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.

Many were surprised when Zach McKinstry outpolled Kansas City’s Maikel Garcia and New York’s Ben Rice to win this year’s American League Silver Slugger Award at the utility position. That’s understandable — McKinstry’s numbers weren’t as good as those put up by his co-finalists — but the honor was nonetheless deserved. For one thing, he was a true utility player. Not only did McKinstry start 20 or more games for Detroit at each of third base (69), shortstop (27), and right field (20), he was stationed everywhere besides center field and catcher. Conversely, Garcia started just 21 games at positions other than third base, while Rice’s only action came as a catcher and a first baseman.

And it’s not as though the Tiger didn’t have solid numbers of his own. Over 511 plate appearances, McKinstry slashed .259/.333/.438 with a 114 wRC+. Moreover, he logged 23 doubles, 11 triples, 12 home runs, and 19 stolen bases. Amid little fanfare, the 30-year-old erstwhile Central Michigan University Chippewa was one of the more valuable players on a team that went on to play October baseball.

By most accounts, McKinstry is an overachiever. Exactly one thousand players were chosen before him in the 2016 draft, and he ranked as just the 28th-best prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization when he made his MLB debut in 2020. When the Tigers subsequently traded for him in March 2023 — he was by then a Chicago Cub — he had appeared in 121 big-league games to the tune of a 79 wRC+ and 0.8 WAR. Read the rest of this entry »

The Winter Meetings begin on Sunday in Orlando, and as always, the FanGraphs crew will be there covering all the baseball buzz. For that reason, I’ll keep this introduction brief; we’ll have more than enough words for you to read in the week ahead, when the offseason action is bound to pick up considerably.

Three weeks ago, I put out a call for fresh mailbag submissions, and you all delivered the goods. I knew I could count on you! We’ve received so many great questions since then, including the four that we’ll get to in a moment, and so I just wanted to thank everyone for holding up your end of the bargain. Now it’s time for us to do our part and answer them!

Before we do, though, 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 »

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 our own observations. This is the sixth 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 »

Last week, MLB announced the distribution of the pre-arbitration bonus pool. You probably saw roughly one headline from this: Paul Skenes earned a record $3,436,343 bonus for his spectacular sophomore season. That is indeed great news, in my opinion. Skenes was one of the most exciting and best players in baseball in 2025, and a compensation system that more closely aligns skill with salary is a no brainer to me. But while Skenes’ record haul drew the headlines, the vast majority of the $50 million pool was spread widely; 101 players received bonuses, with all 30 teams boasting at least one awardee.

I’m here to tell you that I think this is a wonderful development. The fund, established in the most recent collective bargaining agreement, takes in $1.67 million from each team every year to fund its $50 million payout. It hands some of that money out to award winners, from $2.5 million for Skenes’ Cy Young Award win down to $150,000 for Daylen Lile’s fifth-place Rookie of the Year finish. The rest goes to the top 100 pre-arbitration players in a WAR formula jointly calculated by MLB and the MLBPA according to a set ratio.

This didn’t feel like a huge part of the CBA at the time it was signed, but in my opinion, it’s been an incredible boon for the game. Baseball’s compensation system has always been out of whack. The service time system limits all pre-arbitration players to the minimum salary, more or less. Teams do occasionally award salaries slightly greater than the minimum ($760,000 in 2025), but generally by a de minimis amount: The Pirates paid Skenes $875,000 this year, for example.

That flat structure means that under the old system, Skenes would have earned roughly $1.6 million in 2024 and 2025, instead of the $7.2 million he’s pocketed under the new system. You can’t convince me that that’s a bad thing. Cristopher Sánchez is an even better example, because unlike Skenes, he didn’t have a huge signing bonus as an amateur — not to mention all the ancillary income the Pittsburgh superstar earns through his various endorsement deals as one of the most recognizable players in the sport. Sánchez just eclipsed three years of service time; through the end of 2024, the Phillies had paid him around $2.5 million in salary for his first two-plus major league seasons. He signed a contract extension that paid him $3.55 million in 2025, bringing his career contractual earnings up to roughly $6 million. Thanks to the bonus pool, though, he’s received an additional $3.5 million over the last three years. That’s a huge difference, and in a clearly good direction for money to flow. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2026 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 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.

Before he turned 25 years old, Cole Hamels had already reached the pinnacle of the baseball world. At the tail end of his third major league season, the lanky lefty — listed at 6-foot-4, 205 pounds — had gone 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA during the 2008 postseason, leading the Phillies to their first championship since 1980 and winning NLCS and World Series Most Valuable Player honors along the way. Suddenly, the aura he projected — a handsome laidback surfer from San Diego — needed an upgrade. He became a celebrity, expected to dress the part and live up to outsized expectations, both of which he did with some amount of awkwardness but a fair level of success.

Hamels spent the first 9 1/2 seasons of his major league career with the Phillies, part of the nucleus that helped them climb out of the doldrums to become a powerhouse that won five straight division titles. Armed with a fastball that could reach the mid-90s, an above-average curve, and a killer changeup — inspired by watching Padres closer Trevor Hoffman in his heyday — Hamels was a master of deception thanks to his consistency in throwing those three pitches from the same release point. “It’s devastating for a hitter when all of them look like a fastball, and two of them aren’t,” pitching guru Tom House, who worked with Hamels when he was a junior in high school, told Sports Illustrated’s Ben Reiter in 2009.

