It’s always nice when something works out perfectly, right away. At the trade deadline, the Dodgers insinuated themselves into a three-way deal with the White Sox and Cardinals, acquiring Michael Kopech and Tommy Edman in exchange for infielder Miguel Vargas and a smattering of minor leaguers. Edman, who hadn’t played an inning all year to that point because of a wrist injury, was of little use to the Cardinals and zero use to the White Sox, so Los Angeles was able to acquire him on the cheap.
The wrist healed; the former Stanford standout debuted in late August, posted a 98 wRC+ in 37 regular-season games, then played every inning of the Dodgers’ successful World Series run. He started games at both center field and shortstop, hit .328/.354/.508 with five stolen bases in 16 appearances, and went home with NLCS MVP honors.
So you’d understand why both sides would want to run it back. On Friday night, the Dodgers announced that they and the 29-year-old Edman had agreed to a contract extension. This five-year, $72 million deal supersedes the final year of Edman’s previous two-year contract, worth $9.5 million. Should this partnership continue to bear fruit through the end of the decade, the Dodgers have a $13 million club option for 2030 as well. Read the rest of this entry »
Fellowship Opportunities: Baseball Operations, Pro Acquisitions, Player Development
DEPARTMENT: Baseball Operations, Pro Acquisitions, Player Development ORGANIZATION: Chicago Cubs LOCATION: Chicago; Arizona FLSA STATUS: Exempt
BEING PART OF THE TEAM
Our business is a team sport that began on a field with baseballs and bats and has evolved into one of the most recognizable brands in sports and entertainment through Cubs baseball and live events. Our success is driven by our people, who work to create and inspire change in an engaging, collaborative and inclusive environment. As a team, we continue to build a culture on and off the field that delivers unforgettable experiences for one another, our fans and community. In support of that effort, we expect associates to work primarily in our office. Are you ready to be part of it?
OUR STORY
THE CHICAGO CUBS FRANCHISE is a charter member of Major League Baseball’s National League. Since 1876, the team has won the National League pennant 17 times and was the first team to win back-to-back World Series titles in the 1907 and 1908 seasons. In 2016, the Chicago Cubs made history again when the team won its first World Series in 108 years, ending the longest championship drought in North American sports. Known for its ivy-covered outfield walls, hand-operated scoreboard and famous Marquee sign, iconic Wrigley Field has been the home of the Chicago Cubs since 1916, making it the second oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball.
HOW YOU’LL CONTRIBUTE:
The Chicago Cubs’ Baseball Operations, Pro Acquisitions, and Player Development departments are seeking to potentially fill positions in the preidentified areas below. Candidates who thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative environment and possess excellent communication skills with a strong attention to detail are encouraged to apply. The timeline to fill each position may vary and will be prioritized based on qualified candidate credentials.
Baseball Operations Fellow (Location: Chicago, IL)
Responsibilities:
Work in collaboration with other members of Major League Operations, providing daily support to various Baseball Operations functions
Prepare and maintain essential resources and materials for operation, evaluation, and decision making within the front office
Perform research and analysis in support of Major League Operations including salary arbitration, contracts, free agency, roster transactions and management, and rules compliance
Work alongside the Amateur Scouting and Pro Acquisitions departments in advance of the Rule 4 Draft, Trade Deadline, and other key transaction periods
Carry out gameday duties as assigned by the Advance Scouting and Research & Development departments
Conduct ad-hoc research and projects as assigned
Pro Acquisitions Fellow (Location: Chicago, IL)
Responsibilities:
Follow and track the direction and strategies of certain Major League teams and identify potentially available players
Produce in-depth player assessments on professional players, utilizing video and data
Participate in the implementation and continuous improvement of acquisition processes, focusing on optimizing workflows, evaluation methods, decision support, and staff development
Use analytical tools to identify and prioritize players for further analysis.
