I’ve become increasingly convinced that a lot of the subtle roster construction hacks some teams use to get the most out of their prospects — service time manipulation, extremely restrictive pitcher workload management, drafting by bonus demand rather than picking the best player available — are too cute by half. Sometimes it pays off, but in most cases, players are going to be good, or they’re not. They’re going to stay healthy, or they’re not. And fixating on the externalities is ultimately self-defeating.

Consider Jordan Walker. The St. Louis Cardinals, to their immense credit, brought Walker north from spring training last year. The no. 12 global prospect that offseason, Walker was only 20 at the time, and hadn’t had so much as a sniff at Triple-A. But he was athletic for his 6-foot-5 frame, which promised so much power the question was whether scouts could accurately report it before they ran out of pluses.

Did it matter that the Cardinals had an extremely crowded outfield at the time? No. Did it matter that if Walker lived up to his potential, he’d hit free agency at age 26? No. The only thing that mattered was whether he’d sink or swim. Read the rest of this entry »

No manager defined the era of baseball marked by artificial turf and distant outfield fences as Whitey Herzog did. As the manager of the Royals (1975–79) and Cardinals (1980, ’81–90) — and for a short but impactful period, the latter club’s general manager as well — he assembled and led teams built around pitching, speed, and defense to six division titles, three pennants, and a world championship using an aggressive and exciting brand of baseball: Whiteyball. Gruff but not irascible, Herzog found ways to get the most out of players whose limitations had often prevented them from establishing themselves elsewhere.

“The three things you need to be a good manager,” he told Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite in 1981, “are players, a sense of humor and, most important, a good bullpen. If I’ve got those three things, I assure you I’ll get along with the press and I guarantee you I’ll make the Hall of Fame.”

Herzog was finally elected to the Hall in 2010, an honor long overdue given that he was 20 years removed from the dugout and had never been on a ballot. He passed away on Monday in St. Louis at the age of 92. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things, where I highlight some strange and amusing happenings from the last week. We’re getting into the rhythm of the season now; 20 games in, you start to get a feel for how watching your team will feel this year. Are they going to be exasperating? Do they look like a fun group? Have a few new players completely changed the vibe from last year? Are they hitting so many homers that they had to make a new dong bong homer hose?

That’s part of the fun of watching baseball, in my opinion. Playoff odds are one thing, but how you feel watching your guys get from point A to point B matters a lot more in the long run. If you’re reading this article, I’m willing to bet that you’re watching dozens of hours of baseball throughout the year – perhaps even hundreds. The playoffs for your team might last 15 hours of game time. The little things are the point, and there were some great little things this week. As always, I’d like to thank Zach Lowe, whose basketball column inspired this one in both name and content. Let’s get going.
Read the rest of this entry »

I feel pretty confident in saying that I wasn’t alone in my excitement about the Cardinals starting the year with Victor Scott II on the roster. Good center field defense is incredibly fun. Stolen bases are incredibly fun. Scott stole 94 bases in the minors last year and looks like he might be a truly special defender thanks to his blazing footspeed (first in the majors, narrowly ahead of Trea Turner). Sure, he’d only gotten as far as Double-A, but injuries made his call-up at least defensible, and I wanted to see what he could do.

The results are now in: Scott isn’t ready for the majors just yet. The Cardinals have played 19 games, and Scott has appeared in all of them, three times as a defensive replacement, including yesterday. He’s racked up 62 plate appearances. He’s been quite bad in those plate appearances. That’s no knock on Scott, just to be clear. He’s a 23-year-old entering his third professional season. He’s only on the squad in the first place because a number of things went wrong higher up the depth chart. But the way the Cards have managed his playing time is so strange that I feel compelled to look into what’s gone wrong and why nothing has changed.

Scott’s speed has been exactly as advertised — he’s swiped two bags without getting caught — but the rest of his game hasn’t worked. He’s hitting a ghastly .089/.145/.143, good for a -15 wRC+ that’s comfortably last in baseball. He hasn’t made up for it with otherworldly defense; it’s too early for these metrics to stabilize, but every advanced system thinks he’s been below average. Statcast credits it to his below-average reaction time, which makes sense given how fast he is underway. Read the rest of this entry »

Lance Lynn is my favorite player in baseball; I find it easier to just admit this up front and let readers view my work through that lens, instead of going through the trouble of trying to obfuscate this very obvious truth.

