The first day of the Winter Meetings turns out to have been the calm before the storm, but it did end with a modest bang. Late Monday night, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reported that left-hander Steven Matz has agreed to a two-year deal with the Rays. Many details have yet to be reported. The dollar amount is unknown, and it’s not immediately clear whether Matz will slot into the bullpen or the rotation. What is known is that the 34-year-old is coming off an excellent 2025 season, his first as a full-time reliever after 11 years in the majors, and his first without spending a single day on the IL. Matz started the season with the Cardinals before getting dealt to Boston at the deadline. He ran a 3.05 ERA and 3.46 FIP over 53 appearances, including a hot stretch with a 2.08 ERA after the move.

Matz is a sinkerballing left-hander with a career 46% groundball rate. A second-round pick by the Mets in the 2009 draft, he suffered a series of injuries in the minors, including a UCL tear. He debuted in 2015, the last member to debut out of the fearsome youth movement that included Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Zack Wheeler, and Noah Syndergaard. After all that waiting, Matz succeeded immediately, posting a 2.27 ERA over six starts and pitching well in the team’s World Series run. He followed that up in 2016 by going 13-8 with a 3.16 ERA and 3.44 FIP and picking up a Rookie of the Year vote. Unfortunately, the injuries kept coming: back spasm, elbow tightness, shoulder strain, bone spurs, flexor tendon strain, ulnar nerve transposition, finger strain, forearm strain, shoulder impingement. Amazingly, Matz still reached 30 starts twice in his six years with the Mets (and made a full complement of starts in the shortened 2020 season), but he combined for a 4.35 ERA and 4.49 FIP, putting up just 5.1 WAR.

The Mets traded Matz to Toronto in 2021, and he had arguably the most productive season of his career, running a 3.82 ERA and 3.79 FIP over 29 starts and 150 2/3 innings. He parlayed that success into a four-year deal with the Cardinals. His performance was up and down in St. Louis; he continued to deal with injuries and posted ERAs over 5.00 in 2022 and 2024. He put up solid numbers in 2023, but things looked different in 2025. After filling a swingman role in previous seasons, Matz spent the nearly the entire 2025 campaign in the bullpen, where he flourished. (He made two spot starts for St. Louis.) He went more than an inning in 25 out of his 53 appearances, and he was one of just 39 pitchers to throw at least 75 innings and run both an ERA and FIP below 3.50. The Cardinals traded Matz to the Red Sox at the deadline, and he made two more scoreless appearances against the Yankees in the Wild Card Series. Read the rest of this entry »

The Tampa Bay Rays have signed outfielder Cedric Mullins, late of the Mets and Orioles, to a one-year contract worth $7 million. This deal makes a lot of sense if you look at Mullins’ overall numbers from 2025: 17 home runs, a 10.0% walk rate, and a 94 wRC+ from a guy who can run well enough to play center.

That sounds like a pretty good player, and for just $7 million. Inflation’s so bad these days that $7 million is reliever money on the free agent market — not even good reliever money — and for that the Rays got themselves a fringe-average center fielder. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite annual exercises is a quick and dirty assessment of every team’s 40-man roster situation. Which prospects need to be added to their club’s 40-man by next Tuesday’s deadline to be protected from the Rule 5 Draft? Which veterans are in danger of being non-tendered because of their projected arbitration salary? And which players aren’t good enough to make their current org’s active roster, but would see the field for a different club and therefore have some trade value? These are the questions I’m attempting to answer with a piece like this. Most teams add and subtract a handful of players to their roster every offseason — some just one or two, others as many as 10. My aim with this exercise is to attempt to project what each team’s roster will look like when the deadline to add players arrives on Tuesday, or at least give you an idea of the names I think are likely to be on the table for decision-makers to consider.

This project is completed by using the RosterResource Depth Charts to examine current 40-man occupancy and roster makeup, and then weigh the young, unrostered prospects who are Rule 5 eligible in December against the least keepable current big leaguers in the org to create a bubble for each roster. The bigger and more talented the bubble, the more imperative it is for a team to make a couple of trades to do something with their talent overage rather than watch it walk out the door for nothing in the Rule 5.

Below you’ll see each team’s current 40-man count, the players I view as locks to be rostered, the fringe players currently on the roster whose spots feel tenuous, and the more marginal prospects who have an argument to be added but aren’t guaranteed. I only included full sections for the teams that have an obvious crunch or churn, with a paragraph of notes addressing the clubs with less intricate roster situations at the bottom. I have the players listed from left to right in the order I prefer them, so the left-most names are the players I’d keep, and right-most names are the guys I’d be more likely to cut. I’ve italicized the names of the players who I believe fall below the cut line. As a reminder, players who signed at age 18 or younger must be added to the 40-man within five seasons to be protected from the Rule 5, while those signed at age 19 or older must be added within four. Brendan Gawlowski examined the National League yesterday, so be sure to check that out too. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Hagen Smith has a promising future on the South Side. Drafted fifth overall in 2024 out of the University of Arkansas, the 22-year-old left-hander in the Chicago White Sox system is No. 81 on The Board with a 50 FV. Currently making up lost innings in the Arizona Fall League — he missed six weeks this summer due to elbow soreness — Smith has been described by Eric Longenhagen as possessing “a killer fastball/slider combo.”

