AJ Smith-Shawver started on Monday, and it went rather well: 10 batters faced, 48 pitches, 32 strikes, 2 2/3 innings pitched, five strikeouts, one hit, one walk, no runs allowed. The Braves lost, but the damage came after Smith-Shawver left the game, and at any rate, spring training results have less of an impact on regular season success than what sign the GM was born under. Justin Toscano, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s beat writer, tweeted after the start that Smith-Shawver was “in a better place, physically and mentally, for whatever comes this season. You can see the improvement.”

That’s exciting news. The 21-year-old poked his head into the majors for the first time in mid-2023; he threw 25 1/3 regular-season innings with the big club, plus 2 2/3 more of mopup work in the NLDS. Still rookie-eligible, he made our Top 100 list as the top-rated prospect in Atlanta’s system.

But Plan A for the Braves doesn’t necessarily involve Smith-Shawver. Atlanta starts its rotation with Spencer Strider, one of the best pitchers in baseball. After that: Max Fried, Charlie Morton, Chris Sale, and Reynaldo López. Plus, they have quite a bit of prospect and Quad-A depth: Huascar Ynoa, Bryce Elder, Dylan Dodd. Ian Anderson (remember him?) is due back from Tommy John sometime later this year, and 2023 first-round pick Hurston Waldrep, with his unholy splitter, is being fast-tracked to the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

Tarik Skubal is slated to take the mound for the Detroit Tigers on Opening Day when the season begins three weeks from Thursday. Four years into his big league career, the 27-year-old southpaw is emerging as one of the top left-handed starters in baseball. After missing the first three months of last season recovering from flexor tendon surgery, he was one of the best pitchers in baseball upon making his season debut, on July 4. Skubal fashioned a 2.80 ERA, a 2.00 FIP, and a 32.9% strikeout rate — as well as a stingy 4.5% walk rate and a .199 BAA — in 15 starts comprising 80 1/3 innings. His 3.3 WAR from July through the end of the season led all pitchers in that span. And there is reason to believe that he is still getting better, as he adds fastball velocity — he’s hit 99 mph this spring, up from his average of 95.8 mph last season — and fine tunes his five-pitch arsenal.

Skubal sat down to talk pitching at the Tigers’ spring training facility in Lakeland, Florida last week.

———

David Laurila: Looking at your numbers, I saw that your ground ball rate (51.6% last year) keeps getting higher and higher, and your walk rate keeps getting lower and lower. How have you made those things happen?

Tarik Skubal: “I think it all kind of just stems from confidence and the complete arsenal. When you can throw five pitches over the plate, in the zone, and just go right after guys, you tend to get more uncomfortable at-bats. If you can throw different pitches in different counts, hitters have to be a little bit defensive and aren’t getting their A swings off as often. That’s kind of my approach, and I think it impacts the results I’m getting.”

Laurila: That makes sense, as you don’t throw a lot of sinkers… Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had depth on my mind a lot recently. That’s because a lot of us here at FanGraphs have, and it’s turned into some pretty cool work that I previewed last week. That’s probably the last you’ll hear about that little project for a bit while we keep refining it and trying to figure out how to use the general concept in different ways. But there was one takeaway in the comments section that I found pretty amazing and I’m going to riff on it today because hey, it’s still early March and baseball news is in short supply.

Remove the top 10 players from 28 teams in baseball – all but the Rockies and Nationals – and look at every team’s winning percentage against neutral opposition. The Rockies are projected 29th out of 30 teams, ahead of only the White-Sox-Minus-10s. The Nationals, meanwhile, are 27th, ahead of just the Angels-Minus-10s and then those Rockies and the Pale-Hose-Minus-10s.

That just sounds wrong. Remove the Mets’ best 10 players, to pick a so-so divisional rival for one of our benighted franchises, and their best remaining player would be either Brett Baty or Luis Severino, both projected for 1.6 WAR. Again, that’s their best player in this hypothetical world. And we have them down as a .425 team. We think the Nats are at .408 at full strength! It’s truly hard to wrap your head around how that could be possible. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while since the Phillies have had to worry about the front of their starting rotation, which over the past four seasons has been anchored by co-aces Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, though last year it was uncertain how much longer that stability would continue: Nola became a free agent at the end of last season and Wheeler’s contract was set to expire after the 2024 campaign.

