This month I had the honor of filling out a Hall of Fame ballot for the third time, and once again I put checkmarks next to 10 names. As I wrote in last year’s explanatory column, I am both “a Big-Hall guy” and willing (albeit begrudgingly) to look past steroid implications. As I see it, the story of baseball in this era can’t be told without Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, each of whom got my vote.

That the story could reasonably be told without some of the names I’ve chosen to checkmark is, admittedly, a valid argument against exercising the full allotment. This is something I’ve chewed on, but ultimately decided isn’t the way I want to approach my ballot. The Hall includes a plethora of players who weren’t the best of the best — Bruce Sutter was no Warren Spahn; Rick Ferrell no Johnny Bench — and while “X is in, so should Y” is imperfect logic, so too is “Y wasn’t a Bench or a Spahn, so isn’t worthy.” Determining who merits a plaque in Cooperstown is anything but an exact science.

My 2023 selections — asterisks indicating that I voted for the player last year — are Bobby Abreu*, Carlos Beltrán, Todd Helton*, Andruw Jones*, Jeff Kent, Manny Ramirez*, Alex Rodriguez*, Scott Rolen*, Gary Sheffield, and Billy Wagner*.

Beltrán is new to the ballot. More on him in a moment. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago White Sox. 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 »

This offseason has seen an avalanche of activity early on, with 22 of our top 25 free agents signing before Christmas. But last night, we somehow doubled up. After an undisclosed medical issue held up the official announcement of Carlos Correa’s contract with the Giants, the entire deal fell through, and the Mets stepped into the fray, signing Correa to a 12-year, $315 million deal this morning, as Jon Heyman first reported.

I’ll let that breathe for a second so that you can think about it. The Giants went from laying out $350 million and adding a cornerstone player to their roster for more than a decade to nothing at all. The Mets went from a big free agency haul to an unprecedented one. Correa is going from shortstop to third base, and maybe losing one gaudy vacation home in the process when all is said and done.

The Mets had already spent heavily this offseason to shore up their pitching. With Jacob deGrom, Chris Bassitt, and Taijuan Walker all leaving in free agency, the team had a lot of high-quality innings to replace, and they did so in volume, adding Justin Verlander, Kodai Senga, and José Quintana. Those were in effect like-for-like moves, as was signing Edwin Díaz, Adam Ottavino and Brandon Nimmo after they reached free agency. The 2023 Mets stood to look a lot like the 2022 Mets in broad shape – most of their additions were either swaps (deGrom for Verlander) or small (Omar Narváez will be a platoon catcher, David Robertson will shore up the bullpen). 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 Houston Astros.

Batters

The top of Houston’s lineup is dominated by four stars, all of whom could be one of the top three players at their position in any given season. Yordan Alvarez has been ZiPS’ favorite young slugger for a long time, and it’s definitely not seeing anything to make it question its algorithmic stance. Similarly, the system has always been in the Kyle Tucker fan club. Alex Bregman‘s peak was probably in 2018 and ’19, but he remains an elite third baseman, which isn’t easy given the quality at that position right now. We can also be even more confident now that Jose Altuve’s 2020 season was a blip we don’t have to worry too much about. And while he’s entering the downside of his career, he’s starting from a really high point. He bumped his 3,000-hit probability up from 34% to 46% in a single season, and that’s a milestone that’s hard to sneak up on by the back door. 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 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 today’s team is the Cleveland Guardians.

Batters

José Ramírez can make up for a lot of sins, but he can’t carry an offensive single-handedly. But luckily for the Guardians, he looks to have more help than in recent years, even with the surprising and quick decline and departure of Franmil Reyes. Andrés Giménez had a dynamite season, and the fact that he was 23 minimizes the chances that it was a fluke. He is projected to “merely” be worth around four wins instead of six, but people tend to be too quick in assuming that a breakout season represents a complete change in a player’s baseline; the past still matters for players who have breakout (or breakdown) seasons. I’d really like to see the Guardians swap Giménez and Rosario in the middle infield; I think the former is the better defensive player and is likely to be a bigger part of the team’s future than the latter. It’s not inappropriate at all to use him at the more crucial position, though I understand if Cleveland takes a “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” approach and avoids making a change. I do hope he serves as the backup option at short, even if it’s just to preserve flexibility with him for after 2023.

