Jackson Jobe supplied a quality quote when asked about last weekend’s three-straight-heaters punchout of Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr..””I’m done with trying to dot a gnat’s ass,” he told a small group of reporters. “It’s, ‘Here’s my stuff. If you hit it, good. Odds are, probably not.”
Jobe is a student of the art and science of his craft, so I proceeded to ask him where he feels he is in terms development. Has the 22-year-old Detroit Tigers right-hander essentially settled into his mound identity, or is there still work left to be done in the pitch lab?
“I’d like to think I got it pretty much all fine-tuned,” replied Jobe, who is No. 9 on our Top 100. “Now it’s just learning the best way to use it, the best way to sequence it. I put my stuff up against anyone in the league on paper, to be completely honest. It’s just a matter of learning how to harness it.”
Asked about any recent changes to his pitch metrics, the rookie of the year candidate cited his slider. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth 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 we 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 »
You’ve all heard the terms “luddite” and “sabotage” before. They’re words with pejorative connotations: The former is someone who distrusts technological progress; the latter is the act of conspiring to destroy from within. Luddites and saboteurs are rubes and terrorists, respectively, in modern vernacular.
If the winter is a time for dreams, the spring is a time for solutions. Your team may have been going after Juan Soto or Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani, depending on the offseason, but short of something going weird in free agency (like the unsigned Boras clients last year), if you don’t have them under contract at this point, they’ll be improving someone else’s club. However, that doesn’t mean that spring training is only about ramping up for the daily grind. Teams have real needs to address, and while they’re no doubt workshopping their own solutions – or possibly convincing themselves that the problem doesn’t exist, like when I wonder why my acid reflux is awful after some spicy food – that doesn’t mean that we can’t cook up some ideas in the FanGraphs test kitchen.
This is the final piece in a three-part series in which I’ll propose one way for each team to fill a roster hole or improve for future seasons. Some of my solutions are more likely to happen than others, but I tried to say away from the completely implausible ones. We’ll leave the hypothetical trades for Bobby Witt Jr. and Paul Skenes to WFAN callers. Also, I will not recommend the same fix for different teams; in real life, for example, David Robertson can help only one club’s bullpen. I wrote about the teams in the two East divisions last Wednesday, and then covered the Central divisions on Friday. Today, we’ll tackle the 10 teams in the West divisions, beginning with the five in the AL West before moving on to their counterparts in the NL West. Each division is sorted by the current Depth Charts projected win totals.
Texas Rangers: Reunite with Kyle Gibson
Look at the Rangers in our Depth Charts projection and glance down at the pitchers. Do you see a problem? We project the Rangers to have a decent rotation, right at the back of the top 10, but that also relies on a lot of innings from pitchers who have not been able to throw many in recent years. Jacob deGrom and Tyler Mahle are both projected to throw more innings apiece than the two of them have thrown combined over the last two years. I’d love to see 270 innings from deGrom and Mahle, but to count on that is just begging for a sad story. I probably believe in Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter more than most, but neither of them should be counted on to solidify an injury-depleted rotation in 2025.
The Rangers need a reliable innings-eater, and old friend Kyle Gibson is still out there. He has made at least 30 starts in five of the last six full seasons, with the one time he didn’t reach that threshold coming in 2019, when he made 29 starts, appeared in 34 games, and put up 2.6 WAR across 160 innings — the fewest innings he’s thrown in that span, excluding 2020. He’s probably never again going to be as good as he was in 2021, when he was an All-Star with Texas before getting traded to the Phillies and finished with a 3.71 ERA, a 3.87 FIP, and 3.1 WAR, but Gibson comes with a fairly high floor. His performance last year with the Cardinals (4.24 ERA, 4.42 FIP, 1.5 WAR, 169 2/3 innings) was his least-productive campaign during that 2018-2024 stretch, but even that would benefit the Rangers right now.
