A week ago, the Cubs roster was light on long-term commitments. Only Alex Bregman and Dansby Swanson held guaranteed contracts that extended past 2027, and only two others – Phil Maton and Shelby Miller – even had guaranteed years in 2027. But as it turns out, Chicago payroll commitments abhor a vacuum. On Tuesday, Pete Crow-Armstrong signed a six-year extension. On Thursday, Nico Hoerner followed suit with a six-year pact of his own, as Michael Cerami first reported. The deal starts in 2027 and is worth $141 million, with minor deferrals that drop the total present value to the mid-130s.

If you don’t catch many Cubs games, it’s easy to overlook Hoerner. His offensive game is most notable for its lack of extremes. He doesn’t walk much. He doesn’t strike out much. He doesn’t hit for a ton of power. He’s not excessively swing happy like so many contact hitters. He doesn’t pound the ball into the ground, but he equally doesn’t sell out to lift and pull. He’s produced low-power, solid-OBP seasons for four years running, and they’ve been almost metronomically consistent: his seasonal wRC+ marks of 108, 103, 102, and 109 work out to a 105 average.

That’s the 105th-best batting line among hitters over that span. That doesn’t sound particularly impressive. Hoerner is wedged between Jake Cronenworth and Mike Yastrzemski, solidly in nice-but-forgettable territory. He’s 57th in OBP over that span, which is a little bit more exciting, but truthfully, he is not a star at the plate.

The fun starts when you get into the rest of his game. Over that same time frame, from 2022-2025, Hoerner is the sixth-best baserunner in the majors. The guys in front of him – Corbin Carroll, Bobby Witt Jr., Trea Turner, Jarren Duran, and Elly De La Cruz – are famed for their exploits on the bases. Hoerner is the slowest of that group by a fair margin, but he makes up for it with excellent instincts and great reads. He’s fifth in the bigs in steals during that span, and his 85% success rate is better than everyone in front of him on the list. When he gets on base, he’s a threat to steal, and yet he almost never gets thrown out. Read the rest of this entry »

Late last night, Jeff Passan of ESPN reported that the Cubs and star center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong had reached an agreement on a long-term contract extension. That deal, worth $115 million over six years, keeps one of baseball’s most popular young stars in the fold through 2032.

This extension, the largest ever for a player with so little service time, begins in 2027, buys out two of Crow-Armstrong’s free agent years, and includes escalators that could increase the value to $133 million. But shockingly, (and to the immense relief of those of us who are still parsing the inscrutable Julio Rodríguez extension), it does not include any option years. Whatever happens, Crow-Armstrong can still hit free agency after his age-30 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Chase Lee is now a Blue Jay after enjoying a mostly successful 2025 rookie season as a Tiger. The 27-year-old, sidewinding right-hander made 32 relief appearances with Detroit, logging a 4.10 ERA, a 24.3% strikeout rate, and a 6.1% walk rate over 37-and-a-third innings. He allowed 32 hits, seven of which left the yard, and was on the winning end of four of five decisions. Toronto acquired him in exchange for 24-year-old farmhand Johan Simon in mid-December

He was originally in the Rangers system. Texas took Lee in the sixth round of the 2021 draft out of the University of Alabama, only to move him to Motown at the 2024 trade deadline as part of the Andrew Chafin deal. Lee then headed into last season with Eric Longenhagen calling him a “a sinker/slider sidearmer who has posted strikeout rates up around 30% his entire minor league career… a high-probability up/down look reliever.” That proved accurate. Lee rode the Detroit-Toledo shuttle multiple times, making 23 appearances as a Mud Hen.

Talking to him Jays camp on Friday, I learned that the well-educated hurler places a high value on the information he gets from hitters.

“That’s where pitchers get a lot of their information,” the Alabama graduate told me. “When I’m working on new pitches, new shapes, new locations — whatever it may be — I normally go to the hitting coaches. It’s like, ‘Hey, if your team were to face me, what would the plan be?’ I take that, then it’s, ‘OK, how can I mess up that plan?’

“I did this the other day,” the former walk-on to the Crimson Tide baseball team added. “I talked to Cody Atkinson, who is one of our hitting coaches here. I knew Cody in [the Texas Rangers organization]. I asked him to write me a 30-second report on what he would tell hitters to do if we were on different teams and I was coming into a game. He said he would tell them to look in a certain location, for these two pitches. If I were to instead throw a fastball up, or a fastball in, that would ruin the entire plan.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve now spent nearly a quarter of a century working with baseball projections, and in that time, I’ve always been struck by the certainty with which so many people view them. People are far more certain than they should be that great teams will be great, star players will be stars, and so on. However, one of the things that comes from working with projections for a big chunk of your life is that you develop a painful awareness of how much of the future cannot be known until it actually happens.

