You have to hand it to the Mets. There really does seem to be something ineffable that brings drama to Queens. No, I don’t mean the LOLMets meme, the belief that things will find a way to break every year, because I don’t really think it’s true. The Mets aren’t cursed. But they do have a way of making things interesting. It’s never all smooth sailing, but they’re never completely down and out either. There’s always a little more to explore at Citi Field, and this offseason is no exception. The Mets are on top of the world, because they signed Juan Soto, one of the biggest free agent prizes of all time. And they have their backs to the wall, because two pitchers they signed to assemble a playoff rotation are already injured.

Frankie Montas was the first casualty. He felt discomfort after his very first bullpen session of spring training, and a lat sprain means that he won’t be able to throw for another 5-7 weeks. Given that the regular season is five weeks away, and that Montas had done essentially no buildup before his injury, we’re talking about multiple months of absence.

The good news is the Mets built their rotation this offseason to withstand injuries. After all, Montas wasn’t the most prominent starting pitcher they signed this winter. Sean Manaea holds that distinction; he was the best pitcher on last year’s team, and though he hit free agency, he signed a three-year deal worth $75 million to come back. That’s not quite ace money in today’s game, which is perfect: Manaea’s not quite an ace, just a solid playoff starter with upside. Except, he’s also hurt now. After feeling some discomfort of his own, an MRI revealed a right oblique strain.
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Xavier Isaac’s game is built around damage. No. 98 on our recently-released Top 100, the 21-year-old, left-handed-hitting Tampa Bay Rays prospect has, according to our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, “some of the most exciting power in pro baseball.” Getting to it consistently will be his biggest challenge going forward. As Longenhagen also wrote in his report, “By the end of the season, [Isaac] had a sub-60% contact rate, which is not viable at the big league level… [but] if “he can get back to being a nearly 70% contact hitter, he’s going to be a monster.”

While Isaac’s 143 wRC+ between High-A Bowling Green and Double-A Montgomery was impressive, his 33.3% strikeout rate was another story. The built-to-bash first baseman knows that cutting down on his Ks will go a long way toward his living up to his lofty potential. At the same time, he’s wary of straying too far from his strengths.

“I’ve tuned up my power, and now I need to get my contact up a little bit more,” Isaac told me during the Arizona Fall League season. “It’s like a tradeoff, kind of. I’m going to strike out, but I’m also going to hit the ball a little harder. I have a lot of power, so some of it is about going up there and taking a risk. I obviously don’t want to strike out — I‘m trying to put it in play — but I also don’t want to be making soft contact.”

That’s seldom a problem when he squares up a baseball. Not only does his bat produce high exit velocities, he knows what it feels like to propel a pitch 450-plus feet. He doesn’t shy way from the power-hitter label. Asked if that’s what he is, his response was, “For sure.”

That Isaac’s bombs often go to the gaps, particularly to right-center, is by design. Read the rest of this entry »

Pete Alonso is going back to the Mets. It always felt like the most likely outcome, and to be honest, it would’ve been super weird to see him in any other uniform. Alonso has never been the best player on the Mets, but he does the coolest and most valuable thing you can do on a baseball diamond — hit home runs — with great frequency. That, and an affable attitude that’s endeared him to the fans, has made him an institution in Queens.

Unfortunately, there was something of a disagreement over what all those contributions were worth. Alonso returns to his team of origin on a front-loaded two-year, $54 million contract that features an opt-out. If Alonso does what he’s done his whole career, he can test free agency again next winter, having pocketed $30 million. That’s a handsome one-year salary for any player, but far, far short of Alonso’s expectations. Read the rest of this entry »

Y’know that point in the last few rounds of every fantasy football draft when kickers and defenses start flying off the board? We’ve reached the MLB offseason version of that, when teams start making sure their bullpens are composed of relievers more akin to Brandon Aubrey than the Panthers’ defense. With the rush on relief pitching officially on, the Tigers and Mets both agreed to one-year deals with right-handed, back of the ‘pen types on Wednesday. Detroit signed Tommy Kahnle at a salary of $7.75 million for 2025, while New York guaranteed Ryne Stanek $4.5 million for his services this year, with another $500,000 available in incentives.

