Of the many haunted residences in New Orleans, one in particular comes with a very specific warning: Don’t walk under the gallery. (As a brief architectural aside, a gallery is like a balcony, but it’s held up by posts or columns that go all the way to the ground, as opposed to L-shaped supports attached to the side of the building. The posts allow galleries to extend farther out from the building, typically spanning the sidewalk below. Having a gallery rather than a balcony was, and to some extent still is, seen as a status symbol in New Orleans.) This home sits in the French Quarter, and without getting too far into it because the details are pretty horrific, and this article is ostensibly about the Phillies’ signing free agent reliever Brad Keller to a two-year $22 million contract, the place is said to be haunted by the torture victims of an exceedingly cruel socialite who owned the mansion in the early 1830s.

The spirits who linger remain very unhappy (deservedly so!), and they seem especially offended by the thrill-seekers looking to exploit their suffering in the hope of experiencing some sort of supernatural activity. Many who have sought to prove themselves unbothered by the notion of tangling with a few disgruntled ghosts have marched proudly down the sidewalk under the mansion’s gallery. They did not just find themselves temporarily spooked by a burst of cold air or the smell of rotting flesh. Rather, they found themselves cursed with long-term bouts of bad luck and, for years after the fact, continued to report disturbing encounters with other worldly forces.

Now, is this story exaggerated and sensationalized by the ghost tour industrial complex that exists in New Orleans? Probably. But nevertheless, as a former ghost tour attendee, I’m left wondering if at some point early in his career Dave Dombrowski wandered through a heavily haunted bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday morning, the Twins signed Josh Bell to a one-year contract with a mutual option for 2027. Between salary, signing bonus, and option buyout, the deal guarantees Bell $7 million. A couple hours later, the Phillies and outfielder Adolis García agreed to terms on a one-year, $10 million contract.

Look around whatever room you’re sitting in as you read this. Consider the material of the walls, the furniture, whatever appliances (if any) are in view. The carpet, or wood or laminate or tile of the floor. Pens and pencils, soap, hand lotion, power cables, books, magazines, children’s toys… whatever you can see, you know what it’d feel like and taste like if you licked it.

That’s from experience. At some point in your life, you put everything you encountered in your mouth, just to see what would happen. If you’ve ever raised a child, or met a child, or been a child, you know kids are always putting stuff in their mouths. You know equally well that kids aren’t supposed to do that. They could choke, or get sick, or otherwise come to harm by licking the sidewalk.

But they do it anyway, no matter how forcefully their parents remind them not to. There’s only one way to know for sure what the TV remote tastes like, and it’s too important an issue to take anyone else’s word for it. 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.

For the past several election cycles, as a means of completing my coverage of the major candidates before the December 31 voting deadline, I’ve grouped together some candidates into a single overview, inviting readers wishing to (re)familiarize themselves with the specifics of their cases to check out older profiles that don’t require a full re-working because very little has changed, even with regards to their voting shares. This year, I’m adding Bobby Abreu — a candidate for whom I’ve voted five times thus far and intend to include again — to a pair I’ve yet to include on my ballots.

Before Joe Mauer began starring for the Twins, there was Torii Hunter. Before Chase Utley began starring for the Phillies, they had Abreu and Jimmy Rollins. Hunter, a rangy, acrobatic center fielder who eventually won nine Gold Gloves and made five All-Star teams, debuted with Minnesota in 1997 and emerged as a star in 2001, the same year the Twins chose Mauer with the number one pick of the draft. The pair would play together from 2004 to ’07, making the playoffs twice before Hunter departed in free agency. Abreu, a five-tool player with dazzling speed, a sweet left-handed stroke, power, and outstanding plate discipline, quickly blossomed upon being traded to the Phillies in November 1997. But even while hitting at least 20 homers, stealing at least 20 bases, and batting above .300, recognition largely eluded him until he made All-Star teams in 2004 and ’05. Rollins, a compact shortstop who carried himself with a swagger, debuted in 2001 and made two All-Star teams before he and Utley began an 11-year run (2004–14) as the Phillies’ regular double play combination. By the time the pair of middle infielders helped Philadelphia to five NL East titles, two pennants, and a championship — with Rollins winning NL MVP honors in 2007 and taking home four Gold Gloves — Abreu was gone, traded to the Yankees in mid-2006.