As in most seasons, we enter without a general conception of which teams will be the best. We may pretend everyone starts off with a clean slate, but absolutely nobody expects the Rockies to be better than the Dodgers. But even if that particular scenario is extremely unlikely, every one of the top teams has a scenario in which things fall apart. These clubs have a vested interest in protecting against that potential downside, as much as possible, so I thought it would be interesting to look at the doomsday scenario for some of the best teams in baseball.

To get an idea, I did a full seasonal simulation of the ZiPS projected standings, and instead of looking at the standings overall, I looked at the bottom 20% of outcomes to see what we could glean from the results. According to ZiPS, every team except the Dodgers misses the playoffs when it performs no better than its 20th-percentile win total.

Philadelphia Phillies: Rotation Depth

This almost seems counterintuitive given just how good the rotation projections are for the Phillies, but the projections are not enthusiastic about their depth here. And what makes that especially worrisome is that with so much uncertainty around the health of Zack Wheeler and the performance of Aaron Nola, Philadelphia is probably going to need that depth more than it did last year. This time around, the Phillies are missing Ranger Suarez, who signed with the Red Sox during the offseason. Andrew Painter was healthy in 2025, but one cannot ignore that he was rather middling against Triple-A hitting. The outfield looks like a problem, as well, but it generally has been, and ZiPS is a fan of Justin Crawford.

If Philadelphia adds one of the innings-eaters still available in free agency, ZiPS sees the team’s outlook improve, much more than I expected. Just having someone like Lucas Giolito, Tyler Anderson, or even Patrick Corbin around did a lot to alleviate the rotational downside. It may come down to which of these pitchers is open to a swing role or a minor league deal with an opt-out date. And yes, I do think it feels weird to suggest Corbin as an upgrade for a team in 2026.

New York Mets: Right Field

The Mets certainly don’t dominate in either the rotation or bullpen projections, but ZiPS is fairly confident that both of these units will hold up over the course of the season. Despite a solid projection for Carson Benge in right field, the range of outcomes is quite high, and in the simulations where Benge struggles, ZiPS has trouble competently filling in right field. Tyrone Taylor is an underwhelming option, and ZiPS thinks Brett Baty would have a tough time defensively in the outfield. With no particularly interesting outfielders available in free agency, the best solution might simply be making sure Jacob Reimer gets some time in the outfield. New York’s roster just isn’t really set up to get him time at third base, where he probably is most valuable. But he also represents the most tantalizing 2026 upside of any player the Mets have in the minors, so they ought to try and be open to promoting him aggressively, and getting a little weird with it, if need be.

New York Yankees: Injuries

The Yankees’ outcomes are weird, in that their bad seasons were mostly ones in which Aaron Judge, for whatever reason, ended up with fewer than 300 plate appearances, and only occasionally something else. Getting limited innings from Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón was already baked into the cake, and ZiPS thinks there are enough fourth-starter types to patch up any rotation holes that might pop up. The problem is, just how do you replace Judge? I’m not sure there’s a scenario where the Yankees can do much to mitigate any risk there, for the simple reality that in a tightly projected division, suddenly losing six wins is likely to drop them out of the AL East divisional race. At the very least, the Yankees should hold off on shopping Spencer Jones for help elsewhere, but it wouldn’t fix a Judge loss.

Baltimore Orioles: Rotation Quality

Baltimore has potential aces in both Trevor Rogers and Kyle Bradish, but that word potential is an unpleasant adjective. Adding Pete Alonso and Taylor Ward really stabilizes the offense, which was a concern last year, but the rotation is an issue. The Orioles finished with a bottom five rotation in the ZiPS simulations more often than all other AL East teams combined. There’s nothing on the farm that helps this, and I think that with the Orioles increasingly pushing their chips in, they ought to be aggressive at taking the opportunity to loot struggling teams of their top pitching, even if the prospect hit would be tremendous. I think there are even scenarios, though not many, in which it might make sense for the O’s to trade either Adley Rutschman, assuming he has a bounce-back season, or Samuel Basallo.

Boston Red Sox: First Base

The good news is that ZiPS sees the Red Sox as the most stable of AL contenders, with the lowest percentage of sub-.500 seasons of any AL team. The rotation isn’t the best in baseball, but it may be the most bulletproof one, and that isn’t even counting on getting lots of innings from pitchers like Payton Tolle and Connelly Early, who would be Plan As in most rotations in baseball. In fact, when the Red Sox had their worst performance, it was almost entirely the offense that fell short, and not necessarily from the position you might expect.

