2025 Analyst, Baseball Operations

Location: Cleveland, Ohio, United States

Primary Purpose
The Cleveland Guardians Baseball Operations department is seeking analysts who are creative, curious, and collaborative teammates who enjoy tackling unique and challenging problems. The analyst role supports multiple departments (Player Development, Pro/Amateur/International Acquisitions, and the Major League team) with analysis and the practical application of evidence and research-based tools, resources, and processes to help facilitate their work.

Core Job Functions
Analysts are expected to work in a fast-paced team environment and communicate effectively with various organizational stakeholders. The bullets below are intended to capture major realms in which work might be focused, although the Analyst’s time spent across each area may differ based on their skillset, interests, and the team’s needs.

• Analysis:
  • Facilitate and conduct evidence-based analysis in support of each department.
  • Communicate findings to key stakeholders across the organization.
• Development:
  • Work collaboratively with Baseball Research and Development to uncover actionable insights across Hitting, Pitching, and Defense/Base-Running.
  • Work collaboratively with Baseball Systems to build and manage software products that directly drive our internal processes.
  • Support the application and education across departments of evidence-based practices & organizational philosophies.
• Baseball Operations:
  • Facilitate and conduct analysis to support strategic planning.
  • Provide general ad-hoc support across baseball operations.

We know that historically marginalized groups – including people of color, women, people from working class backgrounds, and people who identify as LGBTQ – are less likely to apply unless and until they meet every requirement for a job. We encourage you to reach out if you have questions about the role or your qualifications. We are happy to help you feel ready to apply!

Basic Requirements

• Ability to craft and articulate a compelling message to others in both written and verbal form.
• Collaborative and able to succeed in a team-oriented environment.
• An ability to build and maintain relationships with a broad range of baseball operations employees, including but not limited to scouts, coaches, and front office members.
• Relentlessly curious and open-minded with a track record of evidence-based and divergent thinking.
• Working knowledge of cutting-edge, publicly available baseball research.
• Willing to frequently work nights, weekends, and holidays—particularly during the season.
• Expected relocation to Cleveland and travel to Arizona for Spring Training.
• Potential travel to Minor League affiliate teams.

Preferred Experience
While we don’t expect any candidate to meet every requirement, we’re looking for either a breadth of experience or deep expertise in a particular area. We’re considering applicants with a wide variety of past experiences.

• Demonstrated expertise in biomechanics, hitting analysis, pitching analysis, or sport science.
• Demonstrated understanding of statistics and experience carrying out quantitative analysis.
• Demonstrated experience with a database language such as SQL and a programming language such as R or Python.
• Ability to communicate in Spanish is a plus but not necessary.
• Bachelor’s degree or prior professional experience.

Organizational Requirements

• Reads, speaks, comprehends, and communicates English effectively in all communications.
• Represents the Cleveland Guardians in a positive fashion to all business partners and the general public.
• Ability to develop and maintain successful working relationships with members of the Front Office.
• Ability to act according to the organizational values and service excellence at all times.
• Demonstrated commitment to working with diverse populations and contributing to an inclusive working environment.
• Ability to walk, sit or stand for an entire shift.
• Ability to work extended days and hours, including holidays and weekends.
• Ability to move throughout all areas and levels of the Ballpark.
• Ability to work in a diverse and changing environment.
• Occasional physical activity such as lifting and carrying boxes up to 25 lbs.

At the Cleveland Guardians, we are all about creating an inclusive environment that brings out the best in everyone. It is a big part of who we are, how we compete, and how we make an impact in our community. We want every employee to feel like they truly belong here.

We also know that people from historically underserved groups—like women and people of color—sometimes hesitate to apply for jobs unless they check every single box on the qualifications list. We’re looking for the best person for the job, and we know that you might bring skills and experiences that aren’t exactly listed but could be a huge asset to our team. So, if this role excites you, we encourage you to apply, even if you don’t meet every single qualification.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Cleveland Guardians.

On Thursday the Dodgers and Twins agreed to a small trade involving former Top 100 Prospect, Diego Cartaya, a 23-year-old Venezuelan catcher who has struggled to develop as he’s been exposed to upper-level pitching. The Dodgers designated him for assignment earlier this week. In exchange, the Dodgers received hulking 20-year-old DSL righty, Jose Vasquez, a hard-throwing prospect who has spent the last two seasons in the DSL.