But Philadelphia acted swiftly to keep both pitchers around. After re-signing Nola before Thanksgiving, the Phillies announced on Monday that they had extended Wheeler through the 2027 season. The three-year deal is reportedly worth $126 million, and in terms of its $42 million average annual value, it is the largest extension in baseball history.

Wheeler, who turns 34 in May, has been one of the best starting pitchers in baseball since he joined the Phillies in December 2019 on a five-year, $118 million contract. Over the last four seasons, he leads the majors with 19.3 WAR. If RA9-WAR is more your style, Wheeler has the second highest mark in that span despite pitching in front of what often has been a lackluster Phillies defense behind him. He also ranks fourth among qualified starters in FIP (2.90) and innings (629.1), and 11th in ERA (3.09). Last year, he made 32 starts, allowing a 3.61 ERA and 3.15 FIP over 192 innings, enough for a spicy 5.9 WAR.

It’s hard to overstate the Wheeler’s importance to the Phillies. When he arrived, Philadelphia was better than it had been during its first five years of rebuilding, when it posted a .427 winning percentage from 2013–17, but it was still barely a .500 club. The Phillies remained stuck in neutral for Wheeler’s first two years, but their rotation improved immediately; after ranking 23rd in the majors in starting pitching WAR in 2019, Philadelphia ranked third in ’20 and fourth in ’21, a year in which Wheeler finished second in the NL Cy Young voting.

The Phillies finally broke through in 2022 and made up for lost time. That year, they won the NL pennant and came within two games of winning the World Series, and they were one win away from making a second consecutive World Series appearance last year. Wheeler has been excellent in the playoffs, too: He has a 2.42 ERA and 2.72 FIP over 11 postseason games (10 starts).

Simply, between his regular season and postseason dominance, the Phillies could not afford to risk losing Wheeler in free agency, even if that meant giving him the most lucrative per-year extension ever.

That said, ZiPS expects Wheeler to decline over the next few years, though that is more based on the inherent health risks that come with a pitcher in his mid-30s, rather than his overall ability. The computer would want to pay him about $30 million per season, but this organization, with its talented but aging core, is firmly in win-now mode. The “Stupid Money” Phillies of all teams weren’t going to let a dollars per WAR figure prevent them from extending their best pitcher.

Whether or not the Phillies win the World Series in the next several years, Wheeler and Nola will go down as one of the greatest pitching duos in team history, along with Curt Simmons and Robin Roberts, Steve Carlton and Larry Christenson, and Jim Bunning and Chris Short. Even if both head to different teams at the end of their new contracts, they still project to be in the top 10 of all-time Phillies pitchers.

At least to my eyes, there aren’t any red flags in Wheeler’s profile that the computer didn’t consider. His breakout seasons came with the Mets, but he didn’t become a true ace until he joined the Phillies. With New York, Wheeler relied on a sinker that threatened to take the hands off right-handed hitters, but he lacked the pinpoint command of the pitch that he has found in Philadelphia, where he has also added a sweeper that maddeningly looks a lot like that sinker as it approaches the plate — until it breaks in the opposite direction. With the Phillies, he has become much better at landing his curve just below the bottom of the strike zone, which has helped him against lefties. Wheeler still throws pretty hard, but he also is much more than just a grip-and-rip hurler. That should help him survive and continue to thrive when his velocity dips as he ages.

Just in case you’re not convinced at this point about the consequences of the Phils not having Wheeler, I ran a quick sim of the 2024 season using the ZiPS projections. ZiPS currently projects the Phillies to have a 56.2% chance of going to the playoffs and 14.4% odds to win the NL East. In the simulations that the Phillies fail to get 20 innings from him (about 6.2% of sims), resulting in a lot more innings from Spencer Turnbull and Mick Abel, the Phillies only made the playoffs 37.1% of the time, and their probability to win the division chopped nearly in half, to 7.6%.

With only Matt Strahm and Jeff Hoffman eligible for free agency after 2024, the front office can start addressing their next challenge, putting together enough young talent to transition the franchise to its next core of players without having to endure another interregnum of rebuilding. But, like the threat of a headache after a night of drinking, that’s a tomorrow problem. For today, keeping Wheeler in town keeps the party going.

