The Mariners are favorites in the American League on the back of an all-time duo.

Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez are the best teammates in the AL. They’re each projected to be among the top 10 batters by FanGraphs Depth Charts, and each led their respective positions in our annual positional power rankings series. The only pair of teammates projected for more WAR in 2026 are Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts and Ohtani and Kyle Tucker.

Since their first season together in 2022, Raleigh and Rodríguez have combined for 44.2 WAR. At 11.1 wins per season, that’s “on pace” for the best duo in team history, just ahead of Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez (65.9 WAR over six years), Griffey and Edgar Martinez (119.3 WAR over 11 years), and all sorts of other combinations from the star-studded squads of the 90s. Raleigh and Rodríguez certainly have much more to achieve before approaching these all-time greats, individually or together. But as the Mariners enter their 50th season, it appears the legacy of the franchise may finally be moving beyond its past. Read the rest of this entry »

Dean Kremer has been a staple of the Orioles rotation in recent years. Even while missing significant time due to injuries in a couple of seasons, he’s made more starts than any other Baltimore pitcher since the beginning of 2022, a span that encompasses both the division-winning Orioles from ’23 and last year’s basement dwellers. Yet this past weekend, Kremer was optioned to the team’s minor league camp, the odd man out in a rotation battle. He’s not the only familiar name among those slated to start the season in the minors due to such decisions.

Opening Day is full of fanfare and so often freighted with meaning, but it’s still just one day on the baseball calendar; the decisions regarding who gets to be there (and who doesn’t) don’t actually define the season. Still, unless they’re recalled to replace injured players — which is hardly out of the question — optioned position players need to remain in the minors for 10 days and pitchers for 15 days, counting from March 25 (Opening Day for the Giants and Yankees). In other words, they’ll be eligible to return on April 4 or April 9. Beyond that, circumstances change as the season progresses, and rosters are in a constant state of flux.

Kremer stands out because he’s fully established himself in the majors, while the other high-profile decisions I’ve highlighted below involve players who are or were recently considered top prospects. They’re all headed to Triple-A, and I expect them to stay past the aforementioned dates, but they’re notable because they’re still expected to play substantial roles in 2026. The players are listed alphabetically. Read the rest of this entry »

Late last night, Jeff Passan of ESPN reported that the Cubs and star center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong had reached an agreement on a long-term contract extension. That deal, worth $115 million over six years, keeps one of baseball’s most popular young stars in the fold through 2032.

This extension, the largest ever for a player with so little service time, begins in 2027, buys out two of Crow-Armstrong’s free agent years, and includes escalators that could increase the value to $133 million. But shockingly, (and to the immense relief of those of us who are still parsing the inscrutable Julio Rodríguez extension), it does not include any option years. Whatever happens, Crow-Armstrong can still hit free agency after his age-30 season. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the foundational assumptions of the past 10 years in baseball is that the Braves will always figure something out. Their run of six straight division titles from 2018 to 2023 placed them in a conversation with the Dodgers and Astros as the one of the most consistently successful teams in baseball.

The Braves run a big payroll, but not on a level that allows them to outspend their mistakes. And those mistakes have been few. They always make smart trades, always get their star players to sign under-market extensions, always develop their own talent well. You could argue that the Braves have had more success developing undersized right-handed college starters named Spencer than the Orioles have had with their own pitching prospects of any size, name, and origin over the past 30 years.

But as Atlanta tries to bounce back from its first losing season since 2017, that sense of inevitability is fading. Spencer Schwellenbach is out until midseason with bone spurs in his elbow, and as of Monday, Spencer Strider has a strained oblique muscle and will start the season on the IL. Read the rest of this entry »

Cristopher Sánchez wasn’t going anywhere for awhile. He’s now not going anywhere for even longer. With Ranger Suarez in Boston, Zack Wheeler recovering from thoracic outlet surgery, and Aaron Nola looking his age, the 29-year-old left-hander is the ace of a Phillies starting rotation that led baseball in WAR in both 2025 and 2023 and hasn’t finished below fourth this decade. On Sunday, the Philadelphia signed Sánchez to a contract extension that will keep him around through the 2032 season, with a club option for 2033, when he’ll be 36. The move also comes less than two weeks after the team inked Jesús Luzardo to his own five-year, $135 million extension. Clearly, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski would like to maintain the status quo.

Robert Murray of FanSided broke the news of the deal. Matt Gelb of The Athletic reported that the contract is worth a guaranteed $107 million, and Francys Romero of Beisbol FR reported that it included more than $13 million in incentives. The club option for 2033, if it’s picked up, would add another $32.5 million. This may well sound familiar. In June 2024, the Phillies signed Sánchez to a four-year extension that contained two more club options for 2029 and 2030. Those first four years bought out all of his arbitration years for $22.5 million. If picked up, the two club options (along with Cy Young incentives) could have increased the maximum value to $56.6 million.