Cartaya was a big bonus amateur player ($2.5 million) whose career had a very promising first four seasons. He slashed .254/.389/.503 in 2022, at mostly High-A, when he was still just 20 years old. He was striking out at an elevated rate (26.7%) at the time, but he was also getting to impressive power and playing a premium position. His big frame and plus raw arm strength were the foundation of a likely defensive fit at catcher, and at the time it felt fine that Cartaya (who had missed all of 2020 because of the COVID shutdown, and most of 2021 due to injury) was a little behind as a receiver and ball-blocker.

In the two seasons since then, though, Cartaya has either plateaued or regressed in basically every facet of the game. His hands remain below average, and this shows in the way he tries to frame borderline pitches and in how he tries to pick balls in the dirt. Cartaya is capable of hurling darts right to second base with plus pop times, but he often either takes too long to get rid of the baseball, or airmails throws into center field. He has a good arm, yet he’s allowed stolen bases at an 80% success rate in his minor league career and 84% in 2024.

At a mix of Double- and Triple-A, Cartaya hit .189/.278/.379 in 2023 — his first year on the Dodgers 40-man roster — and .221/.323/.363 in 2024. His measurable power has dipped, with his hard hit rate dropping from 41% in 2022 to 33% last year. It’s prudent to give young catchers a long runway to develop as hitters because their bodies take a beating playing defense, and they might be physically compromised for large chunks of a season, such that it impacts their overall offensive output. But Cartaya has now had two years with the look of a fringe prospect, and so at this point it’s fair to consider him exactly that. He’s still a big-framed young guy with that big arm, and the Twins have had success at developing catchers who were once considered long shots to remain behind the plate, so Cartaya still carries some prospect value as a potential late-bloomer.

While Cartaya’s development stagnated and his options nearly ran dry, Dalton Rushing emerged as a potential everyday catcher in the Dodgers system. Hunter Feduccia (whom I have a backup catcher grade on) is a solid third option on the 40-man right now, behind starter Will Smith and backup Austin Barnes, while Rushing further develops in the minors. There was probably still time for the Dodgers to attempt to develop Cartaya if they really wanted to, but as a contending team they’ll likely have other, more pressing needs for that 40-man roster spot, and they got an actual prospect in return.

Cartaya is now on Minnesota’s 40-man in what will be his final option year. He is very unlikely to make the Opening Day roster, barring injuries to the catchers in front of him, and he’s likely to be the Twins’ fourth catcher on the depth chart when camp breaks, behind Ryan Jeffers, Christian Vázquez, and another former Dodgers minor leaguer, Jair Camargo. Industry inventory at catcher is always low, and depth at that position is coveted on the margins of every roster. If the Twins develop Cartaya enough that he can be their backup next year when Vázquez’s contract ends, then they can feel okay about having given up an actual prospect for him.

That actual prospect is Jose Vasquez, who signed with Minnesota at the tail end of the 2022 signing period (December 13) for $120,000, and he spent both 2023 and 2024 in the DSL. After walking more than a batter per inning in his debut season, Vasquez had a much better second campaign, working 2-to-4 innings at a time, as both a starter and reliever, and amassing 30 2/3 innings, 45 strikeouts, and a much more tenable 15 walks.

Despite his strike-throwing improvement, Vasquez is still most likely going to be a reliever. He’s a physical, 220ish-pound 20-year-old who has had trouble harnessing his 94-97 mph fastball, which sometimes has very heavy late sink. His 84-88 mph slider is curt and cuttery at times, but it flashes bat-missing two-plane shape and above-average length. Vasquez’s realistic ceiling is better than a generic middle reliever, but he’s maybe a half decade away from the bigs. He’ll probably begin his Dodgers career in Extended Spring Training.

On December 12, the day of Juan Soto’s introductory press conference with the Mets – imagine for a moment being one of the three people in New York City who still requires an introduction to the concept of Juan Soto – the temperature at nearby La Guardia Airport peaked at 43 degrees. Soto wore a turtleneck and chain under his blazer, presumably to ward off the cold, but possibly because he was inspired by the look his new teammate Mark Vientos rocked during the National League Championship Series.

