If the winter is a time for dreams, the spring is a time for solutions. Your team may have been going after Juan Soto or Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani, depending on the offseason, but short of something going weird in free agency (like the unsigned Boras clients last year), if you don’t have them under contract at this point, they’ll be improving someone else’s club. However, that doesn’t mean that spring training is only about ramping up for the daily grind. Teams have real needs to address, and while they’re no doubt workshopping their own solutions – or possibly convincing themselves that the problem doesn’t exist, like when I wonder why my acid reflux is awful after some spicy food – that doesn’t mean that we can’t cook up some ideas in the FanGraphs test kitchen.
This is the first piece in a three-part series in which I’ll propose one way for each team to fill a roster hole or improve for future seasons. Some of my solutions are more likely to happen than others, but I tried to say away from the completely implausible ones. We’ll leave the hypothetical trades for Bobby Witt Jr. and Paul Skenes to WFAN callers. Also, I will not recommend the same fix for different teams; in real life, for example, David Robertson can help only one club’s bullpen. Today, we’ll cover the 10 teams in the East divisions, beginning with the five in the AL East before moving on to their counterparts in the NL East. Each division is sorted by the current Depth Charts projected win totals. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the balletic strikeout celebrations of Rockies reliever Jefry Yan, Terry Francona’s selective opposition to ABS this spring, how frequently potential game-ending strikeouts will get challenged, and baseball in Season 2 of Poker Face. Then they preview the 2025 Arizona Diamondbacks (36:00) with The Arizona Republic’s Nick Piecoro, and the 2025 Washington Nationals (1:24:35) with The Washington Post’s Andrew Golden.
The 2024 season was a big one for Kyle Finnegan, or at least it started that way. On the strength of a 2.45 ERA and 25 saves, the Nationals’ closer made his first All-Star team (he finished the year with 38 saves, good for second in the National League). Yet he struggled in the second half, and in November, the Nationals non-tendered him rather than risk a trip through arbitration. On Tuesday — the same day I highlighted his continued free agency within this roundup — he returned to the fold nonetheless on a one-year, $6 million contract.
The deal, which is pending a physical and a 40-man roster move at this writing, is not yet official. Given that Finnegan made $5.1 million last year, the new contract constitutes about an 18% raise for the 33-year-old righty. However, in his annual projections for arbitration-eligible players at MLB Trade Rumors, Matt Swartzestimated that Finnegan would land a salary of $8.6 million, just shy of a 69% raise, because saves play well in arbitration. The view that Finnegan got something of a raw deal by this process is offset by the fact that he did get to test free agency a year ahead of schedule, only to find the market for his services limited enough to make a return his best option. Among the other 29 teams, the Cubs appeared to show the most interest.
Earlier this month, Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo told reporters that the team had kept in touch with Finnegan “throughout the offseason.” He likely lingered on the market because his profile and his performance both have some notable dings. Conceptually, Finnegan is basically a two-pitch pitcher, with a four-seam fastball that averaged 97.2 mph in 2024, and a splitter that has replaced his slider as his main secondary pitch over the past couple of seasons. By the pitch models, the fastball is about average, while the splitter is above-average but short of being a true plus pitch. He doesn’t miss a ton of bats, and while he generates a healthy share of groundballs, he gives up a lot of hard contact. Read the rest of this entry »
Michelle Yeoh is one of the greatest actors working today. How do I know that? It’s not her 40-year career, the 50-plus films on her résumé, or the Academy Award in her trophy case. No, it’s the fact that she was cast in the film adaptation of Wicked, one of the most beloved musicals on the planet, despite having no previous vocal training or singing experience. She told director Jon M. Chu as much before she agreed to join the cast: “You know Jon, I don’t sing.” With all due respect, it shows.
If you haven’t already seen Wicked, well, you should hurry up, because the Oscars are on Sunday. At the very least, take a listen to “The Wizard and I,” in which Yeoh sings alongside Broadway star and Academy Award nominee Cynthia Erivo. Their pairing is the vocal equivalent of the “unfinished horse drawing” meme. Yet, within the context of the entire film, Yeoh makes it work. Her acting is so strong, her portrayal of Madame Morrible so complete and convincing, that by the end of the movie, it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role. She might have a dark blue slider bar in the Vocal Runs Above Average section of her Cinema Savant page, but her overall performance was well above replacement level.
