When addressing his team’s acquisition of Garrett Crochet at the Winter Meetings, Craig Breslow said that the 25-year-old southpaw’s relationship with the Red Sox’ analytics group will be important, so that he “can continue to understand how he can get the best out of his stuff.” I subsequently asked Boston’s Chief Baseball Officer if, based on their pre-trade homework, they have identified any specific adjustments Crochet might want to make, or if they plan to mostly just let him keep doing what he does.

“I think the answer is probably both,” replied Breslow. “Right? We want to lean into what he does particularly well, and he does a lot of things really, really well. You look at the strikeouts, and especially the strikeouts relative to the walks; that’s a pretty good underpinning for a really successful starting pitcher. Once we have a chance to get to know him, have conversations with him, we’ll lean on [pitching coach Andrew Bailey] and the rest of the group. But it’s probably not fair to talk about what adjustments we might make before we’ve had a chance to have that conversation with him.”

Crochet is looking forward to the conversation. He expects it to take place in the coming week, and he’ll go into it with thoughts he’s been formulating since last summer. When I talked to Crochet in late August, he spoke of usage percentages and how he’d begun tinkering with a sinker. I reminded him of that earlier exchange when he met with the Boston media over Zoom on Friday, then proceeded to ask about his forthcoming discussions with the Red Sox pitching department. Read the rest of this entry »

When Juan Soto signed with the Mets this week, there were four parties who should’ve been celebrating: First, the Mets, who nabbed the biggest on-base threat since Barry Bonds, and in the process got to blow raspberries at their old money neighbors. Second, Soto himself, who was already grotesquely wealthy but is now due the kind of lucre that will allow him to oppress multitudes if he so chooses. Third, Scott Boras, who in addition to being paid a handsome commission proved that he still had his mojo after a mortifying 2023-24 offseason.

The fourth winner: Kyle Tucker. The “next-best thing” to a 26-year-old free agent with a .421 career OBP, to someone who is projected by ZiPS to accumulate more than 100 WAR, is… well there’s no such animal. But Tucker is as close as you’ll get these days. If Soto is worth $51 million a year, what is Tucker worth? I don’t know. Neither do the Houston Astros, but they’re clearly not interested in finding out.

On Friday, Houston traded the presumptive top free agent in next year’s class to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for Isaac Paredes, Hayden Wesneski, and third base prospect Cam Smith. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a ritual as old as time. The Brewers develop an intriguing young player into an All-Star, and a fun one at that. Next, that player approaches free agency – that’s how time works. The Brewers then trade that player to a contending team, getting back a few players with multiple years of team control. Finally, the Brewers develop those players into stars, spin the wheel again, and the band plays on. Today’s edition: Milwaukee traded Devin Williams to the Yankees in exchange for Nestor Cortes and infield prospect Caleb Durbin, as Jeff Passan first reported.

Williams is the rare pitcher who isn’t even as famous as his best pitch. His screwball/changeup hybrid is nicknamed The Airbender, and it’s been making major leaguers look like overmatched kids for years. On the back of that pitch and a plus fastball, he’s compiled a career ERA of 1.83 over five-plus seasons of dominance. His 39.4% career strikeout rate reads like a typo. He rose to prominence during the 2020 season, and he’s been the second-best reliever in baseball since then, trailing only Emmanuel Clase.

It doesn’t matter what you call the pitch; Williams’ results speak for themselves. “Changeup-first dominant closer” only sounds fluky until you look at the raw data. He misses more bats than Josh Hader. He might even be better than his run-prevention numbers would suggest, because the runs he gives up come in bunches. In 2023, for example, he gave up 10 earned runs all year, and four were in a single game. The upshot: He’s first among relievers in win probability added by a ton, because a truly outrageous number of his games end in scoreless innings. He’s not Mariano Rivera, but he might be the closest thing in today’s game: an automatic ninth inning.
Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox finished the 2024 season with my fourth-ranked farm system, and now they’ve added four good prospects via their trade with the Red Sox centered around lefty starter Garrett Crochet, who is under contract for two more seasons. You can read about Crochet and the Red Sox here. Coming back to Chicago in exchange are soon-to-be 23-year-old catcher Kyle Teel, 2024 first-round pick Braden Montgomery, 22-year-old developmental righty Wikelman Gonzalez, and data darling 23-year-old infielder Chase Meidroth. Two of those players (Teel and Meidroth) have a good chance to debut in 2025.