During the press conference, Soto swapped out the blazer for a crisp, new Mets jersey, but he left the turtleneck in place. The temperature was down to 37 by the time he ventured out to the elevated seats behind home plate for a photo op. “We got about fifteen minutes with Soto and his family,” said photographer Brad Penner in an email, “and it was COLD.” The photo op wasn’t just quick. It was weird, and the images it left us with are bizarre and beautiful. “I’ve done many press conferences,” wrote Penner, “but few that were like this one.”

As he so often does, Soto seemed to jump right out of the photos. “I chose a seat as close to where Soto would be,” Penner said, “so I could line him up with the scoreboard, rather than the field and seats.” That was smart, as the Mets displayed a “Welcome to the//New York Mets//Juan Soto” graphic on both scoreboards, each featuring three images of him. That left many of the photos with seven Sotos in them, quite possibly a world record. With the focus of the lens necessarily all the way in the foreground, the scoreboard isn’t crisp. You can just make out the tiny “Welcome to the” portion of the graphic, but only if you zoom in and enhance like a CIA agent tracking Jason Bourne through a train station. (Also, there’s no comma between “Mets” and “Juan Soto,” so it reads like the entire team has been renamed the New York Mets Juan Soto. Take that, Cleveland Napoleons!)

Soto was standing in an area that was much darker than the field and the scoreboard in the background, and in the twilight, the black fabric of the turtleneck discolored his paper-thin jersey in an odd way. The white jersey shone brightly where it hung free, but where it lay flat against the turtleneck, it failed to contain the darkness within. The numbers on Soto’s jersey lit up like reflectors while the underside of his cap swallowed light like a black hole. In one picture, Soto smiles and spreads his arms wide, but his arms and his entire head are fully engulfed in impenetrable shadow.

In case you can’t tell, I adore these pictures. They’re not the action-packed hero shots that we’re used to seeing splashed across the sports section or the homepage of our favorite baseball analytics website. We’re accustomed to crisp, perfectly lit pictures of batters flattening fastballs into pancakes and pitchers grimacing mid-delivery with their UCLs stretched past the point of no return. But for the past month, with no new art to take their place, these photos of Soto looking, of all things, human, are everywhere. There he is on the television, in the newspaper, on the internet: in the dark, wearing a baseball jersey over a chain and a turtleneck that probably cost more money than I have ever seen in my life, alternating between posing confidently and standing awkwardly.

That’s part of the deal for professional baseball players. From the moment they arrive at spring training until the moment their season ends, they’re fair game for photographers. The Imagn photo service has 4,455 pictures of Soto, 1,113 of them from the 2024 season alone. But when the season ends, the players disappear. In the winter, they get to live their quasi-private lives away from the cameras, and baseball editors get to scroll through Imagn’s 56 pages of 2024 Juan Soto pictures in an attempt to avoid reusing that one shot they used back in December.

But now we’ve got art of Soto in a Mets uniform. Sure, the art isn’t what we’re used to, but it beats using an old photo of him in a Yankees uniform. Here’s what you see what you search Imagn for Juan Soto (which you can do here).

For any editor whose news organization didn’t send a photographer to Soto’s presser, this is what you have to choose from. It’s one closeup after another: Juan Soto with his arms outstretched like Moses parting the Red Sea, Juan Soto nervously smiling and adjusting the cuff of his turtleneck, Juan Soto with his hands raised like he’s conducting an orchestra, Juan Soto with the same goofy, sideways smile that Steve Carell wore in the poster for The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

I was a teenager when digital cameras began to fully replace film cameras, and I remember that era just well enough to appreciate what the transition cost us. Today, you can take and instantly delete an infinite number of pictures until you get one that shows exactly what you want it to show. Before that option was available, you couldn’t see your photos until you remembered to take the roll to the developer months later. When you finally got them back, you’d discover that you had your finger over the lens for a couple of them, that you had your eyes closed for a couple more, that the lighting was off for a couple more, and that one was, for no discernible reason, completely gray. If you were a total amateur like me, you’d consider yourself lucky to end up with two or three photographs that actually came out well. In other words, photography used to accurately represent real life. Real life is 90% crazy eyes and pre-sneeze faces, and you don’t get to dial up the saturation. I don’t mean to sound like a crank. I love having a decent camera in my pocket at all times; I’m just saying that it has distorted our world a bit.

