One of the things that happens when pitchers and catchers report to camp is that managers update everyone on any unreported offseason developments. Unfortunately, few of those updates are about fun new cocktails they tried or animals they saw on vacation. It brings me no pleasure to tell you I have yet to see one single beat reporter file a story about a manager who saw a really cool sea turtle while snorkeling. Most of those developments are injuries, which meant that Tuesday was at once a glorious rite of the coming spring and an unbearably heavy dump of unpleasant injury news. Today we’re going to focus on the depressing dump, so courtesy of Andy Kostka of The Baltimore Banner, here’s a gorgeous picture that captures the eternal hope of spring training as a little pre-casualty report treat to soften the blow.

Wow. That was beautiful. Thank you, Andy. Now we’ll get miserable, but please remember that it could always be worse. We could be back in the 1880s, when the unpleasant health updates weren’t about who broke their hamate bone, but about who died of consumption. (The preceding sentence was originally intended to be a joke, but guess what.) 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, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Early in his career, Nick Markakis appeared to be a star in the making. In his second and third seasons in the majors (2007 and ’08), the former first-round pick topped 40 doubles, 20 homers, and a .300 batting average while slugging nearly .500. He led the AL in WAR in 2008, his age-24 campaign — not that anyone was aware of it at the time, which helps to explain his omission from that year’s AL All-Star team.

It would take another decade before Markakis finally became an All-Star, and during that stretch, his performances leveled off. He became better known for his durability, his defense (he won three Gold Gloves), and above all, the example he set for younger players while enduring lean years both in Baltimore and Atlanta. He stuck around long enough to help both teams’ rebuilding efforts come to fruition with playoff appearances, racking up so many hits that he generated discussion regarding his potential Hall-worthiness if he persisted long enough to reach the magic 3,000-hit milestone.

Markakis’ retirement after his age-36 season rendered that question moot. He didn’t generate a Hall-caliber résumé or gaudy statistics during his 15-year career, but he received considerable praise for his impact on his teammates. From Braves manager Brian Snitker, who managed him from 2016–20:

“One of the most consistent, professional pros that I’ve ever been around. I’m glad I had the honor to manage him in his last years, because he’s a special player… How consistent he was, how professional he was, the way he played the game, how he grinded every at-bat. He never took a pitch off. And to see what he did late in his career, winning that Gold Glove, and the stabilizing force that he was for our club while I was here. You don’t appreciate a guy like Nick until you manage him. What a great career he had.”

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For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the preantepenultimate team is the Baltimore Orioles.

Batters

Baltimore’s pitching looked to be a problem entering the 2025 season, but the lackluster offense turned what was a good team with a run prevention problem into a losing club. After ranking second in the American League in runs scored in 2024, the O’s dropped to 11th in 2025, and suffice it to say, the pitching didn’t bail them out. A 75-87 record looks bad in a comparatively mild way given some of the clunkers the team has crafted since 1997, but it was one of the biggest O’s letdowns in at least my memory (I’m from Baltimore). But like the Blue Jays going into 2025 or the Yankees going into 2024, people tend to underrate good teams coming off of crappy seasons, sometimes horribly. There’s this belief that the lousy year is some baseline expectation and you have to start counting wins added from that point, which is a very poor way to make projections.

Have the O’s done enough with the offense? If the projections here are accurate, probably. With so many underperformances, some righting of the ship was always going to happen anyway, but the O’s didn’t just wait for the magic of regression to do the job for them. I don’t think the end of the Pete Alonso contract will be pretty, but he’s a legitimate big bat in a way the franchise tried to pretend Ryan Mountcastle was for a long time. Taylor Ward isn’t great, but you know who Taylor Ward is. The O’s are now in a position where they don’t need Coby Mayo or Heston Kjerstad to get back on track, though it would of course be nice. Read the rest of this entry »

The Baltimore Orioles continued filling out their rotation last weekend, signing right-hander Zach Eflin to a one-year contract worth $10 million with a mutual option for the 2027 season. Traded to the Orioles from the Rays in 2024, Eflin struggled with injuries last year, throwing only 71 1/3 over 14 starts while putting up a 5.93 ERA and -0.3 WAR.

A first-round pick by the Padres out of a Florida high school in 2012, Eflin finally established himself as a solid mid-rotation starter with the Phillies at the end of the decade after being a part of trades for Matt Kemp and Jimmy Rollins. COVID and recurring patella issues in his right knee plagued him in 2021, resulting in season-ending surgery, and he missed another three months in 2022 with more problems with the same knee. Despite the setbacks, the Rays saw enough to sign him to a three-year, $40 million deal entering the 2023 season. Eflin experienced a minor back injury and tendinitis in his other knee, but that only cost him a handful of innings, and the result was his best and most durable campaign. He set career highs in starts (31), innings (177 2/3 innings), ERA (3.50), FIP (3.01), and WAR (4.9). While his numbers sagged a bit in 2024, Eflin was still a quality pitcher whose name bandied in trade rumors before the deadline. 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.

The third and final multi-candidate pairing of this series is by far the heaviest, covering two candidates who have both been connected to multiple incidents of domestic violence. Read the rest of this entry »

Orioles fans have had “Frontline Starter” on their Christmas list since the departure of Corbin Burnes, and though Friday’s acquisition of Shane Baz is perhaps the gift equivalent of asking for a Ferrari and getting an Acura, it adds a proven element to the middle of an Orioles rotation that still feels like it will be anchored by Kyle Bradish and Trevor Rogers.