All three players enjoyed lengthy and impressive careers, racking up over 2,400 hits apiece with substantial home run and stolen base totals. From a Hall of Fame perspective, Rollins and Hunter have credentials that appeal more to traditionally minded voters than to statheads — particularly their Gold Gloves — while Abreu, despite half a dozen .300 seasons and eight with at least 100 RBI, was a stathead favorite. Regardless, they’ve all spent years languishing on the ballot. Hunter debuted with 9.5% in 2021 but has yet to match that since, scraping by in 2025 with just 5.1%; one fewer vote and he’d have been bumped off the ballot. Rollins debuted with 9.4% in 2022 and has gained roughly two or three points in each cycle since, with 18% in ’25. Abreu barely made the cut with just 5.5% in his 2020 debut, and since then has alternated small gains and losses; he received 19.5% in 2025. Read the rest of this entry »

No player, not even Bryce Harper, has personified the Phillies’ recent run of four straight trips to the postseason more than Kyle Schwarber. Faced with the prospect of losing their signature slugger to the division rival Mets, Philadelphia instead retained Schwarber on a five-year, $150 million deal, news of which enlivened the Winter Meetings here in Orlando on Tuesday.

Schwarber, who turns 33 on March 5, hit .240/.365/.563 and led the National League with 56 home runs and 132 RBI while playing in all 162 games in 2025. He set career highs in home runs, RBI, games played, slugging percentage, wRC+ (152), and WAR (4.9). The last of those marks owed plenty to manager Rob Thomson’s limiting him to eight games in left field, where he’s a major liability, having totaled -37 FRV and -34 DRS in 2022–23. Only Shohei Ohtani took more plate appearances as a designated hitter in 2025 than Schwarber’s 687.

Schwarber’s season — which propelled him to a second-place finish in the NL MVP voting behind Ohtani (who won unanimously) — may have been a career year, but it was no fluke. Thanks to his ongoing work with hitting coach Kevin Long, who joined the Phillies just a few months before Schwarber signed his four-year, $79 million deal with them in March 2022, he has evolved from a pushover against lefties into a top threat in those matchups. From 2015–21 with the Cubs, Nationals, and Red Sox, Schwarber hit just .214/.324/.361 (86 wRC+) in 584 plate appearances against lefties, making 100 PA against them just twice and topping a 100 wRC+ against them only in the last of those seasons, during which he bounced from Washington to Boston. He has topped 200 plate appearances against lefties in all four of his seasons with the Phillies, and he was an above-average hitter against them in each of the last three. Over the past two years, his 524 plate appearances against lefties led the majors, while his 157 wRC+ (.275/.385/.547) and slugging percentage both ranked second behind Yordan Alvarez (albeit in just 247 PA). By comparison, he hit .244/.365/.525 (143 wRC+) against righties in that span. 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 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.

When the Phillies returned to contention following a slide into irrelevance in the wake of their 1993 National League pennant, shortstop Jimmy Rollins, first baseman Ryan Howard, and lefty Cole Hamels gained most of the attention. Howard all but ran Jim Thome out of town after the latter was injured in 2005, then mashed a major league-high 58 homers in ’06 en route to NL MVP honors. Rollins, the emotional center of the team, carried himself with a swagger, declared the Phillies “the team to beat” at the outset of 2007, then won the MVP award when the team followed through with a division title. Hamels debuted in 2006 and became their ace while making his first All-Star team the next season. In the middle of all that, as part of the nucleus that would help the Phillies win five straight NL East titles from 2007–11, with a championship in ’08 and another pennant in ’09, Chase Utley was as good or better than any of them, though the second baseman hardly called attention to himself.

Indeed, Utley seemed to shun the spotlight, playing the game with a quiet intensity that bordered on asceticism. He sped around the bases after hitting home runs, then reluctantly accepted high-fives in the dugout. “I am having fun,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Andy Martino in 2009. “When I’m on the baseball field, that’s where I love to be. I’m not joking around and smiling. That competition, that heat-of-the-battle intensity, that’s how I have fun.” Read the rest of this entry »

“OK, but what if you could steal first base?” is surely a thought that’s occurred to just about every baseball fan. We’ve all seen players come up who look like absolute studs, except for one thing: They can’t hit. It’s only one skill, but it’s the most important skill for a position player.

I remember having a simply overpowering version of this thought in the press box at Camden Yards during the 2024 ALDS. Maikel Garcia’s tools sizzled and crackled with potential. He’s stolen 37 bases in 39 regular-season attempts. His defense at third base was very good, good enough to play shortstop on a team that had not been built around the best shortstop on the planet. Garcia played 157 regular-season games for the Royals in 2024, and he was about as good a player as you can be with a single-digit home run total and a .281 OBP.