For that reason, I love the fact that these pictures are everywhere you look. Penner took all of them, and he’s a fantastic photographer. He took the widely circulated picture of Francisco Lindor celebrating on the field after the Mets dispatched the Phillies in the NLDS, and he even had a comp in mind for the madness of Soto’s press conference: Kemba Walker’s 2021 introductory presser for the Knicks, which took place at the top of the Empire State Building. But still, these are not the perfect pictures we’re used to seeing. They show the rare photo opportunity that ends up looking every bit as contrived as it actually is.

For the next month, do your best to enjoy these pictures. The moment Soto arrives in Port St. Lucie, you’ll stop seeing them. They’ll be replaced by low-angle shots of a godlike Soto in a crisp uniform, an immaculate Florida sky behind him. He’ll be launching batting practice home runs and laughing with his teammates. It will be perfect. There will be no turtleneck.

What does it cost to sign a living legend? About $15 million, it turns out. Three-time Cy Young winner Justin Verlander is taking his talents to the West Coast for the first time, having inked a one-year deal with the San Francisco Giants for that aforementioned sum.

It’s another bold signing for newly appointed supreme prefect of baseball operations Gerald D. “Buster” Posey, who officially took charge a little over three months ago. And yet — if we give Posey the credit he’s reportedly due for the Matt Chapman extension — more than a quarter of San Francisco’s payroll (according to CBT math) is now devoted to players Posey is responsible for signing.

But Verlander could very well have cost more. He made nearly three times as much last season, and had he hit the 140-inning threshold in 2024, he would’ve been able to activate a player option worth $35 million, not $15 million. So why take such a big haircut? This is Justin Verlander, for God’s sake. 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, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

With his combination of a powerful bat, good range, sure hands, the occasional spectacular leap, and a strong and accurate arm, Troy Tulowitzki had the primary attributes of a Hall of Fame shortstop, like Nomar Garciaparra before him. He debuted in the majors just 15 months after being chosen with the seventh pick of the 2005 draft, and helped the Rockies reach the World Series for the first time following a stellar rookie season. By the time he finished his age-30 season, he’d made five All-Star teams, won two Gold Gloves, and signed the eighth-largest contract in baseball to that point. The face of the Rockies’ franchise appeared well on his way to Cooperstown, but like Garciaparra — whose number he wore as an amateur — Tulowitzki battled a seemingly endless series of injuries until he could take it no more. He never topped his rookie total of 155 games, played in just 71 from his age-32 season onward, and retired at 34, leaving us to wonder what might have been. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday the Dodgers traded Gavin Lux to the Reds for outfield prospect Mike Sirota, and Cincinnati’s 2025 Competitive Balance Round A selection, which is the upcoming draft’s 37th overall pick. Lux, who turned 27 in November, is a career .252/.326/.383 hitter in just shy of 1,500 career plate appearances. He is entering his first arbitration year; the Reds will have him under contract for three seasons.

The Lux Era in Los Angeles was rocky even though the team had championship success around him. He became one of baseball’s best prospects during an incredible 2019 season in which he slashed .347/.421/.607 with 59 extra-base hits in 113 minor league games. He spent the back half of that season, still age 21, at Triple-A Oklahoma City, briefly made his big league debut, and was my no. 2 prospect in baseball entering 2020. Expectations for him were sky high, not only in terms of his impact but also the immediacy of that impact.

Instead, problems with Lux’s throwing accuracy arose during the pandemic season and have been an intermittent problem ever since. His bout with the yips led to 2021 experimentation at third base and in left field, neither of which stuck. The Dodgers seemed determined to move Lux back to shortstop in 2023, but misfortune found Lux again when he blew his ACL in a Cactus League game and missed the whole year. Back at the keystone in 2024, Lux turned in an average offensive season – he slashed .251/.320/.383 over 487 plate appearances with a career high 10 home runs and 100 wRC+ – with below average second base defense, culminating in 1.5 WAR.

