the only player on this list that ZiPS expects to perform at an All-Star level next season. Three Braves make this list — Bryan De La Cruz (now in Triple-A with the Yankees), Matt Olson, and Ozzie Albies — which says a lot about how Atlanta’s season has gone, though the team has bounced back well otherwise. Anthony Santander apparently has enough Orioles residue on him to struggle this year, but a .333 xSLG and a .352 zSLG (the ZiPS version) are abysmal numbers for a player whose main purpose is hitting for power.

I really wanted to figure out how to make a Nick Cimillo’s Sense of Snow joke, but believe me I tried. He’s the highest minor leaguer on this list, an unheralded 22nd-rounder who was slowly getting into prospect territory by merit in the Pirates system. But he hit a wall last season after being promoted to Double-A Altoona, and the wall’s hit back this year; he has a .539 OPS while repeating a level. That’s a pretty big deal.

I didn’t use players with sub-replacement projections on the main list, but I did feel I should give consolation prizes to the three minor leaguers who have seen their 2026 WAR projections go up by at least a full win. Unlike Cimillo, Bolte has dominated in his repeat stint at Double-A, and at 21, it’s nowhere near as concerning that he had a tough promotion last year. He’s far from a big-deal prospect in the Athletics organization, but he’s at least worth watching. It’s just too bad his last name isn’t pronounced like lightning bolt, because it limits the scope of his nicknames. Mets prospect Jacob Reimer has slashed .341/.433/.652 in the South Atlantic League, which has a league-wide .360 slugging percentage, so he’s got to be nearing a promotion. Human Walk Machine George Lombard Jr. was recently promoted to Double-A despite being young for the level. That means he has plenty of time to develop into more than just a player who gets most of his value from walks, a minor league archetype that doesn’t do well in the majors.

As we get further and further into the month of May, signs of summer are popping up all around us. Allergies are flaring, you can start to trust the major league stat leaderboards, and colleges across the country are wrapping up their spring semesters.

That last point is important, because summer is the season of study abroad. Every year around this time, thousands of American undergraduates get on planes, learn to navigate a foreign country, meet new people, and discover that their Spanish gets way better after three or four beers. It’s a marvelous experience, and I want to bring it to you, the FanGraphs readers.

Welcome to the 2025 FanGraphs Fan Exchange Program.

For one week, I want you to put your favorite team on the shelf and follow a different one. Do whatever you do in the normal course of being a fan, but do it for another ballclub. Read the rest of this entry »

I sometimes worry about overusing the words “for a catcher” in my writing. I don’t like overusing words. Case in point, I hate that I have already overused the word “overusing” (and the word “words”) in the first two sentences of this piece. Yet the “for a catcher” qualifier is often necessary. Catchers aren’t as fast as other position players. He runs well… for a catcher. They aren’t as agile as other position players. He’s athletic… for a catcher. They need more time off than other position players. He plays a lot… for a catcher. Above all else, they tend not to hit as well as other position players. Say it with me now: He hits well… for a catcher.

Catcher is the most demanding defensive position, and as a result, offensive standards for backstops are lower. The average wRC+ at catcher is typically about 10% worse than the big league average. That means that a team whose catchers produce a 100 wRC+ will usually rank among the majors’ top third, even though you wouldn’t want to see those catchers batting higher than the bottom third of the order. This is so often the case that most of us take it for granted. For instance, if I were chatting in a sports bar instead of writing for FanGraphs, I might say that Austin Wells (101 wRC+), Bo Naylor (99 wRC+), or J.T. Realmuto (102 wRC+) has hit “pretty well for a catcher” this year, without even bothering to check how well the average catcher has actually performed. Unfortunately for those guys, I’m far more comfortable sitting behind a computer than sitting in a bar, so I did look into how well catchers have hit in 2025. What I discovered is that, at least for now, I’m at no risk of overusing the phrase “for a catcher” after all. Just past the quarter mark of the 2025 season, catchers have a 101 wRC+.

