We are now just over a week from pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training, and while there are still a lot of moves left to make, we have a basic idea how teams will be fundamentally constructed for the 2025 season. Our free agent tracker still lists 124 remaining free agents, as of Monday evening, but most of these players aren’t likely to have major impacts on their new teams. Only 15 of the players are projected on our Depth Charts as being worth one win, and only three players are projected at two wins. But one player remaining, Alex Bregman, stands clearly above the pack, at least as the mean old computers judge the situation. (Sorry, Polar Bear.)

A famous Scott Boras client in his early 30s remaining unsigned due to underwhelming offers in free agency has become a common refrain over the last few years. Unlike with some of their departing free agents over the years, the Astros have made more than a token effort at retaining their star, extending a six-year, $156 million offer in December. The general belief around baseball is that the deal is still on the table, and both the front office and his teammates would be very happy to have him return. But from a baseball standpoint, is Houston necessarily the best place for Bregman? And if it isn’t, which teams should be seriously pursuing him?

Fellow Fangraphéen Michael Baumann discussed the Bregman to the Astros scenario recently, and concluded that given the team’s needs and the acquisition of Isaac Paredes, it would be hard to get the maximum value out of Bregman’s return without doing something shocking, like trading Paredes before the start of the season. Since I’ve completed the initial run of ZiPS projections, I’m now equipped to do some (very) preliminary standings projections. I projected the Astros both with and without Bregman, using the normal methodology I use, which attempts to deal with team upside and downside scenarios and injuries.

ZiPS currently projects the league with a level of parity that appears, at first glance, to be greater than in the typical season. While the Dodgers are projected at 97 wins, the Astros are the only other team projected with an over/under number of 90 wins. That doesn’t mean there will be only two 90-win teams – in fact, you should expect quite a few more teams to reach that threshold — just that there’s a lot of uncertainty in a baseball team’s performance, and currently only two clubs have enough depth across their rosters to avoid the disastrous downside scenarios that are built into this projection system.

At 90.2 wins on average, reconfiguring a healthy Astros team to play Bregman at third, Paredes at second, and Jose Altuve in the outfield (the latter has been discussed), adds 2.8 wins (again, on average) to the bottom line in the ZiPS projections. That’s enough to bump the team’s playoff probability from 69.9% to 78.0%. A gain of just over eight percentage points is solid, to be sure, but how does that compare with the rest of the league?

To answer that question, I redid the simulation an additional 29 times, adding Bregman in turn to each team to see how his presence would change its playoff probability. It’s a bit more complex than simply replacing a team’s existing third baseman because in most cases, Bregman would cause a significant reshuffling of the roster roles. I tried to keep Bregman at third base wherever possible and shift others around him, and I completely avoided implausible scenarios, such as a team signing him to be its starting catcher. So, how’d it shake out?

There are basically two questions here for projection systems to answer: 1) How many wins would Bregman add? 2) What are the utility of those wins? Bregman would represent a massive upgrade for the White Sox, but they are extremely unlikely to be relevant enough for those wins to actually matter. (Bregman would help the Pale Hose avoid rounding to zero, skyrocketing their playoff probability to 1-in-1,455!) Their rivals on the North Side, the Cubs, also rank very low on this list for the opposite reason: ZiPS already sees the Cubs as having a very strong offense. Sure, marginal wins are valuable for any team, but it’s hard for the Cubs to really leverage Bregman without one of those downside scenarios occurring, such as underperformance from guys like Matt Shaw or Seiya Suzuki, or a rash of injuries to key players. If there were a pitching equivalent of Bregman available, the Cubs would likely be at the very top of this list.