We’ll get back into the mechanics of the deal and what they mean soon. We’re not going to spend more than a few paragraphs on why the Phillies decided Sánchez was worth all this. That part should be obvious. Sánchez is quite simply one of the best pitchers in the world. He finished 10th in the National League Cy Young voting in 2024 and second in 2025. He has a career ERA of 3.24 and a FIP of 3.15. By any standard, the lefty found an entirely new level in 2025, running a career-high 26% strikeout rate. His 2.55 FIP was nearly half a run better than his previous career best, and his 63 DRA- was nearly 20 points lower than his previous best. Read the rest of this entry »

Applied AI Engineer

Summary
The New York Mets are seeking an Applied AI Engineer to build and ship production-grade AI capabilities that improve decision-making and streamline workflows across Baseball Operations. This role sits at the intersection of Baseball Systems (software engineering), Data Engineering, Baseball Analytics, Performance Technology, and modern generative AI. You will develop reliable AI-powered applications such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), secure tool/data integrations (MCP-style patterns), and agentic workflows that can support deep work and research, while ensuring strong standards for quality, security, privacy, and operational excellence.

This is a hands-on role for an engineer who can translate ambiguous baseball operations and player development needs into working software, iterate quickly with stakeholders, and harden solutions into durable systems used daily by analysts, coaches, scouts, and baseball operations staff.

Note: This role will require extensive in-person collaboration and innovation alongside stakeholders, analysts, and engineers. Applicants must be local to NYC (or willing to relocate) and be able to travel to Citi Field regularly. Travel to Spring Training and affiliates may also be required.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain AI-powered product experiences that provide intuitive access to baseball information and statistics and workflows across internal systems.
• Develop end-to-end RAG pipelines (ingest, chunking, embedding, retrieval, generation) with strong attention to answer quality, baseball relevancy, analytics accuracy, latency, and cost.
• Implement secure tool and data connectors for AI assistants and agents using standardized patterns (MCP-style), enabling safe interaction with internal APIs, data warehouses, and services.
• Build agentic workflows that can execute multi-step tasks (research, analysis, synthesis, report generation) with clear guardrails, auditability, and human-in-the-loop approvals.
• Partner closely with Product, Analytics, Performance Technology, Player Development, and Baseball operations stakeholders to frame problems, define success, and deliver measurable impact.
• Contribute to shared engineering standards and reusable components so AI capabilities scale across multiple products and teams.
• Ensure strong security and privacy practices (access control, data boundaries, logging and auditing, and safe handling of sensitive information).
• Participate in high-availability support expectations as needed during critical operational periods throughout the baseball season, and during feature releases.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including building and operating production services.
• Demonstrated experience building LLM-powered applications in production (prompt/program design, structured outputs, tool calling, reliability patterns).
• Practical experience with retrieval systems (search, embeddings, vector databases, ranking, chunking/indexing) and applying them to real workflows.
• Strong experience with modern backend and data integration fundamentals: APIs, SQL, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure (GCP/AWS/Azure)
• Proficiency in one or more production languages commonly used for AI applications and services (e.g. Python and/or Typescript)
• Approach work as highly collaborative and stakeholder-driven, with the ability to operate in ambiguity while iterating quickly.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience working in sports, health, finance, or other high-stakes analytics-heavy environments, preferred.
• Strong interest in baseball and comfort working within the culture of a professional sports organization, preferred

he above information is intended to describe the general nature, type, and level of work to be performed. The information is not intended to be an exhaustive or complete list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required for this position. Nothing in this job description restricts management’s right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities to this job at any time. The individual selected may perform other related duties as assigned or requested.

The New York Mets value the unique qualities individuals with various backgrounds and experiences can offer the organization. Our continued success depends heavily on the quality of our workforce. The Organization is committed to providing employees with the opportunity to develop to their fullest potential.

Salary Range: $180,000 – $200,000

For technical reasons, we strongly advise to not use an .edu email address when applying. Thank you very much.

To Apply
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the New York Mets.

Trey Yesavage profiles as a strong Rookie of the Year candidate, but he won’t have a chance to begin building his case in the near term. The 22-year-old Toronto Blue Jays right-hander landed on the injured list due to shoulder impingement and won’t be ready when the season gets underway later this week. His return is expected to come sooner rather than later — fingers are crossed throughout Canada — but for now, Yesavage is on the shelf.

Five months ago he was turning heads in the World Series. With just six MLB outings under his belt — three in the regular season, and three across the ALDS and ALCS — Yesavage bedeviled LA batters with an array of high-riding heaters and diving splitters. He was especially dominant in Game 5, fanning a dozen Dodgers while allowing three baserunners and a lone run over seven frames.