Most people have focused on third base because of the loss of Alex Bregman, but Caleb Durbin is actually a decent option. Plus, if Durbin struggles, Marcelo Mayer could very likely provide what the former isn’t. Where there is real downside risk is at first base. I liked the Willson Contreras acquisition, too, and he’s probably going to be at least solidly average in 2026, but he’s also going to be 34 in May. It’s an age where you look at the long left tails of the outcome distribution for non-elite first basemen, and there’s always a real risk of a very sudden plummet off a cliff. Triston Casas hasn’t played in a game since last May — and won’t even play in any spring training games this year — and he has a real mixed history.

What to do? That’s a lot trickier. Boston obviously isn’t going to replace Contreras before he has that downside year. But this team should be ready for that possibility, and if the surplus of pitching turns out to be real, the Sox will have a position of depth from which to trade.

Chicago Cubs: Rotation Quality

The outlook improved with the addition of Edward Cabrera, but ZiPS still has the Cubs with the weakest rotation of the 10 teams listed here. In the ZiPS simulations, the rotation was largely the source of the Cubs’ worst seasons. There aren’t really any exciting starters left out there in free agency, but I think I’d do what I suspect the Cubs are already thinking of doing: giving Ben Brown’s upside as a starting pitcher more serious consideration. He allowed too many home runs and had a high BABIP on a really good defensive team, but it’s guys like that who tend to come out of nowhere quickly (see Corbin Burnes in 2019). Brown has swing-and-miss stuff, and I think given the potential, I’d rather see him starting at Triple-A than pitching in relief in the majors.

Houston Astros: Outfield Corners

Not counting 2020, for obvious reasons, the 686 runs the Astros scored in 2025 represented their fewest since 2014. A full, healthy season of Yordan Alvarez would be incredibly helpful, but the team’s also not likely to wring another 135 wRC+ out of Jeremy Peña. Not helping matters is that Joey Loperfido and Cam Smith project as one of the weakest corner outfield tandems in the majors in 2026. Smith surprised many, including me, in the early months last year, but an OPS that fell shy of .500 in the second half is highly concerning. There’s a chance that the Astros get little from their outfield corners, which is a problem for a team with a middling offense that just lost ace Framber Valdez in free agency. In some 30% of simulations, the Astros got a sub-90 wRC+ out of their corner outfielders, and in those runs, they had a .475 winning percentage. If there’s a team that should aggressively go after either Jarren Duran or Wilyer Abreu, it’s Houston.

Toronto Blue Jays: Rotation Depth

Even with the loss of Anthony Santander to shoulder surgery, ZiPS still sees the Blue Jays’ rotation as their biggest pain point. There are simply a lot of question marks once you get past Dylan Cease and Kevin Gausman, something I mentioned a bit in Toronto’s ZiPS rundown in January. In a lot of the sims, the team got next to nothing out of any of Cody Ponce, José Berríos, Shane Bieber, and Max Scherzer, whether because of injury, decline, or general performance issues. If Sandy Alcantara looks anywhere near his old self with the Marlins in the early months, I think the Jays ought to be one of his suitors. At the very least, Alcantara would do well with an infield that has Andrés Giménez and Ernie Clement.

Seattle Mariners: Outfield Corners

As with the Astros, ZiPS sees Seattle’s corner outfield spots as having the most downside. Unlike the Astros, ZiPS doesn’t view it as truly a doomsday scenario. After the Red Sox and Dodgers, ZiPS considers the Mariners to be the contender with the least downside. Randy Arozarena’s projection distribution is pretty interesting, with the bottom falling out of him once you get under the 15th-percentile projection or so; while his 20th-percentile OPS+ is a non-disastrous 94, it drops to 70 for the 10th-percentile level. As for Victor Robles, he’s been all over the place in his career, and the Plan Bs in the organization are unimpressive. I think Seattle’s strong enough that it doesn’t necessarily have the same need to be aggressive as Houston does, but this is still a potential point of weakness that could pose an issue.

Los Angeles Dodgers: Black Swans

It’s really hard to kill the Dodgers. I argued after the 2024-2025 offseason, a very busy one, that the Dodgers weren’t really improving their average outcome so much as drastically raising their floor. I stand by it; they’ve added Kyle Tucker and Edwin Díaz while losing nobody who was crucial to the 2025 team. That doesn’t mean they’re going to be projected to win 105 games or anything, but it does mean that in most of their worst projected outcomes, they’re still a playoff contender. Their 10th-percentile projection, for example, is 86 wins. Their 2% chance of finishing below .500 is the smallest percentage I’ve ever projected, a record that now goes back more than 20 years. Doomsday for the Dodgers may require an actual doomsday scenario like societal collapse, nuclear war, or a vacuum metastability event. Since I do not know how to prevent any of those, there’s nothing more I can add.

