Hello, my name is Brendan Gawlowski. I could do the Troy McClure thing and list all of my previous bylines, but I’d prefer to just say that it’s a pleasure returning to FanGraphs after nearly four years away. Back in early 2022, I took a job as a pro scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates and I’ve been scouting minor leaguers ever since. In a few cases, I had a role in bringing players to Pittsburgh. It was a blast and I am grateful for the experience.

But for as much fun as I had, the job wore on those around me. I spent more than 80 nights on the road last year, a grueling schedule that’s rough on families in any situation and was increasingly unreasonable in mine. When I joined the Pirates, I was 30, childless, and ready to stretch my legs after two years of lying low and masking up. In the intervening years, a series of significant events made it hard to balance my passion for scouting with my responsibilities at home. My wife and I had a baby. A year later, we found ourselves facing a cancer diagnosis and long-term treatment. Our parents started battling their own medical problems. Through it all, I tried to be around as much as I could, but the realities of my schedule led to stressful compromises. The logistics of doing the job while being more than a replacement-level family member were hard to manage. This past July, I pulled an all nighter and drove from Corpus Christi to Houston to catch a 6 AM flight back home to Seattle, stepped inside for a quick shower, and then bolted two hours north to Bellingham for a birthday party. During that last stretch, my wife made her annual gentle suggestion that another path was possible.

And what a path this is. FanGraphs’s reputation as a leader in baseball analysis is well earned, particularly in the prospect space. For as long as he’s been at it, Eric has done an incredible job of covering the landscape. From my perspective, the breadth, depth, and nuance of his analysis is worth the price of a Membership all by itself. I learned plenty from him before, during, and after our time working together in my first stint here. The listing for this position came at the perfect time and I applied with gusto: I loved working as a scout, but the opportunity to join Eric in a full-time capacity, to continue evaluating baseball players while also getting another couple of months at home, was too enticing to pass up. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve got the very latest version of the FanGraphs Mug now available for sale.

Drink your coffee every morning knowing that you have the newest and possibly best mug that we’ve ever sold, and that your purchase helped support FanGraphs!

The 2026 Free Agent Tracker is now live! There are currently over 170 players on the list, and more will be added following the postseason as teams begin to clear space on their 40-man rosters and decisions are made about 2026 options. The Tracker will be updated regularly throughout the offseason as qualifying offers are made (and then accepted or rejected), and as free agents find their new homes.

You can filter by status (signed/unsigned), previous team, and signing team, and export the data for your own analysis. You can also sort by a player’s handedness, age, and 2025 WAR. Shortly after the postseason ends, projected 2026 WAR will be added to the Tracker, as will the results of our annual contract crowdsourcing project, which include median contract total, years, and average annual value estimates.

Read the rest of this entry »

In case you forgot, FanGraphs has postseason leaderboards for the entirety of baseball history!

We rolled these out a couple years ago, but now that we have a day of postseason data for 2025, I figured it would be worth a quick reminder. There’s a handy dropdown on the leaderboards where you can select the round (or all rounds) of the postseason you are interested in querying:

Our postseason leaderboards include almost all of the stats we make available during the regular season. This includes MLB Statcast data since 2015 and win probability metrics since 1903.

Let us know if you have any questions, or have trouble finding something in the comments!

Please note, the application period for this position is now closed. Thank you for your interest.

FanGraphs is now accepting applications to join our staff as a full-time prospect writer.

The prospect writer will work with lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and other members of the FanGraphs staff to produce organizational top prospect lists, amateur draft coverage, and other minor league and prospect-related content. A successful candidate will be able to evaluate prospects using in-person looks, video scouting, and data. Familiarity and comfort with advanced statistics is a requirement, as is prior scouting or prospect evaluation experience and a firm understanding of the minor league landscape. Just as importantly, we’re looking for a writer who can generate their own ideas, produce lively and engaging prose, and detail what makes a prospect good (or bad) in a way that is educational, accurate, and fun to read. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s do something completely different and have some fun! Over the course of the past year, I created an arcade game that can be played on a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) from 1985! The game might looks familiar, but it’s been adapted for baseball.

This is an actual NES game; it is a .nes ROM file that you can play on original hardware. I found a JavaScript emulator, so you can more easily play it online. You can download the ROM here and use it in your emulator, flash cart, or your retro gaming setup of choice.

Below you can click on the photo, which will take you to the online emulator. It works best on desktops running Chrome, Firefox, or the new Edge. Safari is playable but it gives a soft picture without sound. Gameplay suffers on mobile, especially smaller devices. It’s best to use your keyboard to control everything, but there is a virtual controller available, too.

(Click to open FanGraphs Arcade)

Game Play

I don’t want to give too much away about the game, because half of the fun of an arcade game is trying things out, failing, then trying again until you succeed, though I will answer questions in the comments or on Twitter if anyone has any. Read the rest of this entry »

FanGraphs turns 20 years old today!

As you’ve no doubt noticed, we’ve added some balloons to the site to mark the occasion. If you click on one, you’ll be presented with an article that’s been deemed a worthy piece of FanGraphs history by our current staff, FanGraphs alumni, and industry friends. (I hope you’ll add your favorites in the comments here.)

Beyond the balloons, 20 years seemed like an appropriate moment to reflect on how the site started, and how it has gotten to where it is today.

I started FanGraphs when I was 23 years old. I was working at AOL, and my job involved putting together powerpoint decks of dialup metric graphs for executives. I thought the dialup business’ days were numbered — somewhat ironic, since dialup seems to have lived on for almost exactly 20 more years. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you a FanGraphs Member? Are you going to be in the Chicagoland area August 23-24? Would you like to attend Sabermetrics, Scouting, and the Science of Baseball, also known as Saberseminar? Well great news! FanGraphs is doing a Saberseminar ticket giveaway for our Members.

Hosted by Illinois Tech at their Chicago campus, Saberseminar is a charity conference that brings together baseball fans, sabermetricians, data scientists, and front office personnel for a two-day showcase of the latest developments in baseball analytics. Researchers, students, and industry folks spend the weekend presenting their latest work. Last year’s conference featured talks from Reds senior director of analytics Nick Wan and Chicago White Sox senior advisor to pitching Brian Bannister, among many others, and this year’s lineup is similarly impressive. It’s also a place to network and build community across the industry, whether it’s with fans, reporters covering the game, scientists studying it, or front office personnel. Several FanGraphs writers past and present will be in attendance, including me! And all of the conference’s proceeds go to charity causes like the Alliance to Cure Cavernous Malformation.

FanGraphs has been a supporter of Saberseminar for over 10 years. This year, we’re giving away six tickets to the conference to our Members. To enter, simply fill out this Google form with your name and the email address associated with your Membership. This is important, as it is how we will verify your Membership status. You’re limited to one entry per email address. We’ll do a random drawing next Thursday, August 14, to determine who gets the tickets.

Conference Details
August 23-24
Hermann Hall Conference Center at Illinois Tech
3241 S Federal St, Chicago, IL 60616
Full Schedule

Saberseminar Meetup (21-plus)
August 23 at 5:30 PM
Maria’s Community Bar Back Patio
960 W 31st St, Chicago, IL 60608

Reminder: Starting August 4, the price of a FanGraphs Membership is going up. You can find more information on the reason for the increase, as well as how to lock in our existing pricing, in the post below. As I noted when we announced the pricing change on June 10, Membership makes our work at the site possible, allowing us to add new site features and grow our staff, and it comes with a ton of great benefits. Since that announcement, we’ve launched a pitch-type splits leaderboard and a crowdsourced trade value tool, and we’ve added a full-time staff member. We know there is intense competition for your subscription dollars, but we think the breadth and depth of our coverage makes a Membership well worth it and still represents a considerable value in the sports media subscription landscape. I hope you’ll become a Member, and help us continue to build a better FanGraphs. Thank you for your support. – David Appelman

Over the last five years, as we’ve navigated a changing advertising landscape — not to mention the pandemic and a lockout — I’ve endeavored to be transparent about the state of the site, our business model, and our plans for the future. I’ve taken that approach because FanGraphs is a community, and I think our readers deserve to understand what we are doing and why. It’s been four years since we last increased the price of a FanGraphs Membership, and we’ve delayed this increase for as long as possible. We’ve not only seen considerable increases in our stat licensing fees and infrastructure costs, but this year we’ve also seen a steep decline in our advertising rates as well as our organic search traffic, as Google continues to push relevant websites further and further down the page in favor of new AI search results.

Beginning August 4, a yearly FanGraphs Membership will cost $80; a Monthly Membership will cost $15 a month, while a Three-Year Membership will cost $200. Since we won’t be introducing this change until August 4, you still have the opportunity to purchase a $60 Membership for the year, or upgrade your existing Membership to a $150 Three-Year Membership, allowing you to grandfather yourself into our existing pricing for the next three years. Read the rest of this entry »

Every July, FanGraphs releases our annual Trade Value Series highlighting the top 50 players in baseball, taking contract status and performance into account. For the past four years, I’ve been in charge of this exercise, with liberal amounts of help from the rest of the FanGraphs staff and some contacts on the team side. This year, I’ve got company. For the first time, FanGraphs readers will be creating their own trade value list. Read the rest of this entry »