There are surely some passionate musical theatre fans who took umbrage at the casting of a non-singer in a singing role. I don’t count myself among them. I think there is something wonderful about the idea that someone can use their strengths to overcome their weaknesses. It’s nice to know a person doesn’t have to be skilled at every part of an activity to be altogether successful. On that note, here’s what it looks like when professional baseball player Josh Bell tries to run: Read the rest of this entry »
Robert Hassell III has encountered bumps in the road, but he’s confident that he’s finally heading in the right direction. Health and a better understanding of his left-handed stroke are two reasons why. Added to the Washington Nationals’ 40-man roster over the offseason, the 2020 first-rounder — he went eighth overall to the San Diego Padres — is also still just 23 years old. While his path to the big leagues has been anything but smooth, Hassell is far from over the hill in terms of prospect status.
Injuries have hampered his progress. Since turning pro, Hassell has incurred a pair of wrist injuries, including a broken hamate bone, and strained a groin muscle. As a result, he’s played in just 428 games over four seasons. Seldom at full strength for an extended period of time, he’s slashed an uninspiring .260/.350/.385 with 36 home runs and a 105 wRC+.
Hassell didn’t want to dwell on his past injury issues when I spoke to him during the Arizona Fall League season, although he did acknowledge that he “needs to be healthy and on the field” in order to allow his true talent to play. And he definitely has talent. While power has never been part of his profile, Hassell’s combination of bat-to-ball skills, speed, and outfield defense helped make him a primary piece in the multi-player trade that sent Juan Soto from Washington to San Diego in August 2022.
The conversation I had with Hassell in Arizona centered on his development as a hitter — something he views as a work-in-progress in need of nuance, not one that requires an overhaul. Read the rest of this entry »
Brett Davis-Imagn Images, Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports, Matt Krohn-Imagn Images
It’s roughly the midway point of the offseason, and things are starting to slow down. Most of the headline free agents are off the board, clearing the way for the Trevor Williamses, Joe Rosses, and Caleb Thielbars of the world to find their 2025 homes.
Those guys all signed in the final days of 2024, inking modest deals for National League clubs. Here’s a little bit about all three.
Trevor Williams Re-Signs With the Washington Nationals
After last year’s disappointing follow-up to their 2023 World Series-winning season, the Texas Rangers jumped the first base market in December and improved the rest of their roster in the process. First, at the Winter Meetings, they acquired corner infielder Jake Burger in a trade with the Miami Marlins, a move that gave us one of Michael Baumann’s best headlines: “Everything Is Burger in Texas.”
Burger’s addition made incumbent first baseman Nathaniel Lowe expendable; sure enough, a few weeks after the Burger trade, Texas sent Lowe to the Washington Nationals for left-handed reliever Robert Garcia.
Immediately after moving Lowe, the Rangers added some thump to their lineup with the signing of Joc Pederson to a two-year, $37 million deal with a mutual option for a third season. Altogether, the three moves essentially function as a two-for-one lineup swap, one that should provide more power to this offense, and also come with the bonus of fortifying their bullpen with a solid lefty who has yet to reach arbitration. Read the rest of this entry »
Since the last time Josh Bell suited up for the Nationals on August 1, 2022, he has played for four different teams. The Nationals dealt him to the Padres alongside Juan Soto at the 2022 trade deadline. Then he became a free agent and signed a two-year, $33 million deal with the Guardians, only for Cleveland to flip him to the Marlins the following summer. He swam with the Fish for just under a year before it was Miami’s turn to cast him off at the deadline in 2024. Finally, after finishing out this past season with the Diamondbacks, Bell is returning to Washington on a one-year, $6 million contract. That closes the circle on a two-and-a-half-year expedition that took him from the East Coast to the West Coast to the Midwest to the wetlands to the desert and back to the nation’s capital. According to Google Maps, it would take you just over 166 days to walk that journey. Bell, not exactly known for his footspeed, did it in 881.