Collaborate with Baseball Analytics, Baseball Sciences, and Baseball Systems to develop, refine, and implement player evaluation and acquisition tools
Conduct research as assigned by leadership, providing quality assurance and control feedback and identifying areas for further exploration and development
Collaborate with predictive modeling teams and incorporate analytical insights into decision-making processes
WHAT YOU’LL BRING:
Bachelor’s degree, preferably in a quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience
Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)
Experience with SQL/R preferred
Familiarity with advanced baseball statistics
Demonstrated passion for baseball
Willingness to work nights, weekends, and holidays, in accordance with the baseball calendar and key events/transactional periods
Ability to relocate and find housing in the Chicago area
Player Development Fellow (Location: Mesa, AZ)
Responsibilities:
Assist the Player Development Department with a range of administrative tasks, including data collection, data entry, and various other responsibilities to support team operations
Facilitate the onboarding process for newly acquired players, including those from the Rule 4 Draft, trades, international signings, and minor league free agency
Collaborate with the Cubs’ Minor League Equipment staff to develop and maintain an effective inventory system and handle logistics needs
Support player services by managing housing arrangements, ensuring nutritional needs are met, and addressing additional player welfare needs
Ad hoc Player Development projects and research as assigned by Director, Player Development
Aid in the implementation of Cubs’ life skills programs, which may include organizing trips to the bank, assisting with social services, and coordinating doctor’s appointments
WHAT YOU’LL BRING:
Bachelor’s degree, preferably in a quantitative field, or equivalent practical experience
Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, PowerPoint, Word), familiarity with Google suite
Valid Driver’s License
Willingness to work nights, weekends, and holidays, in accordance with the baseball calendar
Ability to relocate to Mesa, AZ for duration of role
Spanish proficiency preferred
Response Expectations:
Due to the overwhelming number of applications we receive, we unfortunately may not be able to respond in person to each applicant. However, we can assure you that you will receive an email confirmation when you apply as well as additional email notifications whether you are selected to move forward for the position or not. Please note, we keep all resumes on file and will contact you should we wish to schedule an interview with you.
The Chicago Cubs and its affiliates are an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to inclusion and employing a diverse workforce. All applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, disability, or other legally protected characteristics.
The Miami Marlins are coming off of a 100-loss season, and a lack of bats had a lot to do with that. The NL East club scored the fewest runs in the senior circuit. The arms weren’t all that much better — only the Colorado Rockies allowed more runs — but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Sandy Alcantara and Eury Pérez are on track to return from Tommy John surgery, while Jesús Luzardo and Max Meyer should be healthy following comparably minor injuries. Moreover, the organization’s top pitching prospects have high ceilings. Pitching — especially young pitching — is the organization’s greatest strength.
Miami’s President of Baseball Operations largely agreed with that opinion when I presented it to him at last month’s GM Meetings in San Antonio.
“I think so,” Peter Bendix told me. “I hope so. We have a lot of guys I’m really excited about. I think that next year a lot of these guys have things to prove, whether that’s health, bouncing back from a disappointing season, just establishing themselves, or building on what they did last year.”
A pair of pitchers who are likely a few years away from reaching the big leagues stand out. One of them is is a now-20-year-old southpaw whom the Marlins drafted 35th overall in 2023 out of Andover, Massachusetts’s Phillips Academy.
“Thomas White is maybe the best left-handed pitching prospect in baseball,” said Bendix, whose opinion is by no means singular (Noah Schultz and one or two others are also in the conversation). “If you look at left-handed pitchers who were 19 years old, missed as many bats as he did, didn’t walk guys, limited hard contact, throw 95-plus, have a plus breaking ball, and have command, it’s a short list. Now it’s his job to go out there build on that, see what he can he can do with another full year underneath him.” 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 Athletics.
Batters
In the race for the worst franchise in baseball, the White Sox easily took the title in terms of sheer incompetence. But their out of touch owner who legitimately wanted to win can’t match up with the A’s John Fisher, who probably thought while watching Moneyball that Rachel Phelps was way too generous with her team spending. The A’s won 69-93 games, a respectable number as far as terrible teams go, but it left them in an awkward limbo: They’re not good enough to pretend to be playoff relevant, but not bad enough for young fans to someday tell tales to their grandchildren about the team’s notoriety.
