Last offseason, the Mets got in early on the starting pitching market. They signed Luis Severino in late November, later pairing him with Sean Manaea atop their rotation. Both deals were modest and short term, essentially chances for the players to rebuild their résumés while pitching for a playoff contender. And that’s exactly what happened. So now, with Severino and Manaea in line for larger paydays, the circle of life restarts: The Mets have signed Frankie Montas to a two-year, $34 million deal with an opt out after the first year.
At surface level, Montas doesn’t seem like a blockbuster signing. He just posted a 4.84 ERA (and 4.71 FIP, this wasn’t some weird BABIP issue) in his first year back after missing most of 2023 due to a shoulder injury. He’s about to turn 32. His last excellent season was in 2021. The list of drawbacks is lengthy.
Ah, but “knowing which drawbacks to overlook” might be David Stearns’ superpower. Manaea was coming off of two straight abysmal seasons when he signed in New York, and Severino hadn’t been great since 2018. But both had the capability to excel – they already had in their careers, and not in a fluky way. The right surroundings, the right defense, a pinch of luck here and there: It wasn’t hard to see how those two deals could work out. Likewise, Montas might have been down in 2024, but I have no trouble talking myself into an improved 2025.
Montas has never been a pure bat-missing strikeout machine. When he was at his best in Oakland, he did everything just well enough for the total package to work. He struck out more batters than average, walked fewer than average, kept the ball in the ballpark, and went six or so innings a start. No one would mistake him for Cy Young, but doing a bunch of things well added up to an ERA in the mid-3s. That’s a clear playoff starter, exactly what the Mets need. Read the rest of this entry »
Technically, there wasn’t much at stake. Even though Mason Miller was looking to protect a one-run lead with two outs in the 10th inning of an early September clash, the A’s and Rangers were playing out the string, battling for wins in a lost season. For Wyatt Langford, however, it meant something more.
On the first pitch, Miller fired 101 mph down the middle. Langford was aggressive, fouling it straight back for strike one. He watched 102 mph sail high, then flicked his bat to foul off an up-and-in 101-mph heater to fall into a 1-2 hole. A slider sailed outside before he fouled off pitches at 102 mph and 103 mph to stay alive, and then he laid off two wicked sliders to secure the base on balls. Langford faced down some of the best stuff in baseball, and emerged the victor.
It was just a walk, but it sparked a resurgence. After a dismal five months, Langford exploded in September, posting a 180 wRC+ and leading the American League in WAR. In the series following his successful encounter with Miller, he blasted titanic tanks off Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes, catching up to heaters at the top of the zone and depositing hanging sweepers deep into the left field bleachers.
It led to a question: Was September reflective of Langford’s new level? The answer, in part, was conditional on prior expectations.
And the expectations were certainly high heading into the season. After landing in Texas with the fourth overall pick in the 2023 draft, Langford incinerated the high minors, posting a .360/.480/.677 line across four levels and 200 plate appearances. ZiPS pegged Langford’s 50th percentile outcome above three wins, reasonably confident that Langford would go from the SEC to an above-average regular in the span of a year. As Cactus League play began, the hype train picked up steam; Langford hit .365 with six homers, leaving no doubt as to whether he’d start the year on the big league roster.
It turns out hitting in the majors is hard. No longer was Langford tasked with fending off the pitching staff of Mississippi State or the El Paso Chihuahuas; instead, he had to deal with Chris Sale sliders, Hunter Greene fastballs, and Tarik Skubal changeups.
Fittingly, he looked like a rookie. The plate discipline was there early on; his walk and strikeout rates hovered around league average, suggesting that Langford was not completely overmatched like his rookie counterpart Jackson Chourio, who struck out over 32% of the time in March and April. But Langford’s batted ball quality was lacking. He slugged just .314 in April, lifting heaps of lazy fly balls into outfield gloves.
Whereas Chourio found his footing in the summer months, logging a 144 wRC+ in June and never looking back, Langford’s line remained stubbornly subpar — until the final month of the season. Finally, as the Rangers slogged through their September schedule, Langford went bananas. His .300/.386/.610 line and excellent baserunning led to 1.6 WAR in that month alone, trailing only the infernal Shohei Ohtani.