The Astros are only in the middle of the pack in terms of playoff improvement with Bregman. But two other teams that have been rumored at times to be in the mix would see a major surge in their postseason odds if they were to sign him: the Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox. The Tigers are in a position where the extra wins they’d get from Bregman would translate into a huge playoff probability boost, and though ZiPS thinks Jace Jung would be solid at third, signing Bregman would trigger a roster shuffle that would tighten up right field and the short side of Detroit’s DH platoon — the team’s two weakest positions, according to ZiPS. There’s been some speculation that Bregman could play second base for the Red Sox, but as ZiPS sees it, Boston would get more value from keeping Bregman at third, moving Rafael Devers to first, and letting Triston Casas and Masataka Yoshida fight it out at DH. This alignment would require prospect Kristian Campbell to be on the roster and filling the team’s current hole at the keystone.

But the best place for Bregman, at least in the ZiPS projections, is another AL Central team: the Kansas City Royals. While the corner outfield scenario is absolutely brutal, especially if MJ Melendez and Hunter Renfroe get the vast majority of the playing time in left and right field, respectively, ZiPS sees merit in shifting Maikel Garcia or Michael Massey into one of the corner spots on the grass, with Bregman taking over at third. ZiPS also thinks Bregman would provide a terrific resolution of the hot corner questions in Cincinnati, though there’s probably even less of a chance the Reds would actually do this than the Royals. The Padres likely don’t have enough payroll flexibility even to offer Bregman a short-term deal with an opt out, but if they could find room in their budget, sell him on playing second base, and shift Jake Cronenworth to left field — or even convince Bregman to play left — there would be more high-end scenarios in which San Diego could make the Dodgers uncomfortable.

My gut says the Tigers will be the team to land Bregman, and likely very soon if it happens. They just shored up the rotation with the signing of Jack Flaherty at an extremely reasonable price, and as the projected fourth-place team in the AL Central right now, they have a lot to gain by adding a legitimate All-Star. There’s a way, but is there a will?

It’s been a quiet winter in the AL Central. After Michael Wacha signed an extension at the beginning of the offseason, the division’s five teams combined to add only one deal worth more than $20 million in guaranteed money; that was Shane Bieber’s surgery-affected pillow contract with the Guardians. Now, finally, we can add another to the ledger, courtesy of the Royals. On Wednesday, they signed Carlos Estévez to a two-year, $22.2 million deal with a club option tacked on the end, as ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported.

The Royals came into the winter looking for relief help. It’s not the only place their roster needed a glow-up – even after trading for Jonathan India, they could still use another bat or two, especially in the corner outfield – but the bullpen was also a particular area of need. Last year’s Royals made the playoffs on the back of pitching, but their starters were the ones doing the heavy lifting, not their relievers. Deadline acquisition Lucas Erceg was the best of the group by a large margin, and John Schreiber was the only other reliever with impressive full-season numbers.

It’s not so much that a team can’t make the playoffs with such a thin bullpen – obviously, the Royals did. But they did it by the skin of their teeth at 86-76, and that despite spectacular seasons from Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, and Wacha. Counting on those three to combine for 94 starts, 12.9 WAR, and ERAs in the low 3.00s across the board again would be wishful thinking. Additionally, they no longer have last year’s fourth starter Brady Singer, who was Cincinnati’s return in the India trade.

The 2024 bullpen finished last in baseball in shutdowns – appearances that increased win probability by six percentage points or more – and fifth worst in win probability added. Those are outcome statistics, not process ones, but the process statistics weren’t exactly pretty either. Kansas City was middle of the pack in WAR (3.6), 20th in ERA (4.13), 26th in K-BB% (12.0%). It’s not just that this team didn’t have a “true closer” – its bullpen was light on contributors from top to bottom. Read the rest of this entry »

Direct links to applications (please see job details below):

Pro Player Analyst
Developer-Baseball Systems

Pro Player Analyst

Location: Kauffman Stadium, One Royal Way, Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America

Job Summary: The Kansas City Royals Baseball Club is seeking a highly motivated and creative analyst to join the organization. Under the direction of the Assistant Director of Research & Development/Player Personnel and the Director of Pro Personnel & Strategy, the analyst will be involved in several stages of the player evaluation process to meet the needs of the organization. The successful applicant will leverage baseball data to provide a competitive edge when evaluating players for the Kansas City Royals. This role will be located in Kansas City, MO.

