No sooner had pitchers and catchers begun reporting to Tampa, Florida than the Yankees rotation sustained a double blow. On Monday, Nestor Cortes revealed that he had suffered a hamstring strain that will keep him from participating in the World Baseball Classic and sideline him for at least part of spring training. On Wednesday, the team announced that Frankie Montas will undergo arthroscopic shoulder surgery next week and at best will be limited to a late-season return. While the team has the depth to cover for both losses — indeed, their rotation currently tops our preseason Depth Charts by a full win — the Yankees can’t afford for much more to go wrong with the unit.

The 28-year-old Cortes is coming off a breakout campaign during which he made the AL All-Star team and blew past his previous career high of 93 innings. His 158.1 innings fell just short of qualifying for the ERA title but among AL pitchers with at least 150 innings, his 2.44 ERA ranked ninth, his 3.13 FIP eighth, and his 3.6 WAR tied for 10th. He missed a couple of turns due to a late-season groin strain that recurred in the Yankees’ final game of the season, their ALCS Game 4 loss to the Astros.

Cortes had agreed to pitch for Team USA in next month’s World Baseball Classic, and so like other participants in the tournament, he reported to camp on Monday, three days ahead of the Yankees’ official report date for pitchers and catchers. Upon reporting, he revealed that he had suffered “a low Grade 2” strain of his right hamstring while running sprints on February 6 near his home in Miami. He has been able to continue his throwing program, and manager Aaron Boone and pitching coach Matt Blake both told reporters on Wednesday that they believe Cortes will be ready by Opening Day; he even threw a bullpen on Friday morning. Looking ahead, the Yankees open at home against the Giants on March 30, and thanks to an off day on the 31st, they won’t need a fifth starter until April 5 against the Phillies. Read the rest of this entry »

On October 27, 2008, I lay sprawled on the carpet in front of the television, watching as Cole Hamels twirled yet another postseason masterpiece. My new puppy sat calmly by my side, having finally learned the rally towel was my toy, not his. Hamels pitched six innings that night; he could have gone deeper were it not for a 48-hour rain delay, but his efforts proved to be enough. Two days later, I was jumping with joy into my father’s arms as Hamels clutched the World Series trophy in his.

Fifteen years later, the living room carpet is long gone. The TV remains, although it’s wildly out of date. That new puppy is now officially geriatric, with greying fur and two bad hips. My father would prefer I no longer jump into his arms; he gets enough of a workout carrying our 50-pound dog up and down the stairs.

Forty different players took the field for the Phillies in 2008. Thirty-nine have since retired. Hamels, however, isn’t quite ready to submit to the passage of time. On Thursday afternoon, the veteran left-hander signed a minor league deal with the Padres and will head to Peoria as a non-roster invitee, hoping to make his way back to the big leagues at 39 years old. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Wacha is a boring free agent. Don’t take it personally, Padres fans or Cardinals fans from his electrifying 2013 run; he’s still a very competent pitcher who delivered a classic playoff performance as a rookie. At this point in his career, though, he’s a competent rotation filler, a fourth or fifth starter who offers bulk innings at a reasonable rate. As Michael Baumann already detailed, that suits San Diego just fine.

Naturally, since this is the Padres, that bread-and-butter signing comes with a wildly complicated contract structure. It’s a one-year, $7.5 million deal, or a three-year, $39.5 million deal, or a four-year, $26 million deal with innings pitched bonuses — or even some fraction thereof. No word on whether it’s also Optimus Prime, but it’s certainly a transformer:

Wacha deal with Padres:
Four years, $26M

Signing bonus $3.5M

2023 $4M

Club options, must be picked up simultaneously
2024 $16M
2025 $16M
 
If club options declined
2024 player option $6.5M
2025 player option $6M
2026 player option $6M
All exercised one at a time.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 16, 2023

One thing is for sure: the Padres aren’t afraid of a little complexity. They signed Nick Martinez to a similar deal earlier in the offseason. These nested and mutually exclusive options are hard to parse, but I think they’re an interesting idea, so let’s talk through the different ways this deal could go and what it means for both Wacha and the Padres. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 1012

On this edition of the pod, we talk to a player/analyst in the Cardinals system before hearing the story of how our RosterResource guru got here.

