Here’s an attempt at selecting some adjectives to describe the last year or so in Queens. After a bonkers 2022–23 offseason, a 2023 regular season that was nothing short of catastrophic, and a frantic trade deadline effort to mitigate some of the damage, this offseason, new Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns and company have so far taken an approach that could be described as measured. Last offseason, the Mets signed seven multi-year deals, including four valued at over $75 million. On Thursday, the club agreed to terms on just its second eight-figure contract of the winter, signing center fielder Harrison Bader to a one-year, $10.5 million deal.

The addition of Bader is the latest in an offseason of conservative one-year deals for Stearns’ group. They took a $13 million flier on Luis Severino, who will move over from the Bronx and slot in somewhere in the starting pitching mix after Kodai Senga and Jose Quintana (and perhaps future rotation additions). They made budget-friendly additions to a depleted bullpen, swinging a trade with Milwaukee for Adrian Houser, claiming a handful of arms off of waivers, and offering one-year deals to Michael Tonkin, Jorge López, and Austin Adams. They added to their position player depth with infielders Joey Wendle and José Iglesias (on a minor-league deal) and alliterative outfielders Tyrone Taylor and Trayce Thompson (also on a minors deal), who now have Bader looking down from above on the depth chart. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

At his listed size of 6-foot-4, 240 pounds, Matt Holliday was built like a football player. He could easily have gone in that direction, having excelled as a quarterback in high school and received scholarship offers from big-time college programs. Holliday came from a baseball-rich family, however, and his heart was on the diamond, so he chose to follow in the footsteps of his father and older brother, both of whom played professionally. He surpassed both not just by reaching the majors but by becoming a star, making seven All-Star teams in a 15-year career spent with the Rockies, A’s, Cardinals, and Yankees. He won a Coors Field-aided batting title as well as NLCS MVP honors while leading the Rockies to their only World Series berth in 2007. Winning seemed to follow Holliday, or perhaps it was the other way around; nine times in those 15 seasons his teams made the playoffs, with three trips to the World Series including a championship in 2011.

Matthew Thomas Holliday was born on January 15, 1980 in Stillwater, Oklahoma. His father, Tom Holliday, spent a year in the Pirates’ organization before pursuing coaching at the collegiate level. From 1978–96, he served as Oklahoma State University’s pitching coach and recruiting coordinator, then took over as head coach from ’97–2003. His oldest son, Josh Holliday (b. 1976), starred at Stillwater High School ahead of Matt; the two played on the same team in 1995. Josh was drafted by the Twins in the 14th round in 1995 but instead chose to go to Oklahoma State, where he played for his father and helped the team to the College World Series in ’96 and ’99. Drafted again by the Blue Jays in the ninth round in 1999, he spent two seasons playing professionally before going the college coaching route; he took over as Oklahoma State’s head coach in 2013, and still holds the job. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll level with you, readers: I’ve been taking it easy for the last few weeks, enjoying the end of the year and starting to get recharged for 2024. Not much baseball is going on, spring training is still quite a bit away, and we haven’t even had many exciting signings or trades to break the doldrums. It’s only natural, given that kind of backdrop, to let your mind wander.

One of the things I found myself wondering about was how Tyler O’Neill would like playing in Fenway Park. On the one hand, it seems like a match made in heaven; O’Neill is a righty hitter who puts the ball in the air, and Fenway is a perfect park for hitters who can pepper the monster out in left field. On the other hand, O’Neill’s power is absolutely gargantuan; if you hit the ball 400 feet, how far away the left field wall is doesn’t matter much. Heck, the wall might turn some smashed homers into doubles or even singles; it’s just so dang tall.

Statcast data bears that worry out. In 2023, O’Neill only hit nine homers. That’s bad enough, but here’s the kicker: per Baseball Savant, he would have only hit six homers if he played the entire season in Fenway. That’s actually tied for the stadium that would have allowed the fewest homers – Camden Yards and its new left-field cutout is the other laggard. Some of that is because O’Neill doesn’t hit dead pull shots all that often, and some of it is because no matter how crushed this baseball was, it didn’t get high enough off the ground. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, this is the clickbaitiest headline I could think of for this premise. It’s the first week of January, the free agent market has seized up due to lack of routine maintenance, and the sun hasn’t come out since the Aquaman sequel was released, perhaps as divine punishment for humanity’s crimes. So let’s find pizazz where we can.

Though in all honesty, it shouldn’t be that difficult, because Gunnar Henderson and Bobby Witt Jr. are pretty exciting all on their own. We just saw a Rookie of the Year campaign from the former and a breakout season from the latter. Here’s something that might sound like hyperbole, but really isn’t: Both players are on a Hall of Fame track now. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rangers have a problem you don’t see every day. They have three pitchers, each likely out until halfway through this season, who all look like surefire starters when healthy. Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer need no introduction; deGrom is looking at an August or September return, while Scherzer will likely be back in July. Add Tyler Mahle to the list, too: the Rangers signed him to a two-year, $22 million deal this offseason, but he won’t be fully recovered from Tommy John surgery until around midyear.

Let’s get the easy caveat out of the way: it’s not clear how good any of these three will be in 2024. Scherzer and Mahle weren’t exactly setting the world on fire before they got injured, and deGrom is coming off a nerve wracking second TJ. But I think it’s reasonable to look at that trio and see at least two elite starters. A rotation with a healthy deGrom, Scherzer, and Mahle at the top would probably be one of the best in baseball. That doesn’t even account for Nathan Eovaldi and the rest of the team’s arms – Jon Gray looked pretty good in his own return from injury this past October.

That starting five sounds incredible to me. There’s room for one of those pitchers to get hurt – and with that collection of guys, one of them getting hurt seems likely – and still have a fearsome playoff rotation. That’s almost certainly the team’s plan – signing deGrom is one thing, but signing an already-hurt Mahle makes it pretty clear that they’re building in some injury tolerance and aiming for the postseason. I like the plan – look no further than the Braves and Dodgers to see how teams struggle to find top tier pitching to pair with excellent offenses. But it does raise a question: What do they do for the first three months of the season? Read the rest of this entry »

The other day I was just noodling around on the site, looking for ideas, when I noticed something interesting on the RosterResource payroll breakdown page. This coming season, the Houston Astros are at $222 million in payroll commitments, which brings them to $237 million and change against the competitive balance tax — just over by a couple hundred thousand.

Next season, Houston has just $65 million committed to the major league payroll. Now, actually clicking through to the team page, you realize that’s a little misleading: Depending on workload, both Justin Verlander and Ryan Pressly can activate lucrative options, and Framber Valdez and Kyle Tucker will both enter their third year of arbitration. I do not want to conceive of a scenario in which either Valdez or Tucker gets non-tendered; no doubt it would be horrifying. So clearly the Astros will be well into the hundreds of millions in 2025 no matter what they do.

But upon clicking through, I came to a horrifying realization: Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman will both be free agents after the season. Which just doesn’t seem possible. I remember Bregman’s freshman year in college, and Altuve playing on that terrible contract that the Astros ripped up in order to sign him through what seemed like the end of time. Well, guess what? The end of time is nigh. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th 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 Philadelphia Phillies.

Batters

Unless something significant happens in the next few weeks, the Phillies’ 2024 offense will look a lot like the late-2023 version. In many ways, that’s a good thing: The team ranked sixth in runs scored and seventh in wRC+ in the second half. Problem is, everyone will be a year older and some of the club’s fundamental issues still remain. Most of their best offensive talent is on the wrong side of 30, the outfield’s kind of iffy overall, and you can’t DH both Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos. Bryce Harper playing first “fixes” the loss of Rhys Hoskins, but you have to have a lot of faith in Brandon Marsh and Johan Rojas. Marsh is probably the more likely of the two to maintain offensive relevance, but Rojas is good enough defensively that the floor on his performance is probably pretty high.

I’ve already seen some grumbling about Bryson Stott’s projection, but given the volatility of defensive stats — even the newest-fangled of them — ZiPS isn’t going all-in there until he does it another time or two. Alec Bohm is competently boring.

Issues like the team’s depth and lack of reinforcements on the farm remain. That’s not to say the farm is empty, it’s just that the most fascinating prospects are pitchers and the more compelling offensive prospects are probably a few years off. The Phillies will try to keep their boat afloat until then, but in 2024, the team could be susceptible to a lot of bad news hitting at once.

Pitchers

As long as their pitchers are healthy, the Phillies have one of the best starting rotations in baseball. If you think their lofty ranking in our depth charts is due to some idiosyncrasy of Steamer, ZiPS likes them about just as much when using our depth chart playing time, ranking them fourth among the projected teams so far (Braves, Mariners, Dodgers). Now, I’m personally not quite as bullish about this group, and by the time we have the Real Official ZiPS projections, I’m naturally going to be a little more skeptical about playing time for Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, simply by virtue of them being pitchers.

Wheeler-Nola is a fine one-two punch, and the emergence of Ranger Suárez and Cristopher Sánchez has given the Phillies a lot more runway to survive if calamity strikes. Taijuan Walker’s semi-cromulent performance looks a lot better when he’s only being counted on to be the fifth-best pitcher in the rotation. Sure, Wheeler is unsigned past 2024, but that’s a problem for Future Dave Dombrowski (or Sam Fuld) to worry about. ZiPS remains lukewarm on Mick Abel and Griff McGarry, however, and the team isn’t overflowing elsewhere with those random fourth starters the A’s used to be able to find before they lost their feel for it.

There’s a real polarization among relievers in the ZiPS projections. The computer really likes José Alvarado, Matt Strahm, and Orion Kerkering, and is at least a friendly acquaintance with Jeff Hoffman and Seranthony Domínguez. But the relievers it’s not keen on, like Dylan Covey and Andrew Bellatti, it hates with the kind of burning passion that should worry people who fear AI uprisings. It’s also surprisingly suspicious of Gregory Soto’s improved walk rates for reasons I haven’t completely deciphered.

So, where do the Phillies stand? They still need an awful lot to go right for them and wrong for Atlanta to be serious contenders for the division. But they’re a top-tier Wild Card team and if the rotation stays healthy, they can power themselves pretty far in October once again. Of course, there’s some risk in keeping the band together for another album without anything new; you eventually produce Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Mardi Gras, or a couple of Weezer albums that I’ve only forgotten the names of after years of focused hatred. This is a good team, but with just the right mix of plausible, unfortunate outcomes, it could be susceptible to one of those depressing implosions like the Mets or Cardinals last year.

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.

Here are how the ZiPS percentiles worked out in 2023 for pitchers and hitters in in 2023.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2024 due to injury, and players who were released in 2023. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Belgian Death Metal Skiffle Band that only plays songs by Franz Schubert, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.33.

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.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

Billy Cook is flying well below the radar in the Baltimore Orioles organization. That’s understandable. The 2023 American League East champions continue to boast one of the top farm systems in baseball, and Cook is a soon-to-turn-25-year-old outfielder/infielder out of Pepperdine University who lasted until the 10th round of the 2021 draft. Moreover, while he went deep a team-best 24 times this past season with Double-A Bowie, it’s easy to be overshadowed when your teammates include high-profile first-rounders such as Jackson Holliday and Heston Kjerstad, as well as highly regarded slugger Coby Mayo and, at year’s end, fast-rising backstop Samuel Basallo.

Those things said, Cook has a lot to prove. His numbers with Bowie were solid but unspectacular, posting a .251/.320/.456 line and a 110 wRC+. Moreover, while his 25% strikeout rate was an improvement from the previous year, he’ll likely need to further hone his contact skills if he hopes to beat the odds and wear a big league uniform. Given his age and utility profile, he remains more project than prospect — especially within a system with no shortage of blue chippers.

Cook discussed his game, and dark horse status, at the tail end of the Arizona Fall League season, which saw him log an .818 OPS with the Mesa Solar Sox.

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David Laurila: You hit 24 home runs this year, but outside of that, I don’t know a lot about you. How would you describe your game?

Billy Cook: “I’m working on my complete game. I think the power has always been there, and then there are the stolen bases [30 in 33 attempts in 2023]. I have speed. When I don’t get into my power, I can get away with a little soft contact here and there by beating out a groundball. But I do want to hit the ball in the air. This offseason I’ll be working on turning the hard groundballs into doubles, putting them into the gaps instead of hitting super low line drives. That’s pretty much it with the offense. Defensively, I’m trying to be that utility guy, someone who is able to play anywhere to keep the bat in the lineup.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Philadelphia Phillies. 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 »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Joe Mauer isn’t the only number one pick on this year’s ballot. In 2000, one year before the Twins took Mauer with the first pick, the Marlins used the top pick to select Adrián González out of Eastlake High School in Chula Vista, California. He would turn out to be one of the more successful number one picks, making five All-Star teams, winning four Gold Gloves, and receiving MVP votes in eight different seasons in his 15-year major league career spent with the Rangers, Padres, Red Sox, Dodgers, and Mets. He never played a major league game for the Marlins, however, and was traded five times, including twice at the center of his era’s biggest blockbusters. Along with his two older brothers, he also continued the legacy of his father, David González Sr., by representing Mexico in international competition.

Adrián Sabin González was born on May 8, 1982 in San Diego, California, the youngest of three sons of David and Alba González. His father had been a star first baseman in his own right for the Mexican National Team, and when the family lived in San Diego, he commuted daily across the border to Tijuana, Mexico, where he owned a successful air conditioning business. All three of the couple’s sons were born in the United States and all three would play baseball. The oldest, David Jr., was a shortstop who made it as far as college baseball but injured his arm and never played professionally. The middle son, Edgar (b. 1978), had a 15-year professional career himself (2000-15), including two seasons as Adrián’s teammate in San Diego. Read the rest of this entry »