The erstwhile Razorback’s go-to breaker — a pitch our lead prospect analyst has assigned a 70 on the scouting scale — isn’t notable solely for its bat-missing attributes.

“No, not at all,” Smith replied when asked if his slider grip is fairly standard. “I actually don’t hold any laces on the ball. My first year of college — it was a start in Omaha — I was warming up in the outfield and just kind of tweaked the grip. That’s what it’s been since then. I really don’t know why it works as well as it does. I mean, it’s a good pitch metrically, but outside of that I guess it just plays well off of my heater. It comes out of the same tunnel, and it also helps that I can throw it slower or harder when I want to.”

How has Smith’s slider looked in the AFL? Read the rest of this entry »

Well, the dream is dead. Throughout the season, I have been tracking Nick Allen’s chances of reopening the Homerless Qualifier Club, the exclusive fraternity of players who make enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title but fail to hit a single home run. In 2022, Myles Straw became the only entrant since 2012 and just the 19th of the century. Allen has played in 128 of Atlanta’s 139 games, but batting last and frequently giving up his spot in favor of a pinch-hitter has kept him just under the threshold of 3.1 plate appearances per game all season long. The cruel cat-and-mouse game is finally over, though, because the Braves have claimed Ha-Seong Kim from the Rays off waivers. Kim started at shortstop on Tuesday, going 2-for-4. Manager Brian Snitker made it clear that Kim will play there for the remainder of the season.

Kim tore the labrum in his right shoulder on August 18 last year, requiring surgery and putting an unceremonious end to his final season with the Padres. The Rays took a gamble on him knowing that he wouldn’t be available until May at the earliest, signing him on a two-year deal with an opt-out for $13 million this year (with $2 million more in incentives), then $16 million in 2026. If he performed well, Tampa Bay would have him for one season at a big discount, and he’d get a second shot at having a proper platform year. Instead, Kim’s return was delayed until July by hamstring and calf injuries, and lower back issues put him on the IL twice more in the past two months. In all, Kim got into just 24 games with the Rays, making 93 plate appearances and recording a wRC+ of 72, his worst offensive showing since 2021, his first year in the U.S. That made keeping Kim around for the 2026 season too big a risk for the Rays.

All of this is a shame. Kim is a great player, an excellent, versatile defender with a solid bat, and injuries have now robbed him of his second chance to sign a deal that would reflect that excellence. Even if he puts up a fantastic 2026 campaign, he’ll be re-entering free agency after his age-30 season, which isn’t easy for a player whose value is so wrapped up in his glove.

Now, the Braves are the team taking a chance on Kim. Unless he puts up the greatest September in recent memory, he will forego his opt-out and get paid $16 million to anchor the Atlanta infield in 2026. He wouldn’t have to return all the way to the form he showed from 2022 to 2024 – when he ran a 106 wRC+ with 15 DRS and 7 FRV to average 4.0 WAR per 162 games – in order to make that a bargain. Still, he represents a risk. Atlanta is tying itself to a player who has suffered several minor injuries while recovering from a major one, and who hasn’t performed in his limited time with Tampa Bay. On the other hand, that time was so limited that it’s hard to tell where the noise leaves off and the signal starts. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not telling our readers anything they don’t already know, but defense is a very important part of baseball, especially at the up-the-middle positions. You probably watch enough baseball to list the best and worst couple of defenders at each position with a fair amount of accuracy; I bet you’d nail most of them off the top of your head (aside from Trea Turner, I think the 2025 FRV list is damn good), and that you have a proper appreciation for the importance of defense at the premium positions, even if it comes with some amount of sacrifice on offense.

In the prospect realm, though, things are trickier. Prospect hit data from TrackMan and Hawkeye has become common in public-facing analysis and discourse, but defense remains something of a black box. There aren’t many publicly available minor league defensive stats, and so much of evaluating defense is still best done visually, at least in my opinion. I wrote a version of today’s piece a few years ago, wherein I performed the same sort of video deep dive that I use to evaluate top shortstop prospects’ defense, and ripped and edited together key plays from that deep dive to share with you.

