CJ Abrams does not wait patiently. That’s never been his thing. He rampaged his way to the major leagues in 2022 at age 21, on a playoff contender no less. Now, should he have been in the majors that year? It’s easy, in retrospect, to question San Diego’s decision to call him up. He was below replacement level as a rookie with the Padres before they sent him to the Nationals in the Juan Soto trade, and then he was also below replacement level with Washington that year. But doing things even before they make sense has always been Abrams’ game.
To wit: You wouldn’t teach a major leaguer to swing like Abrams does. He’s one of the most aggressive hackers in the sport. His 53.1% swing rate – and 34.2% chase rate – are both among the highest marks in the league. And this isn’t some case of premeditated, Corey Seager-style aggression, either. Everyone who swings more frequently than Abrams swings at more strikes than he does. Seager chases seven percentage points less frequently and swings at strikes seven percentage points more frequently. Abrams isn’t playing six dimensional chess when he swings. He’s trying to do this:
That’s absurd (complimentary). As fate would have it, I was watching that game on TV when it happened as part of an article I hoped to write on the opposing pitcher, Hayden Birdsong. I made a strange sound when Abrams hit that ball, somewhere between a laugh and a gasp. Look at his contact point again:
The 2025 Major League Baseball season began at 6:10 a.m. Eastern on Monday in the Tokyo Dome. After tuneups against NPB teams, the Cubs and Dodgers played a game that counted, though it still featured telltale signs of mid-March rust. Below, some notes on the game (and, more importantly, managerial eyewear).
First Inning
The first pitch of the game, Shota Imanaga to Shohei Ohtani, is a four-seam fastball for a called strike. The K-Zone graphic says it’s way too high. Statcast says it’s perfectly located at the top of the zone. Ohtani doesn’t challenge. This isn’t spring training anymore.
Both the Chicago and Los Angeles broadcasts have the crowd noise dialed way down, which is a shame. For all the talk of the electric atmosphere, the crowd registers as faint background noise, an oscillating fan in the other room.
Second Inning
In the top of the second, Imanaga walks the first two Dodgers and shakes his head in anger. In the dugout, Craig Counsell reaches for his spectacles.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto is having trouble locating too. In the bottom half, Dansby Swanson stays back and drives a curveball back up the middle. It’s the first hit of the season. Miguel Amaya doubles him home with a liner to right center. It’s the first run of the season. Yamamoto gets out of the inning by dotting a curve at the bottom of the zone to freeze Jon Berti. It doesn’t quite seem fair.
Third Inning
Imanaga leads Ohtani off with a high, hanging sweeper. It stays inside, and Ohtani tries and fails to let his elbow drift into it. “This has gotta be a splitter right here,” says Clayton Kershaw up in the booth when the count gets to 2-2. It’s another high sweeper, and Ohtani smashes it right at the second baseman for a lineout. Kershaw feels vindicated; he didn’t predict the pitch correctly, but the pitch he didn’t predict got crushed.
Ian Happ chops Yamamoto’s first pitch straight into the ground. A backpedaling Yamamoto reaches up and biffs it with the tip of his glove, slowing it down just enough that the second baseman can’t catch Happ.
Michael Busch’s bat looks like it’s as old as he is. The black finish is all nicked and scuffed, like he spent the offseason using it to knock the side of the TV when the reception got fuzzy. It’s the only thing on the screen that isn’t shiny and new. He grounds out on a splitter just like everyone else.
Fourth Inning
A giant screen behind home plate advertises a company called dip, all lowercase. If we’re lucky, we will never have to think about this company again.
Imanaga walks two more batters. Pitching coach Tommy Hottovy, a dark horse contender for the best name in baseball, walks out to say hello. Enrique Hernández lifts the first fly ball of the game, a deep out to center field.
Counsell picks up the phone. The Dodgers still don’t have a hit. Imanaga’s night is done.
Fifth Inning
The center field camera is lower than usual. It gives a nice view of the strike zone, and it has the added benefit of making the pitcher look larger than life. Ben Brown appears to be releasing the ball approximately eight inches from home plate.
The action picks up. Strikeout. Walk. Ohtani rips a single into right field. First and third, first hit of the game for the Dodgers. Ohtani and first base coach Chris Woodward lean in close, turn, and gently touch helmets.
Tommy Edman sends a dying liner into left. Happ lays out but can only trap it. First and second, tie ballgame. Teoscar Hernández hits a chopper to Matt Shaw at third. He throws to second to get the force, but Berti makes the turn and throws the ball away, allowing Ohtani to score from second. Will Smith chops one through the left side, and it’s a 3-1 game. Hottovy returns to the mound. Brown has a moustache as fine as cornsilk.