Seattle Mariners: Add some Tork to the lineup
The Mariners have gotten more out of Luke Raley than they’ve had any right to, but he remains a platoon first baseman, with a .575 OPS in the majors against lefties. Even if he can do better than that — ZiPS thinks he’ll put up about a hundred more points of OPS in 2025 — he’s not David Ortiz against righties, so it’s hard to just give him a full-time job at first. The likely candidates to pair with Raley are thoroughly uninteresting, so why not look at Spencer Torkelson, a player who is just begging for a change of scenery? The Tigers have clearly soured on him; otherwise, they likely would not have signed second baseman Gleyber Torres and moved Colt Keith to first base to start there over Torkelson. He’s still young enough to have some upside and get things back on track, but even if he doesn’t ever reach his full potential, he ought to at least beat up on lefties. The Mariners could use more power, and I doubt the price tag will be high.
Houston Astros: Add a very boring arm
The Astros dug themselves a hole early on in 2024, in large part because of a spate of pitching injuries that tested their depth to the breaking point. Houston’s rotation ought to be good, but there still are a number of pitchers with injury concerns, once again leaving the team vulnerable to some bad health luck. The Astros could use some veteran depth to preemptively reinforce the rotation just in case someone goes down, and I think for them, Lance Lynn is the most interesting free agent still available.
The Astros are skilled at refining pitch arsenals, for both prospects and veterans, and Lynn has the weirdest repertoire of the remaining free-agent starters. Rather than the standard fastball-breaking-offspeed mix, Lynn basically throws a bunch of slightly-to-moderately different fastballs, making him the type of pitcher who could benefit from Houston’s wizardry. A sweeper could cause some additional tension for batters compared to his cutter, and he’s never really had a refined offspeed offering to use as a putaway pitch against lefties. The specifics would be for the Astros to figure out. Lynn also has expressed a willingness to pitch out of the bullpen after teams started inquiring about using him as a reliever, so even if Houston’s rotation remains in tact for the whole season, Lynn could still have a role.
Athletics: Get Sandy before heading to the desert
The good: The A’s actually spent some money this winter. The bad: We still project the A’s to have a losing record. The really bad: Our Depth Charts project the A’s to have a worse starting rotation than the White Sox. The Marlins are clearly in the shopping mood, having already sent away Jesús Luzardo, and with teams likely waiting to see how Sandy Alcantara fares after returning from Tommy John surgery, the A’s have an opportunity to jump the 2022 NL Cy Young’s trade market and steal a march on the better wild card contenders. A potential wrinkle here: The Yankees may be in the market for Alcantara now that Gerrit Cole is going to miss the 2025 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. Still, the A’s shouldn’t let that deter them from targeting an ace at a time when he could be relatively affordable.
Los Angeles Angels: Hire a team of archaeologists to design a very complex treasure hunt that convinces Arte Moreno to sell the team so that he’s free to go on an Indiana Jones adventure
I admit it, I’m at a loss for words with the Angels. In some ways, they’re actually worse off than the White Sox, in that Chicago at least has a reasonable long-term plan while the Angels keep teetering between strategies that are either unclear, unrealistic, or both. Their moves reflect their extreme short-term thinking, leaving the organization without a coherent path to winning now or winning later. Leadership has to come from the top, and Moreno continues to show he is incapable of fixing things. Case in point: The Halos spent this offseason adding veteran depth pieces. These would’ve been smart moves if the Angels were already a good team and looking to patch up their few remaining areas of weakness. That, of course, is not the case. The Angels need to accept that they’re lost before they can move forward and begin to assemble a winning team while Mike Trout is still around. But as long as they keep following an ineffective leader, they’re going to keep walking in circles.
Los Angeles Dodgers: Find a weird reclamation project
This one was a struggle because the Dodgers, while not having the highest median win projection of any team in ZiPS history (that’s still the 2021 Dodgers), they have the highest floor, with no obvious weaknesses anywhere. I guess the one thing the Dodgers are missing is that random broken-down reliever that you forget still plays baseball until they inevitably fix him. I’d love to see if Daniel Bard has another improbable comeback left in him, or maybe Adam Cimber, because a star in the sky disappears whenever a sidearmer loses his job.
Arizona Diamondbacks: See if the Yankees are interested in Jordan Montgomery
As I mentioned in the A’s section, Cole’s Tommy John surgery is a massive blow to the Yankees as they look to defend their American League pennant in 2025. Will Warren has a good shot at being a pretty solid rotation fill-in, but with Luis Gil also out for a while and Nestor Cortes now on the Brewers, the team now has just about zero starting pitching depth left. Jordan Montgomery and the Yankees have a good history, and there’s an obvious need now. Montgomery really struggled in 2024, to the point that Arizona owner Ken Kendrick said publicly that adding the lefty was a “horrible signing.” The Diamondbacks also have plenty of rotation options, so many, in fact, that RosterResource currently projects Montgomery to pitch out of their bullpen. They surely won’t get much in return for him, and they should be prepared to eat a good chunk of his remaining salary, but if they want to move on from him and maybe even get a prospect or two in return, this is the way to do it.
San Diego Padres: Sign David Robertson
The Padres’ bullpen is hardly a dumpster fire, but it is kind of top-heavy, and we project everybody after the fifth option (Yuki Matsui) to be at or below replacement level. There’s not a lot of financial flexibility right now in San Diego for various reasons we won’t go into here, but if the Padres are looking for marginal gains on a budget, David Robertson is by far the best move they could make. They shouldn’t have to spend much to get him, considering he’s 40 years old and remains unsigned in the second week of March, but he is coming off a very good season and is comfortable pitching in a variety of bullpen roles.
San Francisco Giants: Inquire about Jesús Sánchez
The Giants are likely a tier below the Diamondbacks and Padres in the NL Wild Card race, but they’re still close enough that short-term improvements matter. San Francisco’s designated hitter spot is bleak, and the player we have getting the most plate appearances there, Jerar Encarnacion, was in an indie league for much of last season and put up a .277 on-base percentage in the majors. The Giants should see what it would take to get Jesús Sánchez from the Marlins. He’s never developed into a big home run hitter despite solid hard-hit numbers, in large part because he’s never generated much loft. He’s also a spray hitter, and last season, 13 of his 25 doubles were line drives hit the opposite way. It’s the type of game that could be better suited for the spacious Oracle Park. Sánchez would provide a left-handed complement to Encarnacion, and he’s good enough to play all three outfield positions if needed.
Colorado Rockies: Find the next Nolan Jones and Brenton Doyle
Since the departure of former GM Jeff Bridich, the Rockies have made quite a bit of progress in no longer treating prospects as annoyances, and they now give internal, lesser prospects chances to surprise them. The last bit is important, as the Rockies of five or six years ago would never have given someone like Nolan Jones or Brenton Doyle enough playing time to break out in the majors. Doyle hit 23 homers and stole 30 bases in 2024 while winning his second Gold Glove in as many seasons, and although Jones struggled last year, he was hurt on and off and should be expected to at least split the difference between that performance and his 2023 production.
Considering this, the Rockies should go full-carrion bird as the season approaches. Colorado ought to be in on any and all mildly interesting players who are shut out of major league opportunities in 2025. Among the guys the Rockies should target are Mickey Gasper, Edouard Julien, Addison Barger, Shay Whitcomb, Curtis Mead, and Leo Jiménez. They may never develop into stars, but the Rockies need to be willing to throw everything at the wall and hope to find at least a few productive players.
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Detroit Tigers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fifth 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 we 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 »
Expecting the worst only takes out so much of the sting when it happens. As if the baseball world needed any reminder, the Yankees announced on Monday evening that Gerrit Cole is bound for Tommy John surgery.
This had seemed inevitable since Cole felt discomfort after leaving his start against the Twins on Thursday and went for an MRI. The Yankees and their ace received a second opinion from Dr. Neal ElAttrache, obviously hoping for something along the lines of “Oh wait, that other doctor was reading this upside-down, he’s fine.” What they got was an appointment for surgery on Tuesday in Los Angeles. Read the rest of this entry »
Something might be brewing in Sacramento. The 2024 A’s beat expectations by a mile, though expectations were admittedly muted coming off of a disastrous 2023, and this offseason has seen the club be quite busy. The team’s best player, Brent Rooker, signed an extension that will keep him around through at least 2029, well past when the A’s are scheduled to move to Las Vegas. The pitching staff looks much improved, thanks to the surprise signing of Luis Severino and a trade for Jeffrey Springs. And now last year’s second-best player, Lawrence Butler, has signed a contract extension too:
BREAKING: Outfielder Lawrence Butler and the A’s are in agreement on a seven-year, $66.5 million contract extension with one club option, sources tell ESPN. Butler, 24, broke out as a rookie last year and is seen as a foundational player for the A’s moving forward.
A year ago, this contract would have been mind-boggling. Butler debuted in the bigs in 2023 with an uneven two months of work. His minor league track record suggested intriguing upside – he flashed excellent power while climbing the ranks and was only in a position to struggle in the majors because he’d reached Triple-A at age 22 – but like so many A’s, he was a question mark, a talented youngster with some good signs and some red flags.
The A’s started 2024 hot, at least by their standards, but Butler didn’t. After breaking camp with the team, he ran into a huge power outage. Over 121 plate appearances, he managed just two homers en route to a .179/.281/.274 slash line, so the A’s sent him back down to Triple-A. What can you do? Sometimes your 23-year-old who never played above A-ball until a year ago needs a bit of extra seasoning. Read the rest of this entry »
Quinn Priester is poised to take that next step and live up to his first-round pedigree. Opportunity paired with increased octane are among the reasons why. Drafted 18th overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2019 out of Cary-Grove High School, the erstwhile Illinois prep stands a good chance of breaking camp in the Red Sox starting rotation. With Brayan Bello (shoulder) and Kutter Crawford (knee) likely to begin the season the injured list, Priester is well positioned to help fill the void.
The enhanced heater factors heavily into his hoped-for emergence as an established big-league hurler. The 24-year-old right-hander’s two-seamer averaged 93.1 mph last year, and this spring it has consistently been a few ticks higher. In his last outing, Priester topped out at 97.
“The cutter is getting better, but more than anything it’s been the velocity piece,” Priester said of his recent developmental strides. “We’re trying to see that trend upwards, and hold throughout games. I want to be 96-plus with the sinker, and then let everything else complement that pitch.”
Added muscle has contributed to the additional oomph. Acquired by Boston at last summer’s trade deadline in exchange for Nick Yorke, Priester currently carries 220 pounds on his 6-foot-3 frame, 10 more than a year ago. He’s evolving in other ways, as well. Increasingly mature, he’s learning the nuances of his craft. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Atlanta Braves. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth 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 we 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 »
As I write this, the winter free agency period has essentially drawn to a close. Out of the top 50 free agents I highlighted before the offseason began, 48 have found homes — sorry, David Robertson and Kyle Gibson. Per RosterResource, only five free agents – including the two holdovers from the top 50 – accrued 1 WAR or more in 2024 and haven’t yet signed new deals. In other words, all the signing that is going to happen basically has, so it’s time to look back and see how you and I did at predicting the deals players would sign.
I like to evaluate my own predictions in service of making better ones in the future, dividing them up into a few categories. First, I break signings down by position, because the market for relievers and second basemen is different. Second, I look at both average annual value and total guarantee. There’s no set ratio for how to relate those two, so looking at each independently seems best to me. Finally, I look at both the individual predictions (how close to the actual contract that a player signed my predictions came), as well as the overall trend (how my aggregate predictions for each position group did compared to the total amount they received).
This year, I made all of that back-checking more rigorous. I put all of my predictions, as well as every crowdsourced one, into a giant spreadsheet. I noted all the contracts that were signed, made adjustments for deferrals, and ignored non-guaranteed money. I compared each actual contract to our predictions. I also gathered some of the best non-FanGraphs predictions I could find, looking to outlets like ESPN, The Athletic, and MLB Trade Rumors. Below, you’ll find how both the crowd (you) and I did, as well as the best non-FanGraphs entrant in each category. Read the rest of this entry »