His meteoric rise and eye-popping postseason performances raised his public persona, but the Pottstown, Pennsylvania native hasn’t otherwise changed since being drafted 22nd overall in 2024 out of East Carolina University. He’s still polite and unassuming, and his overpowering arsenal has remained in place.

“I’m pretty much the same dude,” Yesavage told me at Blue Jays camp last week. “The pitches are the same. The velocity and movement are the same. I also don’t look at [the metrics] all that much. Whenever Trackman is up on the board, all I really look at is the vert on my heater, and the velo. The only questions I’ll ask my pitching coach are to make sure that my most-used pitch is in line.”

That would be his four-seam fastball, which averaged 94.7 mph and 19.5 inches of induced vertical break across his smattering of regular season outings. Thrown at a 45.2% clip, the offering was augmenting by a slider (28.4%) and a splitter (26.4%), the last of those offerings being the righty’s most lethal weapon. A quintessential complement to his well-elevated heaters, Yesavage’s splitter induced a 57.1% whiff rate and a .111 BAA against big-league hitters.

He began tinkering with his signature pitch in the middle of his three collegiate seasons, but it wasn’t until his draft year that the efforts bore fruit. Read the rest of this entry »

Starting rotations have five slots.

Yes, every once in a while a team will pretend to have four or six slots, but that team must inevitably confront the truth: Starting rotations have five slots. It’s a matter of policy, preference, and just plain practicality, Mariners general manager Justin Hollander said last year in an interview with Lookout Landing.

“The unfortunate thing about the roster rules is you only get 26 spots, and you only get 13 pitchers. And when you add a sixth starter, you take away a reliever. When you add a sixth starter, sometimes your starters pitch every six days, sometimes they pitch every eight or nine days. Starting pitchers are fussy. They don’t like that. They like to stay on a regular schedule. They like to know when they’re pitching.”

I’ve been thinking about the fixed-nature of rotations lately after reading this discussion between Eno Saris and Jen McCaffrey in The Athletic. They compare the rotations in Detroit and Boston by assigning each pitcher a label (one, two, three, four, five), sizing them up horizontally and vertically, and confronting the trade-offs in quality and depth. This reflects how many of us compare rotations in the abstract, and I wanted to see if this could be applied more broadly. Read the rest of this entry »

The World Baseball Classic likely provided many fans their first glimpse of Nolan McLean. The 24-year-old right-hander debuted last August and made just eight big league starts. If you missed his work against Italy on March 10 – if you only caught the last six innings, or if you only saw his line at the end of the night – you might have wondered how McLean ended up starting the championship game for the United States against Venezuela. You might have wondered how this prospect with hardly any major league experience, who earned a 9.00 ERA along with the team’s only loss in the tournament to that point, could have possibly earned that honor over the other All-Stars on the roster.

McLean’s line against Italy wasn’t exactly inspiring. He allowed three earned runs across three innings. He struck out four, but he also walked two batters, hit another, and allowed two home runs. Most of the batted balls he gave up were hard hit. And after that ignominy, he was set to face off against Ronald Acuña Jr. in the championship game? The same Ronald Acuña Jr. who did this to the famous McLean sweeper back in August?

Even if that was your frame of reference coming into Tuesday night, it didn’t take long for the pieces to fall into place. As is so often the case with nasty young flamethrowers, McLean looked absolutely unhittable, even when he was getting hit. Eric Longenhagen has described McLean’s pitches as moving “violently,” and I think that’s right on the money. The slider doesn’t look like it’s sweeping so much as it looks like it’s changing its mind halfway to the plate. It’s an optical illusion due to the camera angle behind the pitcher, but it honestly looks like it’s shifting into top gear once it makes its left turn. The sinker looks like it’s teleporting to the catcher’s glove. The curveball looks like it’s suddenly realized that it has left its curling iron plugged in and needs to get back home as soon as possible. (Even a curveball needs to feel pretty every sometimes.) Read the rest of this entry »

About a month ago, the Padres went shopping over the long weekend and landed a bunch of old guys who seemed pretty washed. I was glib in my appraisal of those moves, suggesting that they’d only work out if A.J. Preller had a time machine.

The Padres live in a perpetual state of roster turnover, which occasionally leaves gaps. That’s how you end up with no. 4 starter Germán Márquez, or platoon first baseman Nick Castellanos. But those two are on major league deals; they were always likely to make the roster in some capacity, regardless of how you feel about those late-2010s stalwarts now.

But nothing so concrete was promised to Walker Buehler, who came to camp in Peoria on a minor league deal with a non-roster invite. Read the rest of this entry »