Yesterday, I looked into how the predictions at FanGraphs, both crowdsourced and those produced by me, matched the contracts awarded to free agents this offseason. Today, I’d like to dive into a few cases where I made mistakes in individual player predictions, as well as a few I think I did well on. In each case, I’ll try to come up with some takeaways for predicting contracts in the future.

Jacob deGrom
My prediction: 3 years, $141 million
Crowd prediction: 3 years, $120 million
Actual contract: 5 years, $185 million

My lesson here: Don’t predict an unprecedented contract if you’re aiming for accuracy. It made sense to me that Jacob deGrom would sign a deal that outstripped any before him when it comes to average annual value. He’s the best pitcher in the game when healthy, and that was enough for me. Why wouldn’t he have the biggest contract?

That’s a silly way of thinking about it in retrospect. He merited a huge contract, and he got one, but why in the world would someone with his injury history want a short-term deal? In all honesty, it doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. Predicting something outside of the ordinary is fine, but extraordinary predictions should require extraordinary confidence, not merely “I think this would be neat.” Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the New York Mets.

Batters

Closing a deal with Carlos Correa would obviously improve the team’s outlook, but the situation at third base — Correa’s likely position — is hardly dire. Eduardo Escobar is a league-average if quite unexciting player, and if his thumb is better, Brett Baty ought to provide additional depth as the season goes on. Even if I’m not quite as optimistic about Brandon Nimmo’s attendance record as the depth charts are, he has a long history of providing a lot of value even while missing a lot of games. Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor are elite players at their respective positions, and Jeff McNeil isn’t that far off that status. Mark Canha and Starling Marte make up a solid supporting cast. Read the rest of this entry »

Along with Johnny Evers and Joe Tinker — they of Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance fame — Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker are the most-storied double-play combination in baseball history. As well they should be. The Detroit Tigers duo played more games together (1,918) than any middle-infield duo in history. Moreover, they combined for 11 All-Star appearances, seven Gold Gloves, seven Silver Sluggers, and they won a World Series together. Both are icons for a franchise that has played in the American League since 1901.

Tinker and Evans, who played together with the Chicago Cubs from 1902-1912, are both in the Hall of Fame. So is Trammell. Meanwhile — this for reasons best explained as inexplicable — Whitaker is not. His exclusion stands as one of Cooperstown’s most glaring omissions.

Whitaker has more WAR and a higher JAWS score than a number of Hall of Fame second basemen, but that can be a debate for another day. For now, let’s focus on how he compares to Evers.

Whitaker: 2,369 hits, 244 home runs, 118 wRC+, 68.1 WAR.
Evers: 1,659 hits, 12 home runs, 109 wRC+, 49.0 WAR.

While Evers’s numbers are anything but great, it should be noted that he won an MVP award and played for three World Series-winning teams (the Cubs twice and the Boston Braves once). That said, it’s highly unlikely that he would be in the Hall of Fame were he not part of a legendary double-play combination (he and Tinker were Old-Timers-Committee selections in the same year). How they became legendary is, of course, a big part of the story. The poem penned in 1910 by sportswriter Franklin Pierce Adams reads: Read the rest of this entry »

For years, the baseball offseason had a predictable rhythm. When the World Series ended, we’d hit a lull. Around the Winter Meetings, a few Scott Boras clients would sign while he spouted strange, vaguely nautical similes. A few more marquee names would get caught up in Boras’ wake (see what I did there?) and sign as well. Then we’d have a lull around year end, and contract activity would pick up again in the new year.

That pattern hasn’t held even a little bit this winter. As of this writing, 45 of our top 50 free agents have signed, including the entire top 30; many guys who just missed the cut have signed as well. Four years ago, plenty of teams were still looking for free agent help in the first week of January. This year, your options are Johnny Cueto, Jurickson Profar, and then tumbleweeds.

This feels different than previous years of free agency, but I wanted to put some quantitative rigor behind that. I set out to compare this offseason to each previous one. I’ll spend plenty of time going through my methodology below, but first, let’s give the people what they want. This year really is different. Here’s the percentage of all free agents, weighted by previous year WAR, that had signed new deals by December 31 of each offseason since the conclusion of the 2000 season, excluding last year’s lockout weirdness:

The 2022-23 offseason (which I’ll be calling 2023 for simplicity’s sake for the remainder of the article) is tied for the most front-loaded offseason of this millennium. Given that offseasons had been getting progressively slower, that’s a meaningful change. Now, let’s talk about how I got to this conclusion, and come up with a few takeaways about the new landscape of free agency. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third 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 I 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 »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Batters

There are certainly some weaker spots in the Dodgers’ offense, and a bit less depth than usual, but like the Astros, as long as the top tier of the offense stays relatively intact, this group will still score a serious number of runs. Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, and Mookie Betts remain in the ultra-elite at their positions, and woe be unto anyone that underestimates these players. Gavin Lux, Chris Taylor, Miguel Vargas, and various fill-ins are also solid parts of the lineup. ZiPS is relatively bullish at DH; it sees J.D. Martinez as having a little more left in him, and Smith filling in doesn’t hurt given his potent bat and the fact that Los Angeles has one of the best backup catchers around in Austin Barnes.

Where ZiPS remains concerned is the non-Mookie outfield positions. Trayce Thompson did terrific work in 2022, and there’s a lot to like about James Outman, but ZiPS is definitely not sold on them necessarily being plan Bs. The LF/CF mix of Thompson, Outman, leftover infielders, Jason Heyward, and a dash of JDM and maybe Bradley Zimmer feels a lot more like the backup plan rather than the one you start April with. It really feels like there should have been a big offseason addition at at least one of these positions.