With the Gold Glover Nathaniel Lowe likely to see most of the playing time at first base, Bell should slot in as Washington’s everyday designated hitter. Bell has primarily played first throughout his career, but his defense has always been lacking, even by the standards of the position. He has never finished a season with a positive DRS, and only once has he finished with a positive OAA or FRV. In 2024, Bell ranked last among all first basemen in DRS and second to last in OAA and FRV, despite playing just 98 games at the position. As long as Lowe stays healthy, which he’s largely managed to do throughout his career, the Nationals won’t need to worry about Bell’s glove at first. Meanwhile, Bell won’t need to worry about the harsh positional adjustment for designated hitters dragging down his overall numbers. A full-time DH who plays all 162 games would finish with -17.5 Def; Bell finished with -17.8 Def in 2024. As long as he sticks at DH, things can’t get any worse.
Of course, that also means Bell’s defensive value won’t get any better. If he’s going to improve upon a replacement-level (-0.1 WAR) 2024 season, he’ll need to do it with his offense. More specifically, he’ll need to do it with his bat. Over the past four years, Bell has been the least productive baserunner in the sport, with -17.6 BsR. His best baserunning season in that span was 2021, when he finished with -3.9 BsR, eighth-worst in the majors. To put that in context, -3.9 BsR is so low that Steamer doesn’t project anyone to finish with -3.9 BsR in 2025. Heck, Steamer doesn’t have anyone else finishing below -2.9, while Bell is projected for -2.3. Bell’s baseline is such an aberration that Steamer refuses to accept it as his (or anyone’s) 50th-percentile outcome. Read the rest of this entry »
Jonathan Dyer, Troy Taormina, Robert Edwards-Imagn Image
It’s been dark here at FanGraphs for a few days, so admit it — you’re desperate to read anything right now. How about a roundup of analysis on three pitchers that went off the market right before our holiday hiatus?
Griffin Canning, Michael Soroka, and Patrick Sandoval all fit somewhere between the back of their new team’s rotation or the front of its starter depth; each received deals commensurate with those expectations. If the going rate for a fourth starter these days is something like $15 million AAV (Alex Cobb got one year and $15 million, Matthew Boyd got two years and $29 million), this trio is probably one tier below that.
Do these three signings, grouped together, mean anything in particular? Probably not. Each year, the starter/reliever binary grows blurrier, and perhaps someday, every pitcher will throw exactly three innings and the distinction will disappear completely. Perhaps each of these signings brings us closer to that day; Soroka, in particular, seems best served to go through a lineup once and then head out on his way. For various reasons, the expectation for all of these pitchers should be somewhere in the 80- to 120-inning range for the 2025 season. But for now, no further trends will be drawn. Without further ado, here is the lowdown on the three hurlers.
Griffin Canning
Canning drew some attention on the pitching nerd internet earlier this year due to the remarkably unremarkable shape of his fastball. The image below is courtesy of Max Bay’s dynamic dead zone app:
Because Canning throws his fastball from a roughly league-average arm angle (45°), a league-average release height (5.8 feet), and with league-average ride (16.2 inches of induced vertical break), the pitch — in theory! — moves on a trajectory that hitters expect. (I say “in theory” because, as Remi Bunikiewicz pointed out, Canning does a great job hiding his fastball during the windup, complicating any perceptive analysis.)
This fastball was the bane of Canning’s existence in 2024. He did qualify for the ERA title, something only 57 other pitchers could claim they did, but his 5.26 FIP was worst among those qualified starters, and his strikeout rate was third worst. That strikeout rate dropped nearly eight percentage points from 2023 to 2024, and the performance against his fastball explained essentially all of that drop. The whiff rate on Canning’s three other primary pitches stayed virtually the same; on the fastball, the percentage of swings that resulted in misses went from 28% in 2023 to just 14% in 2024.
A drop in velocity appears to be the main culprit for the decline in performance. The four-seamer averaged 94.7 mph in 2023; that dipped to 93.4 mph in 2024. Could a 1.5-mph difference in velocity be the entire explanation? I’m inclined to think that the answer is mostly yes. But it’s also possible that the decline in slider quality impacted batter performance against his fastball. Canning’s death ball slider dropped three fewer inches relative to 2023, reducing the separation between his fastball and his primary out pitch against right-handed hitters.
Could a reduced role help Canning return to his prior form? These considerations could be part of the plan. The Mets employ something like eight starters; Canning sits outside the favored five. Assuming perfect health, it’s likely that they will deploy him in two- or three-inning bursts, perhaps allowing him to get back to that mid-90s velocity on the heater. Even in a swingman role, the $4.25 million contract makes good sense — with fewer workload responsibilities, it doesn’t feel unreasonable to expect Canning to deliver something like a 4.00 ERA over 100ish innings. And if injuries do strike the rotation, he can stretch out to a starter’s workload. Either way, there’s a role to play in this era where quality innings can be difficult to come by, especially in the late summer months.
