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.

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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 »

The Giants made a giant splash on Tuesday night, signing the top free agent remaining, Carlos Correa, to a 13-year contract worth $350 million. One of the biggest free agents last year as well, he took a three-year deal with the Twins worth $105.3 million, but with an opt-out clause that allowed him to hit the open market if a second crack at it seemed like a good idea. After a .291/.366/.467, 140 wRC+, 4.4 WAR season in Minnesota, and an offseason with more owners more willing to make it rain than any year in recent memory, Correa took his shot. It was a well-aimed one.

BREAKING: Shortstop Carlos Correa and the San Francisco Giants are in agreement on a 13-year, $350 million contract, a source familiar with the deal tells ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 14, 2022

After Trea Turner got an 11-year, $300 million deal with the Phillies, and Xander Bogaerts landed $280 million from the Padres, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see Correa comfortably clear the $300 million mark. While he didn’t have the best season of these three shortstops, he’s two years younger than Bogaerts and has a longer track record of success than the remaining elite shortstop, Dansby Swanson (and is a tiny bit younger). As I feel with the Turner or Bogaerts signing, this isn’t really a 13-year deal in a meaningful sense, and while the Giants will undoubtedly be overjoyed if Correa is still a star in 2035, that’s a long time from now. Spreading it out over 13 seasons allows his pre-benefit luxury tax number to be just under $27 million a year, something which seems like an unbelievable bargain right now. It’s technically a 25% pay cut from 2022!

Over 13 years, ZiPS actually guessed slightly less on this one, a departure from the big contracts signed this fall. ZiPS has seen enough in recent years to move to a piecewise function, valuing the first win at $5.26 million and subsequent wins at $9.33 million and a 3% yearly boost in both of those numbers. The percentage boost may seem miserly, but MLB’s salary growth has been short of inflation for a while and certainly way behind revenue growth, and helped by COVID, the average salary increased by only $70,000 between 2017 and 2021. MLB’s competitive tax threshold will remain a significant pain point, as will each number that puts a team into the next “tax bracket.” That first threshold barely budges over the life of the new CBA, only increasing 1.5% a year, from $230 million to $244 million.

In all, ZiPS projected a $382 million deal for Correa with the Giants, with $350 million getting you almost through the end of the 10th season of the contract (2032). The Twins apparently offered him a 10-year, $285 million agreement prior to his signing with the Giants; if Correa had an impeccable sense of timing, they displayed a rather poor one. Essentially, Minnesota was fighting the last war rather than the current one, offering a 2022 contract in 2023. Entering the 2022 season, the ZiPS projection for Correa with the Twins for 2023–32 amounted to $278.7 million.

How big a deal is Correa entering free agency at 28 rather than 30? A pretty big one. Below are the ZiPS projections for if I change his 2023 age.

Yes, Correa hit the market a year older, but he also entered it with an additional essentially healthy season added to his résumé. During his age 22–24 seasons, a series of injuries resulted in him only being able to play in 294 out of a possible 486 games. For a player that young, it was an extremely concerning development. But he played in almost every game in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and 148 games in 2021. He missed a handful more games in 2022, but these maladies were more of the freak variety: an injured finger from a ball hitting his hand twice in a May game against the Orioles, and a stay on the COVID-19 list.

The cumulative missed time had an obvious effect on his long-term projections, and after ranking second in projected rest-of-career WAR in ZiPS before 2017, he slipped out of the top 20 before the 2020 season. Correa now has a mean projection of 42.4 career WAR remaining. With it looking increasingly likely that Fernando Tatis Jr.’s days a shortstop are mostly over, that’s enough to give him a projection of the best eventual career WAR of any active shortstop, slightly edging out the Mets’ Francisco Lindor.

The Giants have been active in free agency this winter, signing Mitch Haniger, Sean Manaea, Joc Pederson, and Ross Stripling already. However, while all of these players can contribute a lot in an NL West race, none can reasonably claim the mantle of a star, let alone that of a franchise-leading talent. San Francisco previously tried to burn down the NL West with an Aaron Judge signing, but the Yankees swept in to keep their franchise slugger. Truth be told, I think Correa’s a better fit for the Giants. They arguably need a shortstop more than a star corner outfielder, and Oracle Park is noted for its cruelty to power hitters of all stripes. While Correa hits for power, too, he’s more of the gap-to-gap type than pure loft. I’m slightly bearish on the projected home run totals for Correa, but I think he’ll hit more doubles and triples into Triples Alley in deep right-center than ZiPS envisions.

