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 weird ideas 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 »

Senior Analyst/Analyst – Baseball Strategy

The Pirates Why
The Pittsburgh Pirates are a storied franchise in Major League Baseball who are reinventing themselves on every level. Boldly and relentlessly pursuing excellence by:

• purposefully developing a player and people-centered culture;
• deeply connecting with our fans, partners, and colleagues;
• passionately creating lifetime memories for generations of families and friends; and
• meaningfully impacting our communities and the game of baseball.

At the Pirates, we believe in the power of a diverse workforce and strive to create an inclusive culture centered in Passion, Innovation, Respect, Accountability, Teamwork, Empathy, and Service.

Job Summary
The Strategy team with the Pittsburgh Pirates exists to give the Major League coaching staff the information and tools they need to make elite in-game decisions. The group’s analysts translate information into clear, actionable plans that support both daily competition and long-term player growth.

The Baseball Strategy team will be considering applicants at both the Analyst and Senior Analyst level. In this role, you’ll work alongside Major League coaches and staff, helping turn information into on-field impact. Your work will include elements of game preparation, in-game strategy support, post-game review, skill development, and ongoing tool or process improvement.

Responsibilities:

1. Partner with Major League coaches to identify and create competitive advantages.
2. Translate data, video, and player information into clear, usable insights that influence in-game decisions.
3. Build and maintain workflows, tools, and processes that streamline information delivery.
4. Collaborate across department, including R&D and Player Development, to connect insights from multiple sources.
5. Communicate findings clearly and efficiently, tailoring information to a variety of audiences.

Qualifications

Required:

1. Authorized to work lawfully in the United States.
2. Demonstrated ability to synthesize complex information into actionable recommendations.
3. Proven ability to manage multiple projects and meet tight deadlines in a fast-paced setting.
4. Excellent communication and relationship-building skills.
5. Strong knowledge of modern baseball research and technologies.
6. Programming language proficiencies:
   • General purpose programming (Python or R)
   • Relational databases (SQL)
   • Ability and desire to learn other programming languages as needed.

Desired:

1. Software development experience (Javascript or Typescript)
   • Experience visualizing data with a Javascript library like d3.js
2. Experience working with coaches, analysts, or player development staff in a high-performance environment.
3. Demonstrated baseball or other sports analytics research work product.

Equal Opportunity Employer
The Pittsburgh Pirates are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

To Apply
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Happy first Saturday of the offseason, everyone. To celebrate the occasion, you get two mailbag columns this week! The first ran on Monday and wrapped up a thrilling World Series. In today’s edition, we’ll move on from the Fall Classic and answer your questions about several teams that finished in last place this season. We’ll also cover small-market teams and some of the structures that are in place to encourage them to spend more on their rosters.

The first question we’ll answer today is about a player we’ve featured before in this column. In fact, some are calling him the Patron Saint of the Mailbag, an honor second only to his status as the worst major league player ever.

But before we continue, I’d like to remind you all that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Burrows was rated as having the best curveball in the Pittsburgh Pirates system when I talked to him to for our old Learning and Developing a Pitch series back in 2022. Then a highly-regarded prospect, the 25-year-old right-hander relied heavily on his hook, a pitch that Eric Longenhagen assigned a 70 on the scouting scale and described as having “devastating bite and depth.” Our lead prospect analyst referred to it as his “meal ticket.”

Burrows is now a bona fide big-leaguer, but not because of a bender. Pitching in his first full MLB season — he made one appearance in 2024 — Burrows threw his erstwhile go-to just 11.9% of the time while logging a 3.94 ERA and a 24.1% strikeout rate over 96 innings. He’s evolved into split-change artist. Burrows threw what has become his most-used secondary pitch at a 23.7% clip this year. Moreover, he did so to the tune of a .147 BAA, a .220 slug, and a 43.1% whiff rate.

Why and how did he go from a killer curveball to a bat-missing splitter variant?
Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of different types of players get sent to the Arizona Fall League by their parent clubs: prospects who have lost time due to injury, org arms there to soak up enough innings for the league to function, guys eligible for the Rule 5 Draft whose teams aren’t yet sold on putting them on the 40-man roster, and, quite often, the most talented and exciting players in minor league baseball. It’s a rich and robust tapestry.

Now that the league’s action has commenced, one use of the AFL is to provide a sort of decontextualized look at some of the players whose strong performance in 2025 was already cause for some re-evaluation. Here’s one player from each AFL roster who arrived with some helium, prompting us to ask if they’ve changed their scouting report, or are just progressively improving into the player we expected.