Hamels’ career wasn’t without hiccups. He missed significant time due to injuries while in the minors, including both the usual arm troubles and a fracture in his pitching hand, sustained during a barroom brawl while standing up for a close friend. Although he helped the Phillies get a shot at repeating their title in 2009, his postseason was a disaster; during the World Series against the Yankees, he nearly came to blows with teammate Brett Myers. At times he was overshadowed by other members of his rotation, Cy Young winners for whom the Phillies traded in case Hamels wasn’t enough, namely Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay. For as well as he pitched, Hamels himself never came close to winning a Cy Young, and he made just four All-Star teams. Read the rest of this entry »

The Samsung Lions of Daegu, South Korea, have entered the free agent market, scooping up former Detroit Tigers prospect Matt Manning on a one-year, $1 million deal. All Manning needs to do now is find a team called the Bears, and he’ll have the whole set.

Manning, 27, has a career 4.43 ERA in 50 starts in the majors, none since 2024. But he’s more famous than most players with those credentials, on account of being Detroit’s no. 1 pitching prospect for multiple years. Being a team’s no. 1 pitching prospect is not always as impressive as it sounds; at the moment, there are multiple teams without any minor league pitchers with a future value grade over 45 on The Board.

But for the Tigers, in the early 2020s, being no. 1 was a big deal. On the 2020 list, Manning was the no. 12 prospect in all of baseball, followed by Casey Mize, Riley Greene, Tarik Skubal, and Isaac Paredes in Detroit’s system. In 2021, Manning fell behind the previous year’s top draft pick, Spencer Torkelson, but still rated ahead of Skubal and Mize, in that order. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2026 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 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.

Before he’d ever thrown a major league pitch, cracked a prospect list, or reached legal adult status, Félix Hernández had a nickname: King Felix, crowned by U.S.S. Mariner blogger Jason Michael Barker on July 17, 2003, when he was overpowering much older hitters as a 17-year-old in the Low-A Northwest League. Still a teen when he reached the majors, he quickly came to represent the hopes and dreams of a franchise that had fallen short of a World Series despite four playoffs appearances from 1995–2001; parted with superstars Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez along the way; and capped that run with a record-setting 116 wins but a premature exit in the ALCS.

Though slow to embrace the royal moniker, Hernández grew into it. His dazzling combination of an electrifying, darting sinker, a knee-buckling curve, and a signature hard changeup propelled him to a Cy Young Award, two ERA titles, six All-Star appearances, and a perfect game. From 2009–14, he was the best pitcher in the American League by ERA, FIP, strikeouts, and WAR, parlaying that into a contract that made him the game’s highest-paid pitcher. Unfortunately, a heavy workload — more innings than any pitcher 23 or younger since Dwight Gooden two decades earlier — sapped the sizzle from his fastball, with injuries and a cavalier approach to conditioning taking their toll as well. The Mariners struggled to surround him with a quality roster while cycling through managers and pitching coaches every couple of years. The team didn’t reach the playoffs once during Hernández’s career, finishing above .500 just five times, with a pair of second-place showings in the AL West as good as it got. Read the rest of this entry »

So I had this brilliant theory. My brilliant theory was that Elly De La Cruz wasn’t as bad a defender as the numbers would have us think. De La Cruz finished the 2025 season with 11 fielding errors, the second most in baseball, and 15 throwing errors, also the second most in baseball. Put those two together and you get 26 total errors, the most in baseball. I thought those totals might be shortchanging De La Cruz a bit. My brilliant theory was wrong, but before I get to why, let me explain my thinking.

We should start with the fact the advanced numbers do not say that De La Cruz is a bad shortstop. He makes up for most of his errors with length, speed, and the Mega Man cannon where his right arm should be. Statcast’s FRV loved De La Cruz’s defense in 2024, and it pegged him as perfectly average as he battled through a quad strain in 2025. Baseball Prospectus’ DRP, which tends to skew more conservative than the other advanced metrics, had him at 0.8 runs in 2024 and -0.4 runs in 2025. Sports Info Solutions’ DRS has always liked De La Cruz’s defense the least, pegging him at -2 in 2024 and -5 in 2025. So it’s not as if De La Cruz is grading out as a catastrophe. I just thought he deserved even more credit, and with that credit, we might have started seeing him as an above-average shortstop rather than a good-enough shortstop. Read the rest of this entry »

The Boston Red Sox made a pre-Thanksgiving trade on Tuesday, acquiring Sonny Gray from the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for 25-year-old right-hander Richard Fitts and hard-throwing prospect Brandon Clarke. How well the deal works out for Craig Breslow’s club is anyone’s guess — my colleague Michael Baumann wrote that he couldn’t “declare this trade to be a robbery in either direction” — but the 36-year-old righty does have a track record of reliability. Gray has graced a big-league mound 92 times over the past three seasons, gobbling up 531 innings and posting a 3.63 ERA as well as a 3.11 FIP. If he can continue to fend off Father Time a while longer, the erstwhile Vanderbilt Commodore will add value to the Red Sox starting rotation.

A Vandy product Boston brought on board as a free agent last winter came to mind when the trade was announced. That would be Walker Buehler, who despite high hopes ultimately proved to be a bust. Unable to return to old form, the veteran righty struggled to a 5.45 ERA over 112-and-a-third innings and was cut loose by the Red Sox in late August.

There are clear differences between the two pitchers — their respective health histories particularly stand out — but they nonetheless have things in common. One is a diverse repertoire. Another is a lack of high-octane heaters.

Buehler was in the 43rd percentile for fastball velocity in 2025, while Gray was in just the 16th percentile. As Baumann pointed out, the latter “has started leaking fastball velocity… [but has] compensated by leaning into a cutter and changeup, making him a legit six-pitch pitcher since 2023.” Meanwhile, the 31-year-old Buehler leaned heavily on a six-pitch mix while compensating for the velocity he lost following Tommy John surgery in 2022. Read the rest of this entry »