One way to tell the difference between a baseball fan who has a life and a true sicko is whether they have strong opinions on players who sign minor league contracts and attend spring training on a non-roster invite. The person in a Cubs hat who’s stoked about the Kyle Tucker trade and knows all sorts of intimate biographical details about Shota Imanaga? That’s your friend. If they start talking to you about Travis Jankowski, they might be in a little too deep.

We sickos know that while championships can be won and glory earned on the major league free agent market, NRIs are nonetheless a meaningful collection of useful roster players. Sometimes more. I’d argue that these fringe hopefuls are the only players who truly stand to gain by their performance in camp.

Moreover, these players are by definition underdogs. They include former top prospects, guys recovering from injury, and itinerant Quad-A players hoping for one last spin of the wheel. If you weren’t interested in their progress on a competitive level, surely we can interest you in an underdog story. Read the rest of this entry »

Quinn Priester is poised to take that next step and live up to his first-round pedigree. Opportunity paired with increased octane are among the reasons why. Drafted 18th overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2019 out of Cary-Grove High School, the erstwhile Illinois prep stands a good chance of breaking camp in the Red Sox starting rotation. With Brayan Bello (shoulder) and Kutter Crawford (knee) likely to begin the season the injured list, Priester is well positioned to help fill the void.

The enhanced heater factors heavily into his hoped-for emergence as an established big-league hurler. The 24-year-old right-hander’s two-seamer averaged 93.1 mph last year, and this spring it has consistently been a few ticks higher. In his last outing, Priester topped out at 97.

“The cutter is getting better, but more than anything it’s been the velocity piece,” Priester said of his recent developmental strides. “We’re trying to see that trend upwards, and hold throughout games. I want to be 96-plus with the sinker, and then let everything else complement that pitch.”

Added muscle has contributed to the additional oomph. Acquired by Boston at last summer’s trade deadline in exchange for Nick Yorke, Priester currently carries 220 pounds on his 6-foot-3 frame, 10 more than a year ago. He’s evolving in other ways, as well. Increasingly mature, he’s learning the nuances of his craft. Read the rest of this entry »

The need to define a scope, to create a boundary of coverage, creates a hole in prospect writing. Most public-facing prospect publications, FanGraphs included, analyze and rank players who are still rookie-eligible because, contrary to what you’ve probably learned about my capacity to be long-winded over the years, you just have to stop somewhere. Because of this, every year there are players who fall through the cracks between the boundaries of prospect coverage and big league analysis. These are often players who came up, played enough to exhaust their rookie eligibility, and then got hurt and had a long-term rehab in the minors. Or who graduated and then have been mothballed at Triple-A due to clogged major league rosters ahead of them. The goal of this piece is to highlight some of the players who no longer fit the parameters of my prospect lists and provide an updated long-term scouting prognosis for each of them.

Oswald Peraza, SS, New York Yankees

Peraza was evaluated as an average everyday shortstop when he was last a prospect. Backburnered due to the emergence of Anthony Volpe, Peraza is still an above-average shortstop defender despite average arm strength. He’s always had a slight power-over-hit offensive skillset, and that dynamic has continued; Peraza still has above-average bat speed but only had a 71% contact rate in 2024. He dealt with a shoulder strain which kept him out for most of the first two months of the season and might have impacted his hitting ability. If the shoulder injury continues to affect his bat and he ends up with closer to a 30-grade hit tool instead of his projected 45, he would end up as a utility man rather than a regular.

Endy Rodriguez, C, Pittsburgh Pirates

Rodriguez came to Pittsburgh via the three-team Joe Musgrove deal in 2021, and graduated in 2023 as a 55-FV prospect thanks to projected plus contact ability and catching defense. He needed Tommy John surgery after the 2023 season and missed almost all of 2024, except for 10 games in September at Altoona and Indianapolis. Rodriguez looks bigger and stronger now, and the receiving aspect of his catching defense was fine when he returned, though he had only a few opportunities to throw (he popped 1.97, and 1.90 on a throw cut in front of the bag) and wasn’t really forced to block any pitches in the dirt in his few games back there. Offensively, he looked rusty. He wasn’t rotating as well as before the injury, but he still flashed low-ball bat control from both sides of the dish. I’m wondering if the Pirates had conversations about Rodriguez playing winter ball as a way to get him live reps and, if so, why they decided not to send him. He didn’t play enough to have cogent, updated thoughts on anything but his defense, which I thought looked fine.

Marco Luciano, 2B/OF, San Francisco Giants

I started to move off of Luciano prior to the start of the 2023 season, when he fell to the very back of my Top 100, then was completely off it in 2024. Not only had he made zero progress as a shortstop defender but cracks began to show in his offense. Across the last couple of seasons, as opposing pitchers’ fastball velocity climbed while Luciano traversed the minors, his ability to pull fastballs completely evaporated. He can crush a hanging breaking ball, but his bat path is such that he can really only inside-out heaters to right field. Through my own learned experience, this has become a warning sign when it’s true of low-level prospects. If Luciano can’t pull fastballs when they’re 92 mph, what happens when they’re 95? Well, we’re finding out that it means he has a 70% contact rate, and that in effort to be more on time against fastballs he’s lunging at sliders and missing 40% of those. For a player who is only now just starting to learn the outfield, and therefore not really bringing anything polished to the table at the moment, that’s a problem. The late transition on defense was a stubborn misstep, probably by some combination of Luciano and the org. The Giants were perhaps trying to preserve Luciano’s prospect value for as long as possible (which I suppose worked to an extent, just not here at FG) by leaving him at shortstop and hoping nobody would notice he couldn’t actually play there.

The good news is that Luciano still hits the ball really hard, as do the couple of good big league outfielders who power through their sub-70% contact rates, which appears to be what Luciano will have to do. Think of guys like Teoscar Hernández and Brent Rooker, who broke out in their late 20s. Outcomes like that are perhaps an eventuality for Luciano, but the Giants aren’t exactly in a long-term rebuild such that they’ll be happy to wait around for it to happen. Luciano is also entering his final option year, which means if they want to retain him, those growing pains will have to occur under the big league spotlight. His tenure with San Francisco has been painted into a bit of a corner. He’s still a 40+ FV player for me, and I think Luciano will have a meaningful power-hitting peak in his physical prime, but I think that’s more likely to occur in a different uniform.

Luis Matos, LF, San Francisco Giants

I’m still keen on Matos who, despite some relevant flaws, is a special contact hitter with unique pull power characteristics. Matos graduated as a 55-FV prospect in 2023, in part because I believed he could play a viable center field (he cannot). He spent most of 2024 at Triple-A and has struggled to find big league footing, slashing a career .235/.288/.344 in 400 total plate appearances across a couple of seasons. Despite a frustrating tendency to chase, Matos has still maintained high-end contact rates (92% in-zone, 85% overall), and he has a special ability to cover high fastballs with power. A body blow to Matos’ fit on a big league roster is that he’s a below-average corner defender. That’s fine for guys like Juan Soto, Yordan Alvarez, Riley Greene, and Anthony Santander, but less so for one-note offensive performers, which is what Matos might be. Matos’ chase, and the way it saps his game power because he’s putting sub-optimal pitches into play, makes it more likely that his FV hovers in that 30-to-40 range when you stack him against the other corner outfielders across the next several seasons.

Jordan Walker, RF, St. Louis Cardinals

Walker was sent down to Memphis in April, didn’t come back up until mid-August, and struggled on both sides of the ball upon his return. The Cardinals have a new hitting coach and so this might change, but Walker’s swing (and more specifically his spray despite his style of swinging) is bizarre. He hits with an enormous open stride, bailing way out toward third base, the swing of someone trying like hell to pull the ball. But he still mostly doesn’t, certainly not as much as you’d expect from someone swinging like this. Walker has also never had especially good secondary pitch recognition, and changeups and sliders both performed like plus-plus pitches against him last year. His current swing certainly doesn’t help him cover those outer edge sliders.

On defense, Walker made a full-time transition from third base to the outfield in 2023, but he’s never looked comfortable catching the baseball out there, and that remained true at the end of 2024. Walker is still only 22 years old and has impact tools in his power, speed, and arm strength. His top-end speed for a 6-foot-6, 250-pound guy is amazing, his outfield arm is one of the better ones in baseball, and his bat speed is near elite. Aside from his lack of plate discipline, Walker shares a lot of similarities with Pat Burrell. Burrell was also a heavy-footed outfielder who relied on his arm on defense, and his issues with secondary pitches continued throughout his career, but ultimately his power made him a very productive player for a long time. Walker was in the big leagues before he turned 21, and Burrell didn’t debut until well after his 23rd birthday. I think Walker deserves more runway, and I’m still optimistic that he can be a middle-of-the-order hitter during his window of team control, but there probably has to be a swing change here.