Less than a week after Cody Bellinger signed a three-year deal that allows him to opt out after each of the first two seasons, Matt Chapman has done the same. The 30-year-old third baseman, who spent the past two seasons with the Blue Jays, has agreed to a three-year, $54 million deal with the Giants, with a mutual option for a fourth year — a deal that looks significantly less favorable than that of Bellinger.

Chapman placed seventh on our Top 50 Free Agents list in November, and like Bellinger (who was third on the list) sought and seemed likely to land a larger contract, particularly given the track record of their mutual agent, Scott Boras. That said, Chapman hit free agency after an uneven season, with his overall numbers (.240/.330/.424 for a 110 wRC+ with 3.5 WAR) representing a slight falloff from his 2022 performance (.229/.330/.433, 118 wRC+, 4.2 WAR). A closer look shows that last year Chapman had just two productive months and four bad ones, as well as difficulties hitting with runners in scoring position.

I’ll explore those details below, but the overarching impression I get from this deal — far more so than from Bellinger’s contract, in fact — is that Chapman and Boras overestimated how robust the market for his services would be and had to settle for much less. According to TSN Sports’ Scott Mitchell, the third baseman declined a six-year, $120 million extension offer from the Blue Jays at some point within the past year. His new contract falls short of that average annual value, even though it is half the length.

As initially reported, Chapman is guaranteed $20 million for 2024, $18 million for ’25, and $16 million for ’26, but the breakdown is more complicated. He’ll receive a $2 million signing bonus and a $16 million salary for 2024, with a $17 million player option and $2 million buyout for ’25, an $18 million player option and $3 million buyout for ’26, and then a $20 million mutual option and $1 million buyout for ’27. So if this winds up being a one-year deal, he’ll make $20 million ($2 million signing bonus, plus $16 million salary, plus $2 million buyout); for the two-year deal, it’s $38 million (the initial bonus, salaries of $16 million and $17 million, and a $3 million buyout); and for the three-year deal, it’s $54 million (bonus, salaries of $16 million, $17 million, and $18 million, $1 million buyout). If the mutual option is picked up — which is certainly no guarantee, considering he’ll be entering his age-34 season — the total value of the four-year deal will be $73 million (that $54 million, minus the $1 million buyout, plus $20 million). Got all that?

Chapman’s $18 million AAV is 25% below Ben Clemens’ estimate from our Top 50 list. Ben figured that Chapman would get $24 million per year (five years, $120 million), while our median crowdsource estimate came in at a $20 million AAV (four years, $80 million). By comparison, Bellinger’s $26.7 million AAV actually topped the estimates of $25 million per year by Clemens and $24 million per year by our crowd. What’s more, where Bellinger’s deal appeared to be a slight overpay relative to Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS-projected contract of three years and $70 million, Chapman’s deal falls short of the three-year, $79 million contract projected by the ZiPS model:

For both deals, Dan also provided contract valuations with the opt-outs priced in: three years and $58 million for Bellinger, and three years and $66 million for Chapman. The former exceeded the model’s estimate by about 38%, but the latter fell short by about 18%. That’s quite a haircut, particularly when one considers the questions of sustainability of Bellinger’s performance given his dreadful 2021–22 stretch and last year’s batted ball stats, which reflected a more contact-based two-strike approach. By comparison, for Chapman — who is more than two years older, which is already reflected in ZiPS — the concerns are more garden variety ones about season-to-season variance and aging.

Traditional numbers amplified the perception that Chapman’s decline from 2022 to ’23 was steeper than the advanced stats suggest; his 17 home runs and 54 RBIs last season were a considerable dip from his 27 home runs and 76 RBIs the year before. His career-low full-season RBIs total was in large part the product of a .215/.320/.299 (77 wRC+) performance with runners in scoring position. It was an anomalous showing — he produced a 122 wC+ in 170 PA with runners in scoring position in 2022, and owned a 128 wRC+ in that capacity for the first six years of his career — but it was poorly timed.

Situational hitting aside, Chapman’s monthly splits further shed light on why his season may have been viewed as worse than it actually was:

Chapman’s strong start was impossible to sustain — he had a 32.9% barrel rate over the first month of the season — but his production didn’t regress so much as it cratered. He posted a .205/.298/.361 (84 wRC+) line after April. The split on the bottom two lines illustrates Chapman’s numbers before and after spraining his right middle finger in a weight room mishap; he initially missed three games after suffering the injury, then went just 5-for-32 with a 40% strikeout rate in nine games before landing on the injured list. He missed 15 games and continued to be unproductive in the 15 games he played between his return and the end of the regular season, though he barreled the ball at a 16.2% clip, with a 51.4% hard-hit rate in that final stretch.