There’s unlikely to be any position controversy, even with Brandon Crawford signed for another season. While I wouldn’t anoint Crawford the best shortstop in Giants history — that plaudit better fits Travis Jackson or George Davis — he’s almost certainly the most valuable one for the franchise since Horace Stoneham hired the moving trucks in 1958. But Crawdaddy turns 36 next month and came back down to Earth after a fantastic 2021 season. Even more importantly, he’s in a contract year, and when Correa finishes his time in San Francisco, Crawford will probably have been retired for a decade. He’s still a fine defensive shortstop and ought to be a compelling replacement at third base over Evan Longoria and Wilmer Flores.

Losing Correa no doubt has to be disappointing for the Twins, but if they were willing to spend $285 million on him, there are other players out there. $285 million might land you Swanson and Carlos Rodón, and if not, at least the vast majority of their salaries. The AL Central is up for grabs, and that kind of investment may make a bigger difference there than any other division in baseball. It would be a shame if the Twins simply put that cash back in their pockets.

After seeing 36 wins evaporate from 2021 to 2022 and with the Dodgers and Padres looking like first-tier contenders, the Giants had a choice either to go big or to accept their lot as NL West underdogs. They went big, giving out the largest payday, by far, in team history. While the Giants have given out big extensions before, they only signed a single free agent to a $100 million dollar contract between Barry Zito and now (Johnny Cueto). The NL West just got a lot more exciting.

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 next up is the Oakland Athletics.

Batters

Are the A’s the most boring organization in baseball? There are other teams that are in the basement, but the Rockies do outright nuttier things, the Pirates always have a highly interesting player or two, the Tigers bring in the occasional big-name free agent, and the Reds have a few compelling pitchers. Looking around the diamond, the A’s are safely above replacement level nearly everywhere, but outside of a few players, such as Esteury Ruiz, it doesn’t feel like there’s any upside scenario compelling enough to cancel out all of the bland, featureless gray. Not to pick on Jace Peterson, but he feels like a pickup emblematic of this team: he’s cheap and he’s been useful at times, but no matter what happens, he’s likely to just be the Jace Peterson we know. Read the rest of this entry »

The Oakland Athletics are in search of a new ballpark, either within Oakland or elsewhere — most likely Las Vegas. If and when that comes to pass, the aging Coliseum will probably be torn down. And here’s where the A’s lose me: They seem to be under the impression that their active players must all be evacuated in the form of being traded to other organizations before the ballpark is destroyed.

The Atlanta Braves were in no hurry to disabuse Oakland of this notion, as they pried catcher Sean Murphy from Oakland’s clutches Monday afternoon as part of a three-team deal with the Milwaukee Brewers. Four weeks ago I wrote about the trade market for Murphy, made expendable in Oakland by the emergence of Shea Langeliers, who came over from the Braves in the Matt Olson trade. Therein, I specifically noted the Braves as a team that should not trade for Murphy, owing to Atlanta’s surfeit of catchers: Travis d’Arnaud and William Contreras.

Sure enough, with Murphy coming in, not one but two catchers are heading out. Contreras is headed north, while third-stringer — and longtime Brewers backup — Manny Piña will go to Oakland. Speedster Esteury Ruiz is also headed down the John Jaha Highway from Milwaukee to Oakland, and no fewer than five pitchers fill out this salad bar of a trade: Freddy Tarnok, Kyle Muller and Royber Salinas from Atlanta to Oakland, Joel Payamps from Oakland to Milwaukee, and Justin Yeager from Atlanta to Milwaukee.

Here’s the entire three-team, nine-player deal in table form, for clarity’s sake.

Nine players makes for a big trade, but nevertheless, let’s go through each name in at least some detail before drawing conclusions. Read the rest of this entry »

When I read today’s ZiPS projections for the Blue Jays, I was struck by one clear weakness: starting pitching depth. The team boasts an impressive lineup across the board, with Lourdes Gurriel Jr. the closest thing to a weak spot. Toronto also has two borderline aces in Alek Manoah and Kevin Gausman.

That sounds great, but the fourth and fifth starters are projected for a combined 1.7 WAR, which is wildly uninspiring. That hardly seems like a smart plan for a presumptive playoff team, but the Jays are no dummies. Those projections are now outdated — sorry Dan! — because Chris Bassitt is headed north on a three-year, $63 million deal, as Jeff Passan first reported.

Bassitt isn’t the best pitcher to reach free agency this season, but he’s squarely in the top tier. I ranked him 14th among the top 50 free agents this offseason, with only four pitchers ahead of him. Rational observers could certainly differ on that; he’s at the head of a large pack of starters who I think will deliver roughly equivalent value over the next few years. But the general point holds: he’s the kind of pitcher that you probably don’t want starting your first game of the playoffs but that you’d be ecstatic to have as a third starter. Read the rest of this entry »