In 2024, Detroit’s starters threw 753 innings, while the team’s relievers nearly matched that number with 694 innings — a league-best mark for innings thrown among major league bullpens. Maintaining success while covering such a large quantity of innings is tricky business. “One of our great strengths last year was our ability to throw different looks at hitters and try to limit the number of times a hitter saw the same type of look or shape or slot in a given series.” Tigers GM Scott Harris told reporters after the Kahnle signing, “Tommy gives us a look we didn’t have.”

Alongside Kahnle, the main characters in the Tigers bullpen are likely to be right-handers Jason Foley, Beau Brieske, and Will Vest, with Tyler Holton, Sean Guenther, and Brant Hurter making up the left-handed contingent. Foley and Holton handled most of the late-inning, high-leverage work last year, with Vest and Brieske next in line to get crucial outs. Now Kahnle offers an additional option in close-game scenarios. And as one would expect from such a bullpen-reliant team, a full cast of contributors sits waiting in the wings, be they starters asked to handle a long relief role, such as Matt Manning, Ty Madden, and Kenta Maeda, or minor leaguers with options and big league experience, such as Brenan Hanifee and Alex Lange (who is working his way back from a season-ending lat injury). Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Mets owner Steve Cohen addressed his team’s ongoing contract negotiations with Pete Alonso. During a panel discussion in front of fans, he expounded on the process at length:

“We made a significant offer to Pete. He’s entitled to explore his market. That’s what he is doing. Personally, this has been an exhausting conversation and negotiation. I mean, Soto was tough — this is worse. A lot of it is, we made a significant offer … I don’t like the structures that are being presented back to us. It’s highly asymmetric against us. And I feel strongly about it. I will never say no. There’s always the possibility. But the reality is we’re moving forward. And as we continue to bring in players, the reality is it becomes harder to fit Pete into what is a very expensive group of players that we already have. That’s where we are. And I am being brutally honest. I don’t like the negotiations. I don’t like what’s been presented to us. Listen, maybe that changes. Certainly, I’ll always stay flexible. If it stays this way, I think we are going to have to get used to the fact that we may have to go forward with the existing players that we have.”

That quote caught my eye for a few reasons. First, the length! That’s not a no comment or even close to one. He noted a few specific points where the negotiations had gotten stuck, mentioned that the deal gets less likely as the offseason goes on, and at least nodded in the direction of how an Alonso offer affects team construction. That’s not exactly par for the course when owners give quotes; I’m looking at you, Bill DeWitt Jr., who early this winter said, “The best way to build a championship club is to have good young players.”

Second, I kept coming back to “highly asymmetric against us.” I can’t help it. I’m a contract nerd. I immediately started thinking about what that could mean. The possibilities are nearly endless. Accumulators? Collars? Conditional ownership share? Alonso gets to choose the roster every Tuesday?

Well, probably not. Agent Scott Boras threw some cold water on my ideas in a response. “Pete’s free-agent contract structure request[s] are identical to the standards and practices of other clubs who have signed similarly situated qualifying-offer/all-star level players,” he told The Athletic’s Will Sammon. “Nothing different. Just established fairness standards.”
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It must have been fifth grade or so when I encountered the “compare and contrast” essay prompt for the first time. I remember thinking: What the hell? These two passages were written by different people. Why is it on me to tell you what is similar about them?

Over the years, I got better at these prompts. But it appears I’ve regressed. Two relievers signed eight-figure contracts last week. What’s similar? They both closed out games for World Series-winning teams in the 2020s, will likely handle the eighth inning for their new employers, and were born in the glorious and blessed year of 1993. What’s different? One throws right-handed, one throws left-handed. One signed with a contender; one perhaps got paid a premium so his team can try to avoid an MLBPA grievance.