In truth, there’s actually a lot to like about this set of projections, even if it’s distributed among things you don’t. Brent Rooker not only demonstrated that his 2023 breakout wasn’t a fluke, but he also had a second breakout this season that was even better than the first. Considering he ran a .362 BABIP, he’s likely going to give back at least some of the gains he made. How much he regresses is a source of disagreement between ZiPS and Steamer, but he’s conclusively proven that he’s not just some DH-type player who’s going to put up a 110 wRC+ and 1.7 WAR. Rooker is not young, so hopefully the A’s will trade him to a team with games that matter before he advances too far into his thirties.
Jacob Wilson gets a very solid projection, and ZiPS sees a bit of a bounceback campaign for Zack Gelof. I wouldn’t call ZiPS a full believer in Lawrence Butler or JJ Bleday, but it at least grants them adequacy, which is a step up for both from last year’s projections. ZiPS is decidedly negative on the mulligan stew in left field, and it isn’t buying Tyler Soderstrom as a first baseman, either. I have no idea if the Nick Kurtz projection is too high, too low, or just right given he has played almost no professional baseball. ZiPS does know his Wake Forest numbers, but college translations are more speculative than crypto currency with meme names.
One can argue the most disappointing parts of these projections aren’t the players on the parent club, but the minor leaguers. Past Wilson and maybe Kurtz, ZiPS just doesn’t see anyone in the system having major upside. I mean, Tommy White might suddenly become the offensive beast he was hoped to be, but the computer isn’t banking on it.
Pitchers
Eep. You know a team’s pitching projections aren’t going well when the player with the best projected ERA+ (Mason Miller) has a nearly 50-point edge over everyone else. One thing that used to keep the A’s from falling too far out of the pennant race was that, for a long time, this was a team that could churn out nondescript soft-tossing mid-rotation starters as if it owned a patent on the process. For the third consecutive season, however, the 2024 A’s didn’t have a single pitcher who started 20 games with an ERA+ of at least 100. This is hardly a filter for finding a Cy Young candidate! JP Sears had his moments in 2024, but at the end of the day, he’s simply a soft-tossing lefty without a strikeout pitch who can’t keep the ball down all that well, not any respectable team’s ace. Mitch Spence is interesting, but he isn’t missing bats in the majors yet. Our prospect team wrote that Joey Estes needed to develop a good secondary pitch, and that criticism rings true; he has a mediocre slider and changeup, meaning that his decent command hasn’t meant all that much.
I find J.T. Ginn and Osvaldo Bido more interesting. If Ginn keeps working with his sinker, he might have success in the majors for a while, and Bido at least makes it seem like there’s some adventure happening on the mound; his control is spotty, but he’s got a hard two-seamery sinker that I think could be a real weapon if he ever gets the hang of it. Most pitchers like Bido don’t work out in the long run, but I can squint my eyes and see a Bido breakout as a more tangible idea than what a Sears or Estes breakout would look like.
The bullpen is… not good. Miller projects for all of the bullpen’s WAR, which is fine if you think you’re going to use him for 500 innings. After Miller, there’s not a lot of correlation between spot in the pecking order and the ZiPS projection; Michel Otañez gets a decent projection in ZiPS, while Brady Basso probably doesn’t make the team, at least not in April.
The A’s have almost no guaranteed contracts, the only two right now being the recently agreed one-year pacts with Seth Brown and T.J. McFarland. Normally that would give a team some flexibility to fill some holes in free agency, but we all know that’s not going to happen. The Athletics will likely win somewhere between 65 and 72 games or so, and very little will be remembered about the season outside the weird stadium situation they’re in.
Speaking of that situation, projecting Sutter Health Field is a bit of a problem without data from past MLB games. It’s a pitchers’ park in the Pacific Coast League, but that’s not exactly telling given that the average park in the PCL would likely be a hitters’ park in the majors. I have a rough estimate of it as basically average, though I expect some outfielders might have a few adventures getting used to the caroms as the fences have some corners. The foul territory is much reduced, however, and that might mean something at the margins, considering you might be able to park a 747 in the Coliseum’s foul territory. Hopefully, by the time the A’s move again, I will have stopped calling the park “Sutter Home” after the winery.
Sutter Health Field graphic made by Szym. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to 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.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 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.