Lux is a good fit on a Reds roster teeming with versatile infielders, most of whom hit right-handed. While he’s anemic against lefties, especially their sliders, Lux is a career .264/.337/.408 hitter against righties and slashed .262/.332/.407 against them in 2024. The Reds look as though they’ll have the capacity to play in-game matchups at a variety of different positions if they want to, but from another point of view, they lack stability at every position but shortstop. Center fielder TJ Friedl has been on the IL five times within the last two years, second baseman Matt McLain got Arizona Fall League reps in center field when he returned from a serious shoulder injury of his own. Spencer Steer (1B/LF), Jeimer Candelario (1B/3B), Santiago Espinal (2B/3B/SS), and Rule 5 pick Cooper Bowman (2B/OF) all play a number of different positions, several overlapping with where Lux plays or has played. All are also right-handed. The Reds don’t have a obvious first baseman (Christian Encarnacion-Strand is the projected starter there, but he was bad last season) and it’s possible one of either Steer or Candelario will occupy that spot every day, necessitating a platoon at their other position. It’s conceivable that Lux will revisit left field or third base so that he, too, can bring some amount of versatility to the table and be part of said platoon, but no matter which players claim Opening Day roster spots in Cincinnati, they seem poised to move all over the place to help ensure favorable matchups for the offense.

The main return in this deal for Los Angeles is the draft pick, the 37th overall selection in what I believe to be a deep draft. Lux has performed like a 45-grade player so far, and prospects of about that talent level tend to be available in the Comp round of a deep class. This becomes the Dodgers’ first selection in the 2025 draft, as their ordinary first round pick was chuted 10 spots down to 40th overall because their big league payroll exceeded the second luxury tax threshold. They now have three of this year’s first 70 picks.

The transition from an infield with Lux to one with recent Korean signee, Hye-seong Kim (analysis here), represents a sizeable upgrade for the Dodgers on defense. Kim has played only second base for the last several KBO seasons, but he’s a great athlete with great range, and it’s reasonable to project that he’ll be able to play an MLB-quality shortstop, as well as several other positions, if given the opportunity. The Dodgers’ middle infield contingent in 2024 was a yip-prone Lux, several guys in their mid-30s, and a rusty-from-injury Tommy Edman, whom they acquired at the trade deadline. Their 2025 mix will depend on what kind of shortstop defender Kim ends up being — right now, they are still planning to have Mookie Betts open the year at short — and is pending whatever else the Dodgers do between now and Opening Day.

The sidecar to the trade is Sirota, a 21-year-old outfielder who was Cincinnati’s 2024 third round selection out of Northeastern, where he hit .324/.458/.577 during his career. (Unfamiliar readers should be aware that college stats are bloated.) He has yet to play an actual pro game, but he participated in Cincinnati’s instructional league activity during the fall. Here was my pre-draft report:

Speedy, power-over-hit center field prospect with plus plate discipline. Tightly wound athlete with narrow build, wiry and strong. Hands are especially lively with low-ball power. Likely going to swing underneath a ton of in-zone fastballs and be a below-average contact hitter. Speed fits in center; reads and routes need polish but the footspeed is there. Projected issues with the hit tool and Sirota’s flavor of build/athleticism look more like a part-timer. His on-base ability buoys his profile and gives Sirota a shot to be a Tyrone Taylor type of complimentary outfielder.

The Dodgers often target players with speed-driven profiles and attempt to make them stronger (Jake Vogel, Kendall George, Zyhir Hope), and Sirota is of that ilk. This is also the second year in a row the Dodgers have pounced on a recently drafted prospect who had yet to get his footing in pro ball (also Hope, from the Cubs).

So the Dodgers turn essentially a part-time player into a draft asset of comparable value (albeit a slow-to-mature one) and a likely lesser, but decent young prospect in Sirota. In a vacuum it’s a pretty even trade, but knowing they arguably replaced Lux with a better roster fit in a separate deal, and then cashed him in for multiple pieces feels like vintage Rays-era Andrew Friedman snowballing assets. For the Reds, Lux’s fit on their roster and their desire to compete for the NL Central crown helps justify things on their end, though it’s tougher to swallow a smaller market team coughing up such a high draft pick.