But there are limits to the illuminating qualities of comparison. These days, individualized analysis is required to assess the effectiveness of a pitcher, so that’s how this post will proceed today. A.J. Minter and José Leclerc will earn life-changing quantities of money to chuck leather a few dozen times. Let’s find out why. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Mets signed Juan Soto in December, he was, technically speaking, filling the hole that Jesse Winker left behind. Of course, that’s a bit like buying the Batmobile to replace an expired bus pass. Winker’s greatest strength is drawing walks, and Soto’s career walk rate makes Winker’s career walk rate look like Jeff McNeil’s career walk rate. Still, the point stands. The Mets lost one lefty-batting corner outfielder to free agency and replaced him with another. Yet, on Thursday afternoon, they re-signed Winker anyway. His one-year, $7.5 million contract is fairly straightforward, but the ramifications for New York’s roster could be much more complex.

Poor baserunning, miserable defense, and frequent injuries have limited Winker throughout his career. All the same, his bat was a major asset for the Reds from 2017-21. In just over 1,500 plate appearances with Cincinnati, he slashed .288/.385/.504 with a 132 wRC+. While he thrived at Great American Ball Park, he made his mark outside of that hitter’s haven, too, producing an .845 OPS and 126 wRC+ on the road. He made the All-Star team in his final season with the Reds, batting .305 with 24 home runs in 110 games, good for a career-best 3.2 WAR.

The next two seasons, however, marked a period of steep decline for Winker. Playing for the Mariners and Brewers, he managed just 0.7 WAR in 2022 and -0.8 in 2023. His agent might point out that back, neck, and knee injuries hampered his performance in that time, as did some bad luck on balls in play; his xwOBA was nearly 30 points better than his wOBA, while his BABIP was more than 50 ticks below his average from the previous five years. Even so, it would have been more than fair to worry about his future as a major leaguer after his dismal 2023 campaign. Entering 2024, his ZiPS projection was a mere 0.4 WAR in 415 plate appearances, and he was forced to sign a minor league contract with the Nationals less than two weeks before spring training began.

Back to full health, Winker rebounded in Washington. While he wasn’t a power threat like he’d been in his Reds heyday, he knocked 18 doubles and 11 home runs, giving him a middle-of-the-pack .162 ISO. His BABIP was back up above .300, and his 14.0% walk rate ranked fifth among qualified batters (as of his final day with the Nats). All in all, he put up a 125 wRC+ and 1.2 WAR in 101 games.

This was enough to pique the Mets’ interest ahead of the trade deadline. However, after Washington sent him to New York, Winker wasn’t the productive hitter that the Mets thought they were getting when they acquired him. Well, at least not during the regular season, when Winker was little more than replacement level with his new team. All the more disappointing, he was set up to thrive with the Mets: He had the platoon advantage almost every time he came to the plate. While Washington used him as an everyday player, New York shielded him from southpaws; he faced just four left-handed pitchers over the final two months of the season. Nonetheless, his 97 wRC+ with the Mets was much closer to his career mark against lefties (88) than righties (129).

The problem was rooted in Winker’s approach at the plate. With the Nationals, he ran that aforementioned 14.0% walk rate and struck out just 22.2% of the time. After the trade, he lowered his strikeout rate to 17.1%, which might’ve been a good thing, except that his walk rate also dropped way down, to 7.8%. With the Mets, Winker swung more often and made more contact, especially on pitches in the strike zone. His Z-Swing% (per Statcast) jumped from 60.5% to 70.4%, while his Z-Contact% jumped from 85.5% to 91.2%. This wouldn’t have been a problem if he crushed many of those extra balls he put in play, but, naturally, he did not.

