Baseball fans are often unhappy with projections, and they seem to enjoy sharing that unhappiness with me. That’s hardly surprising, of course — projections have large error bars (which we try to express when discussing them), and on some level, they represent a computer saying mean things about players you might like. You probably aren’t shocked by this, though you might be surprised to learn that the time of year I get the most complaints is during the stretch run rather than the preseason. And while some of the complaints I hear are about projections that missed the mark, the majority are about how little the in-season projections have changed since the start of the year. It can be frustrating when a player who is slugging .500 despite a preseason SLG projection of .350 only has a rest-of-season SLG projection of .400. Clearly, the conventional wisdom says, the projections are too slow to change.

Ben Clemens has written a number of pieces auditing our playoff odds, and while they aren’t as meticulously perfected as a 1996 Lexus, they’re pretty darn good. These calculations rely heavily on our in-season projections, which at their gooey, caramel center are an attempt to combine what we knew about a player or team before the season (in the form of preseason projections) with what we’ve learned since.

The relevant question then becomes how much a few months of performance should change what we thought about a player in March. And as it turns out, it’s less than the folks who find projections frustrating might think. When it comes to ZiPS, the preseason projections, both for teams and individual players, are more predictive of rest-of-season performance than season-to-date numbers. That holds true even very late in the season, when there’s been a lot of cumulative in-season performance to look at. I’ve tested preseason projections versus in-season performance as late as September 10 each year, and the preseason projections never clearly do worse than the in-season stats. Since we’re right at the start of September, I thought this would be a good opportunity to look at how the ZiPS preseason projections stack up against March-through-August performance when it comes to projecting what happens in the final month of the season.

And to be clear, I don’t think this preseason edge is exclusive to ZiPS; I expect that Steamer and PECOTA perform similarly well. It’s just that I have a rather unique level of access to ZiPS. But data is more important than a simple claim, so let’s dig in. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s easy to forget that the trade deadline isn’t actually the last chance for teams to reload before the postseason. Players can join a team through waivers as late as August 31 — Monday, for those of you who, like me, have trouble keeping track of the calendar — and still be eligible for the playoffs.

It’s common practice for teams to put expensive vets on the wire to see if anyone will bite and take the contract off their hands. The Angels famously flooded the waiver wire in 2023, as their last-ditch effort to load up for a playoff run with Shohei Ohtani left backfired in a matter of days. This year, the biggest name on the move was Luis Robert Jr., who’s bound for Baltimore. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to give you a little cheat sheet for writing about deadline moves. If you’re talking about a seller who traded a player for a minimal return and you’re looking for silver linings, you can mention “opportunity.” It has two big advantages. First, it’s nebulous and hard to disprove. If you make a claim about a specific player, it might be wrong. If you say that a roster spot is an opportunity, how will someone counter that? But more importantly, roster spots really are opportunities, so your analysis will have the advantage of being correct. Case in point: Nate Lavender.

If you’re wondering who that is, that’s exactly what I’m getting at. Lavender debuted on August 4, the day after the Mets sent half the team out of town at the trade deadline. He was one of five Mets pitchers called up that day, a hockey-style line shift in the bullpen. Not all of them panned out. Xzavion Curry and Chayce McDermott are back in the minors. Jefry Yan has a fun strikeout celebration and a 5.18 FIP. But Lavender has been good enough that he’s worked his way from his big league debut into a setup role in three weeks. Opportunity, indeed.

A quick recap of Lavender’s minor league career: He was the Mets’ 14th-round draft pick in 2021, climbed the minor league ladder despite below-average velocity and stuff, and then blew out his elbow early in the 2024 season. He had an internal brace surgery that summer, and then the Rays plucked him away in the Rule 5 draft that December. They parked him on the 60-day injured list for the entirety of the 2025 season, as a bone spur in his elbow delayed his rehab. When the year ended and the 60-day IL disappeared, the Rays returned him to the Mets rather than place him on their 40-man roster. Read the rest of this entry »

Tristan Peters was hardly on anyone’s radar entering the season. A lefty-swinging 26-year-old center fielder playing for his fourth organization since being drafted in 2021, he didn’t land on any preseason top prospects list or even project to see much time in the majors, where in his brief career he’d gone 0-for-12. Yet Peters — whose résumé includes a stint with the Savannah Bananas in 2021, when they were a competitive collegiate summer league team instead of a barnstorming sensation — has become one of the season’s biggest and most pleasant surprises. While helping the AL Central-leading White Sox pull off an already-unprecedented turnaround, he landed on the All-Star team and ranks high on the rookie WAR leaderboard. Last week, he even earned a spot in the record books by homering in five consecutive games.