Michael Soroka
Soroka exploded after a midseason move to the White Sox bullpen. As a reliever, Soroka struck out 39% of the hitters he faced, which would’ve ranked second in all of baseball.
Curiously, this wasn’t a case of Soroka ramping up the stuff over 15-pitch spurts. Unlike those pitchers topping the strikeout leaderboards — Mason Miller, Edwin Díaz, Josh Hader — Soroka did it mostly in chunky multi-inning appearances. Soroka pitched 36 innings out of the bullpen; all but 5 2/3 of them came in appearances that spanned two innings or more. In those slightly shorter appearances — he averaged nearly five innings per appearance as a starter and 2 1/3 as a reliever — the strikeout rate somehow tripled.
After moving full-time to relief work, Soroka added 1.5 mph to his four-seam fastball. But the four-seamer isn’t anything special; instead, at 94 mph with dead zone-ish movement, it’s mostly there to set up the slider, which generated nearly a 42% whiff rate.
What’s so special about the slider? It isn’t the velocity — it averages just 82.2 mph, well below the average for major league sliders. But its shape is distinct. There are slower curveballs that resemble the movement profile, but outside of Bryan Abreu, nobody really throws a slider with the combination of depth and sweep that Soroka manages to get. Starting May 18, when Soroka shifted to a bullpen role, the slider averaged -4.5 inches of induced vertical break with 5.2 inches of sweep, moving sharply on two planes.
But averages obscure the full truth. Soroka can also manipulate the pitch to move in a variety of break patterns. Look at the range of movement profiles on his slider, seen in yellow on his pitch plot below:
Soroka can firm it up, throwing it more like a gyro slider at 84 mph with zero inches of induced vertical break:
But he can also bend it like a curveball, dropping over 10 inches more than his firmest sliders:
(Look at poor Spencer Torkelson there — I think he was expecting the gyro.)
Between the identical frequency of the fastball and slider, the distinct two-plane movement profile, and the diversity of potential shapes, Soroka had batters swinging and missing more than almost any pitcher in baseball.
Evidently, the Nationals, who gave Soroka $9 million on a one-year deal, plan to use him as a “starter.” Given his usage patterns as a reliever, I’m not exactly sure what that means. I would expect that the Nationals will tell Soroka to let it loose for 60 or so pitches, just as he did in Chicago, and he’ll take on 12 or 13 hitters in a game. Like Canning, I think Soroka will end up closer to 90 innings than 180, letting his best stuff cook in outings that sit somewhere between a one-inning shutdown reliever and a starter trying to turn the lineup over three times.
Patrick Sandoval
Sandoval, who signed a two-year, $18.25 million deal with the Red Sox, is a perfect fit for their “no fastballs” organizational philosophy. This guy hates four-seamers now — they made up just 16% of his pitches in his injury-shortened 2024 campaign, by far a career low. Regardless of batter handedness, Sandoval mixes in all six of his pitches, but he works them in differently depending on whether he’s facing a righty or lefty. A plurality of his pitches to righties were changeups; to lefties, Sandoval spammed his slider and sweeper over half the time.
As one would expect with a pitcher who throws all that junk, Sandoval struggles to get the ball in the strike zone. He ran a 10% walk rate last year; even in his excellent 2022 campaign, in which he racked up 3.7 WAR, his walk rate was above 9%. The walks are just part of the package with Sandoval, but the hope is that at his best, he can pitch around them, striking out enough hitters and staying off enough barrels with his diverse pitch mix and refusal to throw anything straight.
Sandoval is likely to pitch the fewest innings of this trio in 2025. He tore his UCL and was shut down in mid-June before undergoing Tommy John surgery, so he’ll miss a big chunk of the upcoming season. When he returns, it figures that he will assume a traditional starter’s workload, though following the Walker Buehler signing, Boston’s rotation looks pretty packed. Ultimately, this deal is mostly a 2026 play, with some nice depth for the end of next year as a bonus.
Conclusion
None of these guys is too exciting. All of them have stanky fastballs. But each has a reason to believe that he might contribute surplus value on a modest deal. In the end, that’s what a minor pitcher signing is all about.