Chapman’s strikeout rate crept up one point from 2022, to 28.4%, but when he made contact, he absolutely pasted the ball. He produced average exit velocities of 92.5 mph or higher and hard-hit rates of at least 51.4% or higher in every month except August (90.0 mph and 42.6%, respectively), while his barrel rates were 10.5% or higher in every month except May (9.2%). His full-season 93.4 mph average exit velocity and 17.1% barrel rate both placed in the 98th percentile, while his 56.4% hard-hit rate trailed only that of Aaron Judge among all hitters. He was unlucky in the power department, in that he fell 3.7 home runs short of his expected total based upon the batted ball specs of his biggest flies, a gap that ranked eighth in the majors. He fell 33 points short of his .457 expected slugging percentage.

Chapman did play very good defense, with 12 DRS, 4.5 UZR, and 3 RAA. Those numbers all represented improvements on his 2022 metrics, even in about 130 fewer innings. That performance didn’t escape recognition, as he took home his fourth Gold Glove.

In all, it was a good-not-great season, one with an arc that didn’t particularly help Chapman’s cause. It was reported back in May that he and the team were both interested in an extension, though it’s not clear when the Blue Jays offered him the $120 million deal. Chapman turned down Toronto’s $20.325 million qualifying offer as well, but in mid-November, the team was still reportedly “making a big push” to keep him.

Yet the Blue Jays, who at one point thought they had landed Shohei Ohtani, and who were viewed as being the favorites to sign Bellinger, instead chose to make a series of smaller moves: They re-signed Kevin Kiermaier to a one-year deal in late December, signed Isiah Kiner-Falefa to a two-year deal soon afterward, and added Justin Turner on a one-year deal in late January. With Kiner-Falefa, Turner, Santiago Espinal, and Cavan Biggio all in the fold, the Blue Jays figured they had third base covered, even if that quartet doesn’t make up for the production that Chapman would have provided. Our Depth Charts projects the Blue Jays to finish with 2.1 WAR at third base; Chapman is projected for 3.3 WAR by Depth Charts. In addition to the roster crunch, Chapman’s salary, even at a discount, was more than what the team was comfortable paying after pivoting to those other players. The Blue Jays’ luxury tax payroll is estimated to be just under $12 million above the first Competitive Balance Tax threshold ($237 million), and they will be paying the tax for a second straight season.

With half a dozen teams — the Angels, Braves, Cardinals, Guardians, Padres, Red Sox — already committing at least $20 million to their third basemen on deals that extend through at least 2026, plus the Dodgers and Yankees prioritizing spending elsewhere and the Mets looking to cut expenses, Chapman only had a limited number of options for landing spots. The Mariners, Cubs, and Giants were the only teams other than the Blue Jays that were publicly connected to him.

This is the latest move for the Giants in a winter that also included a six-year, $113 million deal for center fielder Jung Hoo Lee , four years and $44 million for righty Jordan Hicks, three years and $42 million for DH/outfielder Jorge Soler, and two years and $8.25 million for catcher Tom Murphy. The signing of Chapman bumps J.D. Davis — his college teammate at Cal State Fullerton, incidentally — out of the lineup and provides San Francisco a solid upgrade, particularly in the field, where he’ll be playing behind a staff with three projected starters (Logan Webb, Alex Cobb, and Hicks) who last year had groundball rates above 57%.

Davis hit .248/.325/.413 (104 wRC+) while playing 116 games at third base (105 of them starts), 15 at first base, and 14 at DH. Long saddled with a reputation as a below-average defender, he put in considerable work to improve, and in a career-high 915.2 innings at the hot corner produced a mixed bag of metrics (-11 DRS , 0.8 UZR, 4 RAA). With lefty-hitting LaMonte Wade and righty Wilmer Flores the most likely combination at first base and Soler taking the bulk of the playing time at DH, Davis doesn’t have a clear path to playing time and could be a trade candidate. President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi acknowledged the team’s surplus of infielders, telling reporters, “We’ll explore different things. It’s certainly possible that a move or two happens before the end of camp.’’