So, why did Winker suddenly change his approach at a time when things were going well? I’d posit the Mets noticed that he was holding back on too many hittable pitches over the first four months of the season and let him know that was the case after the trade. According to Robert Orr’s calculations from his Damage leaderboard, Winker was better than the average hitter at identifying hittable pitches every year from 2020-23. Yet, with the Nationals this past season, his Hittable Pitch Take rate put him in the bottom third of the league. After he started swinging at more strikes with the Mets, he rose back up to the 66th percentile. The problem, however, was that he sacrificed another critical skill in the process. Winker’s selectivity rate — Orr’s metric that shows how often a player avoids swinging at bad pitches — fell from the 73rd percentile as a National to the 35th percentile as a Met. All that is to say, Winker swung at more good pitches, but he also swung at more bad ones, and he didn’t do enough damage against good pitches to compensate for his lack of production against the bad ones. Ultimately, his hard-hit and barrel rates were lower with the Mets than they were with the Nationals, as were his wOBA and xwOBA on contact.

This raises another question: Why would the Mets want Winker back if their efforts to improve his approach went so poorly? Perhaps they think he just needs a little more time to reap the rewards. After all, 129 plate appearances is nothing. Aaron Judge was still hitting below the Mendoza Line with an OPS in the mid-.700s by his 129th plate appearances last season. Thankfully for our purposes, we have an easy way to increase the sample size of Winker’s 2024 season with the Mets: Include the playoffs, as Winker took an additional 32 plate appearances in October. He continued to swing at strikes at a similar rate, but he used those swings to record several big hits, including two triples and a home run. He also drew seven walks, compared to just four strikeouts. If you combine those numbers with Winker’s regular season stats as a Met, you get a 10.6% walk rate, a 16.1% strikeout rate, and a .341 wOBA. Even more promising is his .353 xwOBA, notably higher than his .335 xwOBA with the Nationals. All of a sudden, it makes a lot more sense why the Mets decided to keep this guy around.

It’s far too soon to say if Winker’s new approach will work in a larger sample size. Still, it’s not hard to see why the Mets think he’s worth a longer look. In a best-case scenario, he could be an even more productive hitter than he was overall in 2024. And if this new approach doesn’t befit him going forward, he doesn’t have to be anything more than the hitter he was in Washington to be valuable on a one-year, $7.5 million deal. After all, the Mets will continue to shield him from left-handed pitching, and his track record against righties is strong:

So, that’s Winker. But this signing is an iceberg – and ironically, it’s the rare kind of iceberg that isn’t so good for a polar bear. At first glance, this is just a 1.0- to 1.5-WAR player signing a short-term deal commensurate with his talents. Yet, there’s a lot more to it than what you see on the surface. When SNY’s Andy Martino first reported the Winker signing, he added that the Mets are now preparing for life after Pete Alonso. Indeed, while no one could argue that Winker is a direct replacement for the All-Star first baseman, there is a connection between this signing and the Mets’ possibly giving up on Alonso if you follow the trail of dominoes far enough.

With Soto, Brandon Nimmo, Jose Siri, and Tyrone Taylor to man the outfield, the Mets are likely to use Winker as their primary DH against right-handed pitching. However, he can still play the corner outfield if he needs to; he spent 95 games on the grass last season, including 27 with New York. So, in the event of an injury to one of the team’s other outfielders, Winker can fill in. That means the Mets are less likely to ask McNeil to play the outfield in 2025. Instead, he can ideally play second base almost every day. As long as McNeil is covering the keystone, the Mets won’t need any of their young infielders at second base, therefore allowing Brett Baty, Luisangel Acuña, and Ronny Mauricio to focus their efforts on third. If just one of them, or some combination of the three, can competently cover the hot corner, Mark Vientos will be able to play first base full-time. Long story short, Winker improves the outfield depth, which indirectly improves the infield depth, which should allow Vientos to formally replace Alonso at first.