Position Accountabilities/Responsibilities:

• Provide data driven insights to help evaluate both pitchers and position players.
• Collaborate with other analysts and Baseball Operations personnel to provide support at all stages of the player evaluation process
• Query and organize data to effectively communicate
• Perform ad-hoc analysis to assist in decision making processes
• Work to create, advance, and or maintain machine learning models

Position Qualifications, Skills, and Experience Required:

• 4-year degree or equivalent experience in computer science, mathematics, statistics, or related quantitative field
• Proficiency with SQL and R to query and organize data from large databases
• Strong understanding of advanced baseball metrics to evaluate players
• Interpersonal and communication skills to seamlessly interact with front office, analysts, scouts, and other Baseball Operations personnel
• Familiarity with the landscape of Major League Baseball. e.g. teams, affiliates, rosters, prospects, free agents, etc.
• Ability to work evening, weekend, and holiday hours during the baseball season

Preferred Qualifications:

• Record of published baseball research and or experience ranking / evaluating players
• Intimate knowledge of MLB rosters, farm systems, free agency, and all things involving player personnel
• Experience with machine learning and modeling techniques to extract actionable insights within large data sets

Physical Requirements:

• Ability to lift items weighing as much as 25 pounds
• Must be able to work in a seated position for majority of workday
• Must be able to be productive utilizing a computer keyboard and telephone
• Must be able to be productive in a work environment where the noise level can be high at times
• Must be comfortable walking to navigate the facility to access the office, concourse, etc.
• Must be able to work extended hours and/or weekends as required by deadlines and event scheduling

The physical demands described here are representative of those that may be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.

This role is a Full-Time, Exempt opportunity that is eligible for Company Benefits, 401K, and PTO. This role is expected to have a standard 40-hour work week.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

Developer-Baseball Systems

Location: Kauffman Stadium, One Royal Way, Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America – Virtual

Job Summary: The Kansas City Royals Baseball Club is seeking a highly motivated developer to work with our group of Developers to support baseball operations. The ideal applicant will be able to manage multiple concurrent projects that facilitate enhanced communications, reporting, and other interactions between teams internal to the organization. At this time, we are open to the possibility of Remote work for the right candidate.

Position Accountabilities/Responsibilities:

• Assist in development tasks and data operations
• Help with system administration of database and web servers
• Assist in daily task monitoring to ensure data health, quality assurance, and reliability of systems
• Automate reports and other tasks that are used on a regular basis
• Support schema and testing of databases of various sizes
• Maintain and support existing code across various languages and frameworks
• Develop, test, and optimize performance and accuracy of scripts used to calculate derived data
• Design, build, and deploy new features for organizational web applications
• Automate, manage, and report data lifecycle based on retention and storage requirements
• Explore novel tools to visualize data and explore models by implementing UI/UX in HTML, CSS, JavaScript/Vue.js
• Develop responsive front-end designs suitable for multiple devices and screen sizes
• Collaborate with baseball operations staff to create and improve internal analysis and informational tools.
• Help ensure that systems and solutions are in line with organizational objectives

Position Qualifications, Skills, and Experience Required:

• 4 year degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or related field or equivalent experience is required
• Ability to work evening, weekend, and holiday hours during the baseball season is a must
• Excellent interpersonal and communications skills and ability to interact and work with staff at all levels
• Ability to recognize and maintain confidentiality of work materials and issues as appropriate
• Experience with the following tools, platforms, and business data is required:
• Two years of experience with Python
• Strong knowledge of SQL
• Strong knowledge of Django, Flask, or similar
• Basic administration of UNIX-based servers (Linux, Mac, etc.)
• Managing cloud resources on AWS or a similar platform
• Interest in and knowledge of UI/UX and web development technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript, Vue.js, Vite, ChartJS
• Experience with the following tools, platforms and business data is preferred:
• Business intelligence experience is a plus
• Baseball knowledge and exposure to baseball statistics