Perhaps more notably, Zaidi refused to rule out another free agent addition and indicated that the team could go over the $237 million CBT threshold. (RosterResource places their payroll at $230.5 million for tax purposes.) With the team already waiting for Cobb and Robbie Ray to return from surgeries at some point during the season, and having just lost Tristan Beck to aneurysm surgery, sources told the San Francisco Chronicle that the Giants remain in the mix for Blake Snell, another Boras client.

As for Chapman, here’s his ZiPS percentile breakdown:

It’s not hard to envision Chapman putting in a strong enough season to opt out, but it is worth remembering that Oracle Park particularly tends to suppress right-handed power, which is Chapman’s calling card on offense. All of which is to say that next winter, he could suffer from a similar perception problem if his counting stats don’t rebound, and so to these eyes, he’s carrying a greater share of the risk than he otherwise might have. However much this gets spun as a win-win deal like that of Bellinger, this looks like a case where Boras and his client came up short.

Daulton Varsho’s last two seasons were directionally different than his first two seasons.The left-handed-hitting outfielder put up a pedestrian 37.8% pull rate in 2020-2021, and in 2022-2023 that number climbed to a lofty 52.6%. Apprised of the marked jump by colleague Davy Andrews prior to my recent visit to Toronto Blue Jays camp, I asked Varsho if it was spurred by a purposeful change of approach. He claimed that it wasn’t.

“I think it’s just how teams are pitching me,” said Varsho, whose pull rate in the two-year span was the highest among qualified hitters. “You don’t want to force the ball to any certain field — it has to sort of naturally happen — and I’ve been getting pounded in. You also have to figure out the changeup away and righties throwing sliders in. You don’t really want to force those to left-center or left field, because they end up being fly outs.”

Davy had also informed me that Varsho’s pull-side results have been far better than his opposite-field results, which came as anything but news to the 27-year-old Marshfield, Wisconsin native. My mentioning it elicited a matter-of-fact response.

“That’s where success happens,” said Varsho. “It’s where my swing is the most successful, and where I can do the most damage.”

It’s no secret that catching pitches out front and driving them in the air goes a long way toward producing power numbers, and not only has Varsho gone yard 47 times over the past two campaigns, just one of the blasts was to the opposite field. My asking if he’s made a concerted effort to lift the ball led to the following exchange: Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley talk to FanGraphs writer Ben Clemens about the site’s ongoing efforts to model team depth and factor it into projections, then preview the 2024 Toronto Blue Jays (30:46) with The Athletic’s Kaitlyn McGrath, and the 2024 Cincinnati Reds (1:16:31) with The Athletic’s C. Trent Rosecrans.

Audio intro: Gabriel-Ernest, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 1: Cory Brent, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 2: Xavier LeBlanc, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: MulderBatFlip, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Other Ben’s blog about depth
Link to Ben’s depth tables
Link to bullpen chaining explainer
Link to projection limitations
Link to Ben on odds calibration
Link to Ben on odds calibration 2
Link to “model talk” pods
Link to Jays offseason tracker
Link to Jays depth chart
Link to Stark on Ohtani’s flight
Link to Sheehan on Rogers Centre
Link to Kaitlyn on Varsho
Link to Statcast park factors
Link to OF OAA leaderboard
Link to OF DRS leaderboard
Link to Kaitlyn on Berríos
Link to 2019 FG cutter post
Link to cutter tweet
Link to Ben on new pitches
Link to Kaitlyn’s fan survey
Link to Mattingly beard
Link to Kaitlyn’s Athletic archive
Link to Reds offseason tracker
Link to Reds depth chart
Link to FG payrolls leaderboard
Link to 2023 Senzel article
Link to team SP projections
Link to team RP projections
Link to story about Reds bunting
Link to 2023 bunt hit leaders
Link to BP on Friedl
Link to bunting Stat Blast
Link to story about bench coaches
Link to Reds bench coach story
Link to conservation of matter
Link to C. Trent’s Athletic archive

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Earlier this week, I took a projection-driven two-part look at the trouble spots on National League and American League contenders. The exercise — a sibling of my annual pre-trade deadline Replacement Level Killers series — primarily highlighted clubs in the middle of the table, based on our Playoff Odds, with many of the best teams, such as the Braves and Dodgers, going completely unmentioned.