Max Muncy’s bat is painted industrial gray. He chases a big curveball in the dirt, then drops the bat in the dirt.
Yamamoto induces a couple hard groundballs. Miguel Rojas makes a nice play deep in the hole at short. Enrique Hernández makes a nice play deep in the hole at first, which isn’t something you get to say very often. Yamamoto punches Happ out with a fastball on the corner.
Sixth Inning
Yamamoto receives congratulations in the dugout. His night is done after five innings: one run, three hits, four strikeouts, one walk.
Ohtani comes up with two on and two out. You can finally hear the crowd for a moment. Brown strikes him out on three pitches. The crowd gasps.
With lefties due up for the Cubs, Anthony Banda replaces Yamamoto. There’s a little bit of Roy Hobbs in his delivery; it’s the way he swings his arms upward at the beginning. Three up, three down.
Seventh Inning
Brown is still out there, and when the Dodgers aren’t hitting him, he looks unhittable. But he’s profligate, requiring 65 pitches to get through 2 2/3 innings. He issues a two-out walk, and Counsell emerges from the dugout, glasses hooked on the collar of his jersey. Eli Morgan is everything Brown isn’t: short, dark-haired, economical. Muncy chops his first pitch to second base and the inning is over.
The crowd murmurs when Swanson lifts a Ben Casparius fastball into the right field corner, but Teoscar Hernández eventually drifts over to make the play. Pete Crow-Armstrong whiffs and sends his bat cartwheeling back toward the dugout.
Eighth Inning
With one out in the eighth, umpire Bill Miller stops the game because of a fan with a laser pointer in the left field stands. After play resumes, Michael Conforto drives a ball down the left field line for a double. For the third year in a row, the Dodgers are celebrating their doubles with the Freddie Freeman dance. Freeman was a last minute scratch with a rib injury. Attempting his own dance would probably leave him in agony right now.
“Day-O,” sings Harry Belafonte. Halfway through the crowd’s response, whoever’s in charge of the sound mix finally turns up the crowd noise for a moment. They dial down the fun again as soon as the call and response has finished.
Blake Treinen hits Berti on the forearm and the ball ricochets into Smith behind the plate for good measure. All of a sudden, the Cubs have the tying run at the plate. Berti steals second easily. Seiya Suzuki, 0-for-3 on the night, comes to the plate with two outs. He could be the hero. The crowd roars when Suzuki fouls a fastball into the stands on the first base side, but Treinen catches him way out in front on a sweeper, resulting in a weak liner to third.
“Thank you,” says Treinen to his God as he walks off the mound. Miller meets Treinen on the third base line and chats him up as he pats his pitching hand.
Ninth Inning
Ohtani hooks another base hit down the line, this one a line drive double off a Ryan Brasier slider. As is so often the case, Ohtani looks awkward, completely off balance, like he just reached out to poke the ball, but it comes off the bat at 107.8 mph. An Edman groundout and a Teoscar Hernández single bring Ohtani home, extending the lead to 4-1. Brasier gets into more trouble, gets out of it.
The Dodgers have chosen to forgo the gold trim with which World Series champions are allowed to accent their uniforms. The only gaudy touch is the MLB logo on the back of the jersey, which has had its white negative space gilded.
The other indicator of the Dodgers’ dominance, the addition that takes them from great to downright decadent, comes in from the bullpen. Tanner Scott sets the Cubs down in order, and just like that, Los Angeles is in first place once again.
I don’t know everything about baseball, but I know this: When a player’s name is in a headline that ends with the phrase “Stares Down Oblivion,” that’s not a good sign. That happened to Joey Gallo four weeks ago, as Michael Rosen wrote a lovely tribute to a popular player whose career seemed to be nearing its end. If the headline weren’t ominous enough, little of what followed augured good things: A table that showed Gallo posting the two highest single-season whiff rates of the decade; a comparison to Ken Griffey Jr. and Andruw Jones, but only during their time with the White Sox; a metaphor about hanging off a cliff by one’s fingertips.
Gallo went 2-for-20 for the White Sox in Cactus League play, and while a minute batting average is nothing new, Gallo’s secondary skills — the talents that made him an impactful big leaguer — were not in evidence. Both of his hits were singles, and he drew just one walk.
The man might swing from his heels, but he’s smart enough to read the signs. So on Sunday, he posted a video of old defensive highlights to X with the caption, “It’s been fun outfield,” with a peace sign emoji. A retirement announcement, perhaps? It seems Gallo also realized he’d been ambiguous, so 11 minutes later he sent a follow-up post: “Just to be clear, I will be pitching.” Read the rest of this entry »
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA — For the Los Angeles Dodgers, being able to pay so many stars comes with a hidden value that one general manager has called “the unseen part of spending.”
The Dodgers have impact players like Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Blake Snell on big contracts. As their luxury tax bill goes up, and as they sign free agents with qualifying offers attached to them, the Dodgers lose out on draft picks and bonus pool money for international free agents.
But they’ve made up for some of the future value that they’ve lost. The Dodgers are known for their buying moves, but they can also sell with the best of them.
“When they go out and acquire players, that makes other good players available,” said Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, who has been a part of one of those deals with the Dodgers. “They’ve done a really good job of going out and getting good prospects.” Read the rest of this entry »
Jackson Jobe supplied a quality quote when asked about last weekend’s three-straight-heaters punchout of Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr..””I’m done with trying to dot a gnat’s ass,” he told a small group of reporters. “It’s, ‘Here’s my stuff. If you hit it, good. Odds are, probably not.”
Jobe is a student of the art and science of his craft, so I proceeded to ask him where he feels he is in terms development. Has the 22-year-old Detroit Tigers right-hander essentially settled into his mound identity, or is there still work left to be done in the pitch lab?
“I’d like to think I got it pretty much all fine-tuned,” replied Jobe, who is No. 9 on our Top 100. “Now it’s just learning the best way to use it, the best way to sequence it. I put my stuff up against anyone in the league on paper, to be completely honest. It’s just a matter of learning how to harness it.”
Asked about any recent changes to his pitch metrics, the rookie of the year candidate cited his slider. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about completing the season preview series, then preview the 2025 New York Yankees (7:48) with Gary Phillips of the New York Daily News, and the 2025 Chicago White Sox (1:04:41) with Sox Machine’s James Fegan.
Ronald Acuña Jr. did something we’ve never seen in 2023, becoming the first player to combine at least 40 homers and 70 stolen bases in the same season en route to NL MVP honors. Unfortunately, Acuña followed up that spectacular season by doing something we had seen before when he tore his anterior cruciate ligament. Having already torn his right ACL just before the All-Star break in 2021, he tore his left one last May 26. While he was playing defense for the first one and stealing a base for the second, the end result was the same: season-ending surgery and a massive hole in the Braves’ lineup. The team has taken his rehab more slowly this time around. Acuña will start the year on the injured list, and likely miss the first month if not more.
When Acuña reported to camp in mid-February, the Braves said that he wouldn’t play in any Grapefruit League games. The 27-year-old slugger has since been cleared for some baseball activity, and has been entertaining onlookers with his long-distance home runs in batting practice, building a legend in the process. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Ken Suguria, Braves manager Brian Snitker claimed that one Acuña homer cleared a video board beyond left center field at CoolToday Park, the team’s spring facility — a shot that would have traveled at least 450 feet.
“[Hitting coach Tim Hyers] was saying he was in the cage the other day and [Acuña was] whistling that bat around like guys would do a Wiffle bat,” Snitker told reporters. “He’s probably as strong as he’s ever been right now.” Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
You’ve all heard the terms “luddite” and “sabotage” before. They’re words with pejorative connotations: The former is someone who distrusts technological progress; the latter is the act of conspiring to destroy from within. Luddites and saboteurs are rubes and terrorists, respectively, in modern vernacular.
Jeff Hoffman is a different pitcher than the one who was drafted ninth overall by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2014. The 32-year-old right-hander has changed organizations multiple times, most recently moving from the Phillies back to his original team on a three-year, $33 million contract he signed in January. He earned that deal following back-to-back years in which he came into his own on the mound. Since being signed off the scrap heap by Philadelphia prior to the 2023 season, Hoffman has made 122 relief appearances and logged a 2.28 ERA, a 2.58 FIP, and a 33.4% strikeout rate over 118 2/3 innings. Before his breakthrough, he’d appeared in 134 games with a 5.68 ERA and a 5.34 FIP over 348 1/3 innings from 2016-2022.
Expectations were high when he entered pro ball. A potential first overall pick before injuring his elbow during his draft season at East Carolina University, Hoffman ranked second on our 2015 Blue Jays Top Prospects list despite having undergone Tommy John surgery the previous summer.
What did his FanGraphs scouting report look like at that time? Moreover, what does he think of it all these years later? Curious to find out, I shared some of what our then-lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel wrote back in 2015 and asked Hoffman to respond to it.
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“He broke out in the summer before the draft on the Cape, flashing an 80 fastball and 65 or 70 curveball from an athletic delivery, projectable frame and shockingly good feel to pitch given the power stuff.Read the rest of this entry »
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