With a .246/.318/.396 slash line, catchers are slightly outperforming the league average in all three triple slash categories. If they can keep this up, the 2025 season will be the first since at least 2002 (as far back as our positional splits go) in which catchers outperformed the league average in any one of the triple slash statistics, let alone all three. Read the rest of this entry »

Which players most often hit the ball to the positions that they themselves play when they’re in the field? It’s a simple question, but it also begs larger, murkier philosophical questions. Is hitting the ball to your own position the height of baseball narcissism? Or is it that hitting the ball to your special spot just feels right? Maybe the batter just stands at the plate, surveys the great green-and-brown expanse before them and gets overwhelmed. “What shall I do?” they ask themselves as the pitch clock ticks down and the hot dog vendors emit their indecipherable warblings. Then they see an oasis of familiarity, the one patch of earth that has welcomed them through a lifetime of baseball-related activities. Hitting the ball there just might feel like coming home. “I know just what I’ll do,” they think, twisting their gloved hands against the handle of the bat. It is their pen, and with it they will write what they know.

So who does that the most? Before I dug into the numbers, I put the question to my colleagues. None of us got it right. I thought I was pretty clever by picking Steven Kwan. He’s a contact maven who specializes in dumping the ball into left field, a position famously played by none other than multiple Gold Glove winner Steven Kwan. I felt all the more clever when Ben Clemens picked Kwan, too. We were wrong. So were Jon Becker, who picked Bo Bichette, Jay Jaffe, who picked Luis Rengifo, and Jake Mailhot, who picked Nico Hoerner. None of the players we picked was even at the top in his respective position, either on a counting basis or a rate basis. Read the rest of this entry »

Mason Fluharty is flying under the radar as one of baseball’s most effective lefty relievers. Since making his major league debut with the Toronto Blue Jays on April Fools Day, the 23-year-old southpaw has a 1.96 ERA and a 2.94 FIP over 18 appearances. Moreover, he’s allowed just seven hits in his 18-and-third innings, and prior to surrendering a solo home run to former Jay Danny Jansen this past Tuesday he’d retired 21 consecutive batters. All three of his decisions are in the win column.

His initial two outings were especially challenging. The first batter Fluharty faced in the bigs was Washington Nationals 2024 All-Star CJ Abrams, who lined a run-scoring double. Three days later, the first batter in his second outing was Juan Soto; the New York Mets superstar also stroked a run-scoring double.

I asked the 2022 fifth-round pick out of Liberty University about those welcome-to-the-big-leagues ABs prior to his third appearance.

“Get put into the fire and see what happens,” said Fluharty, who later that same day faced Rafael Devers [E-6], Alex Bregman [K], and Rob Refsnyder [DP]. “I’m glad they have faith in me. While I obviously would have preferred better outcomes in those first outings, it’s all about adjusting. This game is hard.”

The pitches that were turned around for two-baggers? Read the rest of this entry »

If motor preferences were the final word on pitcher performance, Nathan Eovaldi would be sitting on a beach somewhere.

Eovaldi throws from a low slot, releasing his pitches from an average arm angle of 30 degrees. (Zero degrees is fully sidearm; 90 degrees is straight over the top.) Many low-slot pitchers have a supination bias. There are downsides to being a supinator — their preference for cutting the baseball tends to produce crummy four-seam fastballs — but they usually have no trouble throwing hard breaking balls; they can also more easily harness seam-shifted wake to throw sinkers, sweepers, or kick-changes. Low-slot supinators, like Seth Lugo, can basically throw every pitch in the book. High-slot pronators like Ryan Pepiot or Lucas Giolito don’t have that sort of range, but make up for it with excellent changeups and high-carry fastballs.

Eovaldi is, tragically, a low-slot pronator. Not many low-slot pronators make it to the big leagues. The pronation bias blunts their ability to throw hard glove-side breakers, and the low arm angle obviates the pronator’s nominal advantage, killing the carry on their fastball. As Tyler Zombro of Tread Athletics (now a special assistant of pitching for the Cubs) said in his primer video on motor preferences, “I know in stuff models and just off of Trackman alone, this arsenal with this slot is not that attractive.” Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, the Rocket City Trash Pandas shut out Pensacola, 9-0, in the Southern League. In the Midwest League, the Quad Cities River Bandits eked out a 7-6 win over the Dayton Dragons. And in the big leagues, television cameras captured an enormous raccoon traipsing through the Citi Field seats during the seventh inning of the Mets-Pirates game. It was a good day for raccoons at the ballpark.