There are a few potential stories to tell about the Langford rookie campaign. One is that he ran into a few poorly located pitches across a small sample. Another is that Langford made his adjustments, just as Chourio clearly did, accumulating enough experience against major league stuff to leverage his immense tools.
ZiPS, as always, splits the difference. The projection system sees Langford as a 3.8 WAR, 128 OPS+ guy next year, baking in Langford’s transcendent minor league results with a slight skill bump as he heads into his age-23 season.
But splitting the difference is no fun. This approach, applied to players across the league, will lead to more accurate projections. There is no good empirical reason to weigh September results more heavily in the next season’s forecast. But there is a temptation, at least on my end, to believe that Langford is going to be the player we saw in September moving forward.
In this version of the narrative, the expectation for Langford’s sophomore campaign isn’t just an All-Star 4-WAR season, as ZiPS forecasts; it’s something more like 5 WAR as the 50th percentile expectation, mirroring the age-23 projections for recent breakouts Corbin Carroll and Julio Rodríguez.
To make that argument persuasively, it would require evidence that Langford identified and then fixed the flaws that held him back across his first 400 or so plate appearances. And there is at least some reason to believe he did.
There is no one culprit for a hitter’s poor performance. The reasons are layered and complex; it could be an issue with certain pitch types or certain locations, for example. In Langford’s case, it seemed like at least one of the issues was structural, tied to his hitting mechanics. Both he and Rangers offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker believed his swing was too vertical.
Even two weeks into the season, it was clear that Langford needed to adjust. There was one clear potential area of improvement: His distribution of weight on his swing. In a story written by Steve Kornacki (no, not that Steve Kornacki) at MLB.com, Ecker was quoted as saying that Langford’s mechanical tendencies needed a reboot.
“[Langford] came from college and regularly has not faced breaking balls that are breaking 18 to 20 inches,” Ecker told Kornacki. “So, some of the body position he was in in college is now starting to evolve. If you look where the pressure is at, maybe in college it was on his back side. All of the best hitters in the big leagues, their pressure, when they land [on swings], is in the middle of their body. So, he’s slowly evolving from a guy that’s back, to having to get over the center that’s in the middle of our body.”
Esteban Rivera, FanGraphs’ resident hitting mechanics expert, explained to me that loading up weight on the backside makes it easier for hitters to whip their barrel under the ball and therefore generate power. This approach works well in college, where hitters aren’t generally exposed to high velocity and see a lot of mistake pitches. It works less well when Brandon Pfaadt is spinning sweepers that teleport across the width of the plate. Esteban also pointed out that fastballs on the inner half or sliders off the plate could trouble a hitter with a swing oriented toward crushing middle-middle mistakes.
Langford, for his part, appeared well aware of the problem.
“We’re working on getting back to that center mass, and not staying back too much,” Langford said in April. “It’s caused me to swing a little more up than I wanted, and I’m leveling out my swing. That’s helping me see the ball better.”
The early results were not favorable. Langford’s average launch angle climbed each month, from 16 degrees in April all the way to 23 degrees in August. Perhaps as a result, he was flummoxed by sweepers and sliders thrown by same-handed pitchers; through August, his wOBA was .234 on these pitches. He was even worse on hard inside fastballs; his .205 wOBA on high-velocity sinkers and four-seamers thrown on the inner half ranked among the worst in the league.
But in September, the swing leveled out. Langford’s average launch angle in September — 11 degrees — was the lowest of any month in the 2024 season. And the results — perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not — followed.
On inside heat, Langford never really adjusted. But he started crushing fastballs left out over the plate as well as hanging breaking balls, staying back long enough to identify spin and punishing mistakes. A good portion of his damage came on swings like this double against Marcus Stroman, lasering sliders at the knees into the right-center field gap:
These improvements coincided with a change to his setup. In April, he was hunched at the moment of the pitcher’s foot strike, looking to my amateur eye more like a slap hitter:
But during his month of destruction, Langford stood much more upright, ready to attack balls at any depth or width.