For the past few election cycles, as a means of completing my coverage of the major candidates before the December 31 voting deadline, I’ve been grouping together some candidates into a single overview, inviting readers wishing to (re)familiarize themselves with the specifics of their cases to check out older profiles that don’t require a full re-working, because very little has changed, even with regards to their voting shares. Today, I offer the first such batch for this cycle, a pair of elite hitters who would already be enshrined if not for their links to performance-enhancing drugs: Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez.
Like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, both sluggers have transgressions that predate the introduction of drug testing and penalties in 2004. Via The New York Times (Ramirez) and Sports Illustrated (Rodriguez), both reportedly failed the supposedly anonymous 2003 survey test that determined whether such testing would be introduced. Had they not pressed their luck further, both might already be in Cooperstown alongside 2022 honoree David Ortiz, who also reportedly failed the survey test. Alas, Ramirez was actually suspended twice, in 2009 and ’11; the latter ended his major league career, though he traveled the globe making comeback attempts. Rodriguez was suspended only once, but it was for the entire 2014 season due to his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal and his scorched-earth attempt to evade punishment — a sequence of events unparalleled among baseball’s PED-linked players.
As I’ve noted more times than I can count over the past decade and a half, my own policy with regards to such candidates is to differentiate between pre-2004 transgressions and the rest; while I included the likes of Bonds, Clemens, Gary Sheffield, and Sammy Sosa on my virtual and actual ballots, I have yet to do so for any player who earned a suspension for PEDs, including this pair — two players who at their best were a thrill to watch, but who also did some of the most cringeworthy stuff of any players in their era. They and the other suspended players were well aware of the consequences for crossing the line, yet did so anyway. While this personal policy began as a ballot-management tool at a time when I felt more than 10 candidates were worthy of a vote, I’ve found it to be a reasonable midpoint between total agnosticism on the subject and a complete hard-line stance. My sympathies tend more towards the former group — those who refuse to play cop for MLB and the Hall, reasoning such players have not been declared ineligible à la Pete Rose — than the latter, but I respect both positions.
Anyway, Ramirez debuted with 23.8% on the 2017 ballot, didn’t surpass that mark until ’20 (28.2%), didn’t top 30% until ’23 (33.2%), and fell back a fraction of a point on the ’24 ballot (32.5%). That’s eight years to gain less than 10 percentage points, meaning that he’ll fall off the ballot after his 10th year (the 2026 ballot).
Rodriguez debuted with 34.3% in 2022, barely inched up in ’23 (35.7%), and receded slightly in ’24 (34.8%). Given that Bonds and Clemens topped out in the 65–66% range in 2022 and then were passed over by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee the following year, nobody should be holding their breaths for either of these two to get elected anytime soon, though it will be awhile before we stop hearing about them. Read the rest of this entry »
The Cleveland Guardians are a pretty tightfisted organization. They spend infrequently, frugally, and deliberately. So I was amused when, some three weeks ago, they jumped to re-sign backup catcher Austin Hedges to a one-year, $4 million contract. That’s roughly 4% of what the Guardians spent on player payroll in total this past season — and on a backup catcher?
Now, Hedges is one of the league’s best defenders, at the position where defense is of the utmost performance. And by all accounts he’s the best clubhouse guy since Spanky from The Little Rascals. But he’s the worst hitter in the league. That’s not an exaggeration; Hedges hasn’t posted a wRC+ over 50 since 2018, and in his past two seasons he hasn’t broken 25.
Since 2019, Hedges is hitting .171/.234/.273. Of the 364 players who have taken 1,000 or more plate appearances over that time, Hedges is dead last in wRC+ by a huge margin. Jackie Bradley Jr. is in second-to-last place with a wRC+ of 67; Hedges is at 39. (Which speaks to how far you can get in baseball if you’re an elite defender and everyone likes you.) Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re a team in the market for a top starting pitcher this winter, cross one of the best off your holiday list. The Dodgers, a team desperately in need for dependable starting pitchers whose arms are fully connected at the shoulders and elbows, signed Blake Snell to a five-year contract worth $182 million. The deal also includes a $52 million signing bonus. Snell, one of last year’s big name free agents who signed a shorter-term deal after not getting the offer they wanted, started 20 games for the Giants in 2024, putting up a 3.12 ERA, a 2.43 FIP, and 3.1 WAR in a season that was marred by an adductor strain. Compared to last winter, when Snell’s fate went unanswered until he signed in late March, you might as well start calling him Blake Schnell. Wait, don’t do that, that’s a terrible joke even by my standards.