To acquire the 26-year-old Baz, who is coming off a 2-WAR season, the Orioles had to part with a prospect potpourri made up of a pair of 2025 draftees (Coastal Carolina catcher Caden Bodine and high school outfielder Slater de Brun), a Competitive Balance Round A pick in next year’s draft, upper-level starting pitcher prospect Michael Forret, and speedy 22-year-old outfielder Austin Overn. It’s an enormous, high-volume return for one player and helps the roots of the Chris Archer trade tree anchor deeper into the game’s soil. I’ll talk more about each prospect, the comp pick, and the way this trade impacts both clubs’ farm systems later in the post. But let’s start with the most immediately consequential piece of the deal: Shane Baz.

Baz has been famous since his junior year of high school, when he emerged as one of the better pitching prospects in the 2017 draft. He was selected by Pittsburgh in the middle of the first round and traded as the Player to be Named in the Archer deal a little over a year later. The pandemic and persistent injuries (there were some near-misses as well) slowed Baz’s ascent through the minors and prevented him from working more than 81 innings in any single season until literally 2025. The Rays doggedly deployed him as a starter despite his injuries and early-career command woes, and they were rewarded with something of a breakout this year, as Baz ate 166.1 innings across 31 starts. He posted a 4.87 ERA, but hurricane damage to Tropicana Field meant that he pitched his home games in a minor league park with the hitter-friendly dimensions of Yankee Stadium; his xERA, which controls for defense, quality of contact, and the hitting environment, was 3.86. Read the rest of this entry »

The Baltimore Orioles will be different in 2026, and not just because of roster additions that already include Pete Alonso and Taylor Ward, with more almost certain to follow. They’ve hired a new manager (Craig Albernaz), replaced a few coaches, and done some reshuffling at the executive level. In a sport where remaining stagnant can be deleterious, the O’s are moving forward on the heels of a disappointing 2025 season.

A precipitous dip in the win column — 91 in 2024, just 75 last year — accentuated the need for changes, but that isn’t the only reason. According to Mike Elias, progress is an ongoing endeavor.

“We’re constantly evolving, having to respond to other teams’ getting better in areas,” Baltimore’s president of baseball operations told me during last month’s GM Meetings. “We make changes every year. We’re actually undergoing quite an overhaul at the major league level right now with our staff. We’ve done some reformatting in the front office, although certainly not to the degree we did when we came in.”

Things changed markedly after Elias arrived in November 2018 and began rebuilding the organization. Analytics — an area in which the Orioles had been well behind the times —- was of course a major focus. But while giant strides have been made, there is no finish line to reach. Moreover, an old Satchel Paige adage applies: “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” Read the rest of this entry »

ORLANDO — Congratulations, everybody. We made it. It’s now Thursday, and the Winter Meetings have officially concluded. It’s time to reflect on the state of effort in Major League Baseball, and I am pleased to report that it is strong. At this time last year, we had seen 22 We Trieds (though a few more would be added retroactively due to a rule clarification). As of now, we’re sitting at 24, so let’s take a moment to congratulate all the agents, the anonymous sources, and the reporters who took us this far. As always, I invite you to peruse this vast bounty on the official We Tried Tracker.

Before we break down the last couple days, I should start with an important update on the most recent entry of this series. When news broke that the Giants asked for Tatsuya Imai’s medicals even though they didn’t plan on pursuing him, I gave it an intentionally cumbersome moniker: We’re Not Even Going To Try, So Don’t Bother Getting Your Hopes Up. This was a classic defense mechanism. I went with the big, long name to deflect from the fact that I couldn’t come up with a clever, pithy one. But the right name came to me this week. In the future, such a move will be known as a Pre-Tried. I have spoken.

Since that last update, Bob Nightengale took a new angle on this exercise, packaging the news that the Reds “were hoping to sign” Devin Williams with the news that they had actually re-signed Emilio Pagán. It’s a brilliant maneuver. You sign a lesser player while also announcing that you were also thinking even bigger. We Trieds are all about partial credit, but here are the Reds, breaking out the razzle dazzle and running an end-around in a bid for double credit!

This strategy is also something of a double-edged sword, though. Some fans might give the Reds the double credit they want, but it’s also easy to take the information in the other direction. The Reds held onto a good reliever, Reds fans! Let’s celebrate! Oh, also, they only got him because they tried and failed to get an even better reliever? Do you still want to celebrate? Try pulling that move with a child. Take them to an ice cream shop and get them a kid’s cone. Once they’ve given it a big lick and smiled their adorable little smile, lean over and say, “You know, I was hoping to get you a giant ice cream sundae, but you’ll have to settle for this little one because the New York Mets ordered it first.” Read the rest of this entry »

After a somnambulant first day of the Winter Meetings, one of the buzzier rumors involved free agent first baseman Pete Alonso getting in his car, driving up I-4 from his home in Tampa to Orlando, and pitching himself in person to the Red Sox and Orioles.

Apparently, those meetings went well. The drive from New York to Baltimore mostly takes place on expensive toll roads, but Alonso now has an extra $155 million to put on his EZ Pass account. Big Pete, the Polar Bear, the face of the Mets’ franchise, is bound for Baltimore on a five-year contract. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »