Before Ben Clemens puts together the official Top 50 Free Agents list, he posts a rough draft in Slack and asks for everyone’s opinion. I, personally, didn’t give him much in the way of feedback, because he’s a floating brain in a jar and I’m the guy who’s mostly interested in baseball as a conduit for making stupid jokes in headlines. As long as Shohei Ohtani is no. 1, I’m good. Beyond that, I trust Ben. He knows more than I do anyway.

With that said, I do want to share what little feedback I did offer, because I’ve been thinking about this for weeks: “I have no idea where Mitch Garver should go. I balked at him being as high as no. 18 and then immediately started talking myself into putting him closer to 10.” (Garver was 18th on the first list I saw; he migrated up a spot by the time it was published.)

So let’s do it. Let’s talk ourselves into Mitch Garver as a top-10 free agent. Read the rest of this entry »

In the early hours of Thursday morning, the Reds made their second signing in as many days, adding right-handed pitcher Nick Martinez on a two-year, $26 million deal. Evidently, Cincinnati decided to get in on the regional pitching party; of the nine free-agent pitchers to sign MLB deals with new teams so far, six have joined the AL or NL Central. Not to mention that two of the four position players switching teams also came to the Central, and word on the street is that the Brewers are signing top prospect Jackson Chourio to an $80 million extension. The Central division teams, often the most overlooked and underfunded, have been surprisingly active so far this winter.

Martinez, who turned 33 this past August, is coming off the strongest season of his truncated career. Never a top prospect, he struggled over parts of four seasons with the Rangers from 2014 to ’17, posting a 4.77 ERA and 0.5 WAR in 415.1 innings. He was non-tendered following the 2017 season, after which he spent four years in Japan, pitching for the Nippon Ham Fighters and the Softbank Hawks of NPB. His 2021 season for the Hawks was particularly impressive; he averaged more than 6.2 innings per game and finished second in the Pacific League in ERA (min. 50 IP), trailing only Yoshinobu Yamamoto. His performance caught the attention of several MLB clubs, and when the lockout ended, he signed a four-year, $25.5 million deal with the Padres that included opt-outs after every single season.

Martinez performed well enough in 2022 to escape his deal at the first chance he got, pitching to a 3.47 ERA and 4.43 FIP in 47 games. His underlying numbers weren’t as impressive as his ERA, and while he pitched in nearly every role — starter, long-man, set-up man, closer — a lot of his success came in lower-leverage relief opportunities. Still, he knew he could do better than the three years and $18 million remaining on his contract, and indeed, only a few days after he opted out, he and the Padres agreed on a richer contract, albeit one still replete with options, team and player alike.

Martinez looked even better in 2023, but his performance wasn’t quite enough to convince the newly cost-conscious Padres to pick up their team option for $32 million over the next two years. At the same time, the righty decided he could do better than his player option for two years and $16 million. His new deal with the Reds splits the difference at $26 million over two years. 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. It was initially written for The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books, and subsequently adapted for SI.com and then FanGraphs. 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 and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

It happened so quickly. Freshly anointed the game’s top prospect by Baseball America in the spring of 1996, the soon-to-be-19-year-old Andruw Jones was sent to play for the Durham Bulls, the Braves’ High-A affiliate. By mid-August, he blazed through the Carolina League, the Double-A Southern League, and the Triple-A International League, then debuted for the defending world champions. By October 20, with just 31 regular-season games under his belt, he was a household name, having become the youngest player ever to homer in a World Series game, breaking Mickey Mantle’s record — and doing so twice at Yankee Stadium to boot.

Jones was no flash in the pan. The Braves didn’t win the 1996 World Series, and he didn’t win the ’97 NL Rookie of the Year award, but along with Chipper Jones (no relation) and the big three of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, he became a pillar of a franchise that won a remarkable 14 NL East titles from 1991 to 2005 (all but the 1994 strike season). From 1998 to 2007, Jones won 10 straight Gold Gloves, more than any center fielder except Willie Mays. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Mets began their offseason hunt for starting pitching by snatching up Luis Severino on a one-year, $13 million contract. After a rollercoaster season that led to -0.6 WAR, Severino had no choice but to take a prove-it deal and hope his performance in 2024 will be compelling enough to secure a multi-year contract next winter. For the Mets, this is likely the first in a series of moves to address a starting rotation that is significantly depleted after the trades of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander this summer.

The Mets have the coin to play at the top of the pitching market, and will likely do so, but this deal provides them with a short-term upside play to bolster a thin group of starters. With a rotation that is currently filled out by José Quintana, Tylor Megill, and Joey Lucchesi behind their ace, Kodai Senga, a low-cost, high-reward player was a practical move. If he performs and stays health, Severino becomes a trade option for them depending on the team’s performance. If they hold onto him, they can tag him with a qualifying offer or bring him back on a longer term deal. Either way, this move will not hurt them. Most importantly, it will not impact their ability to sign players such as Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who the Mets reportedly have interest in.

