Drake Baldwin is one of baseball’s most-promising prospects. A third-round pick in 2022 out of Missouri State University, the 23-year-old catcher in the Atlanta Braves organization is No. 11 on our Top 100. His left-handed stroke is a big reason why. Flashing plus power, Baldwin bashed 16 home runs last season while logging a 119 wRC+ between Double-A Mississippi and Triple-A Gwinnett.
He could have pursued a career in another sport. All-State in hockey as a Wisconsin prep, the sturdily-built Madison West High School product potted 43 goals as a junior, then found the back of the net 46 times as a senior.
Why did he choose the diamond, and not the ice?
“Hockey recruiting is a little later, so I didn’t actually talk to many colleges,” Baldwin said of his decision. “I think I had a chance, and the [junior hockey] route was interesting too, but being able to go right from high school to college and start working on a degree was a more straightforward path to where I wanted to be. I mean, I love both sports. I wish I could play both of them. Baseball just came first.” Read the rest of this entry »
It was a bit of a weird assignment: “Hey, one of our most popular projections drops this week, would you mind telling everyone where you think it’s wrong?” Sure thing, bossman!
Joking aside, I get it. Playoff odds are probabilistic; if you asked me how many teams would miss their projected win total, I’d say half are going to come in high and the other half are going to come in low. They follow a set methodology that you can’t tweak if the results look off. That means the standings page is blind to factors human observers can see. It doesn’t know who’s getting divorced, who made a conditioning breakthrough over the winter, and who just really freaking hated the old pitching coach who got fired.
Nevertheless, these numbers are valuable because the projection system doesn’t mistake anecdotes for data and overrate the intangible. It’s a reminder to trust your gut, but only to an extent. Read the rest of this entry »
In 2023, Jurickson Profar was quite possibly the worst full-time player in Major League Baseball. In 2024, he was one of the best. Slashing .280/.380/.459 while playing half his games at the pitcher-friendly Petco Park, Profar finished with a 139 wRC+, sixth best among qualified NL batters. Despite his mediocre baserunning (-0.8 BsR) and poor defense (-8 DRS, -6 FRV), his bat carried him to a 4.3-WAR season. Still, he entered free agency in a tricky position. He’d be looking for a suitor who’d put much more stock in his recent phenomenal performance than the long, uneven period that came before it. On Thursday, the Braves emerged as one such team. Deciding that Profar’s pros far outweighed his cons, Atlanta inked the veteran outfielder to a three-year, $42 million contract.
In hindsight, this contract and pairing feel so predictable that I could have pre-written this article weeks ago. When it comes to projecting Profar’s future performance, the error bars are wide. We’re talking about a player who was released by, of all teams, the Colorado Rockies in 2023 and found himself starting for the NL All-Stars less than a year later. Yet, projecting his contract turned out to be surprisingly easy. Ben Clemens predicted Profar would sign for three years and $45 million. MLB Trade Rumors predicted Profar would sign for three years and $45 million. Kiley McDaniel of ESPN predicted Profar would sign for three years and $45 million. The median projection from our contract crowdsourcing exercise? Yep, three years and $45 million. As divided as this country might be, we could all agree on one thing: Profar would sign a three-year deal with an AAV close to $15 million. Lo and behold, the Braves will pay him $14 million per annum through 2027.
Three years and $42 million is the same contract both Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Jorge Soler signed last offseason, and very close to the three-year, $43.5 million deal Mitch Haniger signed the winter before. In other words, it’s the going rate for a corner outfielder in his early 30s with something like a two-win projection but All-Star upside. Profar might have a wider range of outcomes, but his median projection is right in that window. If he reverts to the version of himself that we saw in 2023, the Braves will soon regret his contract. If he keeps up his 2024 performance, his salary will look like a bargain. Ultimately, however, Profar only has to be the player he was in 2018 (107 wRC+, 2.2 WAR), 2020 (113 wRC+, 0.9 WAR), or 2022 (110 wRC+, 2.4 WAR) for this deal to pay dividends. That’s exactly the kind of player Steamer thinks he’ll be in 2025: Read the rest of this entry »
On August 18 in Colorado, Ha-Seong Kim led off first base, then dived back to beat a pickoff attempt. He tore the labrum in his right shoulder, and that was the last time we saw him play in 2024. After a failed rehab attempt, Kim underwent surgery in October, and he won’t be ready to play again until sometime between April and June. Just as uncertain: Where exactly Kim will be suiting up when he returns. There’s no doubt about his skill. Over the past four years, Kim has spent time at second, short, and third, and neither DRS nor FRV has ever rated him as below average at any of those spots. He needed a year to adjust on offense after arriving from the KBO in 2021, but over the past three seasons, he’s run a 106 wRC+. That ranks 13th among shortstops, and over the same period, his 10.5 WAR ranks 11th.
