Man for man, the quality of starting pitching will never be higher all year than it is on Opening Day. And there were some good performances. Framber Valdez shut out the Mets and their brand-new Juan Soto for seven innings. Zack Wheeler shoved for six innings in a no-decision for the Phillies. Nathan Eovaldi struck out nine with no walks and three hits in six innings of a no-decision for the Rangers. Sean Burke, believe it or not, allowed only three hits in six scoreless frames for the first-place White Sox!

But the best performance on this Day of Aces came from a pitcher most people wouldn’t consider worthy of the title: MacKenzie Gore. The 26-year-old lefty was once the best pitching prospect in the game, but expectations settled down some. Around this time last year, I was happy he’d developed into a reliable mid-rotation starter.

That’s not what he pitched like against Wheeler and the Phillies on Opening Day. In two trips through the order, Gore struck out 13 batters, allowing only a single baserunner, who was erased on a stolen base attempt. Gore set a new Nationals/Expos franchise record for strikeouts on Opening Day, and became just the 10th pitcher in major league history to strike out 13 or more batters in an Opening Day start for any team. Read the rest of this entry »

For the Tampa Bay Rays, it was the fearsome power of nature; for the Athletics, the whims of a greedy doofus. But while the cause may vary, the outcome is the same: Both teams will play all 81 of their home games this season in minor league parks. The A’s will set up shop at Sutter Health Park, also known as the home of the Triple-A River Cats; the Rays’ address is now George M. Steinbrenner (GMS) Field, the erstwhile environs of the Single-A Tampa Tarpons. (The River Cats will share custody, while the Tarpons will move to a nearby backfield.)

This is suboptimal and sort of embarrassing for the league. But it does present a compelling research question: How will these parks play? According to the three-year rolling Statcast park factors, the Oakland Coliseum and Tropicana Field both qualified as pitcher-friendly. The Coliseum ranked as the sixth-most pitcher-friendly park, suppressing offense 3% relative to league average, while Tropicana ranked as the third most, suppressing offense around 8%. Where will Sutter Health and GMS Field settle in?

I started by looking at how each park played in their previous minor league season. Over at Baseball America, Matt Eddy calculated the run-scoring environment for each ballpark in the 11 full-season minor leagues. Eddy found that Sutter Health ranked as the most pitcher-friendly Pacific Coast League park by far in 2024, allowing 31% fewer runs than the average PCL park. GMS Field played closer to neutral compared to its Florida State League peers, but it did significantly boost home runs, particularly to left-handed hitters. Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t expect to be writing about Taijuan Walker this close to Opening Day. I doubt that either he or the Phillies would have expected him to be in the rotation to start the season. Last year, Walker pitched his way out of the best rotation in the National League; three Phillies starters received Cy Young votes, and a fourth, Ranger Suárez, made the All-Star team. Just before Christmas, Philadelphia made an opportunistic trade for Jesús Luzardo and plans to promote Andrew Painter (the team’s top pitching prospect since, I dunno, Gavin Floyd?) around midseason.

Even with two years and $36 million left on his contract, the phrase “surplus to requirements” was invented for people in Walker’s position.

But when the end of March actually arrived, Suárez’s back was giving him problems. He’ll start the season on the IL, and back into the rotation goes Walker. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Stay tuned for the National League movie lineup in a subsequent post. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re not familiar with Jerry Weinstein, you should be. He is a catching coach legend. After decades with the Rockies, he recently jumped to the Cubs, and lucky for us, he’s quite active online talking about catching philosophies and training. One thing he has discussed recently is “slam dunk” framing.

Some cues in baseball are universal, and slam dunk framing is one of them. It looks just like how it sounds: Catchers take their glove and quickly snap it down as if they were dunking a basketball. What’s the intention? By moving their glove down in a quick, fluid motion on pitches at the top of the zone, they’re attempting to give the impression that these pitches are lower than where they actually crossed the plate.

While this could easily just be another solo Patrick Bailey framing post, there is one other guy in particular, Cal Raleigh, who deserves to squat in the spotlight. To set the stage, here are the leaders in Strike% in Zone 12 (the upper third in the shadow zone) last season: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not every day that a piece of baseball news makes just about everyone go, “Oh, yay, that’s nice!” but the Mariners pulled it off less than 72 hours before the start of their season. Cal Raleigh is sticking around for the long run.

Raleigh’s new contract runs from, well, now, through the end of the 2030 season, and will pay him $105 million over those six years, plus a $20 million vesting option for 2031. The extension buys out Raleigh’s previous $5.6 million arbitration settlement, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, who was first to report it. Read the rest of this entry »

The last few years, I’ve had a pre-Opening Day tradition of making five bold predictions about the upcoming season. It’s a good way to talk through some of the players and teams where my opinions are different from the crowd. But bold predictions are a boom industry – the entire FanGraphs staff will be making some tomorrow, and I already drafted 10 of my own on Effectively Wild. So Meg and I came up with a great substitute: five big questions about the season. These aren’t the only big questions I have. They aren’t even necessarily the biggest questions in baseball. But they’re five storylines that I think are unresolved, and their answers will have a lot to say about how the 2025 season goes.