Physical Requirements:

• Ability to lift items weighing as much as 25 pounds
• Must be able to be productive utilizing a computer keyboard and telephone
• Must be able to be productive in a work environment where the noise level can be high at times
• Must be comfortable walking to navigate the facility to access the office, concourse, etc.
• Must be able to work extended hours and/or weekends as required by deadlines and event scheduling

The physical demands described here are representative of those that may be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.

This role is a Full-Time, Exempt opportunity that is eligible for Company Benefits, 401K, and PTO. This role is expected to have a standard 40-hour work week.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Kansas City Royals.

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 years introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Kansas City Royals.

Batters

The Tigers got a bit more attention simply because they seemed so dead in the water in July, but Kansas City’s 30-win improvement from the year before – and the even more impressive 35-win improvement in Pythagorean wins – was damn impressive. Victory may have a thousand fathers, but Bobby Witt Jr. was the big daddy of this feat, missing out on an MVP award only because he plays in the same league as peak Aaron Judge. ZiPS isn’t keen to project 7- or 8-WAR seasons as the baseline expectation based on a single season, but Witt’s projection still is that of a serious MVP candidate, and among players over the next five years, his WAR projection is less than those of only Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani. His nearly $290 million deal with the Royals is, in the early days, looking like one of the best team investments of all time.

ZiPS is naturally excited about Witt, but that excitement doesn’t carry over to the rest of the team. This probably isn’t a surprise considering that other than Witt, only Salvador Perez finished with 2 WAR among Royals hitters in 2024. If you rank Kansas City’s hitters from last season, and add up the five best after Witt, they still add up to a full win short of the franchise shortstop.

That being said, it’s not exactly a Darryl Strawberry-playing-with-Springfield-Nuclear-Plant-employees situation. ZiPS expects the Royals to get around 2 WAR at most positions, with projections for Perez, Jonathan India, and Maikel Garcia crossing the two-win line in 2025. And if Michael Massey and Vinnie Pasquantino end up playing in more games than the 120-something that ZiPS projects for them, they each would also be worth more than 2 WAR. Witt may stand alone as a superstar in this lineup, but the Royals do have some solid talent here.

What is disappointing, given how competitive the projections are for the Royals as a whole and how close they are to the Guardians and Twins, is that Kansas City didn’t make a more vigorous attempt to upgrade its corner outfield spots. MJ Melendez hasn’t done anything that ought to entitle him to be the default option in left field, even if you look at his sunnier Steamer and OOPSY projections. If you subscribe to the ZiPS projection for Melendez, the Royals, as of now, look to enter the season as a reigning playoff team with a replacement-level corner outfield. Kansas City is projected to get positive value from its left fielders overall, but only because our Depth Charts is factoring in some time for India out there, and ZiPS doesn’t like right fielder Hunter Renfroe much more than it does Melendez. Right now, it looks like the value of four of Witt’s wins will do nothing more than offset the roughly replacement-level production of those two outfielders. Then again, that’s kind of what happened last year; while Witt posted a 10-win season, Royals corner outfielders combined for about -1.0 WAR. At the moment, ZiPS is projecting their corner outfielders to be worth about 1.3 WAR. That’s an improvement, yes, but as I mentioned up top, ZiPS projects Witt to be worth about four wins less than he was last season. That’s still a six-win season, but as things stand, the Royals are projected to get about two fewer wins of total value from the three positions — shortstop, left field, and right field — this year (7.3) than they did last year (9.4).