Collin Snider is with Chicago looking to recapture what he had two seasons ago with Seattle. Currently in camp with the Cubs, the 30-year-old right-hander was a pleasant surprise for the Mariners in 2024, logging a 1.94 with a 27.8% strikeout rate over 42 relief outings comprising 41-and-two-thirds innings. Last year was a different story. Hampered by a flexor strain and unable to get back on track, Snider struggled to the tune of a 5.47 ERA across 24 appearances in the majors, then posted an even uglier 8.06 ERA across 25 games with Triple-A Tacoma. Cut loose by Seattle in November, he subsequently inked a deal with the Cubs in December.

Despite the dismal results, Snider wasn’t without suitors. He had options — every team can use more pitching — and in the case of the Cubs, he also had connections. Tyler Zombro, the NL Central club’s Vice President of Pitching Strategy, previously worked at Tread Athletics, where Snider trained in previous offseasons. As the erstwhile Vanderbilt Commodore put it, “That really steered my decision. I like the way the pitching development is here.”

Asked about his poor 2025 performance, Snider pointed to how his injury contributed to bad mechanical habits that resulted in a drop in velocity, as well as “pitch shapes that weren’t the same.” He knew what was happening, but correcting it was another matter.

“I was very rotational, throwing too side-to-side, whereas I need to be north-south,” Snider said. “Side-to-side made the velo go down, because I couldn’t get behind the baseball. I was aware of what was going on, but I didn’t know why I was doing it, or how to make the adjustment quickly. It ended up being one of those things where I needed the offseason to straighten it out.”

Snider averaged 92.5 mph with his four-seamer last season, whereas in the prior two years that number was 94.2 and 95.3. His sweeper was also impacted by his delivery being out of sync. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mets pitching prospect Ryan Lambert’s consumption of copious quantities of raw eggs, then preview the 2026 Chicago Cubs (27:15) with The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma, and the 2026 Cleveland Guardians (1:17:46) with The Athletic’s Zack Meisel, plus a postscript.

Audio intro: Grant Brisbee, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 1: Guy Russo, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 2: Philip Bergman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Daniel Leckie, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Lambert article
Link to Cool Hand Luke scene
Link to Beauty and the Beast scene
Link to Syndergaard “therapies”
Link to Syndergaard velo story 1
Link to Syndergaard velo story 2
Link to pasteurized eggs wiki
Link to eggs and cholesterol link
Link to Ben’s scrambled eggs pic
Link to Ron Swanson clip
Link to team payrolls page
Link to Cubs offseason tracker
Link to Cubs depth chart
Link to Sahadev on Bregman
Link to PCA profile
Link to Sahadev on PCA
Link to Sahadev’s spring questions
Link to Shaw absence article
Link to Sahadev’s author archive
Link to Sahadev’s podcast
Link to Guardians offseason tracker
Link to Guardians depth chart
Link to team wRC+
Link to team RP WAR
Link to team SP projections
Link to framing leaders
Link to Bregman/Aiken article
Link to Zack on Kwan in CF
Link to Vogt MotY article
Link to Zack’s author archive
Link to Zack’s podcast
Link to Skenes article 1
Link to Skenes article 2
Link to Ohtani/Judge article

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A piece titled “Analytically Inclined, Ben Brown Boasts a Power Arsenal” ran here at FanGraphs back on March 13, 2024, two-plus weeks before Brown made his major league debut. Then one of the top pitching prospects in the Chicago Cubs organization, Brown might now be best described as a high-upside hurler with a lot left to prove. The 26-year-old right-hander is coming off a 2025 season in which he logged a 5.92 ERA and 4.08 FIP while allowing 121 hits, 18 of which left the yard, over 106 1/3 innings.

A new addition to his arsenal could be what allows him to turn the corner. Along with an 96-mph four-seam fastball, 87-mph curveball, and 90-mph kick-change, the 6-foot-6 East Setauket, New York native is now throwing a two-seamer.

“I started pitch-designing it during the offseason,” Brown told me at Cubs camp on Wednesday. “I was training in Nashville, picked the brains of some dudes, and it got to the point where I really liked it. I threw probably 15 of them [over two scoreless innings against the Kansas City Royals] the other day and it went well.”