Nick Pratto, 1B/OF, Kansas City Royals

For the last couple of years, Pratto’s strikeout rates have continued to hover around 30%, even in the minors, and while his swing still has superlative lift, his raw power has plateaued and is insufficient for a first baseman striking out this much. He’s out of options and is on the Royals’ roster bubble.

Taylor Trammell, OF, Houston Astros

Trammell only played 10 big league games last year. He looks pretty much the same as he did in 2021 when he was struggling to get his footing in Seattle. He still has above-average power and speed, but he’s a 65% contact hitter who hasn’t been able to cover high fastballs. Despite his speed, Trammell is still not an especially skilled defender; he is a clunky fit in center, and his arm makes left field his best spot. He doesn’t make enough contact to be a regular, but he fits great on a roster as the fifth outfielder. He brings big energy and motor to the party, and he can run into the occasional extra-base hit coming off the bench.

Vaughn Grissom, INF, Boston Red Sox

Grissom, who was traded straight up for Chris Sale, looked pretty bad in 2024 amid multiple hamstring injuries. He is not a good defensive second baseman (the only position he played last year), and has a 50-hit, 40-power combination on offense. That’s a fringe big leaguer.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Red Sox signing Alex Bregman, the Padres signing Nick Pivetta, and Anthony Rendon’s latest long-term injury. Then they preview the 2025 Chicago Cubs (29:35) with The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma, and the 2025 San Francisco Giants (1:14:41) with The Athletic’s Grant Brisbee.

Audio intro: Jimmy Kramer, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 1: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 2: Grant Brisbee, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Moon Hound, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to FG post on Bregman
Link to MLBTR on Bregman
Link to over/under draft results
Link to MLBTR on Pivetta
Link to Blum on Rendon
Link to EW episode on Rendon
Link to Cubs depth chart
Link to Cubs offseason tracker
Link to offseason spending
Link to FG payrolls page
Link to Sahadev’s author archive
Link to Sahadev’s podcast
Link to Giants depth chart
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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 »

Break up the twins! The Giants did just that on Wednesday, sending lefty Taylor Rogers and cash to the Reds in exchange for minor league righty Braxton Roxby. The move ends the two-year run that paired Rogers with his twin brother Tyler in San Francisco, and fortifies the back end of Cincinnati’s bullpen.

If you don’t have your scorecard handy, this Rogers brother is the lefty who throws from a three-quarters arm slot, with an average release angle of 29 degrees according to Statcast. The one still on the Giants is the righty submariner with an average arm angle of -64 degrees. Trevor Rogers is no relation, and the timing of this morning’s piece by Michael Baumann is just an eerie coincidence.

Taylor Rogers, who turned 34 on December 17 — Tyler did too, to be clear — is coming off a season in which he posted a career-low 2.40 ERA in 60 innings spread across 64 appearances. It was his third year in a row and the sixth time in his nine-year career that he’s reached the 60-game plateau. For as impressive as his ERA was, it was somewhat out of step with his 3.75 FIP and 3.29 xERA. While he lowered his walk rate from an unsightly 11.6% in 2023 to 8.8%, his strikeout rate fell from 29.6% to 25.7%, making his 16.9% K-BB% his worst mark since 2017. This was the third year in a row that Rogers’ strikeout rate has declined, from a high of 35.5% while he was with the Twins (but not with his twin) in 2021. The velocity of his sinker has been on the wane as well, dropping annually from a high of 95.7 mph in 2021 to 93.0 last year.

Rogers’ declining strikeout rate was offset by his dramatic improvement in suppressing hard contact. Where he was significantly below average in both 2022 and ’23, he was among the best in ’24:

So what changed? The big thing is that Rogers threw his sinker more often than his sweeper for the first time since 2020; his share of sinkers rose from 41.3% to 52.8%, and his share of those in the strike zone rose from 40.7% to 54.2%. That increase in sinker usage was sort of a hopping-on-the-bandwagon thing for Rogers, as the Giants threw more sinkers than any other club for the second straight year; their 26.4% rate led the majors, though it was actually down from their 28.1% rate in 2023, the highest of any team since the pandemic-shortened season. Rogers’ sinker was much more effective against righties than it had been in recent years, and while it would be a misnomer to suggest they tattooed his sweeper, both righties and lefties got much better results against it on contact than expected:

Overall, righties hit just .202/.268/.380 (.282 wOBA) against Rogers, while lefties slashed .284/.364/.421 (.343 wOBA). This was the first time Rogers showed a reverse platoon split since 2019, a handy outcome considering 57% of the batters he faced were righties, but it’s not necessarily a split that we should expect to continue. Over the past three years, Rogers has held lefties to a .253 wOBA, compared to .339 for righties.

