The worst part of a long rebuild is about a third of the way through, when the teardown is nearly finished and the daunting enormousness of the task starts to sink in. At that point, the old guard is gone but the core of the next good team is still in the minors at best — sometimes, the next superstar is still in ninth grade.
But someone has to go out there and log some minutes for the tanking ballclub. And in every rebuild — sometimes because of keen scouting or inspired development, but often as not just through sheer volume — one or two of those random unfortunates breaks out and survives into the next competitive window.
I’ve long been fascinated by players in this situation, because they fall into one of two categories. First, there’s the Rhys Hoskins class. Hoskins was an uninspiring college first base prospect who exploded into the one bright spot on some late-2010s Phillies teams that I cannot describe accurately on a family website. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Baltimore Orioles. 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 »
Heston Kjerstad turned 26 in February, and he only has 158 major league plate appearances. That’s more than you or I had at that age, but it’s not a lot relative to expectations. This was a highly polished SEC corner bat who went second overall five years ago, though for reasons I’ll get into, Kjerstad wasn’t your garden variety no. 2 pick. After a token call-up at the end of 2023, in 2024 he spent more time in Triple-A (where he posted a 160 wRC+ in 56 games) than in the majors (where he posted a wRC+ of 116, which isn’t lighting the world on fire, but is still good, especially for a rookie).
Nobody wants to get their shot because of an injury, but Colton Cowser busting his thumb on Sunday leaves a two-month hole that Kjerstad has to, has to, has to exploit. Read the rest of this entry »
Daphne Lemke/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Every year, most teams hold some sort of team bonding, social event during spring training. The specifics of the event vary from team to team, but frequently they include renting out a movie theater and showing some cloying, inspirational movie like The Blind Side, Cool Runnings, Rudy, or better yet, a documentary like Free Solo. Regardless of the team’s outlook on the year, the goal is to get the players amped up for the season and ready to compete on the field, even if the competition in question is for fourth place in the division.
But what if instead of taking the clichéd route, teams actually tried to select a movie that fits their current vibe, one that’s thematically on brand with the current state of their franchise? They won’t do this because spring training is a time for hope merchants to peddle their wares, even if they’re selling snake oil to sub-.500 teams. But spring training is over. It’s time to get real. So here are my movie selections for each American League team, sorted by release date from oldest to newest.
In order to bolster their Grayson Rodriguez-less starting rotation, the Baltimore Orioles agreed to a one-year contract worth $5.25 million with free agent starting pitcher Kyle Gibson. The 37-year-old Gibson pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2024, posting a 4.24 ERA and a 4.42 FIP in 30 starts over 169 2/3 innings, good for 1.5 WAR.
In 2023, the Orioles signed Gibson as a veteran arm who could eat innings, a useful purpose for a rebuilding team transitioning to contention and seeking to buttress a patchwork rotation. This was a task that Gibson accomplished successfully that season, scarfing down 192 innings for a 101-win team that lacked any other well-established starting pitchers. After the emergence of Kyle Bradish and Rodriguez’s relatively successful big league debut, the O’s saw less need for a caretaker starter in 2024. So Gibson moved on to St. Louis, a team that was stung in 2023 by the fact that nearly every starting pitcher except Miles Mikolas missed significant time due to injuries. While the 2024 Cardinals didn’t get back to to the playoffs, their failures could hardly be pinned on Gibson, who put up his typical workhorse season, finishing second in innings on the Cardinals, just behind Mikolas.
With the Cardinals in transition and seemingly determined to do nothing of substance during the offseason, they made little attempt to retain Gibson’s services for a second year. As one of the last remaining starting pitchers in free agency with a résumé to command a major league contract, it was likely only a matter of time until Gibson found a suitor to sign him. He joins a familiar club facing a familiar situation, as the Orioles are once again dealing with a thin starting rotation. Corbin Burnes is gone, Rodriguez is out with a triceps injury, and Bradish isn’t expected back for a while after undergoing Tommy John surgery last June. Over the winter, Baltimore added two-time All-Star Charlie Morton and NPB veteran Tomoyuki Sugano to make up for the loss of Burnes, but considering Morton is 41 and Sugano is a 35-year-old control pitcher who hasn’t yet played in the U.S., both of them come with plenty of risk attached.
The hope for the Orioles is that Gibson becomes unimportant to the roster sometime in the summer, as Rodriguez, Trevor Rogers, and prospect Chayce McDermott (no. 71 overall, 50 FV) return from injuries, with Bradish possibly due back in the second half, but this would represent a best-case scenario. Gibson’s contract reflects this uncertainty; based on innings and games started, he can earn just over another $1.5 million in incentives.
Gibson doesn’t have a fastball that flirts with 100 mph or one of those crazy 90-mph changeups that would have seemed like a tall tale 30 years ago. What he does do is make the most out of a six-pitch repertoire, resulting in a better pitcher than one might expect from his middling stuff. Star-level performances get teams to the playoffs, but so too do players with immaculate attendance. It may seem weird, but Gibson’s 112 wins is enough to rank him sixth among active pitchers, and he also ranks seventh in starts and eighth in innings. These three metrics aren’t indications of excellence, but competence, and that also has value.
