Last week, Marco Gonzales got traded twice in three days: First from Seattle to Atlanta in the Jarred Kelenic deal, then up the Denny Neagle Highway to Pittsburgh. No one has ever been more traded. You want to know how traded Gonzales is? The only other player he’s ever been traded for, Tyler O’Neill, just got traded too.
The St. Louis Cardinals, sitting on a surfeit of corner outfield types, have sent O’Neill to Boston for pitchers Nick Robertson and Victor Santos. This is not as exciting a trade as it would’ve been two years ago, when O’Neill was coming off a 5.5 WAR season, but it allows the Cardinals to turn a player they probably weren’t going to use into pitching depth. The Red Sox gain some temporary goodwill from the small subset of locals who’ll scan a headline and think that former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill has returned from the dead. Moreover, they’ve added some right-handed power to a pool of outfielders that could use some. Read the rest of this entry »
Bob Melvin feels that the San Francisco Giants could use more star power. Hearing the team’s new manager say as much when he met with the media in Nashville earlier this week prompted a question from yours truly. Prefacing it by pointing out that the San Diego Padres team he led last year had no shortage of it, I asked the veteran skipper if it is possible to have too much “star power.”
“Not necessarily,” replied Melvin, whose 2023 Padres underachieved to the tune of an 82-80 record. “It just depends on the makeup. Look, the year before we went to the NLCS in my first year there. Last year was a disappointing season, but I don’t think there’s anything to make of it being a poor year because there was too much star power. They have some really good players there, it just didn’t work out as well.
“I am big on incorporating,” Melvin added. “I think everybody needs a role and everybody needs to feel they’re a part of it. That makes for a much better clubhouse. Everybody feels they’re important. There’s an enthusiasm to that. I think there’s a place for both.”
Scott Harris largely agrees with Melvin. When the subject of impact free agents such as Shohei Ohtani came up, I asked Detroit’s President of Baseball Operations the same question that I’d asked his San Francisco contemporary. Read the rest of this entry »
Shohei Ohtani is not on a plane to Toronto. He’s not hiding in your linen closet or lurking off the coast of Jamaica in a submarine. After years of intrigue, weeks of speculation, and days of looking for signs in flight plans and sushi restaurants, it’s over. After a free agent courtship to fit the player — in other words, unique — Ohtani will be a Los Angeles Dodger.
This is hardly the most interesting outcome. There will be no reset to the competitive order, no validation of an underdog’s creative sales pitch or intriguing roster construction. The Dodgers were already one of the best and most heavily scrutinized teams in baseball, and if Ohtani doesn’t mind a bit of a commute, he won’t even have to move. But if the destination is a bit of an anticlimax, the contract is dramatic enough to pick up the slack.
Baseball’s version of Lebron James’ The Decision appears to have come to pass, with all-universe talent Shohei Ohtani announcing on his Instagram that he has found a new home in Los Angeles, this time with the Dodgers. The deal is for 10 years and $700 million.
While the full details of the contract’s “unprecedented” deferrals aren’t yet known, 10 years and $700 million is the mega-contract of all mega-contracts, besting the previous record by hundreds of millions of dollars. And like the Alex Rodriguez signing more than two decades ago, this will likely be the record for a while, including a possible Juan Soto deal next winter. Read the rest of this entry »
Shouldered with the needle-threading task of simultaneously cutting payroll and rebuilding a pitching staff thinned out by the departure of several key free agents, the Padres traded superstar Juan Soto and Gold Glove-caliber center fielder Trent Grisham to the Yankees on Wednesday in exchange for three big league arms — righties Michael King, Randy Vásquez, and Jhony Brito — as well as a fourth who is nearly ready for primetime in prospect Drew Thorpe and backup catcher Kyle Higashioka. Ben Clemens did a full analysis on the impact that the 25-year-old Soto, one of baseball’s best hitters, will have on the Yankees. I’m going to dive deeper into the arms headed to the Gaslamp District and talk about how the Padres might go about finishing their offseason to-do list.
Most readers are probably aware that a mandate to shed payroll was a driving factor for this trade from San Diego’s perspective. The club’s sudden shift in financial direction occurred in the wake of the death of owner Peter Seidler. The trade also addresses a large portion of the Padres on-field baseball needs, though it also creates massive new holes in their lineup and defensive alignment where Soto and Grisham used to be. The Friars will need to fill or upgrade at least two or three spots of their currently-projected lineup if they want to compete with the defending NL champion Diamondbacks and reigning division-winning Dodgers in 2024, and they probably also need another starting pitcher or two to round out their rotation. Shedding Soto’s salary likely created some space to do so, but given the Padres’ financial constraints, perhaps not enough to solve all of these problems via free agency. There may be internal candidates, especially on the position player side, who can contribute at the league minimum salary in 2024; I’ll get to those prospects later.
Let’s start with who came back to San Diego and how they fit into an overhauled pitching staff. Prior to the trade, our Padres rotation projection looked rough. Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish were fortified by 27-year-old knuckleballer Matt Waldron, and walk-prone MLB virgin Jay Groome. The free-agent departures of Nick Martinez, Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha, and reigning Cy Young winner Blake Snell, who pitched a combined 570 innings in 2023, left the Padres in dire need of impact and depth to have a functional and competitive pitching staff in 2024. Even if one believes (as I do) that prospect Jairo Iriarte is talented enough to make a meaningful near-term impact, the Padres still badly needed to add several pitchers to their big league staff. This trade gets them most of the way there, as all four of the pitchers acquired for Soto could reasonably be expected to pitch in the big leagues next season. Read the rest of this entry »
The internet has democratized so much of our society, but nothing more than hating baseball teams. A generation ago, everyone was sick to death of the Yankees, but now it seems like half the league is one obnoxious fan tweet or one ill-timed bat flip or clueless GM comment from becoming the pariah of the week. It can get a little hard to track sometimes.