Another aspect to the iceberg is how this all affects Starling Marte, whose Gold Glove years are long behind him. In 170 games in the outfield over the past two years, he has accumulated -13 DRS, -14 OAA, and a -12 FRV. Meanwhile, neither ZiPS nor Steamer sees him as much more than a league-average bat. As a righty hitter, he could theoretically platoon with Winker at DH. After all, he posted an impressive 141 wRC+ against left-handed pitching last year. Yet, even with the platoon advantage, Marte might not be a strong enough hitter to warrant the reps. While he has had positive platoon splits the last three years, he had reverse platoon splits every year from 2014-21. In other words, he’s hardly a guaranteed lefty masher. On the contrary, ZiPS projects him for a .698 OPS against lefties and a .713 OPS against righties in 2025. Even if the Mets were willing to give a roster spot to the short side of a DH platoon, Marte probably wouldn’t be that guy.

The final component of the iceberg is what the Mets do next. Steve Cohen’s pockets are already deep, but if the Mets aren’t going to give Alonso a multi-year contract, and if they can get someone to take on any of Marte’s remaining salary, they’ll only have more to spend. With a projected payroll still $49 million below last year’s final tally and a luxury tax payroll still $17 million below the top penalty threshold, the Mets remain major players to watch as the offseason rolls on.

After a fairly brisk start, the pace of free agency has bogged down in the new year. The clog in the pipeline is Pete Alonso, the burly first baseman late of the New York Mets. Alonso’s free agent case fascinates me, as he represents a possibly rare intersection of fame and scarcity of skill, making him especially difficult to put a value on.

Given Alonso’s popularity in New York, the shortness of the Mets’ lineup even after signing Juan Soto, and the fact that owner Steve Cohen is so rich the Sumerians might not have invented currency if they’d known he was going to come along, a reunion makes a certain amount of sense. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Like Sara Lee, nobody doesn’t like Curtis Granderson. A power-hitting center fielder who reached the 20-homer plateau 10 times, with a high of 43, he was a threat to steal a base during the first decade of his major league career as well. He made three All-Star teams and had a knack for turning up on winners, starting (and starring) for six teams that made the playoffs, including two that reached the World Series, while reaching the postseason twice as a reserve acquired for the stretch run. His penchant for strikeouts made him a somewhat streaky performer, but he earned a reputation within the game for being even-keeled, thoughtful, hard working, and generous — a clubhouse leader and a favorite of teammates, fans, and media. At a time when African-American participation in baseball was (and still is) on the wane, he wore his socks high every day as a tribute to Negro Leagues players, and channeled his charitable efforts towards increasing Black participation in the sport, an effort that has carried over into his retirement. Read the rest of this entry »

On December 12, the day of Juan Soto’s introductory press conference with the Mets – imagine for a moment being one of the three people in New York City who still requires an introduction to the concept of Juan Soto – the temperature at nearby La Guardia Airport peaked at 43 degrees. Soto wore a turtleneck and chain under his blazer, presumably to ward off the cold, but possibly because he was inspired by the look his new teammate Mark Vientos rocked during the National League Championship Series.

During the press conference, Soto swapped out the blazer for a crisp, new Mets jersey, but he left the turtleneck in place. The temperature was down to 37 by the time he ventured out to the elevated seats behind home plate for a photo op. “We got about fifteen minutes with Soto and his family,” said photographer Brad Penner in an email, “and it was COLD.” The photo op wasn’t just quick. It was weird, and the images it left us with are bizarre and beautiful. “I’ve done many press conferences,” wrote Penner, “but few that were like this one.”

As he so often does, Soto seemed to jump right out of the photos. “I chose a seat as close to where Soto would be,” Penner said, “so I could line him up with the scoreboard, rather than the field and seats.” That was smart, as the Mets displayed a “Welcome to the//New York Mets//Juan Soto” graphic on both scoreboards, each featuring three images of him. That left many of the photos with seven Sotos in them, quite possibly a world record. With the focus of the lens necessarily all the way in the foreground, the scoreboard isn’t crisp. You can just make out the tiny “Welcome to the” portion of the graphic, but only if you zoom in and enhance like a CIA agent tracking Jason Bourne through a train station. (Also, there’s no comma between “Mets” and “Juan Soto,” so it reads like the entire team has been renamed the New York Mets Juan Soto. Take that, Cleveland Napoleons!)