• At the top of the show, David Laurila welcomes Ryan Loutus, a 24-year-old right-hander who went undrafted out of a D-III school and now finds himself in the Cardinals’ big league camp. Loutos has impressed on the mound, but he has also been a big contributor off the field, working as an analyst for the club to develop a player-facing app and help convey data to his teammates. David asks Ryan about balancing his focus between his two responsibilities, weighing pitching science vs. pitching feel, his analysis of his own arsenal, and what he might do after his pitching days are over. [3:57]
• After that, Ben Clemens asks Jason Martinez to share his own FanGraphs Backstory. We hear about wanting to run through a wall thanks to a Bob Gibson biography, working at the YMCA, starting a band, and eventually having the idea to create RosterResource. Jason also tells us how he and RosterResource ended up here at FanGraphs, spending a long time searching for the thing he was destined to do, and seeing Ruppert Jones go deep at his first Padres game. [26:55]

To purchase a FanGraphs membership for yourself or as a gift, click here.

To donate to FanGraphs and help us keep things running, click here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @dhhiggins on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hour 19 minute play time.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the release of FanGraphs’ playoff odds and the biggest differences between the FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus playoff and World Series odds, then continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the Seattle Mariners (18:28) with Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times and the Chicago White Sox (1:03:48) with The Athletic’s James Fegan, plus a Past Blast (1:49:08) from 1970 and a postscript.

Audio intro: Spiritualized, “Do it All Over Again”
Audio interstitial: Superchunk, “Low F”
Audio outro: The Stooges, “1970”

Link to Ohtani’s FA comments
Link to FG playoff odds announcement
Link to FG playoff odds
Link to Ben C. on the playoff odds
Link to PECOTA-based odds
Link to odds differences spreadsheet
Link to MASN statement
Link to Mariners offseason tracker
Link to Mariners depth chart
Link to Ryan’s spring training preview
Link to Ryan’s author archive
Link to 2023 draft order
Link to Vogt hiring news
Link to White Sox offseason tracker
Link to White Sox depth chart
Link to The Athletic’s offseason grades
Link to James’s spring training preview
Link to James’s author archive
Link to FG’s 2B projections
Link to 1970 article source
Link to 1970 Winter Meetings info
Link to SABR’s source
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to McCarver’s NYT obit
Link to Angell’s McCarver profile
Link to Angell on McCarver again
Link to FG’s Negro Leagues stats
Link to info on racetrack
Link to info on photography
Link to more info on photography
Link to third photography article
Link to fourth photography article
Link to fifth photography article

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

They say you should never go to the grocery store hungry. If you do, you could end up like the Padres: A cart full of shortstops, eye-catching extensions for key players like Yu Darvish and Robert Suarez, and even a couple fun veteran DH types from the end caps to snack on during the drive home. Then you get home, unload the car, and realize you forgot something essential like bread, or coffee, or the entire back half of a starting rotation.

So you have to go back to the store and pick up a Michael Wacha before spring training:

Wacha agreement with Padres has complex structure that could earn him more than $24M over four years, sources tell @TheAthletic. Deal includes player and team options that protect both Wacha’s upside and downside while lowering his AAV for luxury-tax purposes. Pending physical.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 15, 2023

Read the rest of this entry »

Gary Sanchez finally has a team… sort of. Last week, he was one of two catchers named to Team Dominican Republic’s roster for the 2023 World Baseball Classic, which gets underway next month. Meanwhile, although pitchers and catchers have reported to major league camps this week, Sanchez still doesn’t have a destination, as he remains a free agent.

By our count, Sanchez is one of just four position players who put up at least 1.0 WAR last year but remain on the market, along with shortstop Elvis Andrus (3.5), outfielder Jurickson Profar (2.5) and infielder José Iglesias (1.0). Admittedly, he’s not coming off a great season with the Twins, but Sanchez’s 1.3 WAR was respectable, his 89 wRC+ matched the major league average for catchers, and he had his best defensive season since 2018, reversing a multiyear decline.