Langford’s apparent mechanical adjustments, prospect pedigree, and chronologically convenient damage distribution leads to questions about the nature of projections. Prospect evaluators, including our own Eric Longenhangen, were unbothered by his slow start. In his Top 100 Prospects Update in May, as Langford sat sidelined with a hamstring injury, Eric wrote that he expected Langford would “be an offensive star upon his return, and probably pretty quickly,” noting that the “huge tools and plate coverage” remained intact. It was just a matter of adjusting.
In his final month of the season, Langford looked like the offensive star Eric expected. In most cases, a huge month should not be cause for altering a projection. Langford, though, could be an exception.
The Milwaukee Brewers have graduated a number of quality hitting prospects in recent seasons, with the likes of Sal Frelick, Garrett Mitchell, and Brice Turang emerging as bona fide big leaguers. Most notable among the arrivals is, of course, Jackson Chourio, who debuted this past spring just weeks after celebrating his 20th birthday. The sweet-swinging wunderkind wasted little time in establishing himself as one of the game’s brightest young stars.
More talent is on the way. Milwaukee’s pipeline is rife with promising young bats, one of whom possesses the raw talent to potentially follow in Chourio’s footsteps. Jesus Made not only put up a 169 wRC+ in the Dominican Summer League, the 17-year-old switch-hitting shortstop logged impressive contact rates, chase rates, and exit velocities. With barely over 200 professional at-bats under his belt, he is already a Top 100 prospect (his exact placement on our list is yet to be determined).
Brenton Del Chiaro has been front and center in the development of Chourio, Made, and others within the Brewers system. Recently promoted to assistant director of player development, the 45-year-old former catcher has been Milwaukee’s minor league hitting coordinator since December 2021. Prior to that, he served as an assistant hitting coordinator, and as a hitting coach in the Arizona Complex League.
In the latest installment of our Talks Hitting series, Del Chiaro discusses several of the system’s top prospects, as well as the philosophies that the hitting department adheres to.
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David Laurila: How will your role change with the new title?
Brenton Del Chiaro: “Actually, not very much. It’s just a little bit of additional responsibility. I will continue overseeing hitting while also interacting with our full-season managers. I’m also going to have some lower-level roster responsibilities. So, still day to day with the hitting, but now interacting and overseeing our managers at the full-season affiliates and having some input on lower-level roster construction and playing time grids.” Read the rest of this entry »
A couple weeks ago, I introduced the We Tried Tracker, which we are using to document each time a team claims that it was also in on a free agent who signed elsewhere. I was truly moved by your response. Many of you sent excellent leads on social media. The tip line I set up, WeTriedTracker@gmail.com, received 30 emails and only 26 of them were spam, which seems like a pretty good ratio to me. As things have gotten cooking, we’ve added color coding to the tracker, and (at the suggestion of Twitter user @YayaSucks) links to the original reporting for each We Tried. I will do my best to keep tricking out the tracker until it’s so bright and confusing that looking at it hurts both your eyes and your brain. Thank you to everyone who reached out with a tip, and please keep up the good work! So many teams are out there trying right now, and it is both our responsibility and our great privilege to award them partial credit for those efforts.
According to the Free Agent Matrices (which now contain the We Tried Tracker), 13 free agents have signed so far. In theory, that means there have been 377 opportunities for a We Tried, but that might not be the most reasonable way to look at things. We have so far documented five We Trieds, and I’d say that going 5-for-13 strikes me as a solid batting average, especially this early in the process, when only two names from the Top 50 are off the board. With that, let’s dive into the week in We Tried.
The second official We Tried of the offseason came in controversial fashion. On November 21, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and A’s manager Mark Kotsay spoke at the USC Sports Business Summit in a segment titled Inside the Dugout: A Fireside Chat. Maybe it’s because I went to a tiny liberal arts college, but I’m really blown away by the USC Sports Business Association’s Adobe Creative Suite budget. Somebody’s not messing around with Canva.
Below is a still from the event that I grabbed from the SBA’s Instagram reel. This isn’t necessarily the point, but I think we should all take a moment to note the conspicuous absence of a fire.
That’s not a fireside chat, my friends. That is just a chat.
