Last month, the Braves retainedRaisel Iglesias following a rollercoaster season in which he temporarily lost his closer job before reclaiming it and dominating down the stretch. Mind you, a stretch during which the team was playing out the string on its way to an 86-loss season and a fourth-place finish in the NL East. Now Atlanta has added another late-game reliever in Robert Suarez, who after opting out of his deal with the Padres has agreed to a three-year, $45 million contract with the Braves.
Suarez, who will turn 35 on March 1, spent the past four seasons with the Padres after pitching in Japan from 2016–21, a span interrupted by Tommy John surgery in ’17. After a strong stateside debut in 2022, he rejected a $5 million player option and quickly re-signed with San Diego on a five-year, $46 million contract. That deal paid him $10 million annually from 2023–25 and included performance bonuses as well as a pair of $8 million player options, which he declined after this year’s World Series, allowing him to hit the open market. Reportedly, his new deal pays him $13 million in 2026, with salaries of $16 million in both ’27 and ’28; none of the money is deferred. With that, the Braves currently have the relievers with the fifth- and sixth-highest average annual values in the majors, with only Edwin Díaz ($23 million AAV), Josh Hader ($19 million AAV), Tanner Scott ($18 million AAV), and Devin Williams ($17 million AAV) ahead of Iglesias ($16 million, on a one-year deal) and Suarez ($15 million AAV).
Suarez made the NL All-Star team in both 2024 and ’25 while closing for the Padres, putting up a pair of superficially similar seasons: a 2.77 ERA in 65 innings, with 36 saves (third in the league) in 42 opportunities in the former, and a 2.97 ERA in 69 2/3 innings, with an NL-high 40 saves in 45 opportunities in the latter. Below the surface, his FIP dropped from 3.49 to 2.88, driven by a spike in strikeout rate from 22.9% to 27.9%, and less dramatic drops in his already-low walk rate (from 6.2% to 5.9%) and home run rate (from 0.97 per nine to 0.78). As a result of that improved FIP, his WAR more than doubled, from 0.9 to 1.9. Read the rest of this entry »
ORLANDO — Congratulations, everybody. We made it. It’s now Thursday, and the Winter Meetings have officially concluded. It’s time to reflect on the state of effort in Major League Baseball, and I am pleased to report that it is strong. At this time last year, we had seen 22 We Trieds (though a few more would be added retroactively due to a rule clarification). As of now, we’re sitting at 24, so let’s take a moment to congratulate all the agents, the anonymous sources, and the reporters who took us this far. As always, I invite you to peruse this vast bounty on the official We Tried Tracker.
Before we break down the last couple days, I should start with an important update on the most recent entry of this series. When news broke that the Giants asked for Tatsuya Imai’s medicals even though they didn’t plan on pursuing him, I gave it an intentionally cumbersome moniker: We’re Not Even Going To Try, So Don’t Bother Getting Your Hopes Up. This was a classic defense mechanism. I went with the big, long name to deflect from the fact that I couldn’t come up with a clever, pithy one. But the right name came to me this week. In the future, such a move will be known as a Pre-Tried. I have spoken.
Since that last update, Bob Nightengale took a new angle on this exercise, packaging the news that the Reds “were hoping to sign” Devin Williams with the news that they had actually re-signed Emilio Pagán. It’s a brilliant maneuver. You sign a lesser player while also announcing that you were also thinking even bigger. We Trieds are all about partial credit, but here are the Reds, breaking out the razzle dazzle and running an end-around in a bid for double credit!
This strategy is also something of a double-edged sword, though. Some fans might give the Reds the double credit they want, but it’s also easy to take the information in the other direction. The Reds held onto a good reliever, Reds fans! Let’s celebrate! Oh, also, they only got him because they tried and failed to get an even better reliever? Do you still want to celebrate? Try pulling that move with a child. Take them to an ice cream shop and get them a kid’s cone. Once they’ve given it a big lick and smiled their adorable little smile, lean over and say, “You know, I was hoping to get you a giant ice cream sundae, but you’ll have to settle for this little one because the New York Mets ordered it first.” Read the rest of this entry »
For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the New York Yankees.
Batters
The Yankees aren’t the flashy spenders they used to be, but they still put very good teams on the field year after year, and the memory of their rather down 2023 is now another season further back in the rear view mirror. Most fanbases would be happy with a 94-68 season, but with New York no longer the big dogs when it comes to payroll, there’s an odd portion of the faithful who have come to believe that the team is fundamentally broken and needs to bunt a lot more and stop using analytics, which is a bit like wanting to fix your constantly running toilet by converting your toolshed into an outhouse. In reality, the Yankees are just a normal really good franchise these days.
The offense, of course, starts, ends, and runs through Aaron Judge. I don’t think I need to spend too much time cataloguing his merits, other than to note that he’s already passed the bus test for me — as in, if he got hit by a bus tomorrow, he’s already done enough in his career to be Cooperstown bound as far as I’m concerned. It is a little odd, though, that when we talk about players who have established their Hall of Fame credentials, we always seem to have them meet their demise via some mishap with mass transit. Read the rest of this entry »
After a somnambulant first day of the Winter Meetings, one of the buzzier rumors involved free agent first baseman Pete Alonso getting in his car, driving up I-4 from his home in Tampa to Orlando, and pitching himself in person to the Red Sox and Orioles.
Apparently, those meetings went well. The drive from New York to Baltimore mostly takes place on expensive toll roads, but Alonso now has an extra $155 million to put on his EZ Pass account. Big Pete, the Polar Bear, the face of the Mets’ franchise, is bound for Baltimore on a five-year contract. Read the rest of this entry »
No player, not even Bryce Harper, has personified the Phillies’ recent run of four straight trips to the postseason more than Kyle Schwarber. Faced with the prospect of losing their signature slugger to the division rival Mets, Philadelphia instead retained Schwarber on a five-year, $150 million deal, news of which enlivened the Winter Meetings here in Orlando on Tuesday.
Schwarber, who turns 33 on March 5, hit .240/.365/.563 and led the National League with 56 home runs and 132 RBI while playing in all 162 games in 2025. He set career highs in home runs, RBI, games played, slugging percentage, wRC+ (152), and WAR (4.9). The last of those marks owed plenty to manager Rob Thomson’s limiting him to eight games in left field, where he’s a major liability, having totaled -37 FRV and -34 DRS in 2022–23. Only Shohei Ohtani took more plate appearances as a designated hitter in 2025 than Schwarber’s 687.
Schwarber’s season — which propelled him to a second-place finish in the NL MVP voting behind Ohtani (who won unanimously) — may have been a career year, but it was no fluke. Thanks to his ongoing work with hitting coach Kevin Long, who joined the Phillies just a few months before Schwarber signed his four-year, $79 million deal with them in March 2022, he has evolved from a pushover against lefties into a top threat in those matchups. From 2015–21 with the Cubs, Nationals, and Red Sox, Schwarber hit just .214/.324/.361 (86 wRC+) in 584 plate appearances against lefties, making 100 PA against them just twice and topping a 100 wRC+ against them only in the last of those seasons, during which he bounced from Washington to Boston. He has topped 200 plate appearances against lefties in all four of his seasons with the Phillies, and he was an above-average hitter against them in each of the last three. Over the past two years, his 524 plate appearances against lefties led the majors, while his 157 wRC+ (.275/.385/.547) and slugging percentage both ranked second behind Yordan Alvarez (albeit in just 247 PA). By comparison, he hit .244/.365/.525 (143 wRC+) against righties in that span. Read the rest of this entry »
In the last competitive major league baseball game of 2025, the Dodgers used six pitchers, five of whom had spent most or all of their careers as starters. They used all four pitchers from their playoff rotation, most notably getting eight outs from Yoshinobu Yamamoto on zero days’ rest to close out the 11-inning contest. Manager Dave Roberts had run out of patience with his high-leverage bullpen, a group that had already been reinforced with starter Roki Sasaki late in the regular season.
The Dodgers, the best team in baseball, a force so immutable it got the American public to turn on capitalism, had a crappy bullpen.
On the second day of baseball’s Winter Meetings, the Dodgers signed Edwin Díaz to a three-year, $69 million contract.
For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Milwaukee Brewers.
Batters
Over the last five or six years, the ZiPS projected standings have tended to underrate the Brewers, but not because of the projections themselves. Instead, this has mostly been because of me. ZiPS is neither systemically high nor low on Brewers players, but I tend to be way too conservative when making depth charts for the simulations in the spring. Typically, when ZiPS spits out a bunch of interesting projections for fringy guys on Milwaukee, I tell myself, “Sure, but no way the Brewers actually gamble and play those guys.” And then, well, they do. So when ZiPS has projected Joey Ortiz to get 2.3 WAR per 600 plate appearances, tabbed Isaac Collins and Caleb Durbin to be roughly league-average starters given full-time play, and liked a whole bunch of random fifth-starter types as relievers, I’ve chickened out and knocked the team down a peg, only for the Brewers turn out to be braver than I thought. So this time around, I’m going to go all in on the interesting guys! And hopefully, this won’t be the year the Brewers get boring.
As for 2025, Milwaukee didn’t get to the World Series, but the team did outlast all but one National League club. For much of the summer, the Brewers were flaming hot, prematurely ending what looked like an interesting NL Central battle with the Cubs, and winning the most games in baseball.
Will they win 97 games again? Probably not. But at the risk of facing the wrath of fans, these Brewers look a lot like one of the good Cardinals teams, in that while they’re not loaded with stars, they’re absolutely rock-solid almost anywhere. At eight of the nine lineup positions, ZiPS projects them at league average or better, usually on the side of “better.” What makes this lineup especially fascinating is that the floor is pretty high because the Brewers generally have pretty respectable plan B options. The outfield is jugglable, and the platoon splits and bat/glove pairs match up really well. ZiPS thinks Andruw Monasterio or Eddys Leonard — recently signed to a minor league deal — are good infield depth, and that Cooper Pratt and quite possibly Jesús Made could be ready surprisingly quickly. (ZiPS thinks Pratt’s 2025 was better than it looked.)
Now, William Contreras would be the hardest player to replace if he were to go down with an injury, but Jeferson Quero gets a pretty decent projection behind the plate. The only starter ZiPS doesn’t really like is Andrew Vaughn, but it’s certainly possible that the projection system isn’t giving him enough juice for being free of the White Sox, who never really appeared to know what to do with him after he didn’t debut to instant stardom. The Brewers won’t have an elite offense, but they ought to have a good one that’s fairly dependable.
Pitchers
The rotation projections aren’t quite as exciting, partially due to the relatively low number of projected innings. But even if there’s no Tarik Skubal or Garrett Crochet at the top, there’s nothing wrong with a starting five of Freddy Peralta, Quinn Priester, Brandon Woodruff, Chad Patrick, and Jacob Misiorowski. ZiPS thinks you could easily slot in basically any of Logan Henderson, Robert Gasser, or Tobias Myers without damaging the rotation. That’s good depth, and I’d normally be skeptical about the Brewers giving much time to Coleman Crow, but as I said up top, I’m switching things up this year and being more open to the possibility that maybe the organization sees the same thing that the projections do.
Milwaukee’s bullpen is the best projected so far this ZiPS season, edging out that of the Phillies. The worst projected ERA (as a reliever) for any of the 12 pitchers with 30 bullpen innings on the current depth chart is Rob Zastr…z…err…something (hey, my last name is Szymborski so I get to make that joke) at 4.19. ZiPS even thinks that a few of the less talked about starting pitching prospects, most notably Tate Kuehner and Tyson Hardin, could finish with an ERA in the threes as full-time relievers. If the Brewers think that’s a possibility, given their history, I wouldn’t be against them.
Like the classic good Cardinals teams, the Brewers could win somewhere between 86 and 94 wins or so, and I wouldn’t bat an eye at any of that. But I also think they have one of the lowest chances of any team to be lousy. Your Toyota Camry may not be flashy, but it’s going to probably still be a usable car in 15 years while your neighbor’s Audi is slowly bankrupting them. This is a good team with a high floor, and I hope this is the year I’m finally smart enough to trust in Milwaukee’s creativity.
Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.
Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.
Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.
As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on Bluesky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2026 Hall of Fame ballot. Initially written for The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books, it was subsequently adapted for SI.com and then FanGraphs. 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.
It happened so quickly. Freshly anointed the game’s top prospect by Baseball America in the spring of 1996, the soon-to-be-19-year-old Andruw Jones was sent to play for the Durham Bulls, the Braves’ High-A affiliate. By mid-August, he had blazed through the Carolina League, the Double-A Southern League, and the Triple-A International League, then debuted for the defending world champions. By October 20, with just 31 regular-season games under his belt, he was a household name, having become the youngest player ever to homer in a World Series game, breaking Mickey Mantle’s record — and doing so twice at Yankee Stadium to boot.
Jones was no flash in the pan. The Braves didn’t win the 1996 World Series, and he didn’t win the ’97 National League Rookie of the Year award, but along with Chipper Jones (no relation) and the big three of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, he became a pillar of a franchise that won a remarkable 14 division titles from 1991 to 2005 (all but the 1994 strike season, with ’91–93 in the NL West and ’95–05 in the revamped NL East). From 1998 to 2007, Jones won 10 straight Gold Gloves, more than any center fielder except Willie Mays. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the navigation tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.
On an eight-man Hall of Fame ballot featuring three players who were linked to performance-enhancing drugs, and four others who had shortened careers that ended by age 37 due to declines accelerated by injuries, it appeared from the outset of this cycle that Jeff Kent — a former MVP who holds the record for most home runs by a second baseman — had the easiest path to a plaque. Sure enough, when the votes from the 16-member Contemporary Baseball Era Committee were counted at the Winter Meetings on Sunday in Orlando, Kent was the lone candidate elected to the Hall. He’ll be inducted on July 26, 2026 in Cooperstown alongside any candidates elected by the BBWAA.
Meanwhile, in a repudiation that echoed the one that he received from the 2023 edition of this committee, Kent’s former Giants teammate and clubhouse nemesisBarry Bonds again received fewer than five votes. So did Roger Clemens (again) and first-timer Gary Sheffield, the two other candidates connected to PEDs, as well as the late Fernando Valenzuela. Based on a new rule introduced earlier this year, all four are ineligible for consideration on the 2029 Contemporary Baseball ballot, assuming the format goes unchanged; the earliest they can next appear is the 2032 ballot, to be voted on in December 2031. If any of those candidates again slips into the fewer-than-five zone, they will be ineligible for future consideration, period — an aspect of the rule that appears ripe for abuse given the heavy hand the Hall has demonstrated when choosing its committees.
Astute readers of my coverage will note that those four candidates were the ones from this ballot whom I endorsed for election. I argued that Valenzuela, who barely made a dent in two years on the BBWAA ballot (2003–04), should be considered primarily as a modern-day pioneer for serving as a beloved global ambassador and international icon who brought generations of Mexican American and Latino fans to baseball. That’s on top of a very good — but not Hall-caliber — playing career which included six All-Star selections and four top-five finishes in the Cy Young voting, highlighted by his incredible age-20 season, in which he won the NL Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards, led the Dodgers to their first championship in 16 years, and emerged as the centerpiece of a cultural phenomenon, Fernandomania.
As for Bonds, Clemens, and Sheffield, this was an extension of the support I gave them during their tenures on the BBWAA ballot, first virtually and then once I joined the voting pool starting with the 2021 cycle. All three were among the very best of their day, with Bonds and Clemens perhaps the best position player and pitcher of all time — period. As for their connections to PEDs, I’ve long drawn a distinction between PED use that dated to the time before testing and penalties were in place, when a complete institutional failure prevented the league and the union from adopting a coherent drug policy. This isn’t a fringe view within the BBWAA electorate, either. Particularly once Bud Selig, who as commissioner presided over the game’s steroid mess, was elected to the Hall via the 2017 Today’s Game election, all three received support from a substantial majority of Hall voters, climbing to at least 63% by the end of their runs on the ballot (2022 for Bonds and Clemens, 2024 for Sheffield). Read the rest of this entry »
On Saturday afternoon, the Mariners traded catching prospect Harry Ford to the Nationals in exchange for Jose A. Ferrer; the Mariners also sent right-handed pitcher Isaac Lyon, their 10th-round pick from this year’s draft, to Washington. Robert Murray of FanSided had the news first.
This is a trade that raises a few eyebrows. While Ford moved through the minor leagues slowly by modern standards, he’s been a consensus Top 100 prospect for nearly three years now. It’s a little jarring to see someone of that caliber dealt for a reliever, particularly one with pedestrian surface-level numbers and good but not sterling peripherals. My initial reaction was that Seattle sold low on Ford, though further review has changed my thinking a little. Let’s dive in.
The Mariners’ side of this takes a little more nuance to work through, so we’ll start with their situation. Ford is a good, if not great prospect. He’s been on our Top 100 list for a couple seasons now on the strength of a well-rounded game, finishing the 2025 season ranked 43rd overall as a 50 FV. He can hit a little bit, there’s average power that he’s learning to tap into, and he’s growing into a reliable, if unspectacular defender behind the plate. There isn’t much star potential here, and I’ll say more on why that is in a bit, but he does project as a regular.
But Ford was also as blocked as any prospect in the minors, stuck behind MVP runner up Cal Raleigh. Raleigh is durable, excellent, and thoroughly entrenched after inking a six-year extension this past March. The Mariners had experimented with Ford in the outfield to see if they could find something else for him to do, as it’s been clear for a while now that his future would not be behind the plate in Seattle. He’s been an obvious trade candidate for at least a year, and the only surprise is that it took so long for the M’s to move him. They’ve reportedly been shopping him for impact relievers elsewhere; frankly, this is a swap that would have made a ton of sense four months ago, when Ford was just as blocked and the Mariners could have used more relief depth in front of Andrés Muñoz and Matt Brash for their playoff push. Oh well, not like it bit them in the butt during October.
So, trading Ford makes sense. But for Ferrer? A guy with a 4.36 career ERA? Don’t they have holes around the infield, ones they may need to fill via trade since it seems like their off-season budget is pretty modest? What gives?
As readers likely know, Ferrer’s numbers under the hood are much better than his ERA. His FIP over the last two years is under 3.00, thanks to tiny walk and home run rates. He’s also one of the league’s foremost groundball generators. His groundball rate is just over 60% for his career, and of the pitchers who threw at least 50 innings in 2025, only José Soriano, Jhoan Duran, and Tim Hill topped Ferrer’s 62.6% mark. As you’d expect, it’s really hard to drive the ball against him, and he only allowed five long balls in 76.1 innings of work in 2025. He takes full advantage of his ability to dampen damage on contact, pounding the zone to the tune of a 2.21 career BB/9 rate and an in-zone pitch rate of nearly 60% (roughly the 90th percentile for the league).
And of course, the Mariners aren’t just acquiring those numbers. They’re trading for the chance to unlock more, and you can see compelling paths forward here.
This season, Ferrer mostly just pounded the zone with his sinker while mixing in a changeup about 20% of the time and a slider once or twice an outing. His sinker is quite good, as it sits in the upper 90s, touches 100, and features plus tail. It’s a quick and reliable way for him to generate outs, and you can see why he leans on it. But like most pitchers who spam the fastball, there’s an argument for a usage adjustment here. The changeup performed very well in 2025, generating big whiff and chase rates, and hitters didn’t do much with it even on contact. He could probably stand to use it more.
The real path forward may be the slider, though. Ferrer’s sits in the low 90s and has tight, two-plane movement, not quite cutterish but in the neighborhood. His command of it isn’t great, generally in the dirt to the glove side, but whether it’s because guys don’t expect the Spanish Inquisition or they’re just not seeing his spin very well, opponents did absolutely nothing with it and whiffed more than half the times they swung. The Mariners have had a lot of success getting fastball-heavy arms to diversify their arsenal — Logan Gilbert and Bryce Miller are two obvious examples — and it would come as no surprise if they have Ferrer lean on the bender a lot more going forward.
Put everything together, and you can imagine why Seattle sees Ferrer as an impact reliever, the kind worth parting with a top prospect for. Sources from around the game like Ferrer as an upside play. He throws hard, he pounds the zone, he has three pitches that flash plus, and there’s a relatively straightforward adjustment that could unlock more. With four years of team control left, he’s not even expensive. He lengthens the bullpen and gives the Mariners a left-handed weapon of a magnitude they didn’t have last season. There’s always risk in acquiring relief pitching, but this looks like a safe way to add 1-1.5 WAR to the bullpen, and with his skills, a nutty, sub-2.00 ERA season is not outside the realm of possibility.
On Washington’s side, this also makes plenty of sense. Ferrer’s a tough guy to lose, but good relievers are a luxury on a rebuilding club and swapping bullpen arms for bats with everyday upside is a sound idea. That’s especially true behind the plate. Nationals catchers produced -1.4 WAR in 2025, last in the majors, and were awful on both sides of the ball. Led mostly by Riley Adams and Keibert Ruiz, the club’s backstops hit .225/.270/.322, good for a 65 wRC+ that was 29th in baseball. Thanks in part to Ruiz’s horrible framing numbers (his mark of -5.3 runs prevented was third from the bottom among all catchers, in 65 games no less), Washington’s catchers were also the league’s worst collective on defense as well. Ruiz was once a top prospect, but he’s now 27, has no approach, and is not exactly an asset defensively. It’s time to move on.
Enter Ford. A first round pick in 2021, Ford progressed slowly and steadily toward the big leagues before making his debut in September. His approach has been awesome: He has a very good eye, he recognizes soft stuff out of the hand, and while he doesn’t swing a ton, he reliably turns it loose on pitches he can drive. If you put a ton of stock in swing decisions, this is your guy.
Statistically, all is well. His production has been strikingly consistent, with Ford notching a wRC+ between 125 and 135 at each full-season level. He’s also posted very small deviations in his walk, strikeout, and — aside from 2024, which he spent in a huge, homer-suppressing yard — ISO numbers, all of which were encouraging. If you value consistent minor league production, this is your guy.
Scouts and evaluators are not universally sold on Ford’s ability to translate that production to the big leagues, though. His bat speed is average and he’s periodically struggled getting his bat to fastballs up in the zone. In his most recent prospect write-up, Eric covered an adjustment Ford made with his feet and timing that seems to have helped this season, but obviously the big leagues will provide a different stress test. I see an average bat with a chance to grow into average game power, but there are scouts who would take the under on both.
Ford’s defensive growth has mirrored his ascent through the minors. His framing has improved but is still fringy, and he may benefit from an ABS assist (though he was actually pretty bad at challenging pitches this season). He shines more in spots where his athleticism takes center stage. He’s quick on plays where the ball is tapped out in front of the plate, and he’s going to catch his share of baserunners. He has an above-average arm, his throwing accuracy has improved, and he caught nearly 25% of would-be-thieves in 2025. Early-career reports questioned whether he had too much trouble simply catching the ball, but his passed-ball figures have plummeted since 2023. I’m projecting an average defender, though again, there are evaluators who will take the under.
It all adds up to a 50 FV report, albeit one where there isn’t a lot of wiggle room if one of the tools doesn’t reach its projection or Ford’s approach buckles against better stuff. In truth, part of that projection is a reflection of the state of catching throughout the league; the bar for being an average regular isn’t very high right now. Still, if he’s average on both sides of the ball, that’s a good player, and he’s the kind of risk Washington should be taking at this stage. Ford could be part of the next good Nationals team, and even if he falls a little short of where we have him here, he’s likely steady enough to be a real upgrade over what they’ve trotted out in recent seasons.
Let’s quickly touch on the other player in the deal. Lyon, the son of former big leaguer Brandon Lyon, signed for nearly $200,000 this summer. He’s a good strike thrower with a bad fastball, a slider and change that flash average, and a delivery with some deception in it. He sat in the low 90s in short starts with Low-A Modesto, and could have another gear as he fills out. He projects as an up-down type and has a low-leverage relief ceiling if he can find a way to throw harder in shorter stints.
One other thing to note: With Ford now in Washington, Seattle will be in the market for a backup catcher. The club is reportedly open to a reunion with Mitch Garver, who hit 24 homers amidst otherwise disappointing production over the past two years as the club’s primary backup catcher; he also started at DH 22 times this season. While Raleigh plays nearly every day, he does DH fairly often, so whoever Seattle signs will probably start about 25% of the time behind the plate.
Ultimately, the deal helps both parties, and one exec I spoke with called it a “win win” move. The more I look at Ferrer, the more he seems like a reliever with another gear, a guy with closer stuff who is a plenty good fit for Seattle’s bullpen as is. Still, I think Washington did well here, getting a high-floor position player at an area of desperate need. The Paul Toboni era is here now, and Nationals fans should be enthused about his first big trade as president of baseball operations with the club.