I thought this deal was much better than what the White Sox got back from San Diego last March for two years of Dylan Cease. A blockbuster rule of thumb: Get back at least one high-probability everyday hitter. Teel fits the bill. He’s a well-rounded player who is a virtual lock to remain at catcher and who will probably hit for enough power to be the White Sox primary catcher a few years from now. Montgomery is a switch-hitter with immense lefty bat speed, and he may also turn into an everyday, power-hitting right fielder down the line. Meidroth (elite contact, no power) and Gonzalez (three good-looking pitches that don’t play due to poor control) each have a plus characteristic or two that should facilitate an eventual big league role, and both have a puncher’s chance to be more than that. While it’s painful to part with a talent like Crochet (who was a bold, injured draft pick in 2020), a four-for-one swap in which each prospect they acquired has a special skill and potentially meaningful upside gives the White Sox a great combination of depth and ceiling in this transaction. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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.

The fourth and final multi-candidate pairing of this series is by far the heaviest, covering two candidates who have both been connected to multiple incidents of domestic violence. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 21st 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 and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the New York Yankees.

Batters

The Yankees’ big problem on offense is an obvious one: Juan Soto is no longer in the lineup. Their position players are projected for 23.3 WAR, about 10 fewer wins from their 2024 total. Much of that is due to Soto’s absence, but ZiPS is also projecting Aaron Judge’s production to dip by three or four wins. That’s not a knock on Judge; remember, he put up 11.2 WAR last season, and no projection system worth anything would expect him not to regress in 2025.

Judge’s projection is still a dynamite one, but unfortunately for the Yankees, he stands alone in stardom in the lineup. There are a lot of good projections here. The Austin Wells/Jose Trevino catching tandem and shortstop Anthony Volpe are projected to eclipse 3.0 WAR. ZiPS expects Jazz Chisholm Jr. to be their second-best position player, and outfielders Jasson Domínguez and Trent Grisham to have solid campaigns. The problem is this group isn’t that exciting. Except for Judge, of course. The Yankees had the no. 2 offense in baseball (117 wRC+) in 2024, but unless they make some significant upgrades between now and Opening Day, expect them to take a step back at the plate.

ZiPS sees DH and first base as the two biggest problems in this lineup. The projections are tremendously unexcited about a Ben Rice/DJ LeMahieu timeshare at first. Giancarlo Stanton had a terrific postseason – and ZiPS factors in that production – but he was still only a .233/.298/.475 hitter in the regular season. Moreover, considering he turned 35 last month, he’s more likely to decline than improve moving forward. Barring injury, Stanton is going to be the Yankees’ regular DH in 2025, but the team could (read: should) add a first baseman over the next few months.

On the plus side, ZiPS thinks New York’s patchwork of second base options should adequately replace free agent Gleyber Torres if he signs elswhere.

The last concern ZiPS has is the organization’s minor league depth, especially on offense. The projections for Spencer Jones are much worse than the scouting consensus.

Pitchers

The Yankees overpaid this week when they agreed to sign Max Fried to the largest contract ever for a lefty pitcher, but that doesn’t mean it was a bad deal. On the contrary, because there is a lot of injury risk in this rotation, it was crucial for the Yankees to add a top-of-the-rotation starter, and ZiPS projects Fried to be their best pitcher this season by WAR. Some of Gerrit Cole’s projected dip is due to his missing a chunk of time in 2024 with an elbow injury, but that’s far from the only source of concern here. Now 34, Cole is allowing more contact these days, a trend that started in his 2023 Cy Young season, not this past year. ZiPS also projects Luis Gil to regress toward the mean, and it sees Carlos Rodón as an injury risk. Don’t get me wrong, the Yankees have a good starting rotation, especially if their pitchers stay healthy, but this group is a step or two below the top-shelf units of the Phillies and Dodgers.

ZiPS is more optimistic than Steamer is about New York’s bullpen. You won’t actually find relievers with projected ERAs above four until you get very deep in the pen, where you’ll see names like JT Brubaker and Yerry De Los Santos. While an extra relief arm or two would be welcome, I don’t think boosting the bullpen ought to be the team’s biggest priority.

All told, the Yankees are projected to finish with a win total in the high-80s or low-90s. That’s not ideal, of course, but that’s about where the Orioles sit right now as well, and nobody else in the division has a better projection. It’ll be interesting to see what the Yankees do the next few months.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2025 due to injury, and players who were released in 2024. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Ukulele Dixieland Jazz band that only covers songs by The Smiths, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.11.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky.

DALLAS — During the middle of the Winter Meetings, the Cleveland Guardians flipped Spencer Horwitz, the principal aspect of their return from the Toronto Blue Jays in the Andrés Giménez trade, to the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for three pitchers: Luis L. Ortiz, Michael Kennedy, and Josh Hartle. The deal expands the Guardians’ return for Giménez — whose projected impact on Toronto you can read about here — to four pieces once you include Nick Mitchell, a 2024 fourth rounder out of Indiana who was drafted by the Blue Jays and shipped to Cleveland in the initial deal. Read the rest of this entry »

DALLAS — The Winter Meetings have officially wrapped up, and our We Tried Tracker is starting to look mighty festive. At this point, it’s too full to tackle everything that happened in Dallas in one article, so we’ll just be breaking down the highlights. If you’re a completist, head over to the tracker, where each We Tried now contains a link its original report. Things have been moving fast this week, so I’m sure we’re missing some things. If you spot anything that’s not on the tracker, please reach out to me on social media or at WeTriedTracker@gmail.com. I so appreciate everyone who has participated. I have been reading and replying to every tip, and I will continue to do so.

I’d like to shout out one tipster in particular. Reader Chris Vena has been keeping me apprised of his softball team’s efforts to land several premier free agents, and they just cannot seem to seal the deal. First, they attempted to pry Shohei Ohtani away from the Dodgers, but were told that they lacked the prospect capital. Next, they tried to land Garrett Crochet, but the White Sox apparently wouldn’t agree to a deal unless Chris threw in his teammate Jimmy. “I know the writers at FanGraphs might accuse me of prospect hugging,” Chris wrote, “but I like this kid’s arm, his bat-to-ball skills, and I kind of have a crush on his older sister. I think our team can afford to pass on Crochet in this instance.”

One of the most interesting parts of this exercise is that when I originally proposed it, fans of several teams jumped in to opine that their particular ball club was sure to lead the league. That makes perfect sense, as the practice of claiming that you were in on a player is often specifically geared toward mollifying a jilted fanbase. If you ever heard Nationals Park explode with boos when Mark Teixeira – a Maryland native who chose to sign with the Yankees rather than the National League team closest to home – would come to the plate, you know that people take these things very much to heart. This offseason, Red Sox fans shouted the loudest that they would lead the league in We Trieds, and though the Blue Jays and Mets were very nearly as vociferous, Boston is not just pacing the field but lapping it. As I write, the Red Sox lead all comers with six We Trieds, twice as many as any other team. They’ve been in the mix for a pitcher, they’ve been in on pitchers, and they’ve even made aggressive runs at pitchers. Truly, no one is trying harder or failing louder than the Red Sox. Trading for Crochet seems like a decent consolation prize.

Now that we’re tracking everything, it’s been fun keeping tabs on all of the different ways that a team can describe its involvement. Classics “we were in on” and “we were in the mix” lead all other phraseologies with four instances each. After that, we’ve got a smorgasbord of one-offs: “We had interest in him,” “We were highly competitive,” “We made what we felt was a competitive offer,” “We had some back and forth.” A.J. Preller broke new ground by telling reporters that the Padres were “involved in, so far, almost all the catchers that have gone off the board to some degree.” How do you even unpack that? The Padres were involved in every single catcher who signed a deal? All six of them? What about Max Stassi, who signed a minor league deal with the Giants? “To some degree” is also the broadest blanket statement possible. Does that include zero degrees? If so, I was in on all those catchers too. I’m just like A.J. Preller.

As you surely know, Juan Soto had five primary suitors: the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, and Dodgers. At this point, two of those teams have made it onto the tracker in very specific fashion. MassLive.com’s Sean McAdam reported that Boston’s best offer to Soto was for 16 years and $700 million, while Bob Nightengale put a bit of poetry into his Yankees We Tried: “The New York Yankees offer for Juan Soto was $760 million for 16 years. He chose the Mets.” I’ve already heard Mets fans talking about printing up “He chose the Mets” t-shirts. While we can’t know for sure what made up Soto’s mind, that information makes it look awfully simple: No one wanted him as badly as the Mets did.

I haven’t seen any information about the Dodgers’ pursuit, but GM Ross Atkins addressed Toronto’s push while talking to reporters on Monday. “As things progressed,” he said, “we felt as though we were a great landing spot for Juan Soto and grateful to be in that process.” Now that’s a different approach. Rather than leaking a combination of years and dollars to a scoopster, Atkins invited a group of reporters into the team’s hotel suite and went on the record in order to say that the Jays were just happy to be there. I can’t decide whether it’s the epitome of the We Tried or the polar opposite, but either way, it’s delightfully Canadian.

We’re going to close this out with the A’s, because things are getting weird in Not Oakland. First of all, the A’s have to get out of their comfort zone and actually sign some players in order to avoid a grievance from the MLBPA. As you might recall, the A’s executed one of the first We Trieds of the offseason accidentally, when manager Mark Kotsay reportedly told a group of USC students that Walker Buehler told the A’s he didn’t want to play in Sacramento. During his media availability in Dallas, Kotsay disputed that report, making a point of telling reporters, “I want to say first, the article that came out with Walker, that wasn’t necessarily true. Walker never said he didn’t want to play in Sacramento.” There’s no way for us to know the facts here. Kotsay could be trying to clean up the classic gaffe of saying something that everyone already knows to be true – and I don’t think anyone would actually fault him for that – or there really could have been a misunderstanding or a rephrasing issue. Can you picture a scenario in which Buehler really is dying to play in Sacramento? Maybe if he’s a big fan of the legendary Sacramento band Cake, or if he’s always dreamed of playing in the California capital. Assuming that he’s not a huge “Sheep Go to Heaven” guy, I’m guessing he’d prefer to play in a big league stadium.

The last one gets even weirder. It started on Wednesday morning, when Bob Nightengale posted an entirely new kind of We Tried: “Believe or not, one of the most aggressive teams in the Max Fried sweepstakes were the Athletics before he signed his 8-year, $218 million deal with the Yankees.” Right out of the gate, things are getting hinky. “Believe it or not, we tried” is an instant classic of the genre. Any time a reporter has to preface breaking news with, “I know it sounds like I’m lying to you, but…” they’re off to a great start. And then after that, there is no specific information. Nightengale just says the A’s were “one of the most aggressive teams.”

Apparently, that was still too specific, though. Within three hours, MLB.com’s Martín Gallegos had a refutation from someone who would definitely know: “GM David Forst said the reports of A’s aggressively pursuing Max Fried were untrue.” Let’s start with the obvious: This is hilarious. Nightengale reports something so preposterous that he has to preface it with an avowal that he really is telling the truth, and the general manager immediately comes out and says it isn’t true. You have to believe him. What motivation could Forst have to refute this rumor aside from a desire to set the record straight? It’s the exceedingly rare We Didn’t Try, and it only makes sense for a team whose primary desire is to avoid getting anybody’s hopes up. “Please,” Forst seems to be begging, “don’t expect us to exchange money for baseball players. We’re still figuring out how Venmo works.”

Personally, I like to imagine that Forst wasn’t disputing the entire report; just the part where Nightengale said that the A’s were pursuing Fried aggressively. Maybe the A’s did try to land him, but their attempt mostly consisted of texting him pictures of the Sacramento skyline.

And that’s going to conclude our wrap-up. We will keep you updated as the offseason progresses. I’m sorry we couldn’t get to all of the week’s developments, but believe it or not, I really tried.

Earlier this week, when Juan Soto agreed to a 15-year, $765 million contract with the New York Mets, I included a projection chart with some very pretty numbers. Now that the dust has settled on the seismic signing, I think it would be interesting to look a little bit deeper at Soto’s long-term projections, which reflect his possible place in baseball history beyond his immediate impact on the Mets.

This time, I’m including the full rest-of-career projections for Soto, along with the career totals should the projections be shockingly — and unrealistically — inaccurate.

Suffice it to say, that’s a line that would lead to an obvious Hall of Fame election during his first year on the ballot. Soto’s long-term projections have shot up quite a bit the last two seasons after his relative slump a couple years ago. After 2022, the season he was traded to the Padres, he dipped to a 146 wRC+ and 3.7 WAR — good enough numbers for the vast majority of the baseball world, but they felt a little underwhelming considering his earlier trajectory. After all, Soto is one of the few players to ever get Ted Williams as one of their near-age offensive comps.

This projection puts him right on pace to get to 3,000 hits, at just below a coin flip (43%). Among active players, only Freddie Freeman projects to finish with more career hits (3,012, 52% at 3,000). It’s also the first time Soto has hit the century mark in projected WAR. Just for fun, here’s a look at the projected career WAR leaders among active players from a decade ago, before 2015.

And here’s how it looks today.

Note that the Ohtani projection is only as a hitter.

Overall, Soto’s career projections give him a JAWS score of 74.4 – ZiPS projects JAWS natively these days – enough to rank him as the seventh-best right fielder in baseball history, sandwiched between Roberto Clemente and Al Kaline.

Those 583 projected home runs are the most among active players as well, giving Soto the best chance — a very slim shot — at reaching the career totals of Babe Ruth (714, 2%), Henry Aaron (755, 0.62%), and Barry Bonds (762, 0.55%). Soto is one of only three current hitters projected to finish with more than 500 homers; the other two, Judge and Ohtani, are both projected to finish at 549.

And since we’re saber-nerds, Soto is projected to seize the all-time walks record from Bonds. What’s even more shocking is that Soto’s projected walk total (2,797) is nearly double the projected total of Harper, who ranks second of the projected leaderboard among active players, with 1,489 walks. Soto also paces the all-time walks leaderboard for players through their age-25 season — by 99!

So, will this all come true? Probably not. But Juan Soto is a special hitter who is tremendously accomplished for a hitter still only in his mid-20s. There’s a reason that many of the wealthiest teams were bidding obscene amounts of money to get him.

I don’t know if you were aware of this, but Anthony Santander hits a lot of foul balls. Let me rephrase that, Anthony Santander hits mostly foul balls. He hit 655 foul balls in 2024, a whopping 220 more than the balls he actually hit into fair territory. In all, 60% of the time that Santander made contact, the ball went foul. That honestly blows me away. It’s obvious once you stop and think about it, but I had simply never considered the possibility that some players would hit more foul balls than fair balls. As it turns out most players hit more foul balls than fair balls. In 2024, just 24% of players hit more balls fair than foul.

Still, Santander’s raw total of foul balls was second only to Matt Olson. In 2023 and 2022, the only other full seasons of his career, Santander finished fourth and eighth, respectively. Between the foul balls and the home runs, when Santander comes to the plate, you know exactly what you’re getting: a fantastic chance of bringing home a souvenir. This season, however, we’re not just interested in the fact that Santander’s foul ball per plate appearance rate was a whopping 98.9%. We’re interested in something a bit more specific.

Depending on how you look at them, foul balls aren’t necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. Obviously, all strikes are bad, but you’d prefer a foul to a whiff. On the other hand, if you hit the ball hard, you’d much rather see it stay fair than land just on the wrong side of the chalk. However, some foul balls are clearly worse than others, and that leads us to another thing Santander does distressingly often. In 2024, Santander led baseball with 65 popups. He also tied for the league lead in 2023 and he finished second in 2022. That’s why we’re focused on Santander in particular. When you discuss the unholy amalgam of foul balls and popups known as the foul out, Santander is unavoidable. These traits combine to create one particular result: Santander spends an extremely high percentage of his follow-throughs with his head tipped all the way back, looking like a little kid leaning out the window and trying to catch raindrops with his tongue. Read the rest of this entry »