In that regard, the exercise worked as I had intended, focusing on the teams and spots where a marginal addition from outside the organization or even a modest breakout from within it could have a sizable impact on their chances of making the postseason. To be considered contenders, teams needed Playoff Odds of at least 25%, and roughly speaking, all but one of those mentioned fell in the range of 80-85 wins. Under the 12-team playoff format, that certainly counts as contention once you consider that two of last year’s NL Wild Card teams, the Diamondbacks and Marlins, qualified with just 84 wins, nosing out the 83-win Cubs and the 82-win Padres and Reds. At each position, I highlighted the two lowest-ranked teams from within that subset, so long as they projected to produce less than 2.0 WAR, after an adjustment: I applied a 20% reduction to counter the general tendency to overestimate playing time at this point in the season. In other words instead of having a total of 1,000 WAR projected across the 30 teams, and 57% of that (570 WAR) allocated to position players, our Depth Chart values currently add up to about 682 WAR, an inflation of about 20%.

Because the mid-table teams almost invariably had some glaring weakness, seven teams escaped scrutiny. The Braves (98.5% odds), Dodgers (94.6%), and Cardinals (53.5%) — three of the NL’s top four teams by those odds, each favored to win their respective divisions — were absent from the Senior Circuit roundup, while the Yankees (75.6%), Rays (62.5%), Orioles (50.6%) and Rangers (36.3%) missed out on the fun in the Junior Circuit piece. Only one of the top four NL teams showed up with trouble spots (the Phillies at 58.5%), but the AL distribution was more haphazard, in that the Astros (86.8%), Twins (64.9%), Mariners (58.6%), and Blue Jays (47.4%) each had at least one representative within my roundup.

In response to the feedback I received, I thought it would be worthwhile to do one more roundup in this format, this time limiting it to those otherwise unexamined teams and going only one layer deep at each position. I couldn’t quite call this “The Weakest Spots Among the Powerhouses” or “… Among the Top Contenders,” hence the title. Note that not every position had a team fall below the threshold, though I do mention the lowest-ranked ones in passing for those spots. It’s worth keeping in mind the tendency for even the game’s top prospects to have fairly tepid projections based upon limited minor league data and a higher risk of being farmed out if they start slowly; those players don’t always hit the ground running. For team totals, I’ve cited the adjusted WARs, but where I reference individual player projections I’ve stuck to the published figures.

Catcher

Rays (21st, 1.9 adjusted WAR)

My AL roundup contained only the Red Sox catchers, and while I’m not sure what happened since I composed the list to move the Rays from right at the 2.0 minimum to below it, here we are. Since landing on last summer’s Replacement Level Killers list, they’ve basically turned over their tandem, with René Pinto and Alex Jackson replacing Christian Bethancourt and Francisco Mejía. The 27-year-old Pinto did the bulk of the catching in the second half, hitting .252/.267/.456 (98 wRC+) in 105 PA, with an eye-watering 34-to-2 strikeout-to-walk ratio. It’s true that he hits the ball hard, but the Rays seem to like him more for his defense than his offense — or, more specifically, his framing, which was 1.7 runs above average by our framing metric and two above by that of Statcast. Meanwhile, the latter system rated him at seven runs below average in blocking and one below in caught stealing.

The 28-year-old Jackson didn’t play in the majors last year, and he owns a .141/.243/.227 line and 48.1% strikeout rate in 185 PA in the majors, mostly from 2021. Nonetheless, he tore up Triple-A (.284/.347/.556 with 16 homers in 248 PA) with the Brewers and Rays’ affiliates before being sidelined by a shoulder injury. Defensively, he’s been a bit below average in framing but is otherwise average-ish. The 28-year-old Mejía, back in the organization on a minor league deal after a brief odyssey with the Angels, probably has his work cut out to regain a share of his old job. He hit just .227/.258/.400 (80 wRC+) last year and hasn’t come close to fulfilling the promise he showed at the plate in the minors.