One of the things that drew me to the big man in the first place was his reliability. Lynn had been many things over his long and venerable big league career: A four-seam specialist, a sinkerballer, an ace, an innings eater, an underrated gem, a star, a national hero. But he’d never been bad before.

In 2023, Lynn still threw 183 2/3 innings, but he gave up about 183 2/3 home runs over that span. Not really, but the actual number — 44 — was so high I invoked the late Jose Lima when I wrote up Lynn’s signing in November. On a scale from zero to things you don’t want, it’s not what you want. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the triumphant return of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, the longest-named column in baseball. Rogers Hornsby famously stared out his window all winter waiting for baseball to return. I can’t claim to have done the same, but I’m still overjoyed it’s back, and what better way to celebrate than by talking about some weird and delightful things that caught my eye while I soaked in baseball’s opening week? As always, this column is inspired by Zach Lowe’s basketball column of a similar name, which I read religiously.

1. Non-Elite Defenders Making Elite Defensive Plays
Great defenders make great plays. I’m sure you can picture Nolan Arenado making a do-or-die barehanded throw or Kevin Kiermaier tracking down a line drive at a full sprint. That’s why those guys are such storied defenders; they make the exceptional seem expected. There are plenty of other players in baseball, though, and many of them make the exceptional seem, well, exceptional. When someone you wouldn’t expect turns in a web gem, it feels all the better, and this week had a ton of them.

There’s the Juan Soto throw, of course:

That was brilliant, and it came at the perfect time. Plenty has already been written about it, but that doesn’t make it less impressive. Soto is at best an average outfielder and likely worse than that, and his arm is one of the weaker parts of his game. But he’s capable of brilliance out there from time to time, particularly when accuracy matters, and this one delivered.

But there were so many more! How about Brett Baty doing his best Arenado (or Ke’Bryan Hayes, shout out to the real best third base defender) impression on a tough grounder:

That’s phenomenal work. The combination of a weakly hit ball and fast runner meant that Baty had to make every instant count. Any wasted movement on a gather or pivot would’ve made Matt Vierling safe. This wasn’t your normal plant your feet and make a strong throw kind of out; Baty was either going to fire off balance or eat the ball. Check out his footwork, courtesy of the always-excellent SNY camera crew:

That throw came against his momentum and with his left leg completely airborne. As an added bonus, fellow lightly regarded defender Pete Alonso received the throw perfectly. Baty was a top prospect because of his hitting. If he keeps making plays like this, we might have to tear up that old scouting report.

Speaking of prospects who aren’t known for their fielding, Jordan Walker was one of the worst outfield defenders in baseball last year – understandable for a 21-year-old learning a new position in the major leagues. He’s fast and has a powerful throwing arm, so the building blocks are there, but the numbers don’t lie: He was out of his element in the outfield.

Maybe this year is different, though:

Simply put, that’s a great play. Jackson Merrill’s liner was headed toward the gap, which meant that Walker had to come in almost perpendicular to the ball to make a play. A bad step early in the route likely would’ve left him high and dry. But he got it right and turned a double into an out.

These guys won’t always make the right plays. In fact, they often won’t. That only makes it more fun when they nail it. Even bad major league defenders are capable of brilliance. Stars – they’re absolutely nothing like us!

2. Location, Location, Location
Pop ups are death for hitters. Infield pop ups are particularly so. Every other type of hit has some chance of finding a hole, but the combination of short distance and long hangtime mean that if you hit the ball straight up and it doesn’t go far, you’re going to be out. Batters hit .006/.006/.006 on infield fly balls from 2021 through 2023 – 12,583 pop ups led to 74 hits. You generally need some wild wind, a collision, or perhaps an overzealous pitcher trying to field for himself to have any shot at a hit. Mostly, though, it just turns into an out.

So far, 2024 has had other ideas. In the first five days of games, two infield pop ups turned into singles. One even turned into a double. It’s silly season for bad contact, in other words. It all started with Eddie Rosario:

That’s one of the hardest-hit infield pop ups of the year, one of only two hit at 95 mph or harder. That meant that the Reds had all day to camp under it, but unfortunately for them, it was a windy day in Cincinnati on Saturday. Gameday reported 17 mph winds from right to left, and you can see Santiago Espinal and Christian Encarnacion-Strand struggle to track the ball. If your infield pop up is going to drop, that’s a common way for it to happen.

