Many were surprised when Zach McKinstry outpolled Kansas City’s Maikel Garcia and New York’s Ben Rice to win this year’s American League Silver Slugger Award at the utility position. That’s understandable — McKinstry’s numbers weren’t as good as those put up by his co-finalists — but the honor was nonetheless deserved. For one thing, he was a true utility player. Not only did McKinstry start 20 or more games for Detroit at each of third base (69), shortstop (27), and right field (20), he was stationed everywhere besides center field and catcher. Conversely, Garcia started just 21 games at positions other than third base, while Rice’s only action came as a catcher and a first baseman.
And it’s not as though the Tiger didn’t have solid numbers of his own. Over 511 plate appearances, McKinstry slashed .259/.333/.438 with a 114 wRC+. Moreover, he logged 23 doubles, 11 triples, 12 home runs, and 19 stolen bases. Amid little fanfare, the 30-year-old erstwhile Central Michigan University Chippewa was one of the more valuable players on a team that went on to play October baseball.
By most accounts, McKinstry is an overachiever. Exactly one thousand players were chosen before him in the 2016 draft, and he ranked as just the 28th-best prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization when he made his MLB debut in 2020. When the Tigers subsequently traded for him in March 2023 — he was by then a Chicago Cub — he had appeared in 121 big-league games to the tune of a 79 wRC+ and 0.8 WAR. Read the rest of this entry »
Alan Arsenault/Special to the Telegram & Gazette-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
The Red Sox and Pirates made a roster-balancing deal Thursday night as a prologue to Winter Meetings, with a five-player swap headlined by outfield prospect Jhostynxon Garcia (who heads to Pittsburgh) and pitchers Johan Oviedo and Tyler Samaniego (who head to Boston). Here’s the complete trade:
Pittsburgh receives:
OF Jhostynxon Garcia
RHP Jesus Travieso
The Boston Red Sox made a pre-Thanksgiving trade on Tuesday, acquiring Sonny Gray from the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for 25-year-old right-hander Richard Fitts and hard-throwing prospect Brandon Clarke. How well the deal works out for Craig Breslow’s club is anyone’s guess — my colleague Michael Baumann wrote that he couldn’t “declare this trade to be a robbery in either direction” — but the 36-year-old righty does have a track record of reliability. Gray has graced a big-league mound 92 times over the past three seasons, gobbling up 531 innings and posting a 3.63 ERA as well as a 3.11 FIP. If he can continue to fend off Father Time a while longer, the erstwhile Vanderbilt Commodore will add value to the Red Sox starting rotation.
A Vandy product Boston brought on board as a free agent last winter came to mind when the trade was announced. That would be Walker Buehler, who despite high hopes ultimately proved to be a bust. Unable to return to old form, the veteran righty struggled to a 5.45 ERA over 112-and-a-third innings and was cut loose by the Red Sox in late August.
There are clear differences between the two pitchers — their respective health histories particularly stand out — but they nonetheless have things in common. One is a diverse repertoire. Another is a lack of high-octane heaters.
Buehler was in the 43rd percentile for fastball velocity in 2025, while Gray was in just the 16th percentile. As Baumann pointed out, the latter “has started leaking fastball velocity… [but has] compensated by leaning into a cutter and changeup, making him a legit six-pitch pitcher since 2023.” Meanwhile, the 31-year-old Buehler leaned heavily on a six-pitch mix while compensating for the velocity he lost following Tommy John surgery in 2022. Read the rest of this entry »
Bubba Chandler has a bright future. Currently ranked fifth on our Top 100 — he remains rookie-eligible — the 23-year-old right-hander broke into the big leagues with the Pittsburgh Pirates in late August and showed why he is one of the game’s top pitching prospects. Featuring a fastball that averaged 98.9 mph, Chandler fashioned a 4.02 ERA, a 2.66 FIP, and a 25% strikeout rate over 31 1/3 innings. Five of his seven outings were stellar. Bookending back-to-back bumpy efforts against the Brewers and Dodgers, he allowed just 10 hits and two runs over 24 2/3 frames, fanning 25 batters and issuing a lone free pass along the way. At his best, the 2021 third-round pick out of Bogart, Georgia’s North Oconee High School was flat out dominant.
