Carson Williams is a high-profile prospect in a fertile Tampa Bay Rays farm system. Drafted 28th overall in 2021 out of San Diego’s Torrey Pines High School, the 20-year-old shortstop is No. 20 in MLB Pipeline’s recently-released Top 100, and he will also rank prominently when our own list comes out next month. His 2023 production provided ample evidence of his plus tools. Playing primarily at High-A Bowling Green, and with cups of coffee at the Double-A and Triple-A levels, Williams walloped 23 home runs while putting up a 130 wRC+.

Erik Neander was effusive in his praise when giving a synopsis of the young infielder during November’s GM Meetings.

“Incredible physical potential in all aspects of the game, both sides of the ball,” Tampa Bay’s President of Baseball Operations told me. “And someone who is made to do this, mentally and emotionally. He handles it well. It’s pretty close to a total package in terms of his potential and the ingredients you like to see at such a young age.”

Fittingly, Williams came off as both humble and self-aware when I spoke to him late in the Arizona Fall League season. Asked where he is in his development, he replied that he was “right in the middle of it,” adding that “the minor leagues are a tough road” and he is “going through all of the normal things that a kid out of high school has to.” One of them, as he readily admits, is the challenge of competing against professional pitchers who possess bat-missing repertoires. If a red flag exists within his prospect profile, it would be the 31.4% strikeout rate on last year’s ledger. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago White Sox. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our 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 »

Sometime during the second inning, I climb past a dozen rows of empty yellow seats toward the usher at the top of the section. “¿Cuando vienen todos?” I ask when she looks up. When are they all coming? This is my first Dominican Winter League game, and I was prepared for pandemonium: the energy, the blaring music, the crush of the crowd. Instead, the stadium is desolate.

The usher looks confused by my question, and I worry that my iffy Spanish is to blame. “¿Quién?” she asks. Who?

We look around the empty stadium, and though we say the exact same thing at the exact same time, our inflections couldn’t be more different. Mine is declarative: “La gente.” The people. Hers is interrogative: “¿La gente?” I realize that she wasn’t confused by my grammar; she was confused by the fact that I expected anyone to be here in the first place. My ears are too slow to process the entirety of her explanation, but I catch enough. This game doesn’t matter. The semi-final round of the playoffs begins in a few days and both teams have already clinched their spots. Nadie viene. Nobody’s coming. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. 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, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

The 2024 Hall of Fame election is in the books, with three newcomers — first-year candidates Adrián Beltré and Joe Mauer, and holdover Todd Helton — crossing the 75% threshold. It was a bit of a nailbiter, as Mauer cleared the bar by just four votes while Billy Wagner missed by five, but after just two candidates were elected by the writers over the past three cycles, it’s a welcome crowd of honorees, and it should make for a raucous weekend in Cooperstown when they and their families, friends and fans join those of Contemporary Baseball Era Committee honoree Jim Leyland for induction into the Hall on July 21. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. 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, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Add a few more chairs to the dais. For the first time since 2020, BBWAA voters have elected multiple players to the Hall of Fame — three, in fact. Not only was Adrián Beltré elected as expected, with a hefty 95.1% of the vote, but fellow first-year candidate Joe Mauer and holdover Todd Helton cleared the 75% bar as well, making this the largest class since 2019 and the sixth of this millennium with more than two candidates elected. Though it appeared possible that Billy Wagner could join them, producing the fourth quartet of the past decade and the seventh class of more than three since the institution’s inception in 1936, he missed by just five votes.

While Beltré’s election was a foregone conclusion given that he received 216 out of 218 votes from among those published in Ryan Thibodaux’s indispensable Ballot Tracker prior to the announcement, the outcomes for Mauer (83.5% in the Tracker), Helton (82.6%) and Wagner (78.4%) all carried varying degrees of suspense up to the point when Hall president Josh Rawitch announced the results on Tuesday evening. Mauer’s high share of votes from among the “small Hall” ballots appeared to make his election a strong likelihood, but neither Helton nor Wagner had generated the volume of flipped votes — from no to yes — from among those public ballots that would have reduced their amount of uncertainty. In a pre-election forecast delivered Tuesday afternoon on MLB Now, Jason Sardell — whose probabilistic model has been the industry’s most accurate for the past several cycles — projected Mauer with a 99.9% chance of election, Helton with “about a 90% chance” (up from 71% Monday night), and Wagner with “about a one-in-four chance” (up from 18% Monday night). Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the final team is the Chicago White Sox.

Batters

In a certain way, this team is a bit more depressing than the Oakland Athletics. No, they’re not trying to peace out of Chicago, but I think the A’s front office is probably more realistic about the team’s immediate chances of winning than the Southsiders are. It’s always hard to gauge exactly what a team truly thinks of their outlook, but I get the impression that the White Sox think they will be at least halfway competitive in 2024. Realistically, though, a lot of things would have to go their way, even in a weak division like the AL Central.