While chatting, Kotsay mentioned that the A’s had talked to free agent Walker Buehler, but that Buehler had told them he didn’t want to play in Sacramento. Right out of the gate, Kotsay was testing the limits of the We Tried. They usually come from reporters, and when they do come from a team source, that source is almost never the manager. Moreover, Kotsay was speaking to a group of college students. He probably didn’t expect his words to get out to the general public at all. It just so happened that one of those college students, Kasey Kazliner, is also a sports reporter who wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to break a story. Kazliner posted the comment 15 minutes into the chat. Less than 70 minutes after it ended, the hardworking R.J. Anderson had already published a full article about it for CBS Sports.
The second factor is that Buehler hasn’t signed anywhere yet. A week ago, I would have told you that by definition, We Trieds have to come after the free agent has actually signed, but after conferring with Jon Becker, I see now that I was wrong. A We Tried simply has to come when the team in question has decided that it’s out on a player, and if there’s one thing the A’s love, it’s getting the hell out of dodge. It may have been accidental, it may have come in a fraudulent fireside chat, and it may end up coming months before the player in question actually signs a contract, but the A’s have officially backed into the second We Tried of the season.
I have to be honest with you, I absolutely love that literally one day after creating the tracker we were already splitting hairs and getting pedantic about what counted and what didn’t count. What better way to spend the offseason than engaging in some light pedantry? And what’s the point of creating a leaderboard if you don’t get to argue about the score? That’s what makes it sports.
Two days before Thanksgiving, Christmas came early. Scoopslinger Jon Heyman set a season high by breaking three We Trieds in two posts. At 11:15 p.m. Eastern, he posted, “Red Sox were in on both Snell and [Yusei] Kikuchi before losing out. They seek rotation upgrades and have preferred a lefty.” This is a true classic of the form. There’s no quote, no attribution, and no supporting evidence. The Red Sox were simply “in on” Snell and Kikuchi, which could mean absolutely anything at all. Maybe they offered more money than the teams that actually signed them. Maybe they’d been meaning to look up their ERAs on the back of a Topps card. Either one would make Heyman’s words technically true. It’s the doubling up that makes it art, though. The Red Sox couldn’t have bothered to reach out to two different reporters, just for the sake of not making it look like they simply texted Heyman a picture of their shopping list? You have to ask yourself how many names could appear one announcement before you’d start to doubt its veracity. I think the answer is three. Say Max Fried signs somewhere on Tuesday, and Heyman posts that the Blue Jays were in on all of Fried, Snell, and Kikuchi. At that point, you’re in list mode. Once the reporter is using a serial comma, we’ve officially entered the realm of farce.
Shortly after Heyman’s post, Mark Feinsand cited a source who also included the Orioles to the mix of the teams that were in on Snell. But the night belonged to Heyman. Less than an hour later, he posted his third We Tried of the evening: “Yankees had a zoom call with Blake Snell just today. But their near total focus is on Juan Soto. Their plan Bs need to wait a bit.” This is really mixing it up. We’ve got one juicy detail to go on, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that when you really mean business, you hop on Zoom. Sure, the Yankees have a private jet, but nothing says “I really, truly want to give you hundreds of millions of dollars” like a glitchy video call. There is no better way to entice a potential employee to join your organization than by forcing them to watch via webcam as the pallid November sunlight plays off the blotchy skin beneath your eyes and your reverb-drenched voice intones the magic words: “We think you’d look great in pinstripes.” Why didn’t the Yankees just announce that they’d sent Snell a carrier pigeon?
On Friday, Andy Kostka reported that the Orioles were in on Kikuchi as well, bringing them into a tie for first place with the Red Sox. More importantly, it gave “We were in on him” a commanding lead in terms of the language used. Of the seven We Trieds, four took the form of a team being “in on” the player, while three other phrasings were tied with just one instance. With that, our update is complete, and I’ll leave you with our first leaderboards of the offseason. We will keep tracking as the offseason continues, and as always, please let us know if you see a We Tried out in the wild.
BONUS CONTENT: Last week, Johnny Damon went on the “Shut Up Marc” podcast, hosted by Marc Lewis. He talked about signing with the Yankees following the 2005 season and described how the Red Sox made him the subject of a particularly cynical We Tried:
I had four great years there and then I accepted with the Yankees, the contract… A couple days later I get a package, a DHL package from the Red Sox: four-year, $40 million contract. And it’s like, ok… So that’s kind of showing faith that they offered me a deal so that can tell to the media that, “We offered them a contract, he just didn’t take it.” So yeah, that’s how things work.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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 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.