First Base

Yankees (17th, 1.4 WAR)

Anthony Rizzo got off to a hot start in 2023, hitting for a 146 wRC+ through May 28, when he collided with Fernando Tatis Jr. and missed his next three games due to what the Yankees called a neck injury. Upon returning, he hit for just a 43 wRC+ over the next two months before the team shut him down with post-concussion symptoms; he didn’t play again, and finished at .244/.328/.378 (100 wRC+). The 34-year-old Rizzo is said to be healthy now, but he projects for just a .238/.332/.426 line, a 111 wRC+ — right at the major league average for first basemen last year — and 1.3 WAR, which won’t be a huge help to the Yankees lineup. The most likely backup is DJ LeMahieu, who’s slated to be the starting third baseman and who’s coming off his second 101 wRC+ in three years, though he did post a 129 wRC+ after the All-Star break compared to a 77 before, when he was still dealing with the effects of a right big toe injury. Oswaldo Cabrera, a switch-hitting utilityman who was very good in a late-2022 stint and terrible last year, is another alternative for first.

Second Base

Oddly enough — or perhaps fittingly, as we are talking about good clubs — none of these teams has a second base situation that falls below the threshold. Orioles second basemen project to rank 14th in the majors with an adjusted 2.4 WAR, the lowest mark from among this group, but that’s with 20-year-old Jackson Holliday, the no. 1 prospect on our Top 100 list, 25-year-old Jordan Westburg, and 29-year-old Ramón Urías projected to account for most of the playing time, with all projecting to be average or better — which particularly for Holliday would be no small achievement, even with his pedigree. Note that this is Baltimore’s only appearance within this exercise, even though the team has a lower projected value at the first base and DH slots than it does at second base; the O’s just don’t stand out relative to their competition’s weaknesses.

Shortstop

Braves (24th, 1.6 WAR)

The Braves project to be the majors’ top team, but they do have their weaknesses, and this is one. After letting Dansby Swanson depart as a free agent, they turned shortstop duties over to Orlando Arcia, who had spent five and a half seasons with diminishing returns in Milwaukee, plus another season and a half as a utilityman for Atlanta, playing a grand total of 24 innings at shortstop. The team nonetheless signed him to a three-year, $7.3 million extension — practically peanuts — and he handled the position reasonably well, hitting .264/.321/.420 (99 wRC+) with a career-high 2.3 WAR despite a mixed bag of defensive metrics. Given that he netted just 0.2 WAR from 2018–22, the projection systems are understandably skeptical he can sustain such production; if he can’t, who knows what kind of magic pixie dust the Braves can sprinkle on backups Luis Guillorme and David Fletcher to try and turn them into league-average regulars.

Third Base

Here’s another spot where none of these teams falls below the threshold, with the Dodgers (15th at 2.1 WAR) the lowest ranked. Neither Max Muncy’s fielding at third base nor his low batting averages are pretty, but he’s a disciplined hitter who can absolutely crush the ball and justify his spot in the lineup; last year, he matched his career high of 36 homers while netting 2.9 WAR. Chris Taylor and the freshly re-signed Enrique Hernández are around for those times when Muncy’s banged up or the team could use more defensive support.

Left Field

Dodgers (21st, 1.4 WAR)

This is the NL West juggernaut’s weakest spot, even after taking steps to address it. Newcomer Teoscar Hernández, who joined the fold on a one-year, $23.5 million deal, hits the ball very hard… when he makes contact. In 2023 he posted an average exit velocity of 91.3 mph (80th percentile), a 13.8% barrel rate (88th percentile), and a 49.4% hard-hit rate (90th percentile). The problem was that he struck out 31.1% of the time opposite a 5.6% walk rate, so he hit an uninspiring .258/.305/.435 (105 wRC+). To be fair, he did say he had trouble seeing the ball at the Mariners’ T-Mobile Park, where he slugged just .380, so it’s hardly out of the question that a change of scenery could drive a rebound for the 31-year-old slugger. The aforementioned Taylor and Enrique Hernández will see time here as well, but both are a few years removed from their best work. Taylor rebounded from a bad season and a slow first half to hit .237/.326/.420 (104 wRC+) but struck out 32.6% of the time himself, while Hernández perked up after returning to Los Angeles, posting a 59 wRC+ with the Red Sox and a 96 wRC+ with the Dodgers.

Center Field

One more where everybody is above the threshold, with the Rays (19th at 2.1 adjusted WAR) the lowest ranked among those here, based primarily on the projections’ skepticism that Jose Siri can repeat last year’s extreme performance. (See Davy Andrews’ piece on Tromps Per Womp.)

