Jamie Arnold has a six-pitch mix that plays up thanks to outlier traits. He also has a lofty ceiling. Drafted 11th overall last year by the Athletics out of Florida State University, the 21-year-old southpaw will debut professionally this season having just missed out on our 2026 Top 100 Prospects list. And while he didn’t quite make that cut, Arnold did merit inclusion on the prospect team’s Picks to Click list, which highlights players expected to make next year’s Top 100. (Eric Longenhagen was present for Arnold’s spring training debut last Friday, video of which can be seen here.)

His delivery plays a role in his effectiveness. As Michael Baumann wrote prior to last summer’s draft, “Arnold’s long arm swing and extreme low release point make it hard to find an easy comp for him.” My colleague also referred to him as “a pitchability lefty,” which is notable given that the 6-foot-1 Tampa native possesses plus raw stuff. He certainly dominated at the amateur level. Over his last two collegiate seasons, Arnold went 19-5 with a 2.96 ERA while allowing just 153 hits over 190 1/3 frames. Moreover, he punched out 278 batters and issued just 53 free passes.

Arnold discussed his arsenal — which currently includes two changeups — as well as the mindset he takes with him to the mound, at the A’s spring training facility in Mesa, Arizona.

———

David Laurila: I’ve read the reports, but how would you describe yourself as a pitcher? How do you get guys out?

Jamie Arnold: “I’m in the zone a lot; I’m a strike-thrower and like to limit walks. You could say that I’m a groundball pitcher, but I also put up strikeout numbers. So I like to play both roles: a pitcher who gets quick outs, and a pitcher who punches guys out.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a generous podcast listener, Bruce Meyer’s elevation to interim executive director of the MLBPA, his framing of the sport’s competitive challenges, media messaging vis-à-vis the owners’ and players’ potential responsibility for missed games in 2027, and the creep of pitch-calling from the dugout, then preview the 2026 Detroit Tigers (53:35) with The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen, and the 2026 Athletics (1:31:28) with A’s on SI’s Jason Burke.

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Jordan Montgomery helped the Rangers win their first World Series in 2023, but since then, things haven’t gone so well for him. First, he had a rough trip through free agency, then pitched poorly after signing a one-year deal with Arizona, left Scott Boras’ agency, publicly blasted Boras, got blasted by Diamondbacks managing partner Ken Kendrick… and underwent his second Tommy John surgery, which cost him all of the 2025 season. While rehabbing, he was even traded to the Brewers in a salary dump. After all that drama, now he’s a Ranger again.

On Wednesday morning, the day after Rangers pitchers and catchers reported to the team’s spring training facility in Surprise, Arizona, the Dallas Morning News’ Evan Grant reported that the 33-year-old lefty will join Texas on a one-year deal with a $1.25 million base salary and as-yet-unreported incentives. Montgomery had his surgery last April 1, so he won’t be ready until sometime in midseason, but the hope is that he can help the Rangers down the stretch.

With camps opening this week, Montgomery isn’t the only free agent who’s found a new home. On Tuesday, fellow starter Aaron Civale signed a one-year contract with the A’s, while Montgomery’s former Rangers batterymate Jonah Heim inked a one-year deal with the Braves. I’ll round all of these up below. Read the rest of this entry »

Life is moving fast for Jacob Wilson. The 23-year-old shortstop got married in December, and on Friday, he agreed to a seven-year, $70 million contract extension to stay in West Sacramento. (Well, he’ll be in West Sacramento for two seasons, anyway, and then after that it’s a bit unclear where he’ll be staying, but wherever it is, it’ll be with the Athletics.) Wilson was under team control for five more seasons, but the deal, first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan, adds two more years to that total, with a team option for an eighth. If the A’s exercise that option, Wilson will reach free agency for the first time after the 2033 season, when he’ll be 31.

Wilson is coming off an eye-opening rookie campaign. Despite missing a month during the summer after a pitch fractured his forearm, he put up 3.5 WAR, a 121 wRC+ and a .311 batting average. He earned an All-Star nod and picked up an MVP vote, and had he given in to what must have eventually been very strong temptation to poison teammate Nick Kurtz, he could have even taken first place in the Rookie of the Year voting. However, that doesn’t mean he’s a four-win player going forward.

It’s not impossible that Wilson could keep running a batting line that’s 20% better than the league average, but it would be foolish to go into the 2026 season with that expectation. He’s cut from the same cloth as Luis Arraez and Steven Kwan, a pure contact hitter who swings slow and squares the ball up, eschewing both power and patience. Like many hitters who can hit anything, he tends to swing at everything. As a result, he never walks or strikes out, which means he really needs the ball to find grass. In 2025, it did just that. Wilson’s .311 batting average was 34 points above his expected mark, which tied him for the biggest gap among all qualified players. Read the rest of this entry »

Mason Barnett doesn’t profile as a front-of-the-rotation starter, but he does project to provide solid innings for a major league staff. A 25-year-old right-hander who made his MLB debut with the Athletics at the end of August, Barnett is currently viewed by Eric Longenhagen as “a big league starter who has demonstrated durability [and] is a no. 4/5 on a good team.” Our lead prospect evaluator anticipates assigning him a 45 FV when our 2026 A’s list is published in the not-too-distant future.

The Kennesaw, Georgia native was originally in the Kansas City system. Drafted 87th overall by the Royals in 2022 out of Auburn University, Barnett was subsequently traded to his current club in the 2024 deadline deal that sent Lucas Erceg to America’s Heartland. With his time down on the farm now mostly complete, Barnett will head into the forthcoming campaign having logged a 6.85 ERA and a 4.88 FIP over five starts comprising 22 1/3 innings in his initial major league opportunity.

Longenhagen has assigned a 40/45 on the righty’s command, and it was that aspect of his game that Scott Emerson emphasized when I asked him about Barnett toward the tail end of last season.

“Barnett, interesting guy,” said the longtime Athletics pitching coach. “Very good competitor. Throws strikes with his fastball, which has some cut-ride. He’s got a good developing changeup. He spins the ball really well and has both the sweeper and the curveball. For me, a lot of it with Barnett is his being able to execute his pitches inside the strike zone when he needs to, and then being able to make them chase outside of the strike zone when he’s ahead in the count. He’s one of our guys who needs to learn to command the ball better.”

The numbers back that up. Barnett had a 10.8% walk rate (as well as a 17.3% strikeout rate) in his big league cameo, while in Triple-A those numbers were 11.9% and 22.8%. But, while concerning, it’s not as though he can’t throw strikes or miss bats. In 2024, he punched out Double-A batters at a 28.5% clip, and walked them at a more-acceptable (albeit still not great) 8.7% over 133 innings of work. Like Longenhagen and Emerson, Barnett also recognizes the need to improve his strike-throwing. 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.

The baseball industry loves its pitching prospects — and sometimes seems to love dreaming on them by using them as trade chips almost as much as it does actually letting them pitch. Considered to have one of the best curveballs in the game from the outset of his professional career, Gio Gonzalez was traded three times before he’d thrown a major league pitch, and five times during a career that ended just after he turned 35. Along the way, the undersized southpaw made two All-Star teams, received Cy Young votes twice, and helped his teams reach the playoffs five times. While he wasn’t always easy to watch given his high walk rates, his ability to miss bats was a testament to the quality of his stuff.

…

Giovany Aramis Gonzalez was born on September 19, 1985 in Hialeah, Florida, a city in Miami-Dade County where roughly three-quarters of the population is of Cuban ancestry. He’s the oldest of six children of Max and Yolanda (Yoly) Gonzalez. Max, a first-generation Cuban-American, installed billboards and owned a scooter shop, while Yoly, an immigrant from Cuba, worked at various jobs to help the family make ends meet.

Gio was just four years old when his parents introduced him to baseball. Growing up, he played sandlot baseball with neighborhood kids in a narrow, rocky strip of land behind the family’s townhouse. “We broke so many windows that I found a guy who would replace them for 15 bucks apiece,” Yoly recalled in 2011.

“Max grew up tough, never got to play as much ball as he wanted and, when it rained on too-rare Sundays when he had a game as a child, he broke down in frustration and cried. But he never stopped studying the sport,” wrote the Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell in 2012. When his eldest son showed an aptitude for the game, Max taught him the curveball that would become his signature. Read the rest of this entry »

As you’re probably aware, the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLBPA expires this year. Time flies, doesn’t it? The last time this happened, MLB locked out its players — the sport’s first work stoppage since the infamous strike that canceled the 1994 World Series.

The smart money is on there being another lockout next offseason; last time around, both sides did a lot of saber-rattling, but relatively little changed. We got the pre-arb bonus pool and some tinkering around the edges, but there was no salary cap, no abolition of the arbitration system, nothing that I’d describe as revolutionary. The duration of the lockout reflects that assessment; the stalemate lasted long enough to delay the season by a week, but not to cancel any games outright.