Another unlikely but possible option is to hit the ball extremely softly, as Matt Carpenter demonstrated on April Fool’s Day:

That was a pop up, but it didn’t go very far up. With the infield playing at medium depth and Graham Pauley guarding third base after an earlier bunt single (yeah, Carpenter had quite a day), there was just no time to get to it. Maybe Matt Waldron could have made a play, but pitchers generally stay out of the way on balls like those for good reason. Even then, it would have required going over the mound and making a running basket catch. Sometimes, your pop ups just land in the exact right spot.

But wait, there’s one more. This one was a real doozy by René Pinto, also on April 1:

This one is the last pop up hit archetype: a Trop ball. There’s no wind in Tampa Bay’s domed stadium, but there is a blindingly white roof. White, conveniently enough, is the color of a baseball. So when you really sky one, as the Rays catcher did here, things can get dicey.

How easy of a play was this? In some ways, it was phenomenally easy. After all, five different fielders had time to converge on the ball, and Corey Seager easily could have made it there if he weren’t covering third. That ball hung in the air for more than six seconds, plenty of time for everyone to judge it. It didn’t carry very far, and there was no pitcher’s mound to stumble on.

Leaguewide, hits like this are the least likely of any pop up to land. Even at the Trop, batters are hitting only .011/.011/.011 on them in the Statcast era. But in other ways, it’s not a probability but a binary. This was Jonah Heim’s ball, but he just plain couldn’t see it:

From there, it was academic. And the Rangers’ diligence in heading for the ball meant that no one was covering second, so Pinto got to jog an extra 90 feet with no one stopping him. That might be the slowest home to first time on an in-play double that I’ve ever seen. That screenshot up above was only a few seconds before the ball landed, and Pinto was still near home plate.

In the long run, these things will even out. Most infield fly balls get caught. But sometimes things get really weird – and weirdness can be sublime. Naturally, Yandy Díaz smoked the next pitch for a 331-foot frozen rope – and made the last out of the game. What a sport.

3. Oneil Cruz Is Chaotic, and Good
I watched Saturday’s Pirates-Marlins tilt closely to write about Jared Jones, but my eyes kept straying. Catch a Pittsburgh game, and I’m pretty sure you’ll feel the same way. Oneil Cruz isn’t always the best player on the field. Sometimes, in fact, he’s a hindrance for Pittsburgh’s chances. But one thing you can never say is that he’s boring.

When Cruz is on the basepaths, his speed means trouble. For who? It’s not always clear, because he’s aggressive to a fault. When he’s on third base and the ball is hit on the ground, you better believe he’s going home:

I think that was a good decision, but it’s close. A perfect throw from Josh Bell probably gets him there; Bell had already thrown out Michael A. Taylor at the plate on a similar play earlier in the game, for example. But the throw wasn’t quite perfect, and Christian Bethancourt couldn’t corral it anyway. Cruz would have been safe even if Bethancourt caught it cleanly, but the ball rolled to the backstop to bring in another run.

In the long run, pressure like that tends to pay off, at least in my opinion. Taylor would have been out at first if Cruz didn’t go for it, and the difference between second and third with two outs (Cruz stays) and first and third with two outs (Cruz tries for home and makes an out) isn’t particularly huge. Sure, it’s a chaotic play, but it’s a positive for the Pirates.

Cruz’s defense is a work in progress, but no one can doubt his tools. Sometimes he’ll make a mess of a play that should be easy:

I’m not in love with his decision to stay back on that ball, but Jesús Sánchez is slow enough that it all should have worked out anyway. But staying back meant Cruz had to crow hop and fire a laser to first. He has a huge arm, but it’s not the most accurate, as you can see here. A different setup would have made that play far easier.

On the other hand, sometimes he’ll make a mess out of a play, only to recover because of that cannon arm. This is definitely not how Tom Emanski would teach it:

Cruz handcuffed himself on the initial attempt; instead of being able to make a clean backhanded pick, he got stuck with the ball coming straight at him and flubbed the scoop. For most players, that would be the end of the play, even with a catcher running. But Cruz has a get out of jail free card: He can pick the ball up barehanded and then unleash havoc. The NL Central has a ton of big shortstop arms: Masyn Winn set the tracked record for an infield assist at the Futures Game last summer, and Elly De La Cruz is no slouch. But Cruz might have them both beat when he can set his feet and get into one. Even flat-footed, that throw got on Connor Joe in a hurry.

This game had a ton of Cruz action; not every Pirates game is like that. I watched Monday’s Pirates-Nats tilt hoping for an encore, but Cruz held onto a ball rather than attempt to turn an outrageous double play and was restrained on the basepaths. At the plate, he’s striking out so much that hard contact is barely keeping him on the right side of a 100 wRC+. His trajectory in the majors is still extremely uncertain. Still, I’m going to keep tuning in and hoping for some excitement. You never know what will happen next when Cruz is on the field.

4. The White Sox Get Feisty
It’s going to be a rough season on the south side. The White Sox are a bad team, they don’t have any obvious reinforcements in sight, and they got swept in the season-opening series against the Tigers. The Braves were due up next – after treating the White Sox like a de facto farm system over the winter – and Atlanta romped to a 9-0 rain-shortened victory Monday.

Tuesday promised more of the same. The temperature at game time was a miserable 44 degrees. Remarkably, 12,300 courageous fans showed up, but not all of them were there for the home team. After all, rooting for a club that seems likely to get battered by the best team in baseball on a frigid Tuesday night doesn’t sound particularly appealing, so a meaningful percentage of the audience was audibly cheering for Atlanta. Things were looking grim, in other words.

Something funny happened, though. The White Sox and their fans made a game out of it. Garrett Crochet spun an absolute gem in his second start of the season: seven innings, eight strikeouts, one walk, and one lone run on a Marcell Ozuna homer. When pinch hitter Paul DeJong smacked a solo shot of his own, it gave Chicago a 2-1 lead with only two frames left to play.

That set the stage for an explosive finish. Almost immediately, Atlanta threatened again. Jarred Kelenic worked a one-out walk in the top of the eighth, bringing Ronald Acuña Jr. to the plate. “MVP! MVP!” The Atlanta fans in attendance made their presence known as Acuña worked a walk to put the tying run in scoring position.

But Chicago’s fans, few though they might be, weren’t going quietly. They drowned out the MVP chant in a series of boos, then started a “Let’s go White Sox” cheer as a counter. After a sleepy start, the game suddenly had some juice.

Michael Kopech came in to relieve John Brebbia after that walk, and he promptly walked Ozzie Albies to load the bases. But Yoán Moncada turned a slick double play to keep the Pale Hose out in front. The dugout loved it:

The Sox tacked on an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth, and it turned out they needed it. Kopech had a tough time closing things out. Ozuna smashed his second solo shot to cut the lead to 3-2 before Kopech walked Michael Harris II after an extended plate appearance in which Harris fouled off a string of high fastballs and spit on a low slider. Orlando Arcia wouldn’t go down quietly, either. Kopech again missed with the one slider he threw, and Arcia eventually slapped a cutter through the infield to put the tying run in scoring position for the second inning in a row.

Was this fated to be a crushing loss? Kopech couldn’t find the zone against Travis d’Arnaud, falling behind 3-1 with four straight elevated fastballs. The slider was totally gone; perhaps the adrenaline that came with the potential for his first big league save was too much. The crowd and players were rowdy now, treating this early April game like one with huge implications. Boos rained down after not particularly close pitches got called balls. Braves fans tried to start their own cheers but got repeatedly drowned out by the Sox faithful.

With Acuña on deck, walking d’Arnaud was unacceptable. Kopech tickled the strike zone on 3-1, which brought it all down to a full count pitch. He hit his spot perfectly, and d’Arnaud could only pop it up:

The crowd roared. The lights dimmed as fireworks went off. Kopech looked relieved more than excited as the team celebrated around him. For a day, at least, Chicago’s best was enough to hold off the best team in baseball.

This isn’t how the year will go for the White Sox. They’re headed straight into a rebuild with an unpopular ownership and front office group. I’m not sure that the fans will be able to muster up the same excitement for a July tilt against the Pirates. For a day, though, the atmosphere felt electric and the underdogs came up big. What a magical sport that lets us find moments of excitement even in seasons of despair.