Right Field

Cardinals (14th, 1.8 WAR)

Given his plus-plus raw power, few people doubted Jordan Walker’s offensive ability, hence his no. 12 ranking on last year’s Top 100 Prospects list. At age 21, with no Triple-A experience, he made the Cardinals out of spring training and immediately reeled off a 12-game hitting streak. But when the league quickly adjusted, he struggled briefly and was sent to Memphis to work on his approach, particularly so he could elevate the ball with greater consistency. Even with a 46.9% groundball rate, he finished at a respectable .276/.342/.445 (116 wRC+), but his defense was another matter. Blocked by Nolan Arenado at third base, he moved to the outfield and was absolutely brutal according to the metrics (-16 DRS, -12 RAA, -11.8 UZR), and the visuals weren’t much better, even with the occasional impressive play. Thus he netted just 0.2 WAR. He does project to improve to 1.6 WAR, with Dylan Carlson getting time in right field as well — presumably when the Cardinals mercifully slot Walker at DH — and I’d bet that Walker far outhits the 116 wRC+ for which he’s projected.

Designated Hitter

Rangers (13th, 1.2 WAR)

With all but the Dodgers and Yankees projected to produce less than 2.0 WAR out of the DH spot (that’s after adjustment), this category is shooting fish in a barrel, and with the Cardinals and Rangers virtually tied, I’m focusing on the defending champions. This is hardly a bad situation, not only because Texas ranks among the upper half of the 30 teams, but also because about half the playing time projects to go to 22-year-old Wyatt Langford, who was chosen fourth in last year’s draft and rocketed through four levels to reach Triple-A, hitting .360/.480/.677 (190 wRC+) with 10 homers in 200 PA along the way. He just placed second only to Holliday on our Top 100 list as “perhaps the most complete hitter in the minors.” The problem is that he’s a 30-grade defender, with the speed for center field but a fringe-average arm and a poor feel for outfield play in general, at least at this stage; meanwhile, the outfield of Evan Carter, Leody Taveras, and Adolis García features strong defenders at all three spots. Langford could make the roster out of spring training, but it’s not a guarantee. With the possible exception of Corey Seager, who’s working his way back from January hernia surgery, no other Ranger projects to have much impact at this spot, hence the middling ranking.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth 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 »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Shohei Ohtani’s surprise marriage announcement (5:15), and Portia of Ohtani fan account @shoheisaveus returns (18:13) to tell Ben how the news was received by the Shobae community. Then Ben and Meg Stat Blast (36:49) about the biggest year-to-year changes in WAR produced by different players who wore the same uniform number for the same team, preview the 2024 Philadelphia Phillies (44:20) with The Athletic’s Matt Gelb, and preview the 2024 Los Angeles Angels (1:21:51) with The Athletic’s Sam Blum.

Audio intro: Dave Armstrong and Mike Murray, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 1: Benny and a Million Shetland Ponies, “Effectively Wild Theme (Horny Version)”
Audio interstitial 2: The Shirey Brothers, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to thread on Cal’s stats
Link to anti-Streak take
Link to owner Cal article
Link to Ohtani’s Insta post
Link to Portia’s first appearance
Link to Ohtani comments
Link to Ichiro dog secrecy
Link to Matsui marriage
Link to Matsui wife drawing
Link to “Ohtani loss” tweet
Link to other Ohtani tweet
Link to John on Ed Sullivan
Link to Dozier tweet
Link to Stat Blast data
Link to Stat Blast song cover
Link to Kenny Jackelen’s Twitter
Link to Phillies offseason tracker
Link to Phillies depth chart
Link to Matt’s Athletic archive
Link to himbo article 1
Link to himbo article 2
Link to Harper offer report
Link to Harper extension article
Link to Matt on Realmuto
Link to Tango on Realmuto’s framing
Link to Eno on Dombrowski pens
Link to Laurila on Dombrowski pens
Link to Sam on Bryant
Link to Moreno report
Link to Angels offseason tracker
Link to Angels depth chart
Link to Sam on Percival
Link to Sam on Rendon
Link to EW on Rendon
Link to Sam’s Athletic archive
Link to Sam on broadcasts
Link to Sam on Schanuel
Link to FG top 100
Link to MLB top 100
Link to BP farm rankings
Link to Soto/Bradley report

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS