The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the navigation tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Barry Bonds has a reasonable claim as the greatest position player of all time. Babe Ruth played in a time before integration, and Ted Williams bridged the pre- and post-integration eras, but while both were dominant at the plate, neither was much to write home about on the base paths or in the field. Bonds’ godfather, Willie Mays, was a big plus in both of those areas, but he didn’t dominate opposing pitchers to the same extent. Bonds used his blend of speed, power, and surgical precision in the strike zone to outdo them all. He set the single-season home run record with 73 in 2001 and the all-time home run record with 762, reached base more often than any player this side of Pete Rose, and won a record seven MVP awards along the way.

Despite his claim to greatness, Bonds may have inspired more fear and loathing than any ballplayer in modern history. Fear, because opposing pitchers and managers simply refused to engage him at his peak, intentionally walking him a record 688 times — once with the bases loaded — and giving him a free pass a total of 2,558 times, also a record. Loathing, because even as a young player, he rubbed teammates and media the wrong way (and occasionally, even his manager), and approached the game with a chip on his shoulder because of the way his father, three-time All-Star Bobby Bonds, had been driven from the game due to alcoholism. The younger Bonds had his own issues off the field, as allegations of physical and verbal abuse of his domestic partners surfaced during his career. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago White Sox have two of baseball’s most promising pitching prospects. Noah Schultz, a 22-year-old left-hander who was drafted 26th overall in 2022 out of an Oswego, Illinois high school is currently no. 22 on The Board with a 55 FV. Hagen Smith, himself a 22-year-old southpaw, was drafted fifth overall in 2024 out of the University of Arkansas and is no. 81 with a 50 FV. Each possesses a power arm, and both have a lot to prove in the forthcoming season — albeit for different reasons. Schultz was limited to 73 innings this year due to injury, while Smith dealt with command issues and lacks a solid third pitch.

I asked White Sox executive vice president/general manager Chris Getz about the young pitchers during last week’s GM Meetings in Las Vegas.

“For Noah, it was an inconsistent year,” Getz said of the 6-foot-10 Schultz, who struggled to the tune of a 4.68 ERA between Double-A Birmingham and Triple-A Charlotte. “Much of that was related to his knee — he had patellar tendonitis — and he needed be to shut down. He’s doing [physical therapy] and strengthening right now. I anticipate that once the knee is completely healed, once it is healthy and completely strong, we are going to get the version of Noah that made him a top prospect in our game. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Texas Rangers.

Batters

Finishing the season with an exactly .500 record seems a fitting fate for the 2025 Texas Rangers, a team that spent most of the year jumping into and out of the playoff race, until their demise was eventually sealed by an eight-game losing streak in September. The oldest team in baseball this year, the Rangers got a lot of production out of their core performers, but a pitching swoon in August and September, and holes at the offense-heavy positions, left the team short of its goal of getting back to the playoffs and grabbing a second World Series trophy. That 2023 championship campaign is the only season in the last nine in which Texas finished with a winning record. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t want to overstate the value of raw financial power in baseball. The Mets spent more than $320 million on player salaries, not counting luxury tax penalties, and they finished four games over .500. Money can’t buy happiness, or even a spot in the playoffs.

It can, however, buy you a closer and a major upgrade to your bench. So the Braves demonstrated Wednesday, when they re-signed closer Raisel Iglesias for one year at $16 million, and swapped utility infielders with the Astros, sending Nick Allen west in a 1-for-1 trade for Mauricio Dubón.

The Braves went into last season as one of the favorites to win the NL pennant only to tumble to fourth place behind the Marlins (the Marlins!) after befalling a series of farces and calamities that recall A Serious Man. Jurickson Profar got popped for PEDs, Spencer Strider and Ozzie Albies lost their juice, half the roster got hurt, it was a huge mess. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Detroit Tigers.

Batters

This year was like two very different seasons in one for the Detroit Tigers. Through July 8, their high-water mark in 2025, the Tigers had the best record in baseball, and held an imposing 14 game lead over the Twins and Royals. Over the final three months of the season, however, they barely played .400 ball, and won less often than any of the White Sox, Pirates, or Nationals. While the threats from the Twins and the Royals didn’t prove to be fatal, the Guardians made up a 15 1/2 game gap to grab the division at the last moment, and the Tigers just barely snuck into the postseason on the strength of a tiebreaker with the Astros. By comparison, the humiliations of the 1978 Red Sox and 1969 Cubs (nine games) were minor. While the Tigers were able to get revenge against the Guardians in the Wild Card round, they were bounced by the Mariners in a 15-inning Game 5 nail-biter in the ALDS. But in what might end up being Tarik Skubal’s final season with the team, the Tigers don’t have much time to brood on the summer of 2025. Read the rest of this entry »

“OK, but what if you could steal first base?” is surely a thought that’s occurred to just about every baseball fan. We’ve all seen players come up who look like absolute studs, except for one thing: They can’t hit. It’s only one skill, but it’s the most important skill for a position player.

I remember having a simply overpowering version of this thought in the press box at Camden Yards during the 2024 ALDS. Maikel Garcia’s tools sizzled and crackled with potential. He’s stolen 37 bases in 39 regular-season attempts. His defense at third base was very good, good enough to play shortstop on a team that had not been built around the best shortstop on the planet. Garcia played 157 regular-season games for the Royals in 2024, and he was about as good a player as you can be with a single-digit home run total and a .281 OBP.

Those two headline numbers do limit one’s potential, unfortunately.

In October, Garcia poked enough grounders through the infield to eke out a .318 batting average in Kansas City’s six playoff games, teasing us with the hope of what could have been if he just learned how to hit. Read the rest of this entry »

November is supposed to be a sleepy time of the offseason, with qualifying offers and 40-man roster shenanigans the main points of interest. This year has had a few fun surprises, though. First, Josh Naylor returned to the Mariners on a five-year deal, a surprise less in terms of destination than timing – these sorts of contracts normally wait until December. Now, we have a bona fide challenge trade: The Orioles are sending Grayson Rodriguez to the Angels in exchange for Taylor Ward.

Rodriguez, one of the top pitching prospects in baseball a few years ago, is also one of the toughest players in the majors to evaluate. The potential is there. He has multiple putaway secondaries, a lively fastball he can command to multiple parts of the zone, and he’s athletic enough that his command has trended upwards from fringe to average, with the kind of trajectory that makes you expect more to come. If you’re looking for an ace, you’re probably looking for someone whose skills roughly look like this.

On the other hand, unavailability is the worst ability, to twist the tired old saying ever so slightly. Rodriguez has struggled to stay on the field in his time in the majors, and that’s putting it lightly. He missed a good chunk of 2022, his last minor league season, with a lat strain. He then missed half of 2024 with two different shoulder injuries, while another lat strain and bone spurs in his elbow cost him the entirety of the 2025 season. At this point, three of his last four seasons have been severely curtailed by major injuries, including recurring shoulder problems. Read the rest of this entry »

Well sports fans, it’s that time again. We Tried season is officially upon us, and for the second offseason in a row, I will be keeping my eye fixed firmly on the periphery of the action. For the uninitiated, We Tried is a noun in this context. It’s the name for the phenomenon of reporters announcing, once a player has signed with a team, that another team was interested in signing that player too. Team A might have succeeded in landing the player in question, but Team B wants to make sure the public knows that they failed to sign him because they want credit for that failure. It is both our duty and great honor to award that credit. The illustrious Jon Becker has once again graciously offered to host the We Tried Tracker on his maniacally comprehensive MLB Matrices spreadsheet, so be sure to check there for all the latest in major league effort.

Jeff Passan, ESPN’s officially-licensed baseball bombardier, kicked off the real offseason bright and early on Tuesday morning (Becker tipped me off to the news not long after). At 7:00 AM, Passan published an offseason preview that featured a key piece of information about Josh Naylor, who agreed to return to the Mariners this past weekend:

The largest free agent contract the Pirates have ever handed out was more than a decade ago: three years and $39 million to Francisco Liriano. They are consistently a bottom-five payroll team. And yet the Pirates were primed to spend more than twice that on Josh Naylor before he re-upped with Seattle for five years and $92.5 million in the first signing of the winter on Sunday night — and they’re considering other possibilities to supplement Paul Skenes and a rotation that was among the five best in MLB in the second half.

Read the rest of this entry »

For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

Much like during the 2020 COVID season, the 2025 Reds finished just above .500, barely squeaked into the playoffs, and got bounced from the Wild Card round in two games. At least this time around, they actually scored runs! But the lineup was a recurring problem in the regular season, the biggest reason Cincy needed a late-summer collapse by the Mets in order to play October baseball. The lineup’s 13.2 WAR ranked 26th in baseball, with Elly De La Cruz and TJ Friedl combining for more than half of that total. Finishing 21st in home runs isn’t good for a team that plays in one of the best home run parks in the majors today. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2026 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the navigation 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.

Carlos Beltrán was the quintessential five-tool player, a switch-hitting center fielder who harnessed his physical talents and became a superstar. Aided by a high baseball IQ that was essentially his sixth tool, he spent 20 seasons in the majors, making nine All-Star teams, winning three Gold Gloves, and helping five different franchises reach the playoffs, where he put together some of the most dominant stretches in postseason history. At the end of his career, he helped the Astros win a championship.

Drafted out of Puerto Rico by the Royals, Beltrán didn’t truly thrive until he was traded away. He spent the heart of his career in New York, first with the Mets — on what was at the time the largest free-agent contract in team history — and later the Yankees. He endured his ups and downs in the Big Apple and elsewhere, including his share of injuries. Had he not missed substantial portions of three seasons, he might well have reached 3,000 hits, but even as it is, he put up impressive, Cooperstown-caliber career numbers. Not only is he one of just eight players with 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases, but he also owns the highest stolen base success rate (86.4%) of any player with at least 200 attempts.

Alas, two years after Beltrán’s career ended, he was identified as the player at the center of the biggest baseball scandal in a generation: the Astros’ illegal use of video replay to steal opponents’ signs in 2017 and ’18. He was “the godfather of the whole program” in the words of Tom Koch-Weser, the team’s director of advance information, and the only player identified in commissioner Rob Manfred’s January 2020 report. But between that report and additional reporting by the Wall Street Journal, it seems apparent that the whole roster, as well as higher-ups including bench coach Alex Cora, manager A.J. Hinch, and general manager Jeff Luhnow, was well aware of the system and didn’t stop him or his co-conspirators. In that light, it’s worth wondering about the easy narrative that has left Beltrán holding the bag; Hinch hardly had to break stride in getting another managerial job once his suspension ended, and Cora was rehired as Red Sox manager after he served his suspension. While Beltrán was not disciplined by the league, the fallout cost him his job as manager of the Mets before he could even oversee a game, and he has yet to get another opportunity. Read the rest of this entry »