The Pale Hose have a one-dude offense in a sport where that isn’t a thing. Luis Robert Jr. is in his prime right now, probably at his peak form. If the White Sox were actually rebuilding, he’s the guy they could trade to start meaningfully restocking the farm system. Instead, he’ll be a key cog in their quest to win 70 games. Read the rest of this entry »

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 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 »

Billy Wagner has a chance to be voted into the Hall of Fame this year. As I type these words on Saturday evening, the erstwhile left-handed reliever — this in his penultimate appearance on the BBWAA ballot — is polling at 80.0% with nearly half of the electorate having disclosed their choices. If he finishes at or above the 75% threshold required for induction he will become the ninth closer enshrined in Cooperstown.

Many will argue that closers — at least not those named Mariano Rivera — don’t belong in the Hall of Fame. The reasoning, by and large, is lack of innings thrown (Wagner has just 903), which factors into comparably low WAR totals (Rivera has 38.6, whereas workmanlike starters such as Kenny Rogers and John Lackey are north of 40). Add in a rule that allows for what might be deemed “cheap saves” and the argument against closers is understandable.

Personally, I don’t think there are enough closers in the Hall of Fame. It’s not as though the role isn’t important, and it certainly isn’t recent. The first 15-save season came exactly 100 years ago, with Firpo Marberry doing the honors with the Washington Senators (the right-hander added two more saves in that year’s World Series). Marberry subsequently logged the first 20-save season in 1926, and by career’s end he’d led the American League in saves and appearances six times each. Marberry isn’t in the Hall of Fame, but when you factor in his historical significance — ditto his higher JAWS score than all of Rollie Fingers, Lee Smith, and Bruce Sutter — he arguably should be.

If a “closer” with Marberry’s statistical résumé — he finished with 99 saves and 148 wins (56 of them as a reliever) — could be deemed Hall-worthy, what about a Wagner contemporary like John Franco? While not as overpowering as Wagner, Franco did amass 424 saves — two more than the on-the-doorstep Hall of Famer’s total, and the most ever for a southpaw. Moreover, it ranks fifth-most all-time, while his 1,119 appearances ranks third-most. With the caveat that JAWS isn’t bullish on his credentials, Franco presents an intriguing case. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the penultimate team is New York Yankees.

Batters

If I’ve learned anything from two decades of projection work (and people getting mad at that projection work), it’s that fans are way too optimistic about teams when everything goes great and way too pessimistic after things have gone awry.
The 2022 Yankees were a good example of this. After a first half in which they went 58-23, good for a .716 winning percentage and a Pythagorean win percentage that nearly matched, ZiPS only projected the team to go 45-36 the rest of the way. “Knave!” they shouted at me on Twitter. “Vagabond! Miscreant!” OK, maybe they didn’t use those words exactly, but there was bewilderment and more than a touch of anger that I would disrespect the Bronx Bombers so. In the end, the Yankees actually were four wins worse than that projection in the second half.

And just like things are never as amazing as they seem when everything goes your way, the reverse is true, with the Yankees again being a good example. They had their worst season since 1992 in 2023, and based on how they’ve been talked about over the last six months or so, you’d think they were a glorified Triple-A team. But the Yankees weren’t that bad — they went 82-80 in a division without a true doormat team to beat up on. That record was all of seven wins below their preseason projection, a miss that barely merits raising an eyebrow, and certainly doesn’t justify floating Brian Cashman out to sea (or bunting more). Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a biased observer. I watch the offseason hoping something will happen, and not just because I’m rooting for one particular team to get better. My job is to write about baseball, and it’s a lot easier to write about things changing than things staying the same. “This just in: Yankees roster same as yesterday” is not a story that I’d be very excited to write, and it’s also probably not a story that many people would be excited to read. Change is imperative for content, especially in the offseason.

With that intro in mind, I have a bone to pick with the Baltimore Orioles – a bone that, coincidentally enough, Meg and Other Ben discussed on today’s Effectively Wild. The Orioles won the AL East last year and finished with 101 wins, second-most in baseball. They seemingly ran out of gas in the playoffs; they didn’t hit or pitch particularly well in their ALDS loss to the Rangers. They followed that up by doing – well, a whole lot of nothing. It’s not just that they’re making my job harder. They’re making their own job harder, and doing so while the clock is ticking on their young, cost-controlled team core.

The AL East is always a competitive division, and it’s gone exactly according to type so far this winter. The Yankees went out and got a star – Juan Soto, not Alex Verdugo, if you’re keeping score at home. The Rays traded six nickels, two dimes, and two pennies for a quarter, three dimes, and a nickel. The Blue Jays shored up their infield depth, though they still need to find a replacement for Matt Chapman. (The current leader in the clubhouse for that position? Matt Chapman.) The Red Sox – well, the Red Sox are certainly making moves, even if I can’t quite figure out the end goal. Read the rest of this entry »