1. Are the Rays still the Rays?
The Rays have been doing the same player-swapping roster construction trick for more than a decade now. They operate on a shoestring budget, they consistently find ways to trade their surplus for great value, and their pitching development is some of the best in the game. They’re constantly churning out top prospects, and even after graduating Junior Caminero, they boast one of the best farm systems in baseball.

That prospect pipeline keeps on delivering, but in 2024, the wins didn’t follow. The team finished below .500 for the first time since 2017, and got outscored by 59 runs in the process. The Rays didn’t do much this winter – trading Jeffrey Springs, and signing Danny Jansen and Ha-Seong Kim were their big moves. We’re projecting them to finish last in the AL East – albeit still above .500. What happened to the 90-win perpetual juggernaut? Read the rest of this entry »

It might not be long before Captain Kirk is the captain of the Starship Blue Jays. Alejandro Kirk made his MLB debut in September 2020. The only players who have been with the team for longer are Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, both of whom could leave in free agency next winter. If that were to happen, Kirk would become the longest-tenured Blue Jay just days before his 27th birthday. He could end up holding that title for quite some time, too. On Saturday, Kirk and the Blue Jays reportedly agreed to a five-year, $58 million extension. The deal, which begins in 2026, buys out the backstop’s final arbitration season and his first four free agent years, running through his age-31 campaign.

A 23-year-old Kirk burst onto the scene in the first half of 2022. He hit .315, slugged 11 home runs, and walked more often than he struck out over 83 games. His 155 wRC+ ranked sixth among qualified AL batters, far ahead of the next-best catcher. The fact that he was splitting catching duties, and thus DHing on the regular, cut into his overall defensive value, but still, Kirk ranked among the top-10 AL players in WAR. Fans voted him to be the starting catcher for the AL All-Stars, and the honor was well deserved.

Yet, Kirk has never looked like that middle-of-the-order threat since. He produced a 95 wRC+ in the second half of 2022. He followed that up with a 96 wRC+ in 2023 and a 94 wRC+ in 2024. To save you some strenuous mental math, I can tell you that averages out to a 95 wRC+ since the 2022 All-Star break. That means Kirk has been about 5% less productive at the plate than the average hitter, but, to his credit, still 5% more productive than the average catcher. His 10.3% walk rate is great, while his 12.0% strikeout rate is elite. Only seven batters (min. 1,000 PA) have a lower strikeout rate in that span, and none of them boasts a walk rate in the double digits. Unfortunately, the plus power that made Kirk such a complete hitter in the first half of 2022 has vanished: Read the rest of this entry »

As spring training ends and rosters are finalized, one team’s flotsam and jetsam becomes another team’s reserve outfielder. Such was the case this past weekend as two outfielders who were in camp with the Brewers but deemed superfluous subsequently found homes within the AL Central. The Brewers traded Mark Canha to the Royals and released Manuel Margot, who signed a deal with the Tigers.

When camps opened last month, the 36-year-old Canha and the 30-year-old Margot were both still free agents, but within a two-day span in late February, Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold inked them to minor league deals with non-roster invitations to spring training. Ultimately, the team decided to head into the season with a starting outfield of Jackson Chourio in left, Garrett Mitchell in center, and Sal Frelick in right, with designated hitter Christian Yelich and switch-hitting second baseman/outfielder Isaac Collins also in the mix, and Blake Perkins recovering from a fractured right shin. As free agents who ended last season on major league rosters, signed minor league deals this past offseason, and had at least six years of service time, both Canha and Margot had the first of three opt-out dates looming on March 22.

This was Canha’s second go-round with the Brewers, who acquired him from the Mets on July 31, 2023, and played him regularly down the stretch on a squad that claimed a Wild Card spot. Canha was on a $26.5 million, two-years-plus-option deal at the time; after that season, the Brewers flipped him to the Tigers in exchange for righty prospect Blake Holub, and Detroit picked up his $11.5 million option for 2024. During the first four months of the season, Canha made 30 starts at DH, 29 at first base, 19 in left field, and 11 in right field. He mustered less power than usual, hitting a modest .231/.337/.350 (101 wRC+) with seven homers in 377 plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

During the last week of spring training, after rosters have been more or less settled, some teams will find they have more pitchers than they can use at the moment. There’s a no. 6 starter who’s pitched well enough to earn a job, but there’s no room for him on the roster and he’s out of options. Good news: Another team needs a pitcher and is willing to trade a minor league depth infielder, say, to jump the waiver line and trade for yours.

I find this process oddly heartwarming, because everyone benefits: Both teams get a more balanced roster, and the pitcher in question gets a spot on a major league roster instead of getting DFA’d. Professional baseball is usually a zero-sum competition, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help your friends out. Read the rest of this entry »