Spring training is a reliably terrible time for injury news. After a whole winter of not playing (though still training, of course), ramping back up to game speed inevitably creates new injuries or aggravates old ones. This process is always worse for pitchers, because their job is inherently more injury prone. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know in this introduction.

Here’s something you might not have known, and certainly didn’t know before this week: The Boston Red Sox look to be hit hardest by this yearly attrition. As Jeff Passan reported, Lucas Giolito is probably going to miss the entire season with an elbow injury. He has both a partially torn UCL and a flexor strain, a double whammy that almost always leads to surgery. That’s a tough injury for a team that absolutely couldn’t afford it.

Oh, sure, other teams have suffered unfortunate injuries to top starting pitchers. Justin Verlander will begin the season on the IL with shoulder soreness. Sonny Gray tweaked his hamstring and might miss Opening Day as a result. Kevin Gausman is dealing with shoulder fatigue and his timeline for returning is murky. The list goes on and on. But Giolito’s injury looks more severe and will likely require a much longer recovery time that the other ones will, and that puts Boston in a particular bind. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi everyone!

It’s been almost two years since we talked about how FanGraphs is doing, and with Opening Day fast approaching, I thought it would be a good time to give you an update on where the site stands now. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while since the Phillies have had to worry about the front of their starting rotation, which over the past four seasons has been anchored by co-aces Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, though last year it was uncertain how much longer that stability would continue: Nola became a free agent at the end of last season and Wheeler’s contract was set to expire after the 2024 campaign.

But Philadelphia acted swiftly to keep both pitchers around. After re-signing Nola before Thanksgiving, the Phillies announced on Monday that they had extended Wheeler through the 2027 season. The three-year deal is reportedly worth $126 million, and in terms of its $42 million average annual value, it is the largest extension in baseball history.

Wheeler, who turns 34 in May, has been one of the best starting pitchers in baseball since he joined the Phillies in December 2019 on a five-year, $118 million contract. Over the last four seasons, he leads the majors with 19.3 WAR. If RA9-WAR is more your style, Wheeler has the second highest mark in that span despite pitching in front of what often has been a lackluster Phillies defense behind him. He also ranks fourth among qualified starters in FIP (2.90) and innings (629.1), and 11th in ERA (3.09). Last year, he made 32 starts, allowing a 3.61 ERA and 3.15 FIP over 192 innings, enough for a spicy 5.9 WAR.

It’s hard to overstate the Wheeler’s importance to the Phillies. When he arrived, Philadelphia was better than it had been during its first five years of rebuilding, when it posted a .427 winning percentage from 2013–17, but it was still barely a .500 club. The Phillies remained stuck in neutral for Wheeler’s first two years, but their rotation improved immediately; after ranking 23rd in the majors in starting pitching WAR in 2019, Philadelphia ranked third in ’20 and fourth in ’21, a year in which Wheeler finished second in the NL Cy Young voting.

The Phillies finally broke through in 2022 and made up for lost time. That year, they won the NL pennant and came within two games of winning the World Series, and they were one win away from making a second consecutive World Series appearance last year. Wheeler has been excellent in the playoffs, too: He has a 2.42 ERA and 2.72 FIP over 11 postseason games (10 starts).

Simply, between his regular season and postseason dominance, the Phillies could not afford to risk losing Wheeler in free agency, even if that meant giving him the most lucrative per-year extension ever.

That said, ZiPS expects Wheeler to decline over the next few years, though that is more based on the inherent health risks that come with a pitcher in his mid-30s, rather than his overall ability. The computer would want to pay him about $30 million per season, but this organization, with its talented but aging core, is firmly in win-now mode. The “Stupid Money” Phillies of all teams weren’t going to let a dollars per WAR figure prevent them from extending their best pitcher.

Whether or not the Phillies win the World Series in the next several years, Wheeler and Nola will go down as one of the greatest pitching duos in team history, along with Curt Simmons and Robin Roberts, Steve Carlton and Larry Christenson, and Jim Bunning and Chris Short. Even if both head to different teams at the end of their new contracts, they still project to be in the top 10 of all-time Phillies pitchers.