Back in February, the personable flamethrower was featured here during our annual Prospect Week in an interview titled “Bubba Chandler Addresses His Power Arsenal.” We heard from him again in early September, that time learning why he is done playing catch with Paul Skenes. Today, we’ll hear from him on his initial impressions of pitching in the majors. Our conversation took place as the calendar was turning to September.
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David Laurila: What have you learned since getting called up from Triple-A?
Bubba Chandler: “I don’t want to say the game is harder, but it is definitely a lot more thinking. Pitch-to-pitch thinking goes into it. Something I’ve learned is that at each level you go up, the less and less mistakes you can make. Up here, I’ve made a couple of mistake pitches that were hit pretty hard, whereas in Triple-A they might have gotten fouled off. So it’s kind of, how many mistakes can I limit myself to in a game? They’re going to happen, but when are they going to happen? Are they going to happen with guys on base? Are they going to happen with no one on base? Stuff like that.” Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the navigation tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.
Barry Bonds has a reasonable claim as the greatest position player of all time. Babe Ruth played in a time before integration, and Ted Williams bridged the pre- and post-integration eras, but while both were dominant at the plate, neither was much to write home about on the base paths or in the field. Bonds’ godfather, Willie Mays, was a big plus in both of those areas, but he didn’t dominate opposing pitchers to the same extent. Bonds used his blend of speed, power, and surgical precision in the strike zone to outdo them all. He set the single-season home run record with 73 in 2001 and the all-time home run record with 762, reached base more often than any player this side of Pete Rose, and won a record seven MVP awards along the way.
Despite his claim to greatness, Bonds may have inspired more fear and loathing than any ballplayer in modern history. Fear, because opposing pitchers and managers simply refused to engage him at his peak, intentionally walking him a record 688 times — once with the bases loaded — and giving him a free pass a total of 2,558 times, also a record. Loathing, because even as a young player, he rubbed teammates and media the wrong way (and occasionally, even his manager), and approached the game with a chip on his shoulder because of the way his father, three-time All-Star Bobby Bonds, had been driven from the game due to alcoholism. The younger Bonds had his own issues off the field, as allegations of physical and verbal abuse of his domestic partners surfaced during his career. Read the rest of this entry »
Well sports fans, it’s that time again. We Tried season is officially upon us, and for the second offseason in a row, I will be keeping my eye fixed firmly on the periphery of the action. For the uninitiated, We Tried is a noun in this context. It’s the name for the phenomenon of reporters announcing, once a player has signed with a team, that another team was interested in signing that player too. Team A might have succeeded in landing the player in question, but Team B wants to make sure the public knows that they failed to sign him because they want credit for that failure. It is both our duty and great honor to award that credit. The illustrious Jon Becker has once again graciously offered to host the We Tried Tracker on his maniacally comprehensive MLB Matrices spreadsheet, so be sure to check there for all the latest in major league effort.
Jeff Passan, ESPN’s officially-licensed baseball bombardier, kicked off the real offseason bright and early on Tuesday morning (Becker tipped me off to the news not long after). At 7:00 AM, Passan published an offseason preview that featured a key piece of information about Josh Naylor, who agreed to return to the Mariners this past weekend:
The largest free agent contract the Pirates have ever handed out was more than a decade ago: three years and $39 million to Francisco Liriano. They are consistently a bottom-five payroll team. And yet the Pirates were primed to spend more than twice that on Josh Naylor before he re-upped with Seattle for five years and $92.5 million in the first signing of the winter on Sunday night — and they’re considering other possibilities to supplement Paul Skenes and a rotation that was among the five best in MLB in the second half.