Left-hander Blake Snell and the Los Angeles Dodgers are in agreement on a five-year, $182 million contract, pending physical, sources tell me and @jorgecastillo. The World Series champions get the two-time Cy Young winner in the first nine-figure deal of the winter.
One of the biggest risks a team winning the World Series faces is complacency. It’s a perfectly natural thing to feel pleased with the moves that led to your team winning a championship, but a team that believes it can mostly stand pat and run it back is planting the seeds of its own demise. Even with all the talent on their team, the Dodgers still have significant roster holes to fill this offseason, and it’s a good sign for those hoping for a repeat that less than a month after hoisting the trophy, they’ve already addressed one of those weaknesses. Whatever one thinks of Dave Roberts as a manager, it’s difficult to deny that he did a convincing job this past postseason managing a pitching staff that basically had two healthy and reliable starting pitchers. The Dodgers won the World Series despite their injury-thinned rotation, not because of it.
Now, Snell isn’t the type to give you seven or eight innings per start. Who is in 2024, really? What Snell brings to the table – outside of being a really good pitcher – is that he has a pretty solid record when it comes to injury. That’s not to say that he doesn’t get hurt. On the contrary, only twice has he made at least 30 starts in a season. However, what he has avoided are the serious injuries that cause pitchers to miss months or entire seasons. His IL stints are generally for short-term nagging ailments, frequently adductor strains. His worst elbow injury was a procedure to remove loose bodies in his elbow about five years ago, not major reconstructive surgery. The Dodgers will be happy to get their five or six innings from him 25 or so times a year.
Given what the Dodgers have faced injury-wise these last few years, that may be especially valuable to them. Bad luck has to figure into some of these injuries, but their problems in October was the downside of the approach they’ve taken toward the pitching staff in recent seasons. The Dodgers haven’t really prioritized certainty among their pitchers. Instead, they’ve depended on high-upside, high-risk guys such as Tyler Glasnow, late-era Clayton Kershaw, and any of the young flamethrowers who dominate upon arrival before blowing out their arms. For the most part, the Dodgers have made this work because they’ve kept enough of these pitchers around to put together a capable rotation of four or five pitchers at any given moment. Generally, this has proven an effective strategy for the Dodgers, but this time, they rolled snake eyes a few times in a row, and ended up in a difficult situation at the most crucial time of the year. They made it work, but they are smart enough to recognize they might not be able to thread the needle through such a narrow margin for error again.
So, what about Snell himself? Let’s run the projections for him with the Dodgers.
ZiPS Projection – Blake Snell
Year
W
L
ERA
G
GS
IP
H
ER
HR
BB
SO
ERA+
WAR
2025
14
6
2.87
28
28
150.2
111
48
14
63
186
143
3.8
2026
14
5
3.05
28
28
147.2
113
50
14
62
176
134
3.5
2027
13
6
3.19
27
27
144.0
116
51
15
59
165
128
3.1
2028
12
6
3.38
27
27
138.1
117
52
16
58
153
121
2.7
2029
11
7
3.61
26
26
132.0
118
53
16
57
139
113
2.3
The Dodgers are projected as one of the absolute best teams for Snell to end up with, and ZiPS projects performance that it would value at five years, $144.2 million. That’s a bit below the actual $182 million deal he received, but then again, so is the actual contract itself! As with Shohei Ohtani, the top dollar figure becomes a bit less sexy when you consider how the deal is structured. Some of the money is deferred, to the extent that it drops the present value enough so that the deal is worth more in the neighborhood of $160 million instead.