Rogers joins lefties Sam Moll and Brent Suter in the Cincinnati bullpen. While Rogers has experience closing — he saved 79 games from 2019–22 with the Twins, Padres, and Brewers — he figures to share setup duties with righty Emilio Pagán in front of closer Alexis Díaz. Though he did trim his walk rate late in the season, Díaz was rather erratic last year, pitching to a 3.99 ERA and 4.57 FIP even while converting 28 of 32 save chances, so it’s definitely not a bad thing that Rogers gives new manager Terry Francona a ninth-inning alternative in case Díaz struggles.

The Giants will pay $6 million of the $12 million Rogers will make in the third year of his three-year, $33 million deal, so this is something of a bargain for the Reds. That $6 million bought the Giants the righty Roxby, who turns 26 in March. After going undrafted out of the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Roxby connected with the Reds during a Zoom meeting with the Kyle Boddy, then the team’s director of pitching, and assistant pitching coach Eric Jagers. “[T]hey had video breaking down my mechanics, as well as the analytics of my pitches and how I can use them better,” Roxby told David Laurila in 2021. “That made it hard not to choose them.”

The 6-foot-3, 215-pound Roxby posted a 5.21 ERA but a 28.8% strikeout rate in 48 1/3 innings at Double-A Chattanooga in 2024, his first full season in the upper minors. Eric Longenhagen graded his slider as a plus with his fastball and cutter both above average, though his command is just 30-grade. From Roxby’s prospect report:

Roxby’s fastball was up two ticks in 2024 and now lives in the mid-90s with uphill angle and tail. Roxby’s funky lower slot creates these characteristics. He tends to pitch backwards off of his sweeping mid-80s slider, which he commands better than his fastball. He has the stuff of a pretty standard middle reliever, though Roxby’s command puts him in more of an up/down bucket.

On the subject of the trade, Tyler Rogers shared this very sweet note:

In all, it’s hard to characterize this trade as an impact move for either team, but it is one of several additions the Reds have made this month — most notably the additions of Gavin Lux and Austin Hays — while trying to upgrade from last year’s 77-85 record. Who knows, maybe they’ll trade for Tyler (or Trevor) next?

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 »

Kristian Campbell shot up the rankings last year, and elevating was a big reason why. Known primarily for his athleticism and bat-to-ball skills when he was drafted 132nd overall by the Red Sox in 2023, the Georgia Tech product transformed his right-handed stroke to the tune of 20 home runs and a 180 wRC+ over 517 plate appearances across three levels. Flying under most radar as recently as a year ago, Campbell is now one of the game’s top prospects. Moreover, he has a legitimate chance to break camp as Boston’s starting second baseman.

I asked the 22-year-old infielder about his swing change when the Red Sox held their annual rookie development camp at Fenway Park earlier this week.

“It’s been all about bat path,” explained Campbell, who had a 90% contact rate but just four home runs in his lone collegiate season (he’d been a freshman redshirt in 2022) . “Instead of being flat, or straight down, I’m trying to hit the ball at a good angle. That’s what I lacked coming into pro baseball, hitting the ball in the air. I never really hit for power before last year.”

The proof is in the numbers, and not just ones that can be found on the back of a baseball card. In 2023, Campbell went deep once in 84 professional plate appearances while logging a 48% ground ball rate with a minus-2 attack angle. This past season, the aforementioned 20 home runs — eight each in High-A and Double-A, and four in Triple-A — were accompanied by a 39% ground ball rate and a plus-9 attack angle. His xwOBAcon jumped from .327 to .422.

According to Campbell, his conversion didn’t require a complete revamping of his mechanics. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the San Francisco Giants. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

What does it cost to sign a living legend? About $15 million, it turns out. Three-time Cy Young winner Justin Verlander is taking his talents to the West Coast for the first time, having inked a one-year deal with the San Francisco Giants for that aforementioned sum.

It’s another bold signing for newly appointed supreme prefect of baseball operations Gerald D. “Buster” Posey, who officially took charge a little over three months ago. And yet — if we give Posey the credit he’s reportedly due for the Matt Chapman extension — more than a quarter of San Francisco’s payroll (according to CBT math) is now devoted to players Posey is responsible for signing.

But Verlander could very well have cost more. He made nearly three times as much last season, and had he hit the 140-inning threshold in 2024, he would’ve been able to activate a player option worth $35 million, not $15 million. So why take such a big haircut? This is Justin Verlander, for God’s sake. Read the rest of this entry »