The Rangers’ busy offseason continues with their biggest (if only literally) signing yet: right-handed pitcher Chris Martin. It’s a nice landing spot for the 38-year-old reliever, who was born and raised in Arlington and previously spent a season and a half with his hometown team at the end of the 2010s. Those links are more than just trivia; Martin reportedly was so eager to return to the site of his birth (kind of like a salmon) that he signed for the fabled hometown discount: $5.5 million over one year. That’s a 42% pay cut from his salary with the Red Sox last season.

At 6-foot-8, he’s also one of the very few active players who can look GM Chris Young in the eye. Here’s a fun fact from the Department of I Looked This Up So You’re Going to Hear About It: There are 52 right-handed pitchers in major league history who have been listed at 6-foot-8 or taller. Four of them are named Chris, and the Rangers are halfway to collecting the full set. If Texas trades for Cardinals righty Chris Roycroft next, surely Chris Volstad will be waiting by the phone expecting a call about a scouting job. Read the rest of this entry »

Are there any Oakland Athletics fans reading this? If so, don’t worry, your team is doing its usual nonsense, there’s nothing to see here. You’re lucky they left, don’t feel so bad, those last few years can’t take away all the good times. You can go ahead and skip this one, great article, hooray. Now that that group is gone, and we’re left with Sacramentonians, new A’s fans, more general fans of the sport, and perhaps Vegas residents, let me say this: The A’s signing Brent Rooker to a five-year, $60 million extension is awesome, and I love it.

Rooker was a rare bright spot on a dismal 2023 A’s squad. Then he was downright excellent on the green-shoots-of-hope 2024 team, compiling 5.1 WAR, even with the punishing positional adjustment that comes from DHing, thanks to a scorching .293/.365/.562 batting line. That line is even better than you might think, coming as it did in the cavernous Coliseum, and it didn’t look fluky.

Rooker hits the stuffing out of the ball. He finished eighth in barrels per batted ball in 2024, just ahead of certifiably enormous guys Oneil Cruz, Kyle Schwarber, and Marcell Ozuna. He also elevates the ball more frequently than any of that crew. The two are intertwined, obviously, but any time you’re hitting rockets like the 2024 versions of Schwarber and Ozuna, you’re doing something right. You could hardly do better from scratch if you were trying to come up with an ideal power hitter; a vicious swing (78th-percentile bat speed) that frequently puts the ball in play at profitable launch angles (86th-percentile sweet spot rate) means plenty of barrels (97th percentile) and 39 homers even in a park that suppresses righty power mightily. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Lorenzen is finally staying put. After signing one-year deals ahead of the last three seasons, and after getting traded at the deadline in each of the last two, the right-hander has played for six teams in four years. All that stops now. On Monday, a day when the temperature in Kansas City peaked at a balmy five degrees Fahrenheit, Lorenzen decided that the City of Fountains was a fine place to spend at least another half of a baseball season, agreeing to sign with the Royals on yet another one-year deal. For the first time since 2021, he’ll get to start a season in the same city where he ended the previous one. The deal is for $5.5 million plus performance escalators, and because of a $12 million mutual option for 2026 with a $1.5 million buyout clause, the guaranteed value comes to $7 million.

Despite a hamstring strain that cost him a month, Lorenzen excelled after being traded to the Royals at the 2024 deadline. In six starts and one relief appearance, he ran a 1.57 ERA over 28 2/3 innings. However, his peripherals were roughly the same before and after the move, and he mostly benefitted from the classic culprits of an unsustainable bounce: a .213 BABIP, an 89% strand rate, and a 6% HR/FB rate. The only notable change he made in Kansas City was ditching his regular slider entirely in favor of his sweeper. Over that short sample size, the move worked: The slider ran a 24% whiff rate in Texas, while the sweeper was at 41% in Kansas City.