In some respects, Snell’s 2024 season was more impressive than the 2023 campaign that earned him the second Cy Young award of his career. Snell allowed a lot of walks in 2023, but he survived it because he was excellent with runners on base. That’s the kind of thing that’s hard to sustain, but he didn’t have to in 2024, as he shaved off the extra walk per game he’d added the year before. Snell’s strikeout rate was the best of his career, and it was powered by a career best in contact percentage. Snell has been a successful starter in the majors for years, but he has more varied tools now than he did before. Most notably, his changeup has become more of a weapon against righties, especially with two strikes.
With Snell under contract, the Dodgers rotation looks something like this: Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Glasnow, and Shohei Ohtani, along with whichever one or two other starters are healthy at any given time. At least in the way-too-early ZiPS positional projections for 2025, Snell’s arrival leapfrogs the Dodgers over the Phillies, Mariners, and Braves for the top rotation in the majors, though things can change a bit depending on how your distribute the innings. And the Dodgers might not be done adding to their rotation, either. They are expected to be serious contenders to sign Roki Sasaki, and they could still bring back Kershaw on another one-year deal.
Does adding Snell fundamentally change the outlook for the Dodgers? Not really; they were always going to be a contender in 2025. However, what signing Snell does is give the Dodgers a better chance to get through the season with fewer surprises and go deep into the playoffs again. Not since the 1999-2000 Yankees a quarter century ago has a team won consecutive championships. Snell puts the Dodgers in a strong position to alter that factoid.
It’s a shame that “bunts are bad” has become one of the truisms at the core of the ceaseless, silly battle between old school and new school, stats and scouts, quantitative and qualitative assessment methods. It’s understandable, because “stop bunting so much” was one of the first inroads that sabermetric analysts made in baseball strategy. But that was 25 years ago, and while everyone kept repeating that same mantra, the facts on the ground changed.
Sacrifice bunts by non-pitchers have plummeted over the years, as they should have. In recent years, the bunts that are left, the ones that teams haven’t streamlined out of their game planning, are mostly the good ones. “Bunts are bad” never meant that in totality; it just meant that too many of the times that teams sacrificed outs for bases were poor choices. That’s become much more clear now that pitchers don’t bat anymore. The 2022 season, the first full year of the universal DH, set a record for most runs added by bunting. After a down 2023, this season was right back near those banner highs. So let’s recap the ways teams beat the old conventional wisdom and assembled a year of bunting that the number-crunchingest analyst on the planet could appreciate.
The Death of the Worst Sac Bunts
When is a good time to bunt? It’s complicated! It depends on where the defense is playing, the score of the game, who’s on base, the player at the plate, the subsequent hitters due up, and myriad other minor factors. But there’s one overwhelming factor: There are base/out states where bunts are almost always a bad idea, and the more you avoid those, the better.
Sacrifice bunting with only a runner on first almost never makes sense. You’re getting just a single advancement, and it’s the least valuable advancement there is. Getting a runner to third with only one out is an admirable goal. Moving two runners up is even better. Squeeze plays have huge potential rewards. Moving a guy from first to second just doesn’t measure up.
Likewise, bunting gets worse when there’s already one out in the inning. Plate appearances with runners on base are worth their weight in gold in the modern, homer-happy game. Crooked numbers are tough to come by, and the easiest way to get them is by stacking up opportunities to hit multi-run homers. When you already have a runner on base, bunts are always suspect. Bunts that cut out half of your remaining outs in the inning are even worse.
There are occasional circumstances where these types of bunts make sense. If the batter thinks they’ll beat out a hit fairly often, bunting gets better. The weaker the hitter and the better the subsequent lineup, the more attractive bunts get. Close games and speedy runners can tip the balance. It’s not a universally bad decision to bunt with only a runner on first, or to bunt with one or more outs, but the higher the proportion of bunts that move a runner to third with less than two outs, the better.
To get an idea of how much this has changed while removing pitchers from the equation, I looked at the 2015-2019 seasons and excluded all plate appearances from the ninth spot in the batting order. That’s not a perfect way of removing pitchers, but it gets pretty close. I used this to get an idea for what percentage of bunts came in favorable situations – with at least a runner on second and no one out.
In those years, 23.2% of bunts occurred in the best situations for a sacrifice. After removing bases-empty bunts, which are clearly a different animal, we’re left with bunts in situations where a sacrifice isn’t particularly valuable. Those ill-conceived bunts cost teams roughly 0.1 runs per bunt, a shockingly high number. All other bunts – attempts for a hit or attempts to move a runner to third with only one out – carried positive run expectancy. It’s just that there were so many bunts in bad spots.
In 2024, 31.7% of bunts came in “good sacrifice” situations, with a runner on second and no one out. Increasingly, the “bad sacrifice” situations are now about going for a single with some ancillary benefits of runner advancement. On-base percentage on bunts with runners on base is up. In 2024, 25% of the bunts with runners on base ended with the batter reaching base safely, via hit, failed fielder’s choice, or error. That’s up from 22% (non-pitcher) in the 2015-2019 era, and from 17.7% from 2008 to 2012. If anything, that understates it too: Plenty of the worst hitters in baseball used to bat in front of pitchers, which limited their bunting opportunities.
Impressive Individual Efforts Jose Altuve bunted 14 times this year. Nine of those turned into singles. That was the best performance by anyone with double-digit bunts, but it was hardly the only exceptional effort. Jake McCarthy bunted 21 times and racked up 10 singles. Luke Raley went 7-for-12. This one from Altuve was just perfect:
That’s not to say there have never been good bunters before. Dee Strange-Gordon consistently turned bunts into singles at a high clip. Altuve has been in the majors for a while. But the high-volume bunters in today’s game are more effective than they were 10 years ago in the aggregate. There are also fewer truly objectionable bunters. Francisco Lindor bunted 20 times in 2015 and reached base safely only three times. Fellow 2024 Met Jose Iglesias bunted 12 times and reached base once. There were still some bad bunters – Kevin Kiermaier and Kyle Isbel had awful results, for example – but it’s become far less common.
Bunting for a single is hardly the only positive outcome, of course. That’s why you bunt in the first place – because bunts lead to more productive outs, on average, than swinging away. Advancement is more likely and double plays are less likely. Individual efforts of the top few bunters have always been net positive. These days, those top bunters are accounting for a bigger share of overall bunts, and the results have improved proportionally.
Bunters Were Already Good
Here’s a secret: The wars were already over. In 2002, bunters batting in the 1-8 spots in the lineup cost their teams 36 runs relative to a naive expectation based on the base/out state when they batted. In 2004, that number swelled to -63 runs. It was negative in 11 of the 12 seasons from 2000-2011, with roughly 2,000 bunts a year from this cohort, which largely excludes pitchers.
The number of non-pitcher bunt attempts declined as the 21st century progressed into its second decade. By 2015, we were down to 1,500 a year or so and steadily declining. The bunts excised from the game were all the lowest-value bunts, the ones most likely to hurt the batting team. From 2012 onward, non-pitchers have produced positive value on their bunt attempts every single year. Meanwhile, bunt attempts have declined and then stabilized, around 1,100-1,200 per year. Teams aren’t dummies – they’ve cut out 800 bunts a year, or more than 25 per team, and those bunts are pretty much all the no-hope-for-a-single sacrifice attempts that drew statistically minded folks’ ire in the first place.
In that sense, you’re not really seeing anything completely new in 2024. The very best bunters in the game are a little bit better than they used to be, but not overwhelmingly so. They’re choosing better spots, but not overwhelmingly so. They’re succeeding more frequently when they aim for a hit, but good bunters have always been good at that. The real change is in the bunts that aren’t happening.
The Mariners
I’ll be honest: I didn’t expect the Mariners to top the list of best bunting teams. They seem too station-to-station, too offensively challenged, too reliant on the home run. What can I say? Appearances can be deceiving. Led by Raley, an unlikely but enthusiastic bunter, the Mariners had a league-best performance. This one was just perfect:
It was a great situation for a bunt. The Astros were shifted over toward Raley’s pull side, which left third baseman Alex Bregman on an island covering third and prevented him from crashing early. Raley disguised the bunt long enough to get everything moving, and then used his sneaky-blazing footspeed to beat it out. It’s a masterpiece of bunting.