One “dude” in particular played a key role in him learning the pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring training is underway and rosters are getting filled up. We’re now down to the part of the offseason where veterans whose recent performances have left them unable to find a guaranteed spot sign minor league deals with non-roster invites. Today we’ll break down the signings of Rhys Hoskins with the Guardians, Michael Conforto with the Cubs, and Thairo Estrada with the Orioles. All three have seen their production drop off over the past two years, but all three have a viable path toward sticking on the roster or even landing a starting spot.

We’ll start in Cleveland, where Hoskins will receive $1.5 million if he makes the roster. This move makes plenty of sense, but it’s important to note that the Guardians aren’t as desperate for a player like him as they would have been in years past. From 2021 to 2023, the only team with fewer than their 454 home runs was the Pirates (441). Cleveland’s 82 wRC+ against left-handed pitching was also the second-worst mark in baseball over that period. Back then, adding a big right-handed slugger who strikes out and hits homers would have been just what the doctor ordered. However, the Guardians are in a different spot right now. Over the past two years, they’ve ranked right around the middle of the league in home runs overall and in wRC+ against left-handed pitching. This is still a good fit, but Hoskins is no longer the slam dunk he would have been a couple years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Mathis is a small-town kid from the South hoping to make it big on Chicago’s North Side. His upside is evident — Mathis possesses projectable tools, including plus raw power — but there are question marks, as well. Drafted 54th overall in 2024 by the Cubs out of the College of Charleston, the 22-year-old corner infielder will enter the 2026 campaign with a smattering of experience above the amateur level. He had Tommy John surgery following his junior season, then was limited to just 194 plate appearances last year (128 with Low-A Myrtle Beach and 66 in the Arizona Fall League) due to a right elbow sprain. The degree to which he’ll have success against professional pitchers as he climbs the minor-league ladder is uncertain.

His future position is also in question. While he was drafted as a third baseman, Mathis was primarily a first baseman in college… when he wasn’t pitching. Prior to going under the knife, Mathis was a two-way player who showed plenty of promise on the mound thanks to a fastball that reached the mid-90s. Over 100 collegiate frames, he fashioned a 3.60 ERA with 90 strikeouts and just 30 walks.

When I caught up to him in the AFL, I asked Mathis if he still thinks about standing atop a clump of dirt sixty feet, six inches away from home plate. I also wanted to hear his thoughts on a what-if:

Had his elbow been healthy, might he have been drafted and developed as a pitcher?

“I mean, yeah, for sure,” Mathis responded to the first question. “It’s something I could fall back on, but hopefully I won’t have to resort to pitching again. At the time of the draft, my hitting skills were farther above where my pitching was, and the Cubs and I saw eye to eye with that, so it’s what we wanted to do moving forward.

“I don’t know,” he said to the second. “I mean, I got to pitch two strong years in college (he was solely a position player in his final collegiate season due to the damaged UCL) and don’t really know what would have happened that junior year. But yeah, I think we made the right decision.”

How well he develops as a hitter — particularly if he ends up at first base rather than at the hot corner — will help determine if it was the right choice. Moreover, his ability to elevate will go a long way toward his reaching, or failing to reach, his ceiling. Mathis understands that.

“We’ve definitely been working on getting the ball in the air a little more,” he told me. “A little bit of it is bat path, but the majority of it is pitch selection, getting pitches that I can drive. I have a flatter swing, so while I’ve had some success on balls down in the zone, pitches up in the zone play more to my swing.”

Mathis went on to say that while he used to have “kind of the same swing, no matter the pitcher,” he has come to realize that adjustability is a necessity against higher-quality hurlers. There is a mental component to it as well as a mechanical.

“I’ve kind of had to change my approach,” said Mathis. “Not so much change my swing, but rather change the thought process behind it. You can’t just have the same approach and swing over and over again. Pitchers watch film as much as we do, so they’re out there playing their pitches off our swings.”

Where he grew up plays into how he approaches the game of baseball itself.

“I come from a small town — it’s called called Cataula — and our county only has one high school [Harris County High School in Hamilton, GA],” Mathis explained. “I don’t know the total population of my hometown, but everybody knows everybody. Knowing that I have a whole town of support behind me, a whole county of support, means a lot. When I go out there, I’m not just playing for me, but for also for them. I’m representing my town.”

———

RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Jason Giambi went 23 for 37 against Darren Oliver.

Al Oliver went 11 for 19 against Vern Ruhle.

Bob Oliver went 11 for 21 against Diego Segui.

Joe Oliver went 8 for 15 against Rheal Cormier.

Ollie Brown went 15 for 30 against Jerry Reuss.