5. Nolan Jones Tries To Do Too Much
Nolan Jones is one of my favorite young players to watch. He’s what you’d get if you took a garden variety power hitting outfielder and stapled a bazooka to his right arm. His outfield defense is below average if you ignore his throws, but you can’t ignore throws. Statcast has him in the 100th percentile for arm strength and runs saved with his arm; in other words, he’s a highlight reel waiting to happen when he picks the ball up. He had 19 outfield assists last year in less than 800 innings, leading baseball while playing 500 fewer innings than second place Lane Thomas.

This year, things haven’t gone quite so well. Jones already has more errors than he did in all of last season. One sequence against the Cubs summed up what I think is going wrong. Everyone knows Jones has a cannon, and so when Christopher Morel singled to left, Ian Happ wasn’t thinking about trying to score from second base:

That’s just smart baserunning. There’s no point in testing the best arm in the game when he’s running toward the ball from a shallow starting position. Only, did you see what happened out in left? Let’s zoom in:

Jones planned to come up firing. He absolutely didn’t need to; as we saw, Happ had already slammed on the brakes. But if you have the best arm in the game, every play probably feels like a chance to throw someone out, the old “every problem looks like a nail to a hammer” issue. He tried to make an infield-style scoop on the run and paid for it. That’s a particularly big error given the game state and location on the field; there’s no one backing Jones up there, and with only one out, it’s not *that* valuable to keep the runner at third anyway.

The ball rolled all the way to the wall, which was bad enough. Happ and trail runner Seiya Suzuki both scored easily. But Jones compounded the error. Let’s see what happened next from Morel’s perspective:

Like Happ, Morel slammed on the brakes as he got to third. After all, Jones has a huge arm and there’s still only one out, so trying to squeeze in the last 90 feet doesn’t make that much sense. Even with his eyes on the play the whole time, he decelerated to a stop. But Jones overcooked his relay throw:

I’m not quite clear about what happened there. That was a situation for a lollipop; the play was over, and all he had to do was return the ball to the infield. Maybe he got a bad grip on the ball, maybe he slipped as he was throwing it, but he just spiked it into the ground and Ryan McMahon couldn’t handle the wild carom.

This feels to me like a clear case of Jones trying to do too much. He appears to be pressing, trying to throw the world out after last year’s phenomenal performance. But part of having a huge arm is knowing when you don’t need to use it. That experience comes with time, and I’m confident that he’ll figure it out, but his aggression has hurt the Rockies so far. Oh, and those other errors? Sometimes you just miss one:

Blaze Alexander is on the bubble to break camp with the Arizona Diamondbacks. His spring showing suggests he deserves the opportunity to do so. In 52 Cactus League plate appearances, the 24-year-old infield prospect has slashed .420/.442/.640 with seven extra-base hits and five stolen bases in as many attempts. Moreover, he’s continued to show promise since being taken in the 11th round of the 2018 draft out of IMG Academy. That he’s mostly flown under the radar while doing so is starting to change.

“I hope that’s the case,” Alexander told me in mid-March. “I mean, I’ve been putting on a pretty good performance this spring, so I definitely think I’m opening some eyes. That said, I obviously need to transfer it over to the regular season.”

The likelihood of his doing so in the big leagues was improved on Friday when the D-Backs released Elvis Andrus, a notable roster move given that the 15-year veteran had been inked to a free agent contract as a potential backup for Geraldo Perdomo. As it now stands, there is a good chance that Alexander — “a viable defensive shortstop with a huge arm… [who] hits for enough power” in the words of Eric Longenhagen — will be filling that role.

Hitting for power isn’t one of Alexander’s aims, nor is it part of his process. While he does possess pop — his ledger includes 30 home runs in 734 plate appearances over the past two minor-league seasons — his M.O. is bullets, not blasts. Read the rest of this entry »

Daulton Varsho’s last two seasons were directionally different than his first two seasons.The left-handed-hitting outfielder put up a pedestrian 37.8% pull rate in 2020-2021, and in 2022-2023 that number climbed to a lofty 52.6%. Apprised of the marked jump by colleague Davy Andrews prior to my recent visit to Toronto Blue Jays camp, I asked Varsho if it was spurred by a purposeful change of approach. He claimed that it wasn’t.