When the Phillies returned to contention following a slide into irrelevance in the wake of their 1993 National League pennant, shortstop Jimmy Rollins, first baseman Ryan Howard, and lefty Cole Hamels gained most of the attention. Howard all but ran Jim Thome out of town after the latter was injured in 2005, then mashed a major league-high 58 homers in ’06 en route to NL MVP honors. Rollins, the emotional center of the team, carried himself with a swagger and declared the Phillies “the team to beat” at the outset of 2007, then won the MVP award when the team followed through with a division title. Hamels debuted in 2006 and became their ace while making his first All-Star team the next season. In the middle of all that, as part of the nucleus that would help the Phillies win five straight NL East titles from 2007–11, with a championship in ’08 and another pennant in ’09, Chase Utley was as good or better than any of them, though the second baseman hardly called attention to himself.
Indeed, Utley seemed to shun the spotlight, playing the game with a quiet intensity that bordered on asceticism. He sped around the bases after hitting home runs, then reluctantly accepted high-fives in the dugout. “I am having fun,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Andy Martino in 2009. “When I’m on the baseball field, that’s where I love to be. I’m not joking around and smiling. That competition, that heat-of-the-battle intensity, that’s how I have fun.” Read the rest of this entry »
It’s always nice when something works out perfectly, right away. At the trade deadline, the Dodgers insinuated themselves into a three-way deal with the White Sox and Cardinals, acquiring Michael Kopech and Tommy Edman in exchange for infielder Miguel Vargas and a smattering of minor leaguers. Edman, who hadn’t played an inning all year to that point because of a wrist injury, was of little use to the Cardinals and zero use to the White Sox, so Los Angeles was able to acquire him on the cheap.
The wrist healed; the former Stanford standout debuted in late August, posted a 98 wRC+ in 37 regular-season games, then played every inning of the Dodgers’ successful World Series run. He started games at both center field and shortstop, hit .328/.354/.508 with five stolen bases in 16 appearances, and went home with NLCS MVP honors.
So you’d understand why both sides would want to run it back. On Friday night, the Dodgers announced that they and the 29-year-old Edman had agreed to a contract extension. This five-year, $72 million deal supersedes the final year of Edman’s previous two-year contract, worth $9.5 million. Should this partnership continue to bear fruit through the end of the decade, the Dodgers have a $13 million club option for 2030 as well. Read the rest of this entry »
Fellowship Opportunities: Baseball Operations, Pro Acquisitions, Player Development
DEPARTMENT: Baseball Operations, Pro Acquisitions, Player Development ORGANIZATION: Chicago Cubs LOCATION: Chicago; Arizona FLSA STATUS: Exempt
BEING PART OF THE TEAM
Our business is a team sport that began on a field with baseballs and bats and has evolved into one of the most recognizable brands in sports and entertainment through Cubs baseball and live events. Our success is driven by our people, who work to create and inspire change in an engaging, collaborative and inclusive environment. As a team, we continue to build a culture on and off the field that delivers unforgettable experiences for one another, our fans and community. In support of that effort, we expect associates to work primarily in our office. Are you ready to be part of it?
OUR STORY
THE CHICAGO CUBS FRANCHISE is a charter member of Major League Baseball’s National League. Since 1876, the team has won the National League pennant 17 times and was the first team to win back-to-back World Series titles in the 1907 and 1908 seasons. In 2016, the Chicago Cubs made history again when the team won its first World Series in 108 years, ending the longest championship drought in North American sports. Known for its ivy-covered outfield walls, hand-operated scoreboard and famous Marquee sign, iconic Wrigley Field has been the home of the Chicago Cubs since 1916, making it the second oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball.
HOW YOU’LL CONTRIBUTE:
The Chicago Cubs’ Baseball Operations, Pro Acquisitions, and Player Development departments are seeking to potentially fill positions in the preidentified areas below. Candidates who thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative environment and possess excellent communication skills with a strong attention to detail are encouraged to apply. The timeline to fill each position may vary and will be prioritized based on qualified candidate credentials.