At least to my eyes, there aren’t any red flags in Wheeler’s profile that the computer didn’t consider. His breakout seasons came with the Mets, but he didn’t become a true ace until he joined the Phillies. With New York, Wheeler relied on a sinker that threatened to take the hands off right-handed hitters, but he lacked the pinpoint command of the pitch that he has found in Philadelphia, where he has also added a sweeper that maddeningly looks a lot like that sinker as it approaches the plate — until it breaks in the opposite direction. With the Phillies, he has become much better at landing his curve just below the bottom of the strike zone, which has helped him against lefties. Wheeler still throws pretty hard, but he also is much more than just a grip-and-rip hurler. That should help him survive and continue to thrive when his velocity dips as he ages.

Just in case you’re not convinced at this point about the consequences of the Phils not having Wheeler, I ran a quick sim of the 2024 season using the ZiPS projections. ZiPS currently projects the Phillies to have a 56.2% chance of going to the playoffs and 14.4% odds to win the NL East. In the simulations that the Phillies fail to get 20 innings from him (about 6.2% of sims), resulting in a lot more innings from Spencer Turnbull and Mick Abel, the Phillies only made the playoffs 37.1% of the time, and their probability to win the division chopped nearly in half, to 7.6%.

With only Matt Strahm and Jeff Hoffman eligible for free agency after 2024, the front office can start addressing their next challenge, putting together enough young talent to transition the franchise to its next core of players without having to endure another interregnum of rebuilding. But, like the threat of a headache after a night of drinking, that’s a tomorrow problem. For today, keeping Wheeler in town keeps the party going.

Daulton Varsho’s last two seasons were directionally different than his first two seasons.The left-handed-hitting outfielder put up a pedestrian 37.8% pull rate in 2020-2021, and in 2022-2023 that number climbed to a lofty 52.6%. Apprised of the marked jump by colleague Davy Andrews prior to my recent visit to Toronto Blue Jays camp, I asked Varsho if it was spurred by a purposeful change of approach. He claimed that it wasn’t.

“I think it’s just how teams are pitching me,” said Varsho, whose pull rate in the two-year span was the highest among qualified hitters. “You don’t want to force the ball to any certain field — it has to sort of naturally happen — and I’ve been getting pounded in. You also have to figure out the changeup away and righties throwing sliders in. You don’t really want to force those to left-center or left field, because they end up being fly outs.”

Davy had also informed me that Varsho’s pull-side results have been far better than his opposite-field results, which came as anything but news to the 27-year-old Marshfield, Wisconsin native. My mentioning it elicited a matter-of-fact response.

“That’s where success happens,” said Varsho. “It’s where my swing is the most successful, and where I can do the most damage.”

It’s no secret that catching pitches out front and driving them in the air goes a long way toward producing power numbers, and not only has Varsho gone yard 47 times over the past two campaigns, just one of the blasts was to the opposite field. My asking if he’s made a concerted effort to lift the ball led to the following exchange: Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth 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 »

One of the great perks of working at FanGraphs is that I get to discuss baseball with my equally obsessed coworkers. Obviously, this is the kind of job you don’t get into unless you love the sport. A lot of the time, that means we just end up nerding out over how much we enjoy some minor but cool thing, or perhaps discussing our favorite of the game’s idiosyncrasies. Sometimes, though, we come up with new ideas together, or one person’s passing fancy turns into another person’s brainstorm, and before you know it, something nifty and novel is happening.

That’s why I’m writing this article today. At the December Winter Meetings, a subset of us sat down for our annual let’s-talk-about-fun-baseball-problems technical meeting. David Appelman and Sean Dolinar ran things. Folks like Jeff Zimmermann and Dan Szymborski popped in at various points. Jason Martinez and Keaton Arneson had big plans for how to improve the site’s functionality. Those guys are great at building models, running websites — advancing the state of how FanGraphs (and ZiPS) works, basically. I like to make jokes and write articles about bunts, so as far as I can tell, I got invited because I’m good at coming up with bad but interesting ideas.