Aside from rumors of interest from the Giants in January and the Angels earlier this month, the Sanchez burner of the hot stove has barely flickered this winter, but things heated up a bit in the wee hours of Wednesday after Sanchez and strength and conditioning coach Theo Aasen shared a short Instagram video of the 30-year-old backstop doing some exercises and baseball activities while wearing a shirt with the Yankees’ insignia. Read the rest of this entry »

Will Bednar had a disappointing 2022 season. Drafted 14th overall in 2021 by the San Francisco Giants after a breakout campaign at Mississippi State University, the 22-year-old right-hander battled back issues and saw both his velocity and command take a step in the wrong direction. Pitching at Low-A San Jose, he logged a 4.19 ERA and issued 22 free passes in 43 innings. But there were positives, too. Even with the health-related downtick in his power arsenal’s effectiveness, the younger brother of Pittsburgh Pirates closer David Bednar fanned 51 batters and allowed just 25 hits.

One year ago this month, our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote that “Bednar’s best pitch is a plus low-80s slider with plenty of bite.” The offering remains the righty’s go-to, and I talked to him about it during his stint in the Arizona Fall League.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with the nuts and bolts. What is your repertoire?

Will Bednar: “Fastball, slider, changeup. I’ve been kind of playing around with a little bit of a two-seam, too.”

Laurila: The slider is your best pitch?

Bednar: “Yeah. The slider is definitely my best pitch. Without a doubt.”

Laurila: What is the story behind it? Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t like this title any more than you do. It just sounds so wrong. The guy with the largest contract signed by a pitcher in the history of the game is underrated? The New York Yankees ace isn’t being given his due? Preposterous! I might as well say no one watched the Super Bowl, or that we aren’t paying enough attention to weather balloons these days.

But uh… it’s true. I don’t have to like it and you don’t have to like it, but Cole is still one of the best pitchers in baseball, despite falling somewhat out of that conversation of late. He wasn’t even the most talked-about Yankee starter last year – that’d rightfully be Nestor Cortes. So consider this a Cole puff piece.

To begin, let’s consider our Depth Charts projections. These projections blend ZiPS and Steamer to produce rate statistic forecasts for every player. From there, Jason Martinez projects playing time, and those playing time projections cross with the rate statistics to produce overall projections. Cole sits in a tie for third place in projected WAR for 2023:

This shouldn’t be particularly surprising. He’s produced the ninth-most WAR among pitchers in the past two years, the ninth-most in the past three years, the third-most in the past four years, the third-most in the past five years… the point is, he’s consistently been one of the best in the game. While 2022 represented a down year, his overall body of work remains excellent.

What’s more, his 2022 swoon seems exaggerated to me. It represented his worst ERA since his Pittsburgh days, but luckily we have multiple statistics to describe pitching performance. I like to take a mosaic approach, looking at as many as I can and taking a rough average, and if you think of it that way, Cole’s 2022 looks pretty dang good. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers have had a fairly quiet offseason by their recent standards. Because they are set to exceed the competitive balance tax threshold for the third consecutive season, any spending over the $233 million limit will carry a 50% tax. As a result, Los Angeles has settled for smaller moves, bringing in Miguel Rojas via a trade with the Marlins and signing a couple of veterans to one-year deals. They added another free agent to that group on Friday, inking David Peralta to a one-year, $6.5 million contract with incentives that could bring the total to $8 million.

A long-time member of the Diamondbacks, Peralta peaked in 2018 with a 130 wRC+ and a career-high 30 home runs. In the three years after that breakout, he fell back to being a league average hitter with good plate discipline and decent power. A late-ish bloomer who converted away from the mound after he had already made his professional debut, the 35-year-old was never going to fit into Arizona’s rebuilding plan despite becoming a fan favorite in the desert. Read the rest of this entry »