Having walked up to the verge of the abyss, peeked over the edge, and retreated, neither capital nor labor reaped a painful object lesson in the reality of all-out labor war. Last time that happened, it scared both sides into détente for 25 years. It seems reasonable to assume that either the players or owners might at least think about tickling the dragon’s tail next winter. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not just the park. The A’s put on a power show in 2025, clobbering 219 homers, getting results up and down the lineup. Nick Kurtz led the way with a superlative rookie season, but he wasn’t alone; Brent Rooker socked 30 bombs, Lawrence Butler added 21 of his own, and Tyler Soderstrom split the difference with 25. Rooker and Butler signed extensions before the season. Kurtz is going to be around forever. Add Soderstrom to that group, too: Over the holidays, he and the A’s agreed to a seven-year, $86 million contract extension, as Jeff Passan first reported.

Soderstrom’s route to stardom is emblematic of this A’s team. He’s always hit well, but figuring out how to plug him into the lineup hasn’t been straightforward. Three years ago, he was a top 25 global prospect as a catcher. Huge, easy power combined with an ability to play the toughest position on the diamond were the selling points. But as he worked through the upper minors and debuted in Oakland, a clear weakness emerged: Soderstrom couldn’t actually catch all that well, and Shea Langeliers, another catching prospect, was an obstacle to everyday playing time behind the dish. After catching 123.2 big league innings that were both statistically and aesthetically ugly enough for the team to pull the plug, Soderstrom was left in search of a position.

In 2024, an early-season minor league stint to work on his defense combined with a mid-season injury meant Soderstrom barely played first base, the new position the A’s selected for him. But between drafting Kurtz and making Rooker a full-time DH, that position didn’t promise much long-term stability. Soderstrom went into 2025 trying to learn left field while also attempting to improve on a lackluster career batting line. A former catcher playing the outfield and maybe not even hitting well? His career was surely on thin ice. Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Henry could close out games for the Nationals next season. Paul Toboni was noncommittal when I brought up that possibility during the Winter Meetings, yet there are no currently clear favorites to fill the role — not since Washington’s new president of baseball operations swapped southpaw Jose Ferrer to the Seattle Mariners in exchange for Harry Ford and Isaac Lyon in early December. And while the 26-year-old right-hander admittedly lacks ninth-inning experience — just two professional saves — he has attributes suggestive of late-inning effectiveness.

Henry’s 2025 numbers serve as an argument both for and against his assuming the closer responsibilities that Ferrer had inherited when Kyle Finnegan was dealt to Detroit at July’s trade deadline. Over 57 relief outings comprising 52-and-two-thirds innings, he held opposing batters to a .213 xBA while logging a better-than-league-average 25.6% whiff rate. Less encouraging were the 5.34 FIP that accompanied his 4.27 ERA, and the 13.3% walk rate that accompanied his 21.6% strikeout rate. Also notable was his .259 BABIP, but is that a red flag, or is it actually a sign that the Nationals might have stumbled upon their next Tyler Clippard?

Pitching for Washington from 2008-2014, Clippard crafted a 2.68 ERA, a notably higher 3.46 FIP, an 15.8% infield-fly rate, and a .233 BABIP (he also had 34 saves and 150 holds during that seven-year span). Henry’s infield-fly rate this past season was 21.4%, the third-highest mark in MLB among pitchers to throw at least 50 innings. Only Jordan Leasure (26.0%) and Alex Vesia (22.1%) induced a higher percentage of pop-ups.

Henry’s arm slot differs from Clippard’s, but his delivery nonetheless plays a role in his ability to miss barrels. Moreover, his slot has dropped since he was drafted 55th overall in 2020 out of LSU. Eric Longenhagen pointed that out earlier this summer: Read the rest of this entry »

Another day, another Met out the door. Jeff McNeil, who to this point had spent his entire 13-year professional career in the Mets organization, is now an Athletic. The 33-year-old second baseman and outfielder is headed to Sacramento (or, to use the Athletics’ official branding, Parts Unknown), in exchange for 17-year-old pitching prospect Yordan Rodriguez. The Mets will pay down $5.75 million of the $15.75 million due to McNeil in 2026, and if the A’s decline McNeil’s club option for 2027, Steve Cohen will cover the $2 million buyout.

At the time of the trade, McNeil was the Mets’ active leader in games played, plate appearances, and hits. If you want a sense of how the Mets’ offseason is going, here’s a fun fact. In the past 30 days, the franchise has had four active leaders in those categories: Brandon Nimmo, who was traded to Texas just before Thanksgiving; then Pete Alonso, who signed with the Orioles during Winter Meetings; then McNeil; and now Francisco Lindor. All that upheaval without playing a single game.

All told, 16 of the 63 players who suited up for the Mets in 2025 have departed since the end of the season. Come February, “Meet the Mets” might be more than a song. They’re going to have to spend the first week of camp wearing name tags and doing icebreakers. Read the rest of this entry »