For the 22nd consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Batters
From a pure talent standpoint, the Pittsburgh Pirates are in better shape than their 71-91 record this season might suggest. Still, the organization always feels like it’s on a giant treadmill because when the time to increase the level of investment comes, the push is always extremely underwhelming. The Pirates have actually gotten slightly better at committing to payroll (slightly!), but when they do spend, they frequently do so in rather unproductive ways. Read the rest of this entry »
We’re less than a month from the Winter Meetings and the Rule 5 Draft, which means it’s a good time to evaluate every team’s 40-man roster situation. This is the time of year when teams have one final chance to protect Rule 5 eligible players by placing them on the 40-man. Eligibility is determined by a mix of how long a player has been with their parent organization and how young they were when they signed: Players who signed at 18 or younger must be added to the 40-man within five seasons, while everyone else must be added within four. RosterResource monitors Rule 5 eligibility, if you’re curious to see the lay of the land.
During the season, teams can free up roster space by placing an injured player on the 60-day IL. In the offseason, teams don’t get extra slots for injured players, which tends to put pressure on the back of the roster. The Diamondbacks are a good example of how space can tighten quickly, as they’ve currently got six pitchers battling long-term injuries occupying a spot. You may have noticed a flurry of moves immediately following the World Series, with many teams outrighting players off the 40-man in order to make room for all the guys who were on the IL.
Below, I’ve assessed every National League team’s 40-man roster situation (Eric will sort through the American League tomorrow). Some teams, like the Braves, have plenty of roster space, and thus a lot of flexibility in adding whoever they like. Others, like the Cardinals and Marlins, will face some tough choices as they seek to balance protecting interesting prospects with retaining players already on the roster, as well as finding room for prospective additions via trade or free agency. Some clubs don’t have many impact players to add, while others may need to protect a half-dozen or so guys. I’ve tried to identify which players are most likely to be added, which guys on the 40-man are vulnerable to getting lopped off in a roster crunch, and who could be moved in a deal to free up roster space. Let’s dig in. Read the rest of this entry »
This is the time of year when people start telling me that my job must be so hard now that there’s no baseball to write about. It happens every offseason. I always protest. While it’s true that without major league games to watch, one particularly fun and fruitful source of article ideas has dried up, I actually love writing in November. The truth about who was dealing with an injury all year starts trickling out. The free agent market is shaping up. General managers are hinting at their plans. Scott Boras is unveiling a fresh batch of the worst puns imaginable. I get to dig into my notes app, where I’ve been stashing weirdideas for a rainy day. More importantly, it’s a great time to reflect on the season that was. Everything is still somewhat fresh in your mind, but you’re working with a full season’s worth of numbers. You don’t have to worry that a player’s going to dive into the world’s worst slump the moment after you write about their hot streak. You can write about players who perhaps aren’t changing the course of the season, but are interesting in their own way. It’s a great time to check the leaderboards for a surprise.
Today’s surprise appeared on the SEAGER leaderboard. That’s Robert Orr’s metric for SElective AGression, and players find their way to the top by swinging at hittable pitches and laying off bad ones. Corey Seager, forever on brand, finished the season in second place (and first in an unpublished updated version). Aaron Judge and Ronald Acuña Jr. finished first and fourth, respectively, which makes plenty of sense since they finished first and fourth in walk rate and also mashed the ball. It was third place that held the name that surprised me: Joey Bart. The 6-foot-3, 235-pound Bart has seen his numbers turn around a bit in the past two seasons. Because he’s a catcher who splits time, his numbers represent a smaller sample with more room for fluctuation, but it was still eye-opening to see him in that kind of company.
Once a Johnny Bench Award winner at Georgia Tech, the second overall pick in the 2018 draft, and the heir apparent to Buster Posey, Bart debuted in San Francisco during the shortened 2020 season and struggled with injuries and underperformance from the get-go. Over 162 games from 2020 to 2023, he batted .219 with just 11 home runs. To that point in his career, his wRC+ in the minors was 123, compared to 77 in the majors. In April 2024, after Bart had exhausted his minor league options and Patrick Bailey had impressed in his own 2023 debut, the Giants traded Bart to the Pirates. Our preseason projections saw him putting up below-average numbers both at the plate and behind it. Instead, he had a career year. Splitting time with Yasmani Grandal and 2021 first overall pick Henry Davis, Bart ran a 121 wRC+, the fourth-highest mark among catchers with at least 200 plate appearances. He bested his career total with 13 home runs. Read the rest of this entry »