———

Jackson Baumeister had a lot of promise when he was drafted 63rd overall by the Baltimore Orioles out of Florida State University in 2023. What he didn’t have was an understanding of pitching analytics. I learned as much when I talked to the 22-year-old right-hander during the Arizona Fall League season, where he was making up for innings lost due to a shoulder ailment.

“In high school, even in college, I had no idea what pitch metrics were,” admitted Baumeister, whom the Tampa Bay Rays acquired from their A.L. East rivals in July 2024 as part of the Zach Eflin deal. “We were a little behind the curve in college when it came to TrackMan, Rapsodo, and stuff like that. I was completely raw coming into pro ball. When I got drafted, it was basically, ‘Hey, I don’t know any of the words or numbers you’re saying to me.’ I basically had to do this whole little master class of pitch metrics.”

Baumeister’s lessons began in Baltimore’s introductory draft meetings, and from there he continued to pick up knowledge, including in bullpen sessions where he would learn about the readings he saw on the iPad. Before long, he “understood what those numbers meant, and what the Orioles were telling me about things like what the sweet spot was for all of my pitches.”

When he signed, Baumeister’s bread and butter pitches were his fastball and curveball, the latter of which has been supplanted by a slider as his primary secondary offering. And while his mid-90s heater remains his best pitch, the way he utilizes it is far different.

“In college, my coaches preached throwing the low-and-away fastball,” explained the erstwhile FSU hurler. “For a guy like me who rides the ball pretty well and gets a lot of induced vertical break, that wasn’t ideal. Getting into pro ball, it became ‘Throw your fastball at the top of the zone.’ I also have a pretty low release, so by locating the ball at the top of the zone, I get a lot of swing-and-misses.

“My release height is lower than six feet,” continued Baumeister. “I get down into the 5-5, 5-6 range, and then I’m around 17 or 18 [inches] of vertical break on average with my fastball. Velo-wise, I think I averaged 95 [mph] this past year, but I can reach back to 97-98 on a good day. It’s my best pitch, no doubt.”

Backing off on his curveball usage and throwing more sliders was a Rays directive. His current organization also altered the shape of his slider. Whereas he used to throw a sweepier version, he now throws more of a gyro. Along with the four-seamer, gyro, and lesser-used curveball, the righty also has a changeup in his arsenal. That has also undergone a tweak. Last season he began working on a kick-change to replace what had been a more traditional two-seam circle.

———

A quiz:

Ichiro Suzuki has the most singles since the turn of the century (2000), while Albert Pujols is tops in both doubles and home runs. Which player has the most triples? (A hint: he had 517 stolen bases and 145 home runs.)

The answer can be found below.

———

NEWS NOTES

The upcoming SABR Analytics Conversation, which will take place in Phoenix from February 27-March 1, will include a seven-person Arizona Diamondbacks front office panel. More information can be found here.

SABR’s John McMurray recently conducted an oral history interview with Greg Maddux. The transcript and video recording can be found here.

Roy Face, a right-hander who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1953-1968, and then briefly for the Detroit Tigers and Montreal Expos, died earlier this week at age 97. A standout on Pittsburgh’s 1960 World Series championship club, Face is the franchise’s all-time leader in pitching appearances (802), relief wins (94), and saves (188). As mentioned here in Sunday Notes two weeks ago, his 18 relief wins in 1959 are an MLB record.

Gary Blaylock, who pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals and New Yankees in 1959, died earlier this month at age 94. The Clarkton, Missouri native appeared in 41 games and went 4-6 with a 4.80 ERA. He was the pitching coach for the Kansas City Royals when they captured the World Series in 1985.

———

The answer to the quiz is José Reyes, with 131 triples. If you guessed Carl Crawford, he had 123 triples, as well as 480 stolen bases and 136 home runs.

———

Mike Daly was featured here at FanGraphs on Wednesday, the subject at hand being the current state of San Diego’s prospect pipeline. Left on the cutting-room floor from my conversation with the club’s assistant director of player development was what he learned from his year as a minor-league manager. Daly was at the helm of the High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps in 2024.

“I learned a lot,” said Daly, whose résumé also includes extensive scouting experience. “First and foremost, it gives you a greater appreciation, and empathy, for what players and the staff go through from spring training all the way to the end. And the season is long. You understand that from a front office perspective, but until you’ve lived it, you don’t truly understand it.”

Daly went on to mention the speed of the game, and how managers frequently need to make decisions on short notice. Experiencing that firsthand reinforced the importance of pre-game planning and talking through various scenarios prior to the team’s taking the field. He also received a reminder that patience is a virtue when it comes to development.