Baseball Operations Fellow (Location: Chicago, IL)
Responsibilities:
Work in collaboration with other members of Major League Operations, providing daily support to various Baseball Operations functions
Prepare and maintain essential resources and materials for operation, evaluation, and decision making within the front office
Perform research and analysis in support of Major League Operations including salary arbitration, contracts, free agency, roster transactions and management, and rules compliance
Work alongside the Amateur Scouting and Pro Acquisitions departments in advance of the Rule 4 Draft, Trade Deadline, and other key transaction periods
Carry out gameday duties as assigned by the Advance Scouting and Research & Development departments
Conduct ad-hoc research and projects as assigned
Pro Acquisitions Fellow (Location: Chicago, IL)
Responsibilities:
Follow and track the direction and strategies of certain Major League teams and identify potentially available players
Produce in-depth player assessments on professional players, utilizing video and data
Participate in the implementation and continuous improvement of acquisition processes, focusing on optimizing workflows, evaluation methods, decision support, and staff development
Use analytical tools to identify and prioritize players for further analysis.
Collaborate with Baseball Analytics, Baseball Sciences, and Baseball Systems to develop, refine, and implement player evaluation and acquisition tools
Conduct research as assigned by leadership, providing quality assurance and control feedback and identifying areas for further exploration and development
Collaborate with predictive modeling teams and incorporate analytical insights into decision-making processes
WHAT YOU’LL BRING:
Bachelor’s degree, preferably in a quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience
Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)
Experience with SQL/R preferred
Familiarity with advanced baseball statistics
Demonstrated passion for baseball
Willingness to work nights, weekends, and holidays, in accordance with the baseball calendar and key events/transactional periods
Ability to relocate and find housing in the Chicago area
Player Development Fellow (Location: Mesa, AZ)
Responsibilities:
Assist the Player Development Department with a range of administrative tasks, including data collection, data entry, and various other responsibilities to support team operations
Facilitate the onboarding process for newly acquired players, including those from the Rule 4 Draft, trades, international signings, and minor league free agency
Collaborate with the Cubs’ Minor League Equipment staff to develop and maintain an effective inventory system and handle logistics needs
Support player services by managing housing arrangements, ensuring nutritional needs are met, and addressing additional player welfare needs
Ad hoc Player Development projects and research as assigned by Director, Player Development
Aid in the implementation of Cubs’ life skills programs, which may include organizing trips to the bank, assisting with social services, and coordinating doctor’s appointments
WHAT YOU’LL BRING:
Bachelor’s degree, preferably in a quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience
Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, PowerPoint, Word), familiarity with Google suite
Valid Driver’s License
Willingness to work nights, weekends, and holidays, in accordance with the baseball calendar
Ability to relocate to Mesa, AZ for duration of role
Spanish proficiency preferred
Response Expectations:
Due to the overwhelming number of applications we receive, we unfortunately may not be able to respond in person to each applicant. However, we can assure you that you will receive an email confirmation when you apply as well as additional email notifications whether you are selected to move forward for the position or not. Please note, we keep all resumes on file and will contact you should we wish to schedule an interview with you.
The Chicago Cubs and its affiliates are an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to inclusion and employing a diverse workforce. All applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, disability, or other legally protected characteristics.
The Miami Marlins are coming off of a 100-loss season, and a lack of bats had a lot to do with that. The NL East club scored the fewest runs in the senior circuit. The arms weren’t all that much better — only the Colorado Rockies allowed more runs — but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Sandy Alcantara and Eury Pérez are on track to return from Tommy John surgery, while Jesús Luzardo and Max Meyer should be healthy following comparably minor injuries. Moreover, the organization’s top pitching prospects have high ceilings. Pitching — especially young pitching — is the organization’s greatest strength.
Miami’s President of Baseball Operations largely agreed with that opinion when I presented it to him at last month’s GM Meetings in San Antonio.
“I think so,” Peter Bendix told me. “I hope so. We have a lot of guys I’m really excited about. I think that next year a lot of these guys have things to prove, whether that’s health, bouncing back from a disappointing season, just establishing themselves, or building on what they did last year.”