I’m afraid I’m not done raining on Lorenzen’s parade just yet, because I have to tell you that this move terrifies me a bit. Between Texas and Kansas City, Lorenzen ran a 3.31 ERA, his best mark since 2019, when he put up a 2.92 mark as a reliever with the Reds. However, the underlying metrics were downright scary. Lorenzen’s 4.58 xERA, 4.89 FIP, and 4.95 xFIP were all his worst marks since his rookie season in 2015. The stuff models didn’t love him either: We have stuff numbers going back to 2020, and Lorenzen’s 5.10 predicted ERA from Pitching Bot and his 95 Stuff+ score were both the worst they’ve been over those five seasons. His 23.9% chase rate was the lowest of his career. His strikeout rate ticked up a tiny bit from 2023, but both it and his walk rate were among the worst of his career. Lorenzen’s four-seamer performed well, but it lost half a tick and a bit of movement. After his sinker spent the 2023 season flirting with the dead zone, in 2024 it decided to move in. Name a stat – other than BABIP, HR/FB, or strand rate – and Lorenzen was worse than his career average.

I’m sorry. That was a lot of negativity. I don’t necessarily think that Lorenzen is a lost cause, and a reunion with the Royals makes a lot of sense. They needed someone to replace the innings they lost by trading Brady Singer to Cincinnati. Also, even when he was at his best, Lorenzen routinely outperformed his peripherals. He was much more of a contact manager than a strikeout pitcher, and there’s no place better for such an approach than Kauffman Stadium. Entering his age-33 season, he no longer has above-average fastball velocity, but he throws the kitchen sink – four-seamer, sinker, changeup, cutter, slider, sweeper, curveball – and he’s still figuring out how to optimize the mix. In 2024, he brought back the cutter and curve, which he’d previously abandoned; the curve worked well and the slider didn’t. That’s useful information. He could keep throwing the sweeper more. He could stand to throw his changeup, which ran a 37% whiff rate, more as well. He also brings versatility, as he’s spent his career hopping between the rotation and the bullpen.

Speaking of versatility, there’s also the odd circumstance of Lorenzen’s two-way ambitions. He came up both a pitcher and a hitter after posting an .869 OPS with 41 home runs at Cal State Fullerton, and he has 147 major league plate appearances under his belt. A few weeks ago, Ken Rosenthal detailed a plan hatched by Lorenzen and his agent. Lorenzen would take a kitchen sink approach to free agency as well, pitching himself as a candidate to qualify as a two-way player, thereby giving his team (or, more likely, the team that trades for him at the deadline) an extra roster spot for a pitcher.

While it’s fun, the gambit was always a bit farfetched, and now that Lorenzen is returning to the Royals, it seems extremely unlikely to happen. In order to qualify, Lorenzen would need to get at least three PAs as a DH or a position player in at least 20 games. Lorenzen ran a .640 OPS in the minors, he has a career wRC+ of 84 in the majors, and he’s taken just two plate appearances over the past five seasons. Even when he was hitting, he never made it to 60 PAs in a season. The Royals just made it to the ALDS last season, and they are, in their own way, showing every indication that they intend to return to the playoffs in 2025. It’s hard to see them giving 60 PAs to a guy whose last hit came in 2019.

This is not a particularly risky move either for Lorenzen or the Royals. He’s back on a one-year contract, back in a pitcher-friendly park, and back playing for a team with which he had some success last season. The worst-case scenario is that the Royals don’t return to playoff contention and Lorenzen doesn’t pitch well enough (or hit enough, period) to get traded to his seventh team in five years. The best-case scenario involves Lorenzen throwing a couple more no-hitters and launching a couple more bombs. Of course, that worst-case scenario is far more likely than the best one, but either way, the possible benefits of this reunion far outweigh the potential pitfalls.

Those of you who followed Premier League soccer in the 2010s surely remember the “Like a New Signing” meme that dogged Arsenal back then. At that time, London’s coolest and bougiest soccer team was managed by an erudite Frenchman named Arsene Wenger, who’d led the club to enormous success in the first decade of his tenure by the strength of his own wits and Thierry Henry’s legs.

But in Wenger’s latter days, Arsenal was overtaken by richer rivals. Manchester United, Chelsea, and later, Manchester City. Arsenal had rich owners, but not Russian oligarch or Emirati sovereign wealth fund rich. That left Wenger to compete with a more modest budget, and his limitless belief that his own intellectual superiority would compensate for any deficit in resources. Read the rest of this entry »