In the high minors, the Dodgers have their usual array of Interesting Dudes, with ZiPS being especially intrigued by Jorbit Vivas and, to a lesser extent, Andy Pages. Outside of Diego Cartaya, it just doesn’t feel that there are as many huge-upside guys as there usually are, and the system feels a bit light there. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Los Angeles Angels.

Batters

I remember the first time I visited Anaheim. A jewel along the Mississippi River, with its vast cornfields, state fairs with fried butter, and an easy drive from cities like Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati, or St. Louis. Hold on a jiffy, that doesn’t sound quite right. Anaheim is actually in southern California, not the midwest. My confusion, you see, stems from my opinion that the Angels, despite having two of the best players of this generation, are a Central division team. At least, they’re run like one.

The Angels aren’t afraid of a few big contracts, but when it’s time to fill out the roster, it’s all cost-cutting, “just good enough” thinking, and depth resembling a small puddle on a blazing hot day. Just good enough hasn’t, it’s turned out, actually been good enough, not by any stretch of the imagination. The Angels haven’t had a winning record since 2015. The Pirates have a win-loss record more recently in the black. Read the rest of this entry »

Tyler Black could follow in his father’s footsteps, but that’s not the path he’s pursuing. What the 22-year-old Toronto native wants to do is to play in the big leagues — a goal that is very much within his reach. Drafted 33rd overall in 2019 out of Wright State University, Black is an on-base machine who ranks No. 12 on our recently-released Milwaukee Brewers Top Prospects list.

The road not being taken is related to the youngster’s dream. His father is former TSN and CTV broadcaster Rod Black, whose three-plus decades behind the microphone had him calling games in a variety of sports, including baseball (one of his on-air partners was World Series hero Joe Carter). I asked the infielder/outfielder if he ever envisions himself describing the action on a diamond, court, or even a sheet of ice.

“Maybe when I’m done playing,” Black told me during his stint in the Arizona Fall League. “I’ve never really thought about it seriously, but I can say that it was definitely great growing up around sports. My dad used to announce Blue Jays games, Toronto Raptors games — pretty much everything — so I was always around ballparks, and around athletes. That kind of put me into the game.”

Legendary Blue Jays broadcaster Jerry Howarth, who was alongside Tom Cheek when the latter emoted “Touch ’Em All Joe!” — a moment that will forever live in Canadian baseball lore — is among those who reached out after Rod Black’s son was drafted by the Brewers. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2022, I once again had an opportunity to interview numerous people within the game. Many of their words were shared in my Sunday Notes column, while others came via an assortment of Q&As, feature stories, and the Talks Hitting series. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations, with the bolded lines linking to the pieces they were excerpted from.

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“I’d say Mike Trout is underrated. For one, he’s coming off an injury. Two, he’s playing with a two-way player who everybody goo-goo and ga-gas about. I’ll say this about Clayton Kershaw as well: When you do it for so long, people kind of get bored. It just becomes ho-hum.” — Dallas Keuchel, Chicago White Sox pitcher

“It was like, ‘Oh, this guy isn’t going to turn into a pumpkin. He’s real. There’s substance to this, he’s not just this novelty act with the shimmy and the shake, and the drop down.’ There are objective measures that say this guy is a high-level starter. Now it’s, ‘OK, how do we continue to build on that?’” — Matt Blake, New York Yankees pitching coach

“It’s part of what led us to George Kirby. He had very good stuff on draft day that turned into elite stuff once he got into our system… We feel like we can take good stuff and turn it into great stuff. We feel like we can take average stuff and turn it into plus stuff. It’s hard to look at a pitcher who only has stuff and say we’re going to make him into ‘a guy.’” — Jerry Dipoto, Seattle Mariners President of Baseball Operations Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Even without Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa — and with just a trickle of compelling new candidates — this year’s BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot doesn’t lack for controversy or tough decisions. The issue of performance-enhancing drugs continues to stand in the way of the candidates with the gaudiest statistics, and voters must also confront the matter of how much weight, if any, to accord the ballot’s notorious character clause. But with a deadline of December 31, a voter can deliberate for only so long, and so five weeks after my envelope arrived in the mail, it’s time to turn this thing around.

This is my third year with an actual ballot, but filling one out hardly feels like old hat, even with 21 years of analyzing Hall of Fame elections, and 19 years of doing so while armed with the system that became JAWS (next year, I’ll do something to celebrate). While so many mentors, peers, and colleagues have come and gone in this racket, I’m grateful to have stuck around long enough to have earned the right to vote, and it’s a privilege I embrace, even with the heightened scrutiny that comes with having a ballot.

In the weeks since the Hall unveiled this year’s 28-candidate slate, I’ve analyzed the top 17 candidates at length. That leaves 11 one-and-done stragglers to cover in early January, none of whom are in serious consideration for space on my ballot; indeed, none of those 11 has secured a single vote from among the 70 published in the Ballot Tracker as of 12:01 AM ET Thursday, but their careers deserve a proper valedictory. While I’ve mostly known whom I planned to include, I went through my full process before finalizing its contents, just as I did with my virtual ballots; particularly given my recent attempts to update the pitching side of JAWS, it never hurts to take another look. Read the rest of this entry »