That said, this year one thing was on a lot of our minds: depth. I’ve written a lot about how well our playoff odds reflect reality. They’re pretty good! But there’s always been an obvious problem with them. They use static rosters, which means they don’t account for the fact that some teams are more vulnerable to injury or underperformance than others. Read the rest of this entry »

We will not be breaking new ground today. What you read in this article won’t change the way you understand baseball. However, it might help you to appreciate a few baseball players for who they are, and that strikes me as a noble goal. A couple weeks ago, Ben Clemens introduced Whomps Per Whiff, a stat that divides barrels by whiffs in order to show “how often you absolutely whomp the ball, as compared to how often your swing results in nothing but a tiny gust of air.” It was a remarkably simple way of looking at hitting, and the leaderboard featured some of the best hitters in baseball. It was also a fun article, and I agreed with several of its underlying premises:

• If there’s one thing baseball doesn’t have enough of, it’s statistics.
• Anybody can make up a statistic, as long as they have a dream in their heart and a copy of Microsoft Excel.
• It’s important that those statistics have silly names. That’s why I’ve been lobbying to have people pronounce wRC+ as “Work-Plus,” preferably in a Rihanna voice.
• The word whomp is decidedly fun.

Read the rest of this entry »

Zack Wheeler has arguably been the best pitcher in baseball over the past four seasons. Since joining the Philadelphia Phillies prior to the truncated 2020 campaign, the 33-year-old right-hander has made 101 starts and boasts a 3.06 ERA, a 2.90 FIP, and a 26.7% strikeout rate. Moreover, his 19.3 WAR over that span is tops among his contemporaries.

A thirst to continually get better has helped bring Wheeler to the pinnacle of his profession. Never entirely satisfied with the depth and quality of his arsenal, he’s always looking for a new edge, whether it’s an additional weapon or an upgrade to one already in his toolbox. Just last year he added a sweeper, and opposing hitters can expect to see yet another option when he takes the mound in 2024.

Wheeler discussed his growth as a pitcher, as well as his goals going forward, last week at the Phillies’ spring training complex in Clearwater.

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David Laurila: How have you evolved as a pitcher over the years?

Zack Wheeler: “I’ve developed more pitches since I got drafted. Everything has gotten crisper. After my TJ [in 2015], I was able to gain some command, which I didn’t have before. So pairing the repertoire with command took me to that next level. Really, a lot of it has just been repetition and learning, and from there putting it all together.” Read the rest of this entry »

To understand why Baltimore Orioles shortstop Jackson Holliday is the no. 1 prospect on our Top 100 list, look no further than Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin’s writeup of the 20-year-old phenom. They describe Holliday, the first overall pick in the 2022 draft, as “a sweet-swinging shortstop with above-average feel for contact and burgeoning power,” and close their evaluation by predicting that he “is very likely to become a 5-WAR shortstop who does everything well.” He has been spending time at second base this spring, because the O’s already have last year’s no. 1 overall prospect Gunnar Henderson at shortstop, but either way, stardom is seemingly in Holliday’s future.

That the promising youngster is the son of former big league slugger Matt Holliday is well known. It is also a primary factor in his advanced approach to hitting, as well as his overall understanding of his craft. Last season, which he began in Low-A and ended in Triple-A, the lefty-hitting Holliday produced a .323/.442/.499 slash line and 159 wRC+ across four levels of the minor leagues.

Holliday sat down to talk hitting over the weekend prior to a Grapefruit League game in Sarasota.

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David Laurila: How do you approach hitting?

Jackson Holliday: “As far as guessing pitches… that’s not something I’m great at. But I really enjoy learning about swings — different guys’ swings — how they work, and little things that can help, like cues. My dad has been around baseball for so long, and is such a hitting guy, and I got that from him. But yeah, my approach is pretty simple. I try to stay in the middle of field, stay on my backside, and hit the heater.”

Laurila: Are you basically hunting fastballs and adjusting from there?

Holliday: “Yeah. I sit fastball. I don’t sit offspeed unless there is a real outlier. That’s something I learned from my dad. He would sit heater and try to hit it to the middle of the field. If you’re in a good spot to hit a fastball to the middle of the field you can adjust to the offspeed pitch a lot better than you can sitting offspeed and trying to hit a heater.”

Laurila: How hard is it to be diligent with that? There are going to be times where your subconscious brain tells you, “He’s not going to throw a fastball here.” Read the rest of this entry »

For as strong as his 2023 campaign had been, and for as well positioned as he was in this winter’s market, Cody Bellinger‘s free agency was always hampered by questions of sustainability. His debut season with the Cubs followed two unsettlingly bad years with the Dodgers, and the metrics underlying last season’s resurgence were comparatively modest relative to his production, raising the possibility if not the likelihood of regression. In light of those issues, even as he placed third on our Top 50 Free Agents list heading into the offseason and reportedly sought a contract as high as $250 million, it seemed quite likely he’d come away with considerably less. He did, agreeing to return to the Cubs on a three-year, $80 million deal, one that contains opt-outs after the first two seasons, and one that was still pending a physical as of this writing.