So in some respects, this week’sJuan Soto trade is a welcome throwback to old times. A no-doubt top-tier superstar has drifted across the great material continuum and found himself, almost by accident, resplendent in pinstripes and razor burn. A trade to make Yankees fans rejoice, and the vast majority of our great, God-fearing nation go, “Ugh, these freakin’ guys.”
Nevertheless, Soto’s arrival in New York offers an opportunity to witness something unusual. Assuming Aaron Boone figures out that Soto should go in front of Aaron Judge in the batting order, we’re about to see the best on-base guy of his generation batting ahead of the best power hitter of his generation. Read the rest of this entry »
While looking back at the free agent signings I covered last winter, I noticed a bit of a pattern. On the same day Aaron Judge came to terms on a nine-year, $360 million deal with the Yankees, I wrote about Miguel Castro. On the same day Brandon Nimmo agreed to a $162 million deal with the Mets, I wrote about Matt Strahm. On the same day Yu DarvishandBo Bichette signed contract extensions, I wrote about Pierce Johnson and Scott McGough. While the rest of the baseball world was focused on All-Stars and mega-million-dollar contracts, I found myself drawn to mid-tier relievers on small-scale deals.
We’re not farming for clicks here at FanGraphs, and I’m grateful to write for a website where I never have to come up with hot takes or misleading headlines. Thankfully, I’ve never been asked to write about one weird trick for evading the luxury tax or why dermatologists hate Gabe Kapler. Still, it’s nice when others read your work, and as much as I love them, I know middle relievers don’t rack up pageviews like middle-of-the-order bats. While I have a weakness for run-of-the-mill bullpen arms — the more ordinary the better — I know I need to resist the pull.
“Leo,” I said to myself when the offseason began. “You can’t write about so many relievers this winter. You wrote about Joely Rodríguez last year. Maybe this time you cover Eduardo Rodriguez instead?”
In the midst of a Winter Meetings that was fairly quiet as far as free agent signings go, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Eduardo Rodriguez came to an agreement on a four-year contract worth a guaranteed $80 million. Bouncing back from a problem-filled 2022 Detroit debut, Rodriguez was one of the reasons the Tigers maintained a position at the very edge of relevance in 2023. Through the end of May, E-Rod was a top 10 starting pitcher in the American League, posting a 2.13 ERA and 3.14 FIP over 11 starts; his 1.8 WAR ranked eighth in WAR. But his chances of sneaking into the Cy Young conversation were derailed by a finger injury that cost him a month of the season. While he got back into the rotation fairly quickly, he wasn’t quite the same in the second half, issuing more free passes and seeing his strikeout rate drop by about 20%.
The first few days of the Winter Meetings didn’t deliver much action; at breakfast on Wednesday, Erick Fedde versus Wade Miley as the biggest signing of the meetings was a popular debate. But things picked up as the gathering ground to a close. First, the Yankees traded for Juan Soto. Next, Eduardo Rodriguez agreed to terms with Arizona. Finally, Jeimer Candelario capped the meetings off when he signed with the Reds for three years and $45 million and a team option for another year, as MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand first reported.
Part of the allure of free agency, as a fan experience, is that you never know where any given player might land, or who your team might pick up. Sure, we all have opinions on where the top guys will sign, but until they put pen to paper, or at least until Jeff Passan gets a text about their chosen destination, nothing is set in stone. But if you’d asked me to predict signings that wouldn’t happen this winter, I would have made a lazy prediction: the Reds would stay away from hitters in general and infielders in particular.
That doesn’t have anything to do with Candelario, to be clear. I think he’ll be one of the bargain signings of the offseason, a plus bat with playable defense at third base on an affordable contract. A three-year deal nets the back half of his prime without too much messiness at the end of the contract, and he’s played at a 3–4 WAR clip in three out of the past four years. He’s been the 68th-best hitter in baseball by our count over those four years, just ahead of Luis Arraez and Ketel Marte in a similar number of plate appearances, if you’re trying to calibrate that in your head. 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 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’s no secret that we’re in the midst of a lean period for starting pitchers getting elected to the Hall of Fame via the BBWAA. Since the elections of 300-game winners Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and Randy Johnson in 2014 and ’15, just four starters have gained entry via the writers, two of them alongside the Big Unit in the latter year (Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz) and two more in ’19 (Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina). From a demographic standpoint, Halladay is the only starter born after 1971.
It’s quite possible we won’t get another starter born in that shag-carpeted decade unless voters come around on Andy Pettitte (b. 1972) or Mark Buehrle (b. 1979), a pair of southpaws who cleared the 200-win mark during their exceptional careers, producing some big moments and playing significant roles on championship-winning teams. Yet neither of them ever won Cy Young awards, created much black ink, or dominated in the ways that we expect Hall-caliber hurlers to do. Neither makes much of a dent when it comes to JAWS, where they respectively rank 92nd and 90th via the traditional version, about 14 points below the standard, or tied for 80th and 78th in the workload-adjusted version (S-JAWS). Neither has gotten far in their time on the ballot; Pettitte maxed out at 17% last year, his fifth, and Buerhle returned to double digits with 10.8% in his third year of eligibility — still a couple eyelashes short of his debut share.
After updating both pitchers’ profiles last year, I’ll stick to excerpting them this time before getting back to my latest thinking on the subject. Read the rest of this entry »