Steven Kwan also has regression toward the mean in the projection — a slightly more serious one than Giménez’s, given that he didn’t start off as high. I don’t actually think ZiPS is wrong on this on, given that it certainly didn’t hate Kwan going into 2022, projecting him at .287/.343/.426 before the season (and I wager most people would have taken the under on that line). As a left fielder without a lot of power, there’s simply only just so much WAR upside at the position. Like Adam Frazier, he is going to susceptible to a huge dropoff on a poor BABIP season, though I think he’s clearly a superior offensive player. Read the rest of this entry »

Why would you want to add a top-tier shortstop in free agency? I can think of plenty of reasons. Maybe you lost just such a player to free agency this offseason; after all, for every star reaching free agency, there’s a team that employed them in 2022 and now has a hole at the position. Maybe you want to improve a team that’s solid elsewhere but has room to improve at shortstop; the Phillies fit that description exactly and snagged Trea Turner earlier this month. Maybe your plan to promote a top prospect is starting to feel risky; if Aaron Judge had left New York, the Yankees might have replaced some of his production in the form of a slugging shortstop.

Or maybe your team just wants to get better and spend more money to do so. For example:

BREAKING: Cubs and Dansby Swanson have an agreement on a seven-year deal for $177 million, per source. https://t.co/9cmtK9mLzL

— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) December 17, 2022

The Cubs weren’t close to contention in 2022, going 74–88 with underlying numbers that largely agreed with that assessment of their talent. They have interesting players on the major league roster and promising prospects nearing major league debuts, but even if several of those situations worked out, there’s a meaningful gap between 74 wins and the 93 the Cardinals posted to win the division. Heck, there’s a meaningful gap between 74 and 86, the mark the Brewers hit in a down year for them. If Chicago wanted to compete in 2023, it couldn’t sit pat. Read the rest of this entry »

Masataka Yoshida is MLB’s latest NPB import, having been inked to a five-year, $90M contract by the Boston Red Sox earlier this week. A 29-year-old, left-handed-hitting outfielder, Yoshida is coming off of a season where he slashed .335/.447/.561 with 21 home runs for the Orix Buffaloes… and it wasn’t a breakout season. He’s been one of the best hitters in Japan’s top league in each of the last five years.

Who is the best pitcher in NPB? I asked Yoshida that question on Thursday following his introductory press conference at Fenway Park.

“Probably Kodai Senga,” replied Yoshida, citing the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks right-hander who recently signed a 5-year, $75M deal with the New York Mets. “I think he was the best pitcher in Japan.”

Intrigued by that answer, I followed up by asking, via interpreter Keiichiro Wakabayashi, if he feels that Senga is actually better than his former Orix teammate, 24-year-old Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Read the rest of this entry »

Nine down, one to go. The 2022 free-agent signing period has been fast and furious. When Carlos Correa signed with the Giants earlier this week, he was the eighth of my top 10 free agents to sign. That breakneck pace hasn’t slowed. On Thursday night, Carlos Rodón and the Yankees agreed to a six-year, $162 million contract, as Jon Heyman first reported.

I pre-wrote some words on Rodón as a player, so let’s get to those before discussing the broader context of his signing. He’s a fascinating story, and yet simultaneously a very straightforward pitcher. He throws an overpowering fastball. He throws an overpowering slider. He throws them both very hard, and with solid accuracy. It sounds almost too simple, but both pitches are spectacular, and they pair well together. He’s going to throw them; the question is whether batters can hit them.

For the past two years, the answer has been a resounding no. In 2021, you could convince yourself it was just a hot streak. Rodón missed most of 2019 and ’20 due to injury, and he’d been roughly league average before that. The peripherals were excellent, and the pedigree was there — he was the third overall pick in the 2014 draft after a standout college career at North Carolina State — but he was a two-pitch pitcher with health concerns and one excellent season. To make matters worse, he looked fatigued at the end of the season — reasonably so given his workload increase — and lost fastball velocity until regaining it in the playoffs. The White Sox declined to issue him a qualifying offer, and he signed what was essentially a high-class prove-it deal with the Giants: two years and $44 million, with an opt out after the first year. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to start today by telling you something very obvious: the new hot trend in contracts this offseason is extremely long deals. You know it. I know it. Ken Rosenthal says it, so it must be true. Living legend Jayson Stark laid it out as only he can: we’ve seen three free-agent deals of 11 or more years in the last two weeks, as compared to one in the entire previous history of baseball.

What factors are behind this hot new contract structure? Did a financial consultant walk through the Winter Meetings whispering “long contracts are in, pass it on” to team employees? I truly wish that were the case. It could be my big break in starting up Ben Clemens Investigates, and I’ve always wanted to wear a Sherlock Holmes hat. Bad news, though: to the best of my knowledge, that didn’t happen. It didn’t have to happen. The incentives to offer long-term deals are mathematically based, and I’m frankly pretty annoyed that I didn’t see this coming in predicting contracts this offseason. Read the rest of this entry »