I’m sure Severino and the Mets hope that he can forget most of the summer of 2023 and instead build on the success he had in his final five starts. Among the 172 pitchers who threw at least 80 innings in 2023, Severino ranked 169th in WAR. His surface stats didn’t look any better. He set career worst marks in strikeout rate, HR/9, ERA, FIP, batting average allowed, hard-hit rate… the list goes on. As I said in his Top 50 Free Agent blurb, this wasn’t due to a concerning drop-off in rotational power. His four-seam fastball velocity (96.4 mph) was in the 88th percentile, and it even peaked as high as 97.7 mph in his second-to-last start of the season. This is a player who still has upper-90s gas in his back pocket. 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 Detroit Tigers.

Batters

This is hardly an impressive set of offensive projections, but given that Detroit ranked 13th in the American League in runs scored in 2023, it would be odd to expect them to be that great at this point in the offseason. And in contrast to a team like the Royals, the Tigers have a lot of interesting players, most with actual upside. ZiPS likes Riley Greene, but that’s nothing new, as he’s long been the system’s favorite Tigers hitter. The computer is a believer in Spencer Torkelson’s second-half power being closer to his actual abilities. Tork was one of the biggest underperformers in the zStats that ZiPS uses as part of establishing a player’s baseline. Now, it’s not exactly projecting him to become Matt Olson or anything, but after 2022 and the early parts of 2023, this constitutes a pretty good comeback. Mark Canha is in his decline phase, but he’ll still at least get on base and is relatively flexible on the diamond, though he’s more of an emergency option at third base and in center field at this point.

Javier Báez is the only really depressing veteran hitter projection here. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s got one last season or so of relevance in there somewhere, but that could just be a relic of my memories from before pitchers figured out how to absolutely shut Báez down. ZiPS isn’t really all that keen on Matt Vierling, and third base might be a useful place for the Tigers to look at upgrading this offseason. A Jeimer Candelario reunion would be fun if he’s into it, though the team may simply utilize Colt Keith and Jace Jung at second and third, depending on how their fielding shakes out. ZiPS is very interested in Justyn-Henry Malloy as a hitter, but it absolutely detests his defense at third.

It makes me sad to say, but even with a very ordinary DH situation, the team picks up one or two wins a year just from not having to play Miguel Cabrera.

Detroit will still likely finish in the bottom half of the league in runs scored, but there are players worth watching here.

Pitchers

Tarik Skubal came back from flexor tendon surgery to be one of the best pitchers in baseball in the second half of the season, and I remain surprised how little he was talked about. He came back throwing harder and with better command than he’d previously had in the majors, making me wonder if they replaced a tendon with an industrial spring. Whatever the cause, ZiPS is into it, though it’s obviously hedging its bets about Skubal’s health. There aren’t any real standouts in the rotation, including recent signee Kenta Maeda, but ZiPS sees the Tigers with a lot of starters just below league average, and the vast majority of them are in their mid-20s or younger, so it’s likely a few of them will break out. The computer is especially interested in Sawyer Gipson-Long and Jackson Jobe.

If our depth charts are right about the pecking order in the bullpen, the Tigers are poised to get the most of their relief corps, and ZiPS especially likes Will Vest and Tyler Holton. The quality of the ‘pen drops off a bit as you get to the back of it, but that’s normal for a team that’s still rebuilding. One or two of the starters who don’t make the rotation might serve to fill that need.

Overall, the Tigers look like a roughly .500 team, but their talent is made up of younger players, so they have a decent win ceiling, though I don’t think there’s much chance they go the route of the 2023 Orioles in 2024. In the AL East, this forecast would mean fighting with the Red Sox, but in the AL Central, the Tigers are actually playoff relevant, though they’re certainly far from the favorite.

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.

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.

Emilio Pagán has heeded the call. Whose call? The guy in the red tank top in Angels in the Outfield, who yells, “Go back to Cincinnati!”

Pagán, 32, is the second-best right-handed pitcher in this free-agent class who played college baseball in North Carolina and pitched for Puerto Rico in this spring’s World Baseball Classic. (Marcus Stroman remains unsigned as of this writing.) He’ll slot in nicely in the Reds’ bullpen, setting up for Alexis Díaz, the second-best Díaz brother who pitched for Puerto Rico in this spring’s World Baseball Classic.

The Reds like Pagán enough to sign him to a one-year, $8 million contract with a player option for an additional $8 million in 2025. Bob Nightengale noted at the time of the signing that Pagán had just become Cincinnati’s highest-paid player. Fortunately, Pagán held that distinction for just 12 hours before the Reds added Nick Martinez as well. But it was pretty bleak there for a minute. Read the rest of this entry »

Blaze Jordan quietly put together one of the best seasons in the Red Sox minor league system this year. Overshadowed by higher profile prospects such as Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, and Ceddanne Rafaela, the 20-year-old corner infielder slashed .296/.351/.481 with a 124 wRC+ and 18 home runs between High-A Greenville and Double-A Portland. Moreover, his 141 hits and 32 doubles were both tops among Boston farmhands. That he fanned in just 14.3% of his 525 plate appearances is also notable, although that does come with a caveat: His 7.6% walk rate was less than ideal.