ZiPS Projection – Kyle Gibson
Year
W
L
ERA
FIP
G
GS
IP
H
ER
HR
BB
SO
ERA+
WAR
$
2025
7
8
4.55
4.53
25
25
138.3
143
70
19
54
117
87
0.8
$4.6M
ZiPS Projection Percentiles – Kyle Gibson
Percentile
ERA+
ERA
WAR
95%
117
3.41
2.7
90%
108
3.69
2.2
80%
100
3.97
1.7
70%
95
4.17
1.4
60%
91
4.39
1.0
50%
87
4.55
0.8
40%
84
4.73
0.5
30%
79
5.02
0.1
20%
75
5.30
-0.2
10%
69
5.78
-0.8
5%
64
6.22
-1.3
Suffice it to say, ZiPS isn’t terribly excited about Gibson’s 2025, but then again, that’s beside the point. The O’s are no longer rebuilding or on the cusp of competing; they’re expected to contend for the AL East title. For a lot of teams, signing Gibson would be a bad idea, as they’d get a lot more out of signing a fourth starter with real upside rather than an innings-eater in his late 30s. But for the O’s, they’re getting the right pitcher at the right time, and basically for the right price. Despite my curmudgeonly inclinations, I can’t find a good reason to complain about that.
In which ways would a fully-implemented Automated Ball-Strike System [ABS] impact pitching? According to a coordinator I spoke to, one effect could be a further increase in the number of power arms who can get away with attacking the middle area of the zone. Conversely, crafty finesse types will become even less common, as getting calls just off the corners will no longer be possible.
Count Chris Bassitt among those not enamored with the idea.
‘“If you go to a full ABS system, you’re going to develop more throwers and the injury rates are going to spike,” opined the 36-year-old Toronto Blue Jays right-hander. “Then you’ll have to go back to pitching. The only way to stay healthy is to pitch. That’s never going to change in our sport. No matter how many people want to do something different, you have to pitch. There are obviously a number of facets for why people get hurt at the rate they’re getting hurt, but the answer for the injury history of the sport for the last five, ten years is more throwers. I don’t agree with it.”
Tim Heitman, Mitch Stringer, and Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images
If you’ve ever lived in a cold climate and had a car that you’re trying to nurse through one more winter because you can’t quite afford to replace it, you know the startup noise. Sort of a squeal on a rumble on a cough. You’re waking your old Ford Explorer from hibernation, and it would rather go back to bed.
Throwing arms are like that to some extent. As much as pitchers stay loose and work out all offseason — we no longer live in an age when a pitcher could spend all winter inside a bottle of whiskey, dry out on the train ride to Sarasota, and throw 250 innings without breathing hard — sometimes the body just does not ramp up to game fitness the way you’d expect.
As routine as injury announcements are this time of year, the end of last week was a bloodbath. Three pitchers who were going to end up on a lot of AL Cy Young shortlists — Gerrit Cole, George Kirby, and Grayson Rodriguez — all came down with some flavor of arm ickiness. Any kind of layoff at this point in the calendar can disrupt a pitcher’s ramp-up to the point that it imperils an Opening Day start, and three contenders are now praying that worse news isn’t coming. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
The first baseball cap I remember buying was a gorgeous Orioles throwback. I’m not sure what exactly drew me to it. Maybe it was my mom’s lifelong Orioles fandom. Maybe it had to do with the crisp colors. Maybe I’d just listened to noted ornithological transporter Jay-Z on the drive to West Town Mall. “Before Mitchel and Ness did it/I was moving birds like an Oriole fitted/I’m Cal Ripken Jr., let’s get it” always got me excited to watch some baseball. Whatever the reason was, though, that hat called out to me, so I paid an exorbitant price for something I ended up not wearing very frequently.
I’m telling you this story for a few reasons. First, I want to establish my bona fides as someone who has always had a soft spot for the O’s. Second, I get to show my age a bit — I was in high school when The Blueprint 2 came out. Third, who doesn’t like telling stories? But the main reason is that ledes are hard to write, and I want to talk about the O’s today. To quote Jay-Z: Let’s get it.
A recent Ken Rosenthal article had me double-checking payroll lists and salary tables. The Orioles – the Orioles!! – were listed as the team who increased its payroll by the most from 2024 to 2025. I looked at that for a little bit, looked at the data to confirm that the never-errant Rosenthal had, in fact, not erred, and then I let out a long puzzled sigh. It’s true! The O’s have opened the purse strings this winter. There are a few ways to calculate payroll, but based on the yearly expenditures listed in RosterResource, here are the top five payroll increases across the majors:
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Dodgers’ overstuffed 2025 bobblehead lineup, Ippei Mizuhara’s sentencing, and the Angels’ tireless pursuit of players who were good several seasons ago. Then they preview the 2025 Baltimore Orioles (35:55) with the Baltimore Banner’s Danielle Allentuck, and the 2025 Kansas City Royals (1:08:21) with the Kansas City Star’s Jaylon Thompson.
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