Victor Robles is less about masterpieces and more about maximum effort. He bunts too often for his own good. That leads to a lot of iffy bunts, but also some gems:
That’s another one where reading the defense made all the difference. The Rays shifted their middle infielders away from first, which meant a bunt past the pitcher would leave Yandy Díaz helpless. This one also benefited from a bit of defensive confusion, as many good bunts do. Who was covering second when Díaz fielded the ball? More or less no one:
Hey, every little bit helps when you’re bunting. And while plenty of other Mariners contributed to their success as well – Leo Rivas and Jorge Polanco know how to handle a bat – I had to close this out with another gem from Raley. Sure, it’s against the White Sox, but those runs count too. Raley is just vicious when it comes to attacking good spots to bunt:
It’s not every day that you see a squeeze bunt go for a no-throw single. But again, Raley read the defense and placed the ball perfectly. Not much you can do about this:
Altuve might have the advantage in raw numbers, but no one made me sit up in my seat hoping for a bunt like Raley did this year. Hat tip to Davy Andrews for highlighting his hijinks early in the year, and Raley just never stopped going for it.
The Angels
By all rights, this article should be over. The Mariners were the best bunters this year, Raley was their ringleader, and they exemplified the way bunts are making offenses better in today’s game. But the Angels are altogether more confusing and more giffable, so I’m giving them a shout too.
You’d think that Ron Washington’s team would be at the very top of the bunt rate leaderboards, but the Halos attempted only 25 bunts this year, half the Mariners’ tally and seventh-lowest in baseball. The reason why is obvious: They weren’t that good at it. They weren’t the worst team in terms of runs added – that’d be the Nats, who were both prolific and bad at bunting this year – but they were impressively inefficient. No one with so few bunt attempts was nearly so bad in the aggregate.
They bunted in bad spots. They rarely reached base even when the defense was poorly positioned. This might be the worst bunt attempt you’ve seen this year:
Unless it’s this:
The lesson: Stop with all these squeeze bunts. Unless it’s against the White Sox, that is:
See, our story has a happy ending for the bunters after all. I love bunts, and I’m not afraid to use this platform to show it.
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.
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, helping five different franchises reach the playoffs, and putting together some of the most dominant stretches in postseason history once he got there. 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 team, including 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. 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.
Will Beltrán’s involvement in sign stealing cost him a berth in Cooperstown, the way allegations concerning performance-enhancing drugs have for a handful of players with otherwise Hall-worthy numbers? At the very least it kept him from first-ballot election, as he received 46.5% on the 2023 ballot — a share that has typically portended eventual election for less complicated candidates. His 10.6-percentage point gain last year (to 57.1%) was the largest of any returning candidate, suggesting that he’s got a real shot at election someday, though I don’t expect him to jump to 75% this year. Read the rest of this entry »
Enlightenment era poet Alexander Pope famously wrote, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” His words imply that angels are the opposite of fools. If that’s true, I wonder if it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for angels to give rushing in a try every once in a while. Could that be precisely what Perry Minasian is thinking?
Including the piece you’re reading right now, the FanGraphs staff has written about four trades and three free agent signings this November. Five of those seven transactions have involved the Angels. It started with the first major trade of the offseason: Before the Dodgers even held their parade, the Angels flipped Griffin Canning to the Braves for Jorge Soler. Then they signed free agents Kyle Hendricks, Travis d’Arnaud, and Kevin Newman. Along the way, the Halos also picked up Scott Kingery and Ryan Noda, and dropped Patrick Sandoval (among others) ahead of the non-tender deadline.
On Monday morning, the Angels continued getting an early start on the offseason – this time in more ways than one. At 5:38 AM PST, news broke that they had agreed on a three-year, $63 million deal with left-hander Yusei Kikuchi. I’m imagining the news came out so early in the morning because Kikuchi is in Japan right now, and given Kikuchi’s well-known sleep schedule (and the 17-hour time difference), Minasian only had a brief window in which both he and his top target were awake. Like MacGyver racing to deactivate a time bomb, Minasian cut the right wire just in time and successfully negotiated the biggest free agent deal of his Angels tenure. Read the rest of this entry »