Jordan’s profile coming into pro ball was that of a slugger. As our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote after the Red Sox selected him in the third round of the 2020 draft out of Southaven, Mississippi’s DeSoto Central High School, “Jordan had some of the best power in the class.” That would be an understatement. The now 6-foot-2, 210-pound right-handed hitter won the High School Home Run Derby in Cleveland at the 2019 All-Star Game, and he was reportedly called “a young Bob Horner” by a scout who had seen him punish baseballs in a prep tournament.

That Jordan’s power output in pro ball — 36 dingers in 1,160 PAs — has been comparatively modest is at once concerning and a sign of age-appropriate developmental goals. Just shy of the legal drinking age, he doesn’t aspire to be an all-or-nothing basher. 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 Boston Red Sox.

Batters

As last-place teams go, the 2023 Red Sox were a pretty good one. Nobody puts a 78–84 season on their sizzle reel, but they played adequate baseball for most of the season, enough that they hovered two to four games out of a wild card spot for a large chunk of the summer. An 8–19 September suffocated those chances, but Boston still managed to have an 81–81 Pythag record. If the Red Sox played in a Central division, they would have been competitive for even longer. But Boston’s coastline is on the Atlantic Ocean, not a Great Lake, so this is where they compete.

The offense highlights the awkward situation the Sox are in. They may be happy with the value they got for a year of Mookie Betts, but he offers something that the Red Sox don’t have: someone who can go out of their minds for a year and put an 8–9-WAR season on the leaderboard. Rafael Devers is very good, and one of the premier power-hitting third basemen of this generation; ZiPS gives him a final median home run total among his active compatriots at the hot corner (442) that’s behind only Manny Machado. But he’s not a multi-dimensional all-around monster. Nor is Trevor Story going to fill that role, even if he has as juicy a comeback season as ZiPS thinks he will. Triston Casas should be good as well, but the rest of the roster is just “there.” To upgrade on this group, you need to find 3–4-WAR players, and those don’t come cheap. Boston would be better off with a few more sixes and zeroes on the depth chart.

On the plus side, some of the reinforcements may help, with ZiPS finding a lot of interesting possibilities in Boston’s top prospects. Ceddanne Rafaela didn’t hit in his brief debut, but my Total Zone-esque coordinate measurement system had him as the second-best center fielder in the minors, behind only Jorge Barrosa. ZiPS also already has Marcelo Mayer at the two wins-per-600 PA threshold in 2025 and is certainly more into Kyle Teel than Steamer is. But like the main offense, there just isn’t that phenom guy, though Mayer could take a big step up if his shoulder doesn’t give him too much more trouble. This isn’t a great offseason to make big offensive additions via free agency, and given how the Red Sox have been run in recent years, I can’t imagine they’ll go into any rentals.

Pitchers

The story here is similar. The Sox aren’t bad anywhere, but there just isn’t a tremendous amount of upside either. Expecting Chris Sale to channel the old Chris Sale for 160 innings is a big ask, and Brayan Bello looks more like a good number two than an ace for the franchise that had Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez. With Steamer, we have the Red Sox rotation as the middle of the pack, and I don’t think anything ZiPS is saying here will change that. On the good side, there are quite a few above-replacement Plan Bs, Cs, and Ds for the rotation — necessary given the injury history of several of the starters — but nobody with amazingly high potential. And maybe someone like Wikelman Gonzalez will change that, but it’s a little too soon for projections to see that as a median outcome. This is one place I can see the team spending some money this winter.

When Steamer came out, I was a little surprised to see the Red Sox projected as a top-10 bullpen, but ZiPS actually agrees with that. I suspect Garrett Whitlock is likely to stay in the bullpen from here on out — this has not been confirmed as far as I’ve seen one way or the other — and as a full-time reliever, ZiPS sees him with an ERA in the low threes. Chris Martin joined the team in a whisper on a two-year contract last offseason and served as one of the team’s indispensable parachutes, with an ERA just over one. Clocks are a concern given his age, and there’s a clear warning sign in the strikeout rate decline, but he should still put hitters in their place for another season. As veteran relievers go, ZiPS isn’t as confident about Kenley Jansen given his age and some erosion in his peripheral metrics, and I’d like to see the Red Sox slowly transition their closer job to Whitlock if they keep him in relief. The bottom of the ‘pen isn’t exciting, but it’ll get the job done.

The Red Sox look like an 80–86 win team or so. That kind of team can surprise, and with the coins flipping a bit different last year, they could have made a real wild card run. The Orioles, Blue Jays, and Rays are a clear tier above them, though, and when all is said and done by winter’s end, I think the Yankees may be as well. But that last question is a tale for another ZiPS entry.

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.