Peters began his binge — which took place entirely at Guaranteed Rate Field against the Mets and Rangers — on August 22 with a solo home run off New York’s Christian Scott, then followed it up the next day with a wall-scraping walk-off solo shot off Kodai Senga, breaking a 1-1 tie. Peters hit both blasts while using a yellow bat — a nod to his time with the Bananas. The streak continued with a two-run tater off Texas right-hander Kumar Rocker on August 24 (Chicago’s only runs in an 11-2 drubbing), then a solo homer off Peyton Gray the next night, and finally a two-run dinger off Robby Ahlstrom on August 26.

That 406-foot homer off Senga was Peters’ only one during this stretch with an estimated distance of at least 400 feet, and just his second to travel at least that far this season; he had a 410-footer off A’s righty Justin Sterner on July 10, the day he hit for the cycle. On that note, Peters finished a triple shy of the cycle on both August 25 and 26; the first of those efforts included a two-run double off Jacob deGrom. All told, he went 10-for-18 with three walks, three strikeouts, nine RBI, and a 1.500 slugging percentage during that five-game run, not too shabby for a guy whose last prospect report, under the Rays’ 2025 unranked “Depth Starters and Outfielders” section, referred to him as one of the team’s “smaller, contact-oriented corner outfielders at the upper levels without meaningful power.” Read the rest of this entry »

With Byron Buxton out with a hip impingement and no timetable for his return, the Twins were short one outfielder. Luckily for Minnesota, it just so happens that the team’s best prospect, Walker Jenkins, is a center fielder, and is looking a lot like a hitter who didn’t have much more to learn from facing Triple-A pitchers. The fifth pick in the 2023 draft, Jenkins was hitting .308/.407/.532 for a 142 wRC+ in 69 games for the St. Paul Saints when he got the call on Thursday. He started in center for all three games of the team’s weekend series against the White Sox.

Still just 21, Jenkins might have reached the majors even quicker than he actually did if not for sharing Buxton’s proclivity for landing on the injured list. Hamstring and quad injuries in 2024 held him to 82 games, while an ankle injury cost him two months of the 2025 season. An injured shoulder, earned by a collision with the Summit Beer advertisement on the right-center field wall, put him on the shelf for most of May. Since returning to the Saints in late June, Jenkins has been on a tear, hitting .335/.414/.603, topped off with an August line of .405/.484/.772 with eight of his 12 homers on the year.

While one could argue that the Twins should have called up Jenkins a month earlier — Minnesota right fielders have combined for 0.0 WAR — this is one case where I think the conservatism was warranted. With a long injury history, it made sense for Jenkins to get more time in the high minors, and his readiness only became glaringly obvious in recent weeks. His .252/.332/.394 translation through mid-July (by ZiPS) was certainly good enough to be playable, but his hot run has improved his Triple-A translation to a legitimately exciting .287/.364/.450 line on the season. Just to demonstrate what I mean by exciting, ZiPS was still on the fence with Jenkins when I published this season’s top 100 prospects list back in February; ZiPS ranked him outside the top 100, at 131st overall. But if ZiPS had known his 2026 numbers, it would have shot Jenkins all the way up to fourth on the list. Read the rest of this entry »

Tristan Peters was a 22-year-old San Francisco Giants outfield prospect when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in August 2022. Drafted in the seventh round the previous year out of Southern Illinois University, he had recently been acquired from the Milwaukee Brewers at the trade deadline in exchange for Trevor Rosenthal. His profile was modest. While he possessed potential, Peters was nonetheless unranked, with plenty of raw edges to be smoothed out if he hoped to one day reach The Show.

It took time, but his once-raw tools are now are shining brightly on Chicago’s South Side. Now with his fourth organization — the White Sox purchased his contract from the Tampa Bay Rays over the offseason — Peters is thriving to the tune of a .279/.344/.468 slash line, a dozen home runs, and a 128 wRC+ over 408 plate appearances. Moreover, he went deep for the fifth straight game on Thursday, tying a franchise record held by seven other players. Munetaka Murakami is among them, having turned the trick back in April.

The developmental strides Peters has made since we spoke four years ago this month? Peters told me that there have been “tons,” with defense standing out as an especially meaningful area of improvement. On the offensive end, he has made adjustments to his lower half, putting him “in a better position to swing,” thus allowing him to be “more powerful.”

His future was in doubt as recently as December. Nine days before Christmas, the 26-year-old native of Winkler, Manitoba was designated for assignment. Not surprisingly, he found himself not only wondering where his baseball journey would take him next, but also if a big-league uniform was part of that equation. Read the rest of this entry »

Three months ago, when MLB and the MLB Players Association made their first proposals for baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement, I wrote about how these offers were designed to be rejected, and that they would continue to be until January at the earliest. For that reason, I haven’t devoted much space in these mailbags to the various rounds of bargaining that have taken place this summer. We have real baseball games to cover.

That said, I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw the most drastic change in MLB’s latest proposal: In the offer sent to the union on Thursday, the league proposed instituting two free agent signing periods during the offseason, the first stretching from the first day of the Winter Meetings until December 21, and the second beginning the first week of February. The first period of no free agent signings would allow teams to trade players and re-sign their own free agents, while the second would be a complete blackout of big league transactions. So why is that funny? Well, because the league made clear that the players wouldn’t be able to get these free agent signing periods unless they agreed to a salary cap, as if the transaction limitations would be enough of a sweetener to get the players to give in. The union doesn’t want free agent signing periods because they would give ownership greater leverage during negotiations, potentially resulting in unfavorable contracts. Bruce Meyer, the interim executive director of the MLBPA, called the proposal “unserious.” We’ve got a long way to go.

If you want to read more about the latest proposal, you should check out Michael Baumann’s writeup from Friday. Otherwise, let’s get on to this week’s mailbag. We’ll be answering your questions about Julio Rodríguez’s hitting, the greatest World Series ever, and what would happen if home runs became automatic triples. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

As Pete Crow-Armstrong authors his breakout season and Chris Sale side-eyes Laz Diaz, the battle for the future of baseball rolls quietly on in the background. On Thursday, MLB delivered to the MLB Players Association its latest set of proposals for the next collective bargaining agreement. This is news for nerds and diehards — you either have to love the minutiae of labor relations or have a vested interest in the structure of the Rule 5 draft to get excited about this stuff.

Fortunately, I know what my audience is. Read the rest of this entry »

Behold, a table. Does anything strike you as odd about this leaderboard?

Some of those guys are just the best relievers in baseball and have been for a while. We’ve also got a couple breakout relief aces from this season, including Brent Headrick, Erik Sabrowski, and Samy Natera Jr., who is apparently not the lead singer from Chicago. Don’t feel bad, it’s an easy mistake to make. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I saw Aaron Ashby lean on his loopy curveball when he found himself in a jam:

Later that day, I was watching the Tigers when Drew Anderson used his own big hook to finish off an at-bat:

I’m a longtime admirer of the giant 12-to-6 curveball, a pitch that is on the decline across the majors. There’s a good reason for that – without delving into it too deeply, velocity is very important. The league-wide curveball rate is down by nearly a quarter over the last decade, and the curves that remain tend to be harder and sharper than the ones I grew up seeing. But no amount of cold hard data about the pitch’s effectiveness would make it less visually enjoyable for me. So in this, the age of the looping breaker’s decline, I set out to find some good examples of my favorite pitch, even as guys throw it less and less frequently.

How do you define a looping curveball? My first thought was to look for the curveball that falls the most from its initial trajectory as it heads home. There’s just one problem with that definition, and that problem’s name is Victor Robles:

Amazingly, this clip doesn’t come from either the 22-0 or 19-2 blowouts the Mariners endured last week; they’re having some kind of month on the “getting blown out” front. But that perfectly located curveball had an absurd amount of downward movement because he threw it at 46 mph. I don’t even think it’s a curveball, to be honest; Statcast says it had nearly a foot of positive vertical break from backspin. In any case, clearly this criteria isn’t sufficient for our purposes. Read the rest of this entry »