The major league raccoon went down one row of seats in center field, then back across the next row up, looking for all the world like it was just searching for its seat. “I’m scared of raccoons,” said SNY broadcaster Ron Darling, stammering slightly. The brief clip makes it look like the Citi Field raccoon was simply out for a late-night stroll, not bothering anybody. It turns out there’s more to the story. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Milwaukee Brewers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Marcus Semien was a promising prospect heading into the 2013 season, but he was far from a high-profile player. When that year’s Baseball America Prospect Handbook was published, the 2011 sixth-round pick out of the University of California-Berkeley was ranked just 14th in a light Chicago White Sox system. (At the time, in-depth scouting reports were still in their nascent stages here at FanGraphs.)

In the 12 years since then, the 34-year-old Semien has gone on to exceed those modest expectations. He reached the big leagues with the White Sox in September 2013, then established himself as an everyday player after they traded him to the Athletics before the 2015 season. Now in his fourth year with the Rangers after six seasons in Oakland and one in Toronto, the Bay Area native has three All-Star selections, two Silver Sluggers, and a Gold Glove on his résumé. Scuffling in the current campaign — Semien has a 47 wRC+ over 176 plate appearances — he nonetheless has 1,533 hits, including 241 home runs, to go with a 108 wRC+ and 36.1 WAR over his major league career.

What did Semien’s Baseball America scouting report look like in the spring of 2013? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what then-BA contributing writer Phil Rogers wrote, and asked Semien to respond to it.

———

“The son of former California wide receiver [Damien] Semien, Marcus was a three-sport standout in high school who followed his father’s footsteps to Berkeley, where he focused on baseball.”

“I actually just played basketball and baseball in high school,” Semien replied. “I was part of a state championship runner-up in my senior year, so I missed probably the first three weeks of my [baseball] season. Once I graduated high school, I knew that baseball was all that I was going to play in college.” Read the rest of this entry »

Roll over Pete Rose, and tell Shoeless Joe Jackson the news. In an historic decision that reversed over eight decades of precedent, on Tuesday commissioner Rob Manfred formally reinstated Rose, Jackson, and 15 other deceased individuals who had previously been placed on the permanently ineligible list for violating Rule 21, which bars players, umpires, and club and league officials and employees from gambling on baseball. The move opens the door for Rose (and Jackson) to be considered for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but that opportunity won’t come until December 2027 at the earliest. Neither their placement on the Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot nor their election to the Hall is automatic even if they do become candidates, as the Hall’s heavy hand in committee proceedings — particularly with regards to players linked to performance-enhancing drugs — should remind us.

Given the extent to which Rose spent decades lying about his gambling and showing a lack of contrition even after he was banned — to say nothing of the allegations of statutory rape that surfaced in recent years — Manfred’s decision is a bitter disappointment, perhaps even a shock. While his decade-long tenure as commissioner has produced no shortage of grounds for criticism, he appeared to be hyper-conscious when it came to drawing a distinction between Major League Baseball’s recent embrace of legalized gambling, and the lines crossed by those who flouted Rule 21. Last June, Pirates infielder Tucupita Marcano was placed on the permanently ineligible list for making 387 baseball bets totaling $150,000 through a legal sports book, while in February, an arbiter upheld the firing of umpire Pat Hoberg for sharing legal sports betting accounts with a professional poker player who bet on baseball, and for impeding MLB’s investigation. Rose’s gambling, via bets placed through bookies, was illegal at the time as well as completely out of bounds given his role within baseball.

Manfred’s latest move was driven by the Rose family’s petition to remove Rose — who died last September 30 at the age of 83 — from the permanently ineligible list so that he can be considered for election to the Hall. Rather than just revisit Rose’s eligibility, however, the commissioner chose to issue a broader ruling that erased what had previously been a meaningful distinction between a popularly misunderstood “lifetime ban” (i.e, one ending with the death of the banned individual) and a permanent spot on baseball’s blacklist. Created by commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1920, the permanently ineligible list was reserved for those found to have gambled on baseball (plus a few who committed other transgressions Landis viewed as grave) from future participation within the game. Read the rest of this entry »