“I think it’s just how teams are pitching me,” said Varsho, whose pull rate in the two-year span was the highest among qualified hitters. “You don’t want to force the ball to any certain field — it has to sort of naturally happen — and I’ve been getting pounded in. You also have to figure out the changeup away and righties throwing sliders in. You don’t really want to force those to left-center or left field, because they end up being fly outs.”

Davy had also informed me that Varsho’s pull-side results have been far better than his opposite-field results, which came as anything but news to the 27-year-old Marshfield, Wisconsin native. My mentioning it elicited a matter-of-fact response.

“That’s where success happens,” said Varsho. “It’s where my swing is the most successful, and where I can do the most damage.”

It’s no secret that catching pitches out front and driving them in the air goes a long way toward producing power numbers, and not only has Varsho gone yard 47 times over the past two campaigns, just one of the blasts was to the opposite field. My asking if he’s made a concerted effort to lift the ball led to the following exchange: Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I took a projection-driven two-part look at the trouble spots on National League and American League contenders. The exercise — a sibling of my annual pre-trade deadline Replacement Level Killers series — primarily highlighted clubs in the middle of the table, based on our Playoff Odds, with many of the best teams, such as the Braves and Dodgers, going completely unmentioned.

In that regard, the exercise worked as I had intended, focusing on the teams and spots where a marginal addition from outside the organization or even a modest breakout from within it could have a sizable impact on their chances of making the postseason. To be considered contenders, teams needed Playoff Odds of at least 25%, and roughly speaking, all but one of those mentioned fell in the range of 80-85 wins. Under the 12-team playoff format, that certainly counts as contention once you consider that two of last year’s NL Wild Card teams, the Diamondbacks and Marlins, qualified with just 84 wins, nosing out the 83-win Cubs and the 82-win Padres and Reds. At each position, I highlighted the two lowest-ranked teams from within that subset, so long as they projected to produce less than 2.0 WAR, after an adjustment: I applied a 20% reduction to counter the general tendency to overestimate playing time at this point in the season. In other words instead of having a total of 1,000 WAR projected across the 30 teams, and 57% of that (570 WAR) allocated to position players, our Depth Chart values currently add up to about 682 WAR, an inflation of about 20%.

Because the mid-table teams almost invariably had some glaring weakness, seven teams escaped scrutiny. The Braves (98.5% odds), Dodgers (94.6%), and Cardinals (53.5%) — three of the NL’s top four teams by those odds, each favored to win their respective divisions — were absent from the Senior Circuit roundup, while the Yankees (75.6%), Rays (62.5%), Orioles (50.6%) and Rangers (36.3%) missed out on the fun in the Junior Circuit piece. Only one of the top four NL teams showed up with trouble spots (the Phillies at 58.5%), but the AL distribution was more haphazard, in that the Astros (86.8%), Twins (64.9%), Mariners (58.6%), and Blue Jays (47.4%) each had at least one representative within my roundup.

In response to the feedback I received, I thought it would be worthwhile to do one more roundup in this format, this time limiting it to those otherwise unexamined teams and going only one layer deep at each position. I couldn’t quite call this “The Weakest Spots Among the Powerhouses” or “… Among the Top Contenders,” hence the title. Note that not every position had a team fall below the threshold, though I do mention the lowest-ranked ones in passing for those spots. It’s worth keeping in mind the tendency for even the game’s top prospects to have fairly tepid projections based upon limited minor league data and a higher risk of being farmed out if they start slowly; those players don’t always hit the ground running. For team totals, I’ve cited the adjusted WARs, but where I reference individual player projections I’ve stuck to the published figures.

Catcher

Rays (21st, 1.9 adjusted WAR)

My AL roundup contained only the Red Sox catchers, and while I’m not sure what happened since I composed the list to move the Rays from right at the 2.0 minimum to below it, here we are. Since landing on last summer’s Replacement Level Killers list, they’ve basically turned over their tandem, with René Pinto and Alex Jackson replacing Christian Bethancourt and Francisco Mejía. The 27-year-old Pinto did the bulk of the catching in the second half, hitting .252/.267/.456 (98 wRC+) in 105 PA, with an eye-watering 34-to-2 strikeout-to-walk ratio. It’s true that he hits the ball hard, but the Rays seem to like him more for his defense than his offense — or, more specifically, his framing, which was 1.7 runs above average by our framing metric and two above by that of Statcast. Meanwhile, the latter system rated him at seven runs below average in blocking and one below in caught stealing.