Kim entered free agency after both he and the Padres declined their ends of a mutual option, and he came in at ninth on our Top 50 Free Agents. According to the projections, he’ll command a four- or five-year deal with an AAV in the neighborhood of $19 million. However, the shoulder injury could cost him as much as half of the 2025 season, and it makes for a tough needle to thread. He’s got to sign with a team that needs a solid infielder, but not badly enough to need one right away. Moreover, a shoulder injury is especially scary for Kim, whose arm strength is an important part of his overall value and who already possesses below-average power at the plate. For that reason, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Kim get a pillow contract: Ben Clemens proposed two years with an opt-out. Back in November, Mark Feinsand reported that Kim had generated “lots of interest,” and wrote about the possibility that he’d be among the first free agents off the board. However, it’s now late January, and if you cruise through our Depth Charts, you’ll notice that there just don’t seem to be many good landing spots for Kim. Let us begin our litanies. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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.
With a foundation that centered upon the Hall of Fame triumvirate of Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and John Smoltz, the Braves dominated the NL West and then the NL East, reaching the postseason every year from 1991–2005 save for the ’94 strike season. Nothing lasts forever, though, and as Glavine and then Maddux departed in free agency, the team inevitably had to retool. Among the centerpieces of the next wave of Braves stars was one practically grown in their own backyard, Brian McCann.
A lefty-swinging backstop with rich baseball bloodlines, a strong arm, and a powerful bat, McCann was just 21 years old when he debuted with the Braves in June 2005. Over his first eight full seasons, he made seven All-Star teams and helped Atlanta to three postseason appearances, though the team’s success wasn’t nearly on par with the preceding dynasty. While McCann’s footwork and pitch framing wasn’t initially as polished as that of Russell Martin (who debuted with the Dodgers as a 23-year-old in 2006), he too developed into one of the game’s elite framers, that while providing stronger offense than his West Coast counterpart. Along the way, he also developed a somewhat dubious reputation as an enforcer of the unwritten rules, thanks to high-profile incidents involving José Fernández and Carlos Gómez in September 2013, though both players smoothed things over with McCann. Read the rest of this entry »
Proposition No. 1: Identifying the smartest front office in baseball would be a difficult task even if it weren’t such a loaded question to start. How do you weight scouting versus development? How do you factor the influence of ownership, for good or ill? Or injuries, or luck, or other elements of force majeure?
So I’ll state my premise this way: The Braves seem to be a competently run organization. They’ve made the playoffs seven years running — six of those by winning the NL East — and are set up well to continue contending in the future. They’ve had internal developmental successes, savvy trade wins, and the occasional opportunistic buy-low move for a veteran free agent. Are they the best-run team in the league? I don’t know, but I’d hear out an argument to that effect.
Surely they wouldn’t go out of their way to acquire a player coming off a historically bad season. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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. Dubbed as such by U.S.S. Mariner blogger Jason Michael Barker Dave Cameron on July 17, 2003, when he was just a 17-year-old in the Low-A Northwest League, he was already overpowering much older hitters. 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 commensurate 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, and changed 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 »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. It was initially written for The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books, and subsequently adapted for SI.com and then FanGraphs. 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.
It happened so quickly. Freshly anointed the game’s top prospect by Baseball America in the spring of 1996, the soon-to-be-19-year-old Andruw Jones was sent to play for the Durham Bulls, the Braves’ High-A affiliate. By mid-August, he blazed through the Carolina League, the Double-A Southern League, and the Triple-A International League, then debuted for the defending world champions. By October 20, with just 31 regular-season games under his belt, he was a household name, having become the youngest player ever to homer in a World Series game, breaking Mickey Mantle’s record — and doing so twice at Yankee Stadium to boot.
Jones was no flash in the pan. The Braves didn’t win the 1996 World Series, and he didn’t win the ’97 NL Rookie of the Year award, but along with Chipper Jones (no relation) and the big three of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, he became a pillar of a franchise that won a remarkable 14 division titles from 1991 to 2005 (all but the 1994 strike season, with ’91–93 in the NL West and ’95–05 in the revamped NL East). From 1998 to 2007, Jones won 10 straight Gold Gloves, more than any center fielder except Willie Mays. Read the rest of this entry »
By the peripheral metrics, Max Fried is nothing special. Over the course of his career, his strikeout and walk rates sit somewhere around the league average. By results, however, he looks like a Hall of Famer; his 2.81 ERA since the start of 2020 ranks third among all starters. When teams contemplate whether to offer the left-hander a five- or six-year deal this winter, one question will be top of mind: Who is the real Max Fried?
Last week, Thomas Harrigan at MLB.com argued that Fried’s contact prevention resume might be the strongest of any contemporary pitcher. Harrigan noted that, after setting a cutoff, nobody has allowed a lower barrel rate this decade. That is reflected in Fried’s home run rate and therefore his FIP — other than Logan Webb, no starter allowed fewer home runs on a rate basis. Thanks to that super low home run rate, Fried posted a 3.11 FIP and 15.4 WAR over the decade — strong numbers, but reflective of a very good pitcher rather than one of the game’s elite.
One thing FIP ignores is the number of doubles a pitcher allows. Fried allowed just 16 doubles in 2024, tied for the lowest mark among all qualified pitchers. That low doubles rate is consistent with his performance over the years — during the 2020s, only 3.5% of the hitters Fried faced reached on doubles, ranking sixth-lowest among 173 pitchers in the sample:
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2016 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. 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. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance over collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.
Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a hard slider learned from teammate Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 900 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA. Read the rest of this entry »