“In the past, I was sometimes guilty of coming into an affiliate for a week and maybe trying to expedite, or push, some action with the staff regarding certain development of players,” Daly admitted. “What you learn from being in that dugout for a full season is that the process of development really does take time. It certainly made me better in terms of asking questions.”

Writing the reports that are sent to the front office after a game is a markedly different experience from being on the receiving end.

“Yes,” acknowledged Daly. “When you’re writing that manager report, especially after a tough loss… let’s just say it’s a lot different sitting in the dugout than it is sitting behind the plate [as a scout] or in the office. Until you walk in those shoes… again, you understand, but you don’t truly understand. I’m very thankful to have had an opportunity to do it.”

———

A random obscure former player snapshot:

Ice Box Chamberlain had a fascinating career. Born in Warsaw, New York in 1867, the right-hander went on to pitch for six major league teams across the 1886-1896 seasons, registering a record of 157-120. His best year was 1889, when he went 32-15 while throwing 421-and-two-thirds innings for the American Association’s St. Louis Browns.

Chamberlain — his given name was Elton —had some especially notable games. Twice he pitched both right- and left-handed in the same contest, making him, along with Larry Corcoran and Tony Mullane, one of three pre-1900 hurlers to toe the rubber in ambidextrous fashion. On May 30, 1894, Chamberlain not only went the distance for the Cincinnati Reds in a 20-11 loss to the Boston Beaneaters, he was taken deep four times by Bobby Lowe. In doing so, Lowe became the first player in big-league history to hit four home runs in the same game.

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

MassLive’s Christopher Smith wrote about Kyle Boddy and how the Boston Red Sox have been implementing Driveline philosophies.

CBS Sports’s Dayn Perry weighed in on Chaim Bloom’s rebuild in St. Louis, and where the Cardinals go from here.

Cy Young was born in a town of roughly 400 people in Ohio’s Tuscarawas County, and his 35-acre boyhood farm is now up for sale. Joey Morona has the story at Cleveland.com.

What would MLB look like with a salary cap? Evan Drellich delved into that question at The Athletic.

The Athletic’s Katie Woo wrote about how “The Harvard of umpire schools” is closing as changing times favor tech over tradition.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Ollie Bejma played for the St. Louis Browns from 1934-1936, and for the Chicago White Sox in 1939, logging 202 hits and a .245 batting average. Humble as those numbers are, they didn’t dissuade legendary cartoonist (and big-time baseball fan) Charles Schultz from featuring him in a February 21, 1974 Peanuts comic strip. Asked who played shortstop for the pennant-winning St. Paul Saints in 1938, Woodstock replied to Snoopy that it was Ollie Bejma.

Blaine Durbin played in 32 games and logged 14 hits in 51 at-bats while suiting up for three teams across the 1907-1909 seasons. His first two seasons were spent with the Chicago Cubs, who won the World Series in each of those years. The last of Durbin’s seasons was split between the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates, the latter of which won the World Series.

J.D. Martinez had 6,865 PAs, 1,741 hits, and 3,172 total bases.
Nick Castellanos has 6,950 PAs, 1,742 hits, and 2,977 total bases.

Mike Piazza had 7,745 PAs, a .308 BA, and 779 extra base hits.
Magglio Ordonez had 7,745 PAs, a .309 BA, and 741 extra base hits.

The St. Louis Cardinals signed Leon Durham as a free agent on today’s date in 1989. The erstwhile Chicago Cubs slugger — he had 135 home runs and a 125 wRC+ for the Northsiders from 1981-1987 — proceeded to record just one hit in 18 at-bats with the Cardinals. Suspended for failing a drug test, Durham never again played in the majors.

The New York Yankees signed Jeff Reardon as a free agent on today’s date in 1994. The righty reliever, who recorded 367 saves while playing for seven teams across 16 seasons, went on to appear in 11 games for the Yankees, earning a win and two saves in what proved to be his final hurrah. Reardon is the only pitcher in MLB history to allow exactly 1,000 hits in his career.

Players born on today’s date include Larry Yount, who appeared in one MLB game… yet never actually appeared in an MLB game. A right-hander, the older brother of Hall of Famer Robin Yount took the mound for the Houston Astros on September 15, 1971, but was injured while warming up and never delivered a pitch to a batter. Because he had been announced, Yount’s name is in the record books with one official appearance.

Also born on today’s date was Carlton Molesworth, a left-hander who logged a 14.63 ERA while appearing in four games for the Washington Senators in 1895. A teenager when he took the mound in the majors, Molesworth subsequently played 17 seasons in the minors as an outfielder, suiting up for teams including the Binghamton Bingos, Schenectady Electricians, and Shamokin Coal Heavers.