The 28-year-old Jackson didn’t play in the majors last year, and he owns a .141/.243/.227 line and 48.1% strikeout rate in 185 PA in the majors, mostly from 2021. Nonetheless, he tore up Triple-A (.284/.347/.556 with 16 homers in 248 PA) with the Brewers and Rays’ affiliates before being sidelined by a shoulder injury. Defensively, he’s been a bit below average in framing but is otherwise average-ish. The 28-year-old Mejía, back in the organization on a minor league deal after a brief odyssey with the Angels, probably has his work cut out to regain a share of his old job. He hit just .227/.258/.400 (80 wRC+) last year and hasn’t come close to fulfilling the promise he showed at the plate in the minors.

First Base

Yankees (17th, 1.4 WAR)

Anthony Rizzo got off to a hot start in 2023, hitting for a 146 wRC+ through May 28, when he collided with Fernando Tatis Jr. and missed his next three games due to what the Yankees called a neck injury. Upon returning, he hit for just a 43 wRC+ over the next two months before the team shut him down with post-concussion symptoms; he didn’t play again, and finished at .244/.328/.378 (100 wRC+). The 34-year-old Rizzo is said to be healthy now, but he projects for just a .238/.332/.426 line, a 111 wRC+ — right at the major league average for first basemen last year — and 1.3 WAR, which won’t be a huge help to the Yankees lineup. The most likely backup is DJ LeMahieu, who’s slated to be the starting third baseman and who’s coming off his second 101 wRC+ in three years, though he did post a 129 wRC+ after the All-Star break compared to a 77 before, when he was still dealing with the effects of a right big toe injury. Oswaldo Cabrera, a switch-hitting utilityman who was very good in a late-2022 stint and terrible last year, is another alternative for first.

Second Base

Oddly enough — or perhaps fittingly, as we are talking about good clubs — none of these teams has a second base situation that falls below the threshold. Orioles second basemen project to rank 14th in the majors with an adjusted 2.4 WAR, the lowest mark from among this group, but that’s with 20-year-old Jackson Holliday, the no. 1 prospect on our Top 100 list, 25-year-old Jordan Westburg, and 29-year-old Ramón Urías projected to account for most of the playing time, with all projecting to be average or better — which particularly for Holliday would be no small achievement, even with his pedigree. Note that this is Baltimore’s only appearance within this exercise, even though the team has a lower projected value at the first base and DH slots than it does at second base; the O’s just don’t stand out relative to their competition’s weaknesses.

Shortstop

Braves (24th, 1.6 WAR)

The Braves project to be the majors’ top team, but they do have their weaknesses, and this is one. After letting Dansby Swanson depart as a free agent, they turned shortstop duties over to Orlando Arcia, who had spent five and a half seasons with diminishing returns in Milwaukee, plus another season and a half as a utilityman for Atlanta, playing a grand total of 24 innings at shortstop. The team nonetheless signed him to a three-year, $7.3 million extension — practically peanuts — and he handled the position reasonably well, hitting .264/.321/.420 (99 wRC+) with a career-high 2.3 WAR despite a mixed bag of defensive metrics. Given that he netted just 0.2 WAR from 2018–22, the projection systems are understandably skeptical he can sustain such production; if he can’t, who knows what kind of magic pixie dust the Braves can sprinkle on backups Luis Guillorme and David Fletcher to try and turn them into league-average regulars.

Third Base

Here’s another spot where none of these teams falls below the threshold, with the Dodgers (15th at 2.1 WAR) the lowest ranked. Neither Max Muncy’s fielding at third base nor his low batting averages are pretty, but he’s a disciplined hitter who can absolutely crush the ball and justify his spot in the lineup; last year, he matched his career high of 36 homers while netting 2.9 WAR. Chris Taylor and the freshly re-signed Enrique Hernández are around for those times when Muncy’s banged up or the team could use more defensive support.