Those two headline numbers do limit one’s potential, unfortunately.

In October, Garcia poked enough grounders through the infield to eke out a .318 batting average in Kansas City’s six playoff games, teasing us with the hope of what could have been if he just learned how to hit. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the navigation tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Though he won the Rookie of the Year award, a Cy Young, and a World Series all in his first full season while beginning a six-year streak of All-Star selections — the first of those as the game’s starter — Fernando Valenzuela wasn’t just a star pitcher. He was an international icon, the centerpiece of a cultural phenomenon, and a beloved global ambassador who brought generations of Mexican American and Latino fans to baseball while helping to heal the wounds caused by the building of Dodger Stadium, the very ballpark in which he starred.

“Roberto Clemente is ‘The Great One,’ but culturally, Fernando Valenzuela has been more significant in terms of bringing a fan base that didn’t exist in baseball,” José de Jesus Ortiz, the first Latino president of the BBWAA, told author Erik Sherman for Daybreak at Chavez Ravine, a 2023 biography of Valenzuela. Sherman himself described the pitcher as “like a composite of the Beatles — only in Dodger blue. His appeal was universal.”

After excelling in a relief role during a September 1980 cup of coffee with the Dodgers — as a 19-year-old in the heat of a playoff race, no less — Valenzuela took the world by storm the following spring. Pressed into service as the Opening Day starter, he threw a five-hit shutout, then reeled off four more shutouts and six more complete games within his first eight starts, a span during which he posted a 0.50 ERA. Despite speaking barely a word of English, the portly portsider (listed at 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds, but generally presumed to be at least 20 pounds heavier) charmed the baseball world with his bashful smile while bedeviling hitters with impeccable command of his screwball, delivered following a high leg kick and a skyward gaze at the peak of his windup.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re less than a month from the Winter Meetings and the Rule 5 Draft, which means it’s a good time to evaluate every team’s 40-man roster situation. This is the time of year when teams have one final chance to protect Rule 5 eligible players by placing them on the 40-man. Eligibility is determined by a mix of how long a player has been with their parent organization and how young they were when they signed: Players who signed at 18 or younger must be added to the 40-man within five seasons, while everyone else must be added within four. RosterResource monitors Rule 5 eligibility, if you’re curious to see the lay of the land.

During the season, teams can free up roster space by placing an injured player on the 60-day IL. In the offseason, teams don’t get extra slots for injured players, which tends to put pressure on the back of the roster. The Diamondbacks are a good example of how space can tighten quickly, as they’ve currently got six pitchers battling long-term injuries occupying a spot. You may have noticed a flurry of moves immediately following the World Series, with many teams outrighting players off the 40-man in order to make room for all the guys who were on the IL.

Below, I’ve assessed every National League team’s 40-man roster situation (Eric will sort through the American League tomorrow). Some teams, like the Braves, have plenty of roster space, and thus a lot of flexibility in adding whoever they like. Others, like the Cardinals and Marlins, will face some tough choices as they seek to balance protecting interesting prospects with retaining players already on the roster, as well as finding room for prospective additions via trade or free agency. Some clubs don’t have many impact players to add, while others may need to protect a half-dozen or so guys. I’ve tried to identify which players are most likely to be added, which guys on the 40-man are vulnerable to getting lopped off in a roster crunch, and who could be moved in a deal to free up roster space. Let’s dig in. Read the rest of this entry »

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 first team up is the Philadelphia Phillies.

Batters

The Phillies offense kept right on rolling for another season, once again scoring nearly 800 runs, and finishing with a wRC+ of 109, the team’s best total during this era. As expected, Philadelphia’s rotation was terrific, but the offense contributed more than its fair share to the team’s 96 wins, the second most in baseball.

There are worries lurking on the horizon, however. Trea Turner had what was certainly his best season in Philadelphia, but he’s entering his mid-30s, a very dangerous time for a middle infielder. I was actually surprised to see the drop-off in the ZiPS projection for Turner, but noticed that Steamer was basically projecting the same thing. Also entering his mid-30s is Bryce Harper, who has solidified his chances of a plaque in Cooperstown, but appears to now be off his peak years. Kyle Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto are free agents, and I think both stand a real chance of returning to Philadelphia, though both are also entering the likely decline phases of their careers; indeed, Realmuto probably already has. Read the rest of this entry »