Effectively, this is a pillow contract, negotiated by the agent who created the term, Scott Boras. The 28-year-old Bellinger will get the opportunity to show that his 2023 performance was no fluke, with two chances before his age-30 season to secure a much bigger payday. He’s guaranteed $30 million in 2024, with salaries of $30 million in ’25 and $20 million in ’26 if he hasn’t exercised his opt-outs, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

Bellinger came to the Cubs after an eventful 10-year run in the Dodgers’ organization, one that began when the son of former utilityman Clay Bellinger was drafted in the fourth round out of an Arizona high school in 2013. He hit 39 home runs while winning NL Rookie of the Year honors in 2017, and smacked 47 homers two years later while taking home the NL MVP award. His timely hitting and spectacular fielding during the 2020 postseason helped the Dodgers to their first championship since 1988, but one of those timely hits precipitated his fall. Celebrating what proved to be the decisive home run in Game 7 of the 2020 NLCS against the Braves, the exuberant Bellinger dislocated his right (non-throwing) shoulder after bashing forearms with teammate Enrique Hernández. He underwent arthroscopic labrum surgery after the World Series, started slowly in spring training, and then in the fourth game of the season suffered a hairline fracture in his left fibula, knocking him out for eight weeks. Unable to find his rhythm as he recovered from both shoulder and leg issues, he hit a gruesome .165/.240/.302 (47 wRC+) with -1.0 WAR in 350 plate appearances, though he showed signs of life during the playoffs when he adopted a shortened swing with lower hand placement; he hit .353/.436/.471 (146 wRC+) across 39 plate appearances in 12 postseason games. While he got off to a solid start in 2022, he couldn’t maintain it despite endlessly tinkering with his swing. Exceptional defense in center field kept him in the lineup, but he hit just .210/.265/.389 (83 wRC+) with 1.8 WAR, and was nontendered following the season.

Less than three weeks later, Bellinger agreed to a one-year deal with the Cubs, one that paid him $12.5 million for 2023 with a $1 million bonus for winning NL Comeback Player of the Year honors (which he did) and a $5 million buyout on a $25 million mutual option for ’24. He declined his end of the option as well as the $20.325 million qualifying offer he received, and entered the market as the top free agent position player, behind only pitcher/designated hitter Shohei Ohtani and pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto on our list.

For Bellinger, last year’s change of scenery proved to be just what the doctor ordered. Reuniting with Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly and assistant Johnny Washington, both of whom he had worked with in the Dodgers’ system, Bellinger focused on adjusting his mechanics, particularly with regards to his hand placement and back hip, allowing him to use his lower body better. He further adapted his approach by pulling the ball with less frequency than at any time since his rookie season, and shortening his swing with two strikes to focus on contact. The result was his best season since 2019, as he hit .307/.356/.525 (134 wRC+) with 26 homers and 20 steals in 130 games — he missed nearly four weeks with a left knee contusion — while cutting his strikeout rate from 27.3% to 15.6%. Coupled with solid defense in center field, his 4.1 WAR tied for 20th in the NL and was the second-best showing of his career.

Bellinger’s intent is worth noting when digging into his underlying metrics, as he sacrificed some power in exchange for contact en route to the lowest exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate of his career:

Bellinger’s barrel rate placed in just the 27th percentile, his exit velo in the 22nd percentile, and his hard-hit rate in the 10th percentile. He outdid his expected slugging percentage by 91 points, and his expected wOBA by 43 points; both gaps ranked third in the majors among batting title qualifiers (502 PA). On the other hand, his .279 AVG and .312 wOBA with two strikes ranked second and seventh in the majors, thanks in large part to his consistency in collecting hits despite soft contact, a topic that MLB.com’s Mike Petriello and our own Esteban Rivera both investigated.

All of that created something of a puzzle for Bellinger’s suitors — most prominently the Blue Jays (considered the favorites to sign him as of mid-December) and Giants, with the Mariners and Yankees also connected to him via rumors. Bellinger’s deal always seemed unlikely to approach the hot air of the $200 million-plus Borasphere, but in our Top 50 exercise, Ben Clemens projected him to get a six-year, $150 million contract, and our crowdsource expected a six-year, $144 million one. Other outlets went even higher.

As the Blue Jays dragged their feet this winter, the Giants turned to Jung Hoo Lee, and the Cubs refused to act like a large-market team, Bellinger’s anticipated market never fully materialized, with the aforementioned issues undoubtedly playing a part, as well. By ZiPS, he did well to get as much as he did:

ZiPS projects just a three-year, $70 million contract for that forecast, per Dan Szymborski, though perhaps that’s not surprising given that Bellinger has had just one good season out of the last three. Based on the percentile breakdowns, it appears the system gives him only about a 10% to 20% chance of matching or exceeding last year’s performance:

Bellinger probably doesn’t have to match his 2023 numbers to justify opting out, and he does have two chances to decide when to enter the market again. Still, a mediocre 2024 followed by a strong ’25 would probably leave teams with similar questions to the ones they confronted this winter.

As for how he fits into the Cubs, the key word is flexibility. The team already had Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki, both entering their age-29 seasons and on multi-year deals, set for the outfield corners. Prior to Bellinger’s re-signing, Pete Crow-Armstrong, the 20th-ranked prospect on our Top 100 list, appeared likely to take over as the Chicago’s regular center fielder. A 2020 first-round pick acquired from the Mets in the Javier Báez trade at the ’21 deadline, Crow-Armstrong hit a combined .283/.365/.511 (127 wRC+) in 73 games at Double-A Tennessee and 34 games at Triple-A Iowa. He went just 0-for-14 with three walks and two sacrifice hits in a cup of coffee with the Cubs, though to be fair, he started just three of the 13 games in which he appeared. He’s considered an elite center fielder who’s fearless on the basepaths and should produce at least average power. “If he can plug that hole over time, he’ll be a five-tool superstar,” wrote our prospect team of Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin. “More likely, he’ll have some 20-25 homer seasons amid a ton of strikeouts and a low OBP, with peak years resembling Mike Cameron’s (though almost certainly not to that level of annual consistency).”

Given Crow-Armstrong’s age (he turns 22 on March 25) and modest amount of upper-level experience, it always seemed possible that he would start the season in the minors before rejoining the Cubs. Now it would appear even more likely. If he hits his way back to the majors in a hurry, the Cubs could use him in center field and play Bellinger at first base, where lefty-swinging rookie Michael Busch was slated to be the starter or at least the long half of a platoon with righty Patrick Wisdom. The 26-year-old Busch, no. 84 on our prospect list, is considered a bat-only prospect who last played first base regularly at North Carolina, and who may be better suited to DH duty. Alternately, Bellinger has experience in both left field (315.1 innings, though none since 2018) and right (989 innings, the bulk of them in 2019), and Happ has experience at every defensive position except shortstop and catcher, though he hasn’t played the infield since 2021, when he totaled 36 innings, mostly at second base. Also in the category of moving parts is Christopher Morel, who last year saw time at all three outfield positions plus second base, shortstop, and third base; he was projected to get the bulk of the work at DH but also to be in the third base mix along with Nick Madrigal. Suffice to say that new manager Craig Counsell will have options for how to piece his lineup together, and that a clearer picture may emerge during spring training.

Via our Depth Charts projections, here’s a comparison of how the situation looked before the signing and immediately after, in terms of estimated plate appearances:

In terms of overall playing time, the real loser of the Bellinger deal is Mike Tauchman, a capable center fielder who hit .252/.363/.377 (107 wRC+) last year, with Crow-Armstrong, Madrigal, and Wisdom also losing substantial time. Keep in mind that all of this is based on best guesses just as exhibition season has opened, and before the Cubs have even confirmed the deal. A lot could still change.

Particularly with the Cardinals, Brewers, Cubs, and Reds each projected to win between 79 and 85 games, the NL Central is expected to be a dogfight. Any impactful addition could be the difference between reaching the postseason — something the Cubs haven’t done since 2020 — and staying home. By bringing back Bellinger, the team has given itself a better shot at playing in October without assuming a huge long-term risk. Bellinger, for his part, gets to return to a comfortable situation with a contending team, while also knowing that he can play his way into a bigger contract. It will be fascinating to see how this all unfolds.