Left Field

Dodgers (21st, 1.4 WAR)

This is the NL West juggernaut’s weakest spot, even after taking steps to address it. Newcomer Teoscar Hernández, who joined the fold on a one-year, $23.5 million deal, hits the ball very hard… when he makes contact. In 2023 he posted an average exit velocity of 91.3 mph (80th percentile), a 13.8% barrel rate (88th percentile), and a 49.4% hard-hit rate (90th percentile). The problem was that he struck out 31.1% of the time opposite a 5.6% walk rate, so he hit an uninspiring .258/.305/.435 (105 wRC+). To be fair, he did say he had trouble seeing the ball at the Mariners’ T-Mobile Park, where he slugged just .380, so it’s hardly out of the question that a change of scenery could drive a rebound for the 31-year-old slugger. The aforementioned Taylor and Enrique Hernández will see time here as well, but both are a few years removed from their best work. Taylor rebounded from a bad season and a slow first half to hit .237/.326/.420 (104 wRC+) but struck out 32.6% of the time himself, while Hernández perked up after returning to Los Angeles, posting a 59 wRC+ with the Red Sox and a 96 wRC+ with the Dodgers.

Center Field

One more where everybody is above the threshold, with the Rays (19th at 2.1 adjusted WAR) the lowest ranked among those here, based primarily on the projections’ skepticism that Jose Siri can repeat last year’s extreme performance. (See Davy Andrews’ piece on Tromps Per Womp.)

Right Field

Cardinals (14th, 1.8 WAR)

Given his plus-plus raw power, few people doubted Jordan Walker’s offensive ability, hence his no. 12 ranking on last year’s Top 100 Prospects list. At age 21, with no Triple-A experience, he made the Cardinals out of spring training and immediately reeled off a 12-game hitting streak. But when the league quickly adjusted, he struggled briefly and was sent to Memphis to work on his approach, particularly so he could elevate the ball with greater consistency. Even with a 46.9% groundball rate, he finished at a respectable .276/.342/.445 (116 wRC+), but his defense was another matter. Blocked by Nolan Arenado at third base, he moved to the outfield and was absolutely brutal according to the metrics (-16 DRS, -12 RAA, -11.8 UZR), and the visuals weren’t much better, even with the occasional impressive play. Thus he netted just 0.2 WAR. He does project to improve to 1.6 WAR, with Dylan Carlson getting time in right field as well — presumably when the Cardinals mercifully slot Walker at DH — and I’d bet that Walker far outhits the 116 wRC+ for which he’s projected.

Designated Hitter

Rangers (13th, 1.2 WAR)

With all but the Dodgers and Yankees projected to produce less than 2.0 WAR out of the DH spot (that’s after adjustment), this category is shooting fish in a barrel, and with the Cardinals and Rangers virtually tied, I’m focusing on the defending champions. This is hardly a bad situation, not only because Texas ranks among the upper half of the 30 teams, but also because about half the playing time projects to go to 22-year-old Wyatt Langford, who was chosen fourth in last year’s draft and rocketed through four levels to reach Triple-A, hitting .360/.480/.677 (190 wRC+) with 10 homers in 200 PA along the way. He just placed second only to Holliday on our Top 100 list as “perhaps the most complete hitter in the minors.” The problem is that he’s a 30-grade defender, with the speed for center field but a fringe-average arm and a poor feel for outfield play in general, at least at this stage; meanwhile, the outfield of Evan Carter, Leody Taveras, and Adolis García features strong defenders at all three spots. Langford could make the roster out of spring training, but it’s not a guarantee. With the possible exception of Corey Seager, who’s working his way back from January hernia surgery, no other Ranger projects to have much impact at this spot, hence the middling ranking.

When the Cardinals signed Brandon Crawford to a one-year, $2 million deal earlier this week, the first thing that popped into my mind was a two-word hashtag. I figured it wouldn’t be long before the Giants’ social media accounts would send out the same thing they always post in response to the departure of a franchise icon: #ForeverGiant.

Of course, #ForeverGiant is a public relations gimmick, a way for the organization to soften the blow for fans who are sad to see one of their favorite players retire or, worse, wearing another team’s uniform. Yet in the case of Crawford, who grew up a Giants fan in the Bay Area and who became the franchise’s all-time leader in games played at shortstop, those two words actually rang true. They weren’t a ploy; they were a promise.

That’s why Crawford’s leaving San Francisco is sad for many Giants fans and weird for the rest of us. But moving on from something and getting over it are not the same thing. It was time for the Giants to move on from Crawford, to let him go somewhere else, even if it wasn’t an easy decision. Read the rest of this entry »