A pair of pitchers who are likely a few years away from reaching the big leagues stand out. One of them is is a now-20-year-old southpaw whom the Marlins drafted 35th overall in 2023 out of Andover, Massachusetts’s Phillips Academy.
“Thomas White is maybe the best left-handed pitching prospect in baseball,” said Bendix, whose opinion is by no means singular (Noah Schultz and one or two others are also in the conversation). “If you look at left-handed pitchers who were 19 years old, missed as many bats as he did, didn’t walk guys, limited hard contact, throw 95-plus, have a plus breaking ball, and have command, it’s a short list. Now it’s his job to go out there build on that, see what he can he can do with another full year underneath him.” Read the rest of this entry »
For the 21st 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 Athletics.
Batters
In the race for the worst franchise in baseball, the White Sox easily took the title in terms of sheer incompetence. But their out of touch owner who legitimately wanted to win can’t match up with the A’s John Fisher, who probably thought while watching Moneyball that Rachel Phelps was way too generous with her team spending. The A’s won 69-93 games, a respectable number as far as terrible teams go, but it left them in an awkward limbo: They’re not good enough to pretend to be playoff relevant, but not bad enough for young fans to someday tell tales to their grandchildren about the team’s notoriety.
In truth, there’s actually a lot to like about this set of projections, even if it’s distributed among things you don’t. Brent Rooker not only demonstrated that his 2023 breakout wasn’t a fluke, but he also had a second breakout this season that was even better than the first. Considering he ran a .362 BABIP, he’s likely going to give back at least some of the gains he made. How much he regresses is a source of disagreement between ZiPS and Steamer, but he’s conclusively proven that he’s not just some DH-type player who’s going to put up a 110 wRC+ and 1.7 WAR. Rooker is not young, so hopefully the A’s will trade him to a team with games that matter before he advances too far into his thirties.
Jacob Wilson gets a very solid projection, and ZiPS sees a bit of a bounceback campaign for Zack Gelof. I wouldn’t call ZiPS a full believer in Lawrence Butler or JJ Bleday, but it at least grants them adequacy, which is a step up for both from last year’s projections. ZiPS is decidedly negative on the mulligan stew in left field, and it isn’t buying Tyler Soderstrom as a first baseman, either. I have no idea if the Nick Kurtz projection is too high, too low, or just right given he has played almost no professional baseball. ZiPS does know his Wake Forest numbers, but college translations are more speculative than crypto currency with meme names.
One can argue the most disappointing parts of these projections aren’t the players on the parent club, but the minor leaguers. Past Wilson and maybe Kurtz, ZiPS just doesn’t see anyone in the system having major upside. I mean, Tommy White might suddenly become the offensive beast he was hoped to be, but the computer isn’t banking on it.
Pitchers
Eep. You know a team’s pitching projections aren’t going well when the player with the best projected ERA+ (Mason Miller) has a nearly 50-point edge over everyone else. One thing that used to keep the A’s from falling too far out of the pennant race was that, for a long time, this was a team that could churn out nondescript soft-tossing mid-rotation starters as if it owned a patent on the process. For the third consecutive season, however, the 2024 A’s didn’t have a single pitcher who started 20 games with an ERA+ of at least 100. This is hardly a filter for finding a Cy Young candidate! JP Sears had his moments in 2024, but at the end of the day, he’s simply a soft-tossing lefty without a strikeout pitch who can’t keep the ball down all that well, not any respectable team’s ace. Mitch Spence is interesting, but he isn’t missing bats in the majors yet. Our prospect team wrote that Joey Estes needed to develop a good secondary pitch, and that criticism rings true; he has a mediocre slider and changeup, meaning that his decent command hasn’t meant all that much.
I find J.T. Ginn and Osvaldo Bido more interesting. If Ginn keeps working with his sinker, he might have success in the majors for a while, and Bido at least makes it seem like there’s some adventure happening on the mound; his control is spotty, but he’s got a hard two-seamery sinker that I think could be a real weapon if he ever gets the hang of it. Most pitchers like Bido don’t work out in the long run, but I can squint my eyes and see a Bido breakout as a more tangible idea than what a Sears or Estes breakout would look like.