Glendale Desert Dogs
Sam Antonacci, 2B, White Sox
2025 FV: Honorable Mention

Not only did the White Sox trade for Chase Meidroth months after giving Antonacci a slightly over-slot bonus in the fifth round of the 2024 draft, their Double-A Birmingham affiliate won the Southern League while slotting Antonacci in as the third straight feisty little bat-to-ball maven at the top of their lineup behind Rikuu Nishida and William Bergolla. At six feet, he’s a bit taller, but similar to Meidroth, below-average thump and a dearth of the athleticism necessary to drive a shortstop projection cooled early scouting reads for Antonacci, and he was an honorable mention for us on the White Sox list in April. Despite only playing his junior season there after two years of Division II ball, Antonacci is so Coastal Carolina-pilled that 35 hit by pitches form a substantial part of the .433 OBP he held over his first full pro season. (That he has yet to be plunked in his first three AFL games has to be, one would imagine, a source of deep personal disappointment.) Read the rest of this entry »

This week, the baseball world turns its attention to the first round of the playoffs. It’s what we’ve spent the past six months waiting for. Nevertheless, the past 48 hours or so have brought a flurry of news events involving people and teams that (cue sad trombone sound effect) will not be taking part. Since the season ended on Sunday, seven teams made announcements about managers who were on the hot seat and/or wobbly chair:

Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Narváez has far exceeded expectations this season. Acquired by the Red Sox from the Yankees last winter in exchange for 22-year-old pitching prospect Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz, Narváez went into spring training hoping to earn a job as Boston’s backup catcher. He did much more than that. The 26-year-old backstop went on to claim the starting job, and he heads into the final day of the regular season with 15 home runs and a 97 wRC+ over 446 plate appearances. A plus defender, Narváez has 12 defensive runs saved and 2.7 WAR.

Back in spring training, Alex Cora said something about the still-unproven — just six games of MLB experience — native of Maracay, Venezuela that caught my attention.

“He had a great offseason, playing in winter ball,” the Red Sox manager told a group of reporters, including yours truly. “Learned a lot about the offensive side of it. Very Gleyber-like as far as his swing. He can stay inside the ball and drive it.”

I stored away those quotes, thinking they might be worth revisiting if Narváez were to not only make the team, but also end up contributing with the bat. Six months later, I did just that. Reminding him of what he’d said in Fort Myers, I asked Cora if Narváez still has a Gleyber Torres-like swing. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the final Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week of the year. As we prepare to leave the normal cadence of regular season baseball behind, we’re all already mentally preparing for the madcap pace of the playoffs, when the games are fewer but more momentous. This last week is more of a transitional phase; some of the series are monumentally important, while others feature the Royals and Angels (just to pick a random set) playing out the string. Maybe this is the best time for baseball, actually. If you’re looking for it, there’s more drama in the back half of September than in any other regular season month. But if you just want silly baserunning in inconsequential games, or role players making the most of big opportunities, there’s plenty of that too. I love October baseball, but I’ll be sad when September ends.

Of course, no Five Things intro would be complete without me thanking Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the format I’ve shamelessly copied. So Zach, I hope your Mets fandom isn’t too painful this week. To the things!

1. Playoff Races
Obviously. If this isn’t the thing you like most in baseball this week, you’re probably a Mets or Tigers fan, and even then, you’re probably lying to yourself a little. The thrill of a pennant race coming down to the wire is one of the great joys of this sport. Most of the time, I like baseball because no single outcome matters all that much. Lose a game? Play the next day. Strike out in a big spot? Everyone does that sometimes. Give up a walk-off hit? I mean, there are 162 games, you’re going to give up some walk-offs. But every so often, as a treat, it’s fun when the games suddenly transmute from seemingly endless to “must have this next one.”

Has the new playoff format played a role here? It’s hard to argue it hasn’t. This is the fourth year of the 12-team field, and it’s the fourth straight year with an unsettled playoff race in the last week of the season. It’s the third straight year with multiple good races, in fact. That’s not exactly unimpeachable evidence – the final year of the old format saw its own thrilling conclusion to the regular season – but the point is that when the last week of the regular season is filled with drama, it makes for a great playoff appetizer. I’m still unsure what the new format does to the competitive structure of the game, and I haven’t liked the way trade deadlines work when the line between contender and pretender is so hazy. But in late September, it sure seems to be giving me more of what I want. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. That title is quite a mouthful. Every time I submit it, our helpful back end interface informs me that it is “far too long.” You’re not wrong, WordPress. But I lifted the title and the inspiration for this column from Zach Lowe’s basketball feature of the same name, and every time I consider removing the parenthetical part of it, I remember that the frustrations and failures of the game are part of what makes baseball so compelling. If you never disliked anything about sports, they wouldn’t be so fun to follow. So while every item this week involves something I liked, they also all contain an element of something I didn’t care for. Missed plays, bobbled balls, artificially abbreviated outings, below-average defensive units, lengthy injury recoveries – there are things to dislike in each of these. They all brought me extreme joy anyway, though. Let’s get going.

1. Relatable Frustration
Mike Yastrzemski has been everything the Royals could have hoped for since he joined the team at the trade deadline. He leads off against righties, gets platooned against lefties, and plays his habitual right field. He’s been the team’s second-best hitter behind Bobby Witt Jr., a huge boon as they chase slim playoff odds. Also, when he goofs something up, his reactions are very relatable:

You can see what happened there right away. Yaz’s first step was in, but the ball was actually over his head, and tailing towards the foul line so strongly that he couldn’t reach it. Sure, it was only his second start of the year in left field. Sure, he hasn’t played left for more than a handful of games since 2019. And sure, the ball had plenty of slice on it. But he’d probably tell you the same thing you’re thinking: Major league outfielders, particularly solid ones like Yastrzemski, should make that play. Read the rest of this entry »