This year, I’m turning that exercise into a series. I’m going to batch together a few players at a time until I’ve gone through all of the 50 FV shortstops, as well as a few key prospects with lesser grades. That will include all of the players linked here, plus a few more. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. Between a vacation, the All-Star break, the Trade Value Series, and the trade deadline, Five Things has been on a bit of a summer hiatus. Baseball itself doesn’t stop, of course; weird and delightful things happen whether I’m documenting them or not. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that this week had an extra helping of whimsy. Balls took funny hops. Good pitchers got shelled in unexpected ways. Balks took center stage. Leads changed hands late, defenders kicked things into high gear – there was so much delightful baseball this week that I struggled to narrow it down to five things. Seven things just doesn’t have the same ring to it, though, so let’s quickly nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the column inspiration and get going.

1. The True King of Contact
Writing about Luis Arraez can be a bummer sometimes. Not because he’s bad – he’s emphatically not – but because merely mentioning his name reinvigorates the age-old argument between those who say there are too many strikeouts and those who insist that slug is in the air. Should everyone be doing what Arraez is doing? Is he an anachronism? Is he underrated? Overrated? He’s so good at what he does – and what he does is so different from what most good baseball players do – that these questions are frustratingly omnipresent in any discussion about Arraez.

That said, I think I found an Arraez play that won’t divide the audience. The key is for it not to involve a ball in play, a walk, or a strikeout. Take a look at this beauty:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees had a busy deadline season. Whether trading for Ryan McMahon, patching smaller holes, or adding top relievers, they were in the news seemingly every day for adding to the 2025 club. As the deadline approached, they looked at their roster and decided that merely adding wasn’t enough. Thus, they finessed a roster reshuffle Thursday afternoon, acquiring utility infielder José Caballero from the Rays and trading utility infielder Oswald Peraza to the Angels.

Let’s start with Caballero. A plus-fielding, slap-hitting nuisance (complimentary), he has been a perfectly serviceable utility infielder in two-plus years of big league play. He has below-average raw power and a patient approach at the plate, which can result in some ugly strikeout numbers when pitchers challenge him early in the zone and he takes. Though he’s good at elevating the ball, it’s rarely with much authority, and he never quite worked out the Isaac Paredes trick of turning mediocre raw power into pulled homers. He was still a league-average contributor overall, though, because the rest of his game is excellent.

No matter which metrics you subscribe to, Caballero is a plus defender across the infield. He started playing the outfield this year and took to it quickly. He’s a pretty good bunter, if you’re into that; if you need someone to come off of the bench in a late-and-close situation and advance the runners, he’s your guy. Read the rest of this entry »

I was starting to get worried that Griffin Jax was going to be left behind in the Twins’ wholesale liquidation of their bullpen. Fear not; the hardest thrower in the Air Force Reserve is headed out after all. The Rays currently sit two games under .500 and 3 1/2 games out of a Wild Card spot, with a 9.9% chance of making the playoffs. That long-shot contender status did not dampen their enthusiasm for Jax in the slightest. Tampa Bay sent the talented but inconsistent starter Taj Bradley to Minnesota in exchange for Jax, who is under team control through 2027.

The Rays also sent infielder Curtis Mead and prospects Duncan Davitt and Ben Peoples to the White Sox in exchange for Adrian Houser, who will presumably take the rotation spot Bradley vacated. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, after Zack Littell had started for the Rays in what would turn out to be a dramatic extra-inning loss at Yankee Stadium, he was traded to the Reds as part of a three-team deal with the Dodgers. The names of the players involved slowly trickled out into the ether, and after an hour or so, the entire transaction came into focus:

• The Reds acquired Littell
• The Rays acquired right-handed pitcher Brian Van Belle from the Reds and catcher Hunter Feduccia from the Dodgers
• The Dodgers acquired left-handed pitcher Adam Serwinowski from the Reds, and catcher Ben Rortvedt and right-handed pitcher Paul Gervase from the Rays

Littell, who turns 30 in October, is in his final arbitration season and will be a free agent this winter. After spending the first half decade of his big league career in the bullpen, he made a successful transition to the rotation starting in the middle of 2023. He has the third-lowest walk rate among all qualified pitchers since then, at a microscopic 4%. This season, Littell has a 3.58 ERA (his FIPs and xERA are in the 4.20 to 4.90 range) across 22 starts. He’s a quintessential soft-tossing pitchability guy whose fit in the Rays rotation the last few years was largely driven by his addition of a sinker and a shift away from using his fastballs so much. Littell’s splitter has been his most reliable bat-missing weapon and played like a plus pitch in 2023 and 2024 before losing some of its sink in 2025; it has backed up into more of an average area in terms of garnering whiffs. He’s posting the lowest full-season strikeout rate of his career and one of the lowest across qualified big league pitchers this year. He’s also surrendered 26 home runs, the most in the majors and a potential concern in the bandbox that is Great American Ballpark. Read the rest of this entry »