Slicker Parks had a humble MLB career. Appearing in 10 games for the Detroit Tigers in 1921, the right-hander from Dallas Township, Michigan went 3-2 with a 5.68 ERA over 25-and-a-third frames. He fared far better down on the farm. In 1926, Parks went 19-14 with the International League’s Jersey City Skeeters.

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 antepenultimate team is the Chicago Cubs.

Batters

ZiPS was a big believer in the 2025 Chicago Cubs, and it was right on point about most of their core talent. The problem, though, was that ZiPS wasn’t right about the Milwaukee Brewers, and though Chicago stayed in the NL Central race for most of the season, Milwaukee’s 14-game winning streak all but settled things by mid-August. Add in a five-game loss to the Brew Crew in the NLDS, and a successful season ended in underwhelming fashion for the North Siders. The Cubs went into the offseason looking to replace Kyle Tucker in the lineup and shore up the rotation a bit.

Generally speaking, the Cubs have a rather boring lineup in one manner: It’s mostly well-established players who are largely in the same roles as last season. Carson Kelly and Miguel Amaya, the latter swapped in for Reese McGuire, will be a competent tandem behind the plate. Dansby Swanson, Nico Hoerner, and Pete Crow-Armstrong will play terrific defense, with PCA adding a bunch of homers at the cost of a rather low on-base percentage. Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki are on the wrong side of 30, but not distressingly so, and the typically B+ corner outfielders will likely put up their typical B+ seasons. One can see why the Cubs felt they could afford to trade Owen Caissie to Miami for Edward Cabrera; he was going to have a hard time finding playing time, and Kevin Alcántara’s defense makes him a more versatile fourth outfielder.

Where there are changes are at third base and designated hitter (by way of Suzuki playing a lot more right field). Alex Bregman is more or less the Kyle Tucker replacement, with a bit less bat and a bit more defensive value. Moisés Ballesteros has a lot of offensive upside, but he’s not really exciting yet as a full-time designated hitter, and Matt Shaw loses significant value as a DH. ZiPS is optimistic about Tyler Austin after a mostly successful six-year run in Japan, though he doesn’t provide a lot of flexibility, as it’s been years since he’s played anywhere but first base. I say mostly successful because he wasn’t particularly durable in NPB, with his most notable — and amusing — injury coming when he smashed his head on the dugout ceiling while changing his jersey.

I’m actually not quite sure what happens with Shaw, who appears to have been musical chaired out of a significant role by the Bregman and Austin signings. I don’t know just how seriously the Cubs consider him a supersub. Swanson and Hoerner were both durable in 2025, so we didn’t get any sneak peeks at how the Cubs truly felt about Shaw’s ability to play the middle infield when the rubber meets the road.

I wonder if the Cubs will be particularly active with non-roster invitations over the next month; ZiPS doesn’t see a great deal in the way of reinforcements in the high minors. Guys like Scott Kingery are probably far too high in the ZiPS WAR rankings than the Cubs ought to be comfortable with.

Pitchers

ZiPS sees the Cubs as having a very deep rotation that’s also very deep in unexcitement. There’s certainly some upside here, especially in Edward Cabrera, but ZiPS largely views the team as having a whole lot of broadly average starting pitching options. The good news here is that if Justin Steele has any setbacks, ZiPS likes the team’s replacement options. Even with especially bad luck in the injury department, the computer thinks Javier Assad will be adequate — it has him with an ERA considerably lower than his FIP, though some of that is thanks to the stellar Cubs defense — and that Ben Brown and Jordan Wicks would both be far more acceptable as starters if called into duty than they’ve shown so far. Heck, if Colin Rea or even Connor Noland were forced into starting some games, that wouldn’t be an apocalyptic scenario for the Cubs.

While deep in meh, ZiPS is more enthusiastic about the Chicago bullpen. Now, as was the case with Assad, some of the bullpen’s projected sufficiency comes down to the defense behind it, but ZiPS largely sees these relievers as having ERAs below four, and generally well below that line. ZiPS especially likes Hunter Harvey, Daniel Palencia, and the relief version of Porter Hodge. In the case of Hodge, remember the rule not to freak out about one-year home run totals for otherwise competent pitchers. The only prominent relievers ZiPS looks at with a bit of a side eye are Ethan Roberts and recent signee Jacob Webb.

All in all, the Cubs look like a team with a win total in the low 90s. The only negative of that projection is that ZiPS feels similarly about the Brewers this time around. We won’t know the end of this story for another nine months.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on Bluesky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.