The bullpen is… not good. Miller projects for all of the bullpen’s WAR, which is fine if you think you’re going to use him for 500 innings. After Miller, there’s not a lot of correlation between spot in the pecking order and the ZiPS projection; Michel Otañez gets a decent projection in ZiPS, while Brady Basso probably doesn’t make the team, at least not in April.
The A’s have almost no guaranteed contracts, the only two right now being the recently agreed one-year pacts with Seth Brown and T.J. McFarland. Normally that would give a team some flexibility to fill some holes in free agency, but we all know that’s not going to happen. The Athletics will likely win somewhere between 65 and 72 games or so, and very little will be remembered about the season outside the weird stadium situation they’re in.
Speaking of that situation, projecting Sutter Health Field is a bit of a problem without data from past MLB games. It’s a pitchers’ park in the Pacific Coast League, but that’s not exactly telling given that the average park in the PCL would likely be a hitters’ park in the majors. I have a rough estimate of it as basically average, though I expect some outfielders might have a few adventures getting used to the caroms as the fences have some corners. The foul territory is much reduced, however, and that might mean something at the margins, considering you might be able to park a 747 in the Coliseum’s foul territory. Hopefully, by the time the A’s move again, I will have stopped calling the park “Sutter Home” after the winery.
Sutter Health Field graphic made by Szym. 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 2025 due to injury, and players who were released in 2024. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Ukulele Dixieland Jazz band that only covers songs by The Smiths, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.11.
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.
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 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.
For the past few election cycles, as a means of completing my coverage of the major candidates before the December 31 voting deadline, I’ve been grouping together some candidates into a single overview, inviting readers wishing to (re)familiarize themselves with the specifics of their cases to check out older profiles that don’t require a full re-working, because very little has changed, even with regards to their voting shares. Today, I offer the first such batch for this cycle, a pair of elite hitters who would already be enshrined if not for their links to performance-enhancing drugs: Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez.
Like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, both sluggers have transgressions that predate the introduction of drug testing and penalties in 2004. Via The New York Times (Ramirez) and Sports Illustrated (Rodriguez), both reportedly failed the supposedly anonymous 2003 survey test that determined whether such testing would be introduced. Had they not pressed their luck further, both might already be in Cooperstown alongside 2022 honoree David Ortiz, who also reportedly failed the survey test. Alas, Ramirez was actually suspended twice, in 2009 and ’11; the latter ended his major league career, though he traveled the globe making comeback attempts. Rodriguez was suspended only once, but it was for the entire 2014 season due to his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal and his scorched-earth attempt to evade punishment — a sequence of events unparalleled among baseball’s PED-linked players.
As I’ve noted more times than I can count over the past decade and a half, my own policy with regards to such candidates is to differentiate between pre-2004 transgressions and the rest; while I included the likes of Bonds, Clemens, Gary Sheffield, and Sammy Sosa on my virtual and actual ballots, I have yet to do so for any player who earned a suspension for PEDs, including this pair — two players who at their best were a thrill to watch, but who also did some of the most cringeworthy stuff of any players in their era. They and the other suspended players were well aware of the consequences for crossing the line, yet did so anyway. While this personal policy began as a ballot-management tool at a time when I felt more than 10 candidates were worthy of a vote, I’ve found it to be a reasonable midpoint between total agnosticism on the subject and a complete hard-line stance. My sympathies tend more towards the former group — those who refuse to play cop for MLB and the Hall, reasoning such players have not been declared ineligible à la Pete Rose — than the latter, but I respect both positions.
Anyway, Ramirez debuted with 23.8% on the 2017 ballot, didn’t surpass that mark until ’20 (28.2%), didn’t top 30% until ’23 (33.2%), and fell back a fraction of a point on the ’24 ballot (32.5%). That’s eight years to gain less than 10 percentage points, meaning that he’ll fall off the ballot after his 10th year (the 2026 ballot).
Rodriguez debuted with 34.3% in 2022, barely inched up in ’23 (35.7%), and receded slightly in ’24 (34.8%). Given that Bonds and Clemens topped out in the 65–66% range in 2022 and then were passed over by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee the following year, nobody should be holding their breaths for either of these two to get elected anytime soon, though it will be awhile before we stop hearing about them. Read the rest of this entry »