For the 21st 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 and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Washington Nationals.
Batters
While Washington had a below-average offense in 2024, many of the spots in the lineup are coming on nicely, though not enough yet for ZiPS to believe in a huge run-scoring turnaround. James Wood and Dylan Crews are young and project to be three-win players right now, and CJ Abrams is right there, too. With Abrams, the oldest, still just 24, that’s a trio to build around, and ZiPS sees them all as having significant superstar potential, especially the first two. Luis García Jr. is projected to regress a bit from 2024, but he still should be a solidly above-average player overall. If Andrés Chaparro can play third base, ZiPS likes him well enough, but it doesn’t think he’ll truly provide enough offense to be valuable at first base or designated hitter. The scouting consensus is generally more negative than ZiPS here, which is based on ball location data from the minors.
After these five, things get less exciting quickly. Probably the most interesting in 2025 is Jacob Young. ZiPS is conservative on Young given the volatile nature of defensive statistics, and it was less impressed by him in the minors, but if he’s as good defensively as he was this year, his WAR projection would get comfortably over two wins as well.
Former top prospect Keibert Ruiz’s projection has gone in a negative direction. Last year was a disappointment, and while some of that was undoubtedly due to his losing 20 pounds from influenza in the spring, his struggles were more extreme versions of what went wrong for him in 2022 and 2023. Ruiz is a good contact hitter, but he’s developing in the mold of David Fletcher, a hitter whose contact skills are too competent for his own good. Ruiz swings at a lot of crappy pitches — pitches that nobody should swing at because they are difficult to drive — and puts them in play. Maybe if he were an ultra-speedy type with a low launch angle who could leg out a bunch of junky grounders, that would be fine, but he just dishes out a stew of weak grounders, popups, and flies, leading to a lot of uncompetitive at-bats. He should be healthier this season, so he should add a few mph of exit velocity to his balls in play, but unless his plate discipline improves, his ceiling is going to be limited.
Another concern is that with Wood and Crews now in the majors, ZiPS doesn’t believe the Nationals have any strong hitters coming up next to buttress them. ZiPS thinks little of Brady House – and Steamer likes his bat even less – and doesn’t think Juan Yepez is an impressive short-term solution at first. Except for catcher Drew Millas, every Nationals batter projected to have five or more WAR over the next five seasons is likely to make the Opening Day roster, and Millas’ projection is simply that of a low-upside backup. If the Nats don’t develop hitters, they’re going to have to spend more aggressively to fill the team’s depth in the lineup.
Pitchers
MacKenzie Gore is fine, but ZiPS has a general ambivalence about the rest of the rotation. DJ Herz is the most interesting of the pack. He misses a ton of bats, and his results from his limited time in the majors are promising, but ZiPS is still on the fence about whether he’s really shed some of his walks from the minors. He has some of the darkest downside scenarios of the staff but also the second-best upside after Gore, and a rebuilding team ought to be interested in riskier pitchers. The computer sees Jake Irvin and Mitchell Parker as competent inning-eaters rather than pitchers with big upsides. Cade Cavalli is risky, and once you get past him, ZiPS is decidedly lukewarm everywhere.
ZiPS may be ambivalent about the rotation, but when it comes to the bullpen, it’s far more opinionated, in a bad way. The Nationals are no strangers to having terrible bullpens – they won a World Series with at most three relievers they could trust – and for rebuilding teams, the bullpen tends to be the last thing to come together. ZiPS thinks Derek Law and Robert Garcia are good parts of a competent pen, but the rest of Washington’s relievers are expected to be below replacement level. None of the names even project particularly well, which suggests to me that unless the computer is quite wrong, the team’s next good relief pitchers likely are not currently in the organization, and if they are, they’ll probably be failed starters who convert to the bullpen.
For the first half of 2024, the Nationals stayed on the edge of the exurbs of the NL Wild Card race, close enough to .500 to believe that maybe they could push for a playoff spot if everything broke right for them. However, their 32-47 record from July onward ended that whimsy, and their 71-91 record was a fair representation of where they stood. Short of some major changes, Washington is likely to make some progress and finish with a win total in the mid-to-high 70s. That’d would be a step forward, but it wouldn’t be enough to return to the postseason.
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 2025 due to injury, and players who were released in 2024. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Ukulele Dixieland Jazz band that only covers songs by The Smiths, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.11.
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.
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