Pitchers

ZiPS may think that the Royals have the offense of a 68-win team plus Witt, but it thinks they have a rotation that’s in the top third of the league, a more bullish outlook than the other projections. It’s not shocking that ZiPS projects Cole Ragans to have a 4-WAR season, based on Depth Charts’ projected innings for him. (Below, you’ll see ZiPS has him at 2.9 WAR, but that’s only because it projects him to throw fewer innings.) But what might be surprising is how little Seth Lugo is projected to drop off from his superb 2024 season, when he finished second in the Cy Young voting. If Witt makes up for some of the sins for the offense, the Ragans-Lugo one-two punch covers up some more of them. Michael Wacha projects as a solid no. 3 starter, and though ZiPS doesn’t love Alec Marsh, it does like Kris Bubic quite a bit. It also thinks that pitchers like Michael Lorenzen and Kyle Wright are more than capable of filling out a decent rotation.

From a projection standpoint, Noah Cameron might be the most interesting Royals starter. He’s a soft-tosser, with a fastball in the low 90s, but he has excellent command and, most importantly, he avoided getting his brains beaten in by Triple-A hitters, which is a frequent fate of pitchers of this type. Instead, opposing batters had a very low average exit velocity against him (under 83 mph). And thanks to his changeup and curveball, which are both plus pitches, he also struck out 29% of the Triple-A batters he faced. A control pitcher who can avoid hard contact and knows how to get some strikeouts is someone worth watching.

ZiPS projects the bullpen to be right around league average, thanks in large part to Lucas Erceg and Hunter Harvey, both picked up last July for the pennant race (and beyond). Considered just as a reliever, Angel Zerpa would have a projected 3.65 ERA, an slight improvement over his solid 2024 season. John Schreiber gets a fairly good projection as well, but after that, ZiPS is less impressed with Kansas City’s relief options. If the Royals are not going to fix their outfield in free agency – and they may not be able to do that anymore because most of the quality guys have already signed — they might want to get another arm or two to improve their bullpen.

From a preliminary standpoint, ZiPS projects Kansas City to finish with 82-85 wins in 2025. That’s tantalizingly close to competing on equal terms with the Twins and Guardians, close enough that the Royals should keep adding this offseason to pull ahead of their division rivals and make a run at another postseason appearance.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our 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. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky.

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.

Calling Ben Zobrist a utility player — or even a superutility player, given that he could play the outfield as well as the infield — is like calling Citizen Kane a movie about a sled. Unrecruited out of high school, and later unheralded as a prospect due to his age, he seemingly came out of nowhere to emerge as a star for the upstart Tampa Bay Rays, and in doing so removed the stigma of moving between positions on a regular basis. On the offensive side, “Zorilla” was a switch-hitter with elite plate discipline, mid-range power, and a minimal platoon split. As a defender, he provided average-or-better defense at second base and the outfield corners, and could play passably at a few other positions as well. Thanks to that combination, he helped change the way teams thought about roster construction, giving the more creative ones the flexibility to cobble together multiposition platoons.

Zobrist made only three All-Star teams in his 14-year career, but he helped his clubs reach the postseason eight times in an 11-year span (2008–18). From 2009–14, he ranked among the game’s most valuable players by WAR, and in the years adjacent to that stretch, he helped the Rays (2008), Royals (2015), and Cubs (2016) reach the World Series. He was the World Series MVP in the last of those seasons, when the Cubs won their first title in 108 years, and even got a breakfast cereal named after him, Zorilla Crunch! If not for his late start — he didn’t get more than 250 plate appearances in a season until age 28 — he might have had a real shot at making noise on this Hall of Fame ballot instead of going one-and-done. 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.

When addressing his team’s acquisition of Garrett Crochet at the Winter Meetings, Craig Breslow said that the 25-year-old southpaw’s relationship with the Red Sox’ analytics group will be important, so that he “can continue to understand how he can get the best out of his stuff.” I subsequently asked Boston’s Chief Baseball Officer if, based on their pre-trade homework, they have identified any specific adjustments Crochet might want to make, or if they plan to mostly just let him keep doing what he does.