Soto was standing in an area that was much darker than the field and the scoreboard in the background, and in the twilight, the black fabric of the turtleneck discolored his paper-thin jersey in an odd way. The white jersey shone brightly where it hung free, but where it lay flat against the turtleneck, it failed to contain the darkness within. The numbers on Soto’s jersey lit up like reflectors while the underside of his cap swallowed light like a black hole. In one picture, Soto smiles and spreads his arms wide, but his arms and his entire head are fully engulfed in impenetrable shadow.

In case you can’t tell, I adore these pictures. They’re not the action-packed hero shots that we’re used to seeing splashed across the sports section or the homepage of our favorite baseball analytics website. We’re accustomed to crisp, perfectly lit pictures of batters flattening fastballs into pancakes and pitchers grimacing mid-delivery with their UCLs stretched past the point of no return. But for the past month, with no new art to take their place, these photos of Soto looking, of all things, human, are everywhere. There he is on the television, in the newspaper, on the internet: in the dark, wearing a baseball jersey over a chain and a turtleneck that probably cost more money than I have ever seen in my life, alternating between posing confidently and standing awkwardly.

That’s part of the deal for professional baseball players. From the moment they arrive at spring training until the moment their season ends, they’re fair game for photographers. The Imagn photo service has 4,455 pictures of Soto, 1,113 of them from the 2024 season alone. But when the season ends, the players disappear. In the winter, they get to live their quasi-private lives away from the cameras, and baseball editors get to scroll through Imagn’s 56 pages of 2024 Juan Soto pictures in an attempt to avoid reusing that one shot they used back in December.

But now we’ve got art of Soto in a Mets uniform. Sure, the art isn’t what we’re used to, but it beats using an old photo of him in a Yankees uniform. Here’s what you see what you search Imagn for Juan Soto (which you can do here).

For any editor whose news organization didn’t send a photographer to Soto’s presser, this is what you have to choose from. It’s one closeup after another: Juan Soto with his arms outstretched like Moses parting the Red Sea, Juan Soto nervously smiling and adjusting the cuff of his turtleneck, Juan Soto with his hands raised like he’s conducting an orchestra, Juan Soto with the same goofy, sideways smile that Steve Carell wore in the poster for The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

I was a teenager when digital cameras began to fully replace film cameras, and I remember that era just well enough to appreciate what the transition cost us. Today, you can take and instantly delete an infinite number of pictures until you get one that shows exactly what you want it to show. Before that option was available, you couldn’t see your photos until you remembered to take the roll to the developer months later. When you finally got them back, you’d discover that you had your finger over the lens for a couple of them, that you had your eyes closed for a couple more, that the lighting was off for a couple more, and that one was, for no discernible reason, completely gray. If you were a total amateur like me, you’d consider yourself lucky to end up with two or three photographs that actually came out well. In other words, photography used to accurately represent real life. Real life is 90% crazy eyes and pre-sneeze faces, and you don’t get to dial up the saturation. I don’t mean to sound like a crank. I love having a decent camera in my pocket at all times; I’m just saying that it has distorted our world a bit.

For that reason, I love the fact that these pictures are everywhere you look. Penner took all of them, and he’s a fantastic photographer. He took the widely circulated picture of Francisco Lindor celebrating on the field after the Mets dispatched the Phillies in the NLDS, and he even had a comp in mind for the madness of Soto’s press conference: Kemba Walker’s 2021 introductory presser for the Knicks, which took place at the top of the Empire State Building. But still, these are not the perfect pictures we’re used to seeing. They show the rare photo opportunity that ends up looking every bit as contrived as it actually is.

For the next month, do your best to enjoy these pictures. The moment Soto arrives in Port St. Lucie, you’ll stop seeing them. They’ll be replaced by low-angle shots of a godlike Soto in a crisp uniform, an immaculate Florida sky behind him. He’ll be launching batting practice home runs and laughing with his teammates. It will be perfect. There will be no turtleneck.