“I think the answer is probably both,” replied Breslow. “Right? We want to lean into what he does particularly well, and he does a lot of things really, really well. You look at the strikeouts, and especially the strikeouts relative to the walks; that’s a pretty good underpinning for a really successful starting pitcher. Once we have a chance to get to know him, have conversations with him, we’ll lean on [pitching coach Andrew Bailey] and the rest of the group. But it’s probably not fair to talk about what adjustments we might make before we’ve had a chance to have that conversation with him.”

Crochet is looking forward to the conversation. He expects it to take place in the coming week, and he’ll go into it with thoughts he’s been formulating since last summer. When I talked to Crochet in late August, he spoke of usage percentages and how he’d begun tinkering with a sinker. I reminded him of that earlier exchange when he met with the Boston media over Zoom on Friday, then proceeded to ask about his forthcoming discussions with the Red Sox pitching department. 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, 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 »

Last offseason, the Reds assembled a frankly confusing amount of infield depth. With the emergence of Elly De La Cruz, Matt McLain, and Noelvi Marte, there weren’t many spaces available to start with. They signed Jeimer Candelario, and already had Christian Encarnacion-Strand as an option at first. Spencer Steer moonlights in the infield too. That left Jonathan India as an odd man out, and he seemed like a clear trade candidate merely waiting for a good home.

In 2024, that good home turned out to be Cincinnati. McLain missed the entire year after shoulder surgery. Encarnacion-Strand got hurt in May and didn’t return. Marte got suspended for PED use. When all was said and done, the Reds ended up trading for infield depth in Santiago Espinal. India played in 151 games and supplied his usual OBP-heavy offense.

Holding onto India worked out for the Reds last year, but there’s no way they could’ve tried the same plan again. That would’ve been just too many resources committed to one subset of the team, and Cincinnati has needs across the roster. So after many months, the trade we’ve all been expecting for roughly a year has come to pass. The Reds traded India and outfielder Joey Wiemer to the Royals in exchange for righty starter Brady Singer.

At first blush, this trade feels strange from the Reds’ standpoint. India might be a luxury good for their team, but he’s a legitimately good hitter with two years of reasonably priced team control remaining. He was their third-best hitter by WAR, and the Reds need people on base to take advantage of their homer-friendly stadium. Singer was Kansas City’s fourth starter, and 700 innings into his career, he’s not exactly a mystery box: He’ll give you a 4-ish ERA if you can put a good defense behind him. Not only that, but the Reds had to throw in Wiemer just to get things done. What gives?
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When I talked to him at last year’s GM meetings, J.J. Picollo told me that an offseason priority was to add “guys with experience” to a Kansas City Royals roster that was long on promising young talent but short on veteran presence. Picollo did just that — Seth Lugo, Hunter Renfroe, Will Smith, and Michael Wacha were among those brought on board — and while the additions only told part of the story, the end result was a best seller. One year after winning just 56 games, the 2024 Royals went 86-76 and played October baseball for the first time in a decade.

What does the AL Central club’s Executive Vice President/General Manager see as the top priority going into next season?

“We need to be a little more dynamic offensively, and by that I mean we need to get on base at a higher rate than we did this year,” Picollo told me earlier this week in San Antonio. “We’re trying to target players we can lengthen out our lineup with, whether it’s someone at the top, in the middle, or toward the back end. Our identity is more pitching and defense, base running, and situational hitting, so how can we add some guys that can complement what we already have that will allow us to score more runs?”

The Royals crossed the plate 735 times in 2024, the sixth-highest total in the American League. Their .306 on-base percentage was ninth-highest, while their .403 slugging percentage and their 170 home runs ranked sixth and tenth respectively. As power obviously helps provide more runs, I asked Picollo if OBP is indeed the priority. Read the rest of this entry »