Of all 193 relief pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched this season, exactly three have thrown four distinct types of fastballs a minimum of 20 times each: Reed Garrett, Chris Martin, and Cole Sands. They all have one non-fastball offering, but none of them throw it more than a quarter of the time. Justin Choi wrote recently about the strategic options available to pitchers with more than one fastball, but four? Four whole fastballs? These guys feel like doomsday preppers getting ready for some apocalyptic scenario where money is now worthless and fastballs are the new currency.

But anytime a new strategy pops up in baseball, it’s worth checking to see if the outliers are onto something others should attempt, or if their “one weird trick” to pitching works only for them. Shoot, maybe it doesn’t even work for them all that well. Regardless, we’re gonna get to the bottom of what’s going on with these pitchers and all the fastballs they’re hoarding.

Reed Garrett

Garrett has thrown 34.2 innings for the Mets so far this season, posting a 3.12 ERA and a 3.17 FIP. He’s struck out 37% of the batters he’s faced and walked 12%. His performance this year has earned him an ERA- of 81, firmly better than average. What the averages aren’t telling you is that Garrett started the season with a 0.57 ERA in March and April, a ridiculous run that earned him a full breakdown on his evolution from last season by Ben Clemens on April 23. But that April ERA had to buy new pants after swelling to 6.08 in May. His performance has regressed somewhat in June, settling somewhere between those extremes. The current version of Garrett is probably more representative of what the Mets should expect from him moving forward.

The table below shows a breakdown of Garrett’s pitch repertoire with the usage and a few metrics for evaluating each offering (run value per 100 pitches thrown, xwOBA, Stuff+, and Location+). The two most common fastball types (four-seamers, sinkers) that most pitchers feature at the center of their arsenals are the pitches he throws the least. But the metrics linked to Garrett’s outcomes — either actual outcomes (RV100) or expectations based on the characteristics of the outcomes (xwOBA) — agree with his decision to de-emphasizing those pitches. They like Garrett’s four-seamer the least, even though it has his highest velocity and second best Stuff+. The pitch’s Location+ score reveals its critical flaw: a lack of command. Stuff+, RV100, and xwOBA agree that his sweeper and splitter are his two best pitches. Based on usage, Garrett agrees with that assessment.

His pitches mostly hover around league average in terms of individual characteristics, but the sweeper and splitter are both a tick or two harder than average and generate a bit more spin leading to more horizontal break, which is likely why Stuff+ likes them more than the rest of Garrett’s arsenal.

He makes the most of middling pitches by playing them off one another. The sweeper and cutter mirror the spin direction of the sinker and the splitter. As a result the pitches look similar out of the hand but fork in four different directions as they approach the plate to keep the hitter guessing (see movement plot below). So even if hitters guess the horizontal direction correctly, they’ve still got two similarly spinning pitches that fan out vertically as they approach the plate.

Garrett deploys all of his pitches no matter the handedness of the hitter, but he does vary the flavor of his approach. To lefties, Garrett likes to fill the zone with his cutter and dangle the splitter down and away when looking for a chase. To righties, he keeps the hitter off balance by throwing the sweeper to a variety of locations, but then comes down and inside at varying speeds with the splitter and the sinker.

The flowchart below gives us an idea of Garrett’s sequencing habits. He tends to start hitters with a cutter or sweeper. Once ahead in the count, he’s more likely to play around on the periphery of the zone with his sweeper and splitter, whereas while behind in the count he rolls with the four-seamer and cutter as more zone-friendly options. The wOBA values for plate appearances passing through each given count indicate the approach works well in early counts and with two strikes, but not as well when the count forces him back into the zone, in part because his four-seam command limits his ability to actually hit the zone with that pitch when circumstances demand it.

Here’s a representative example of how hitters respond to Garrett’s two-strike splitter.

Looking at swing metrics by pitch type, each pitch adds a valuable tool to his kit. The splitter is Garrett’s best combo play for inducing swings (56% swing rate) without courting disaster. The pitch owns his best swinging-strike rate (30%) and second lowest hard-hit rate (20%) when batters do connect. He gets batters to swing at 74% of the sinkers he throws in the zone, he uses the sweeper to induce weak contact (17% hard-hit rate), and turns to the cutter to mix things up. The four-seamer is the weak link in the chain so long as it keeps taking the scenic route to the catcher’s mitt.

Chris Martin

Martin has thrown 21.1 innings for the Red Sox in 2024, logging a 4.22 ERA with a 3.90 FIP. He’s struck out 28.2% of the batters he’s faced while walking just 2.4% of them. He has been on the IL since June 5 while proactively seeking help with anxiety.

Again, we’ll start with a synopsis of each pitch he throws according to the value metrics. Stuff+, RV100, and xwOBA all like his splitter best. The pitch is very similar to Garrett’s splitter from a velo/movement/spin perspective, but he doesn’t throw it nearly as much. His four-seamer is his next best pitch by RV100 and xwOBA, but fourth best by Stuff+. However, he locates it well enough to still get results. Martin’s cutter is his consensus third-best pitch, striking a balance between stuff and command to get the job done. Like Garrett, Martin’s non-fastball pitch is a sweeper, but unlike Garrett, he throws it so infrequently that it’s hardly worth discussing.

His pitch characteristics all hover around average, thrown maybe a tick or two harder, but with slightly less spin and therefore less movement. What helps overcome somewhat middling profiles is a distinct release point created by his long levers. Though his delivery is composed of a pretty standard three-quarters-ish arm slot, the arm attached to his 6’8” frame allows him to release the ball several inches higher and farther to his right than other pitchers throwing from a similar slot.

Rather than mirroring the spin on his offerings like Garrett, Martin takes a different approach to cultivating deceit. The puzzle for his hitters is more akin to spotting the difference between two nearly identical photos. All of Martin’s pitches spin in a similar direction, and his four-seamer, sinker, and cutter do so at almost the same spin rates. Where they differ is in the amount of active spin, or the amount of spin contributing to the pitch’s movement. The four-seamer, as one might expect, has the most active spin and the most rise. The sinker has a little less active spin and creates more horizontal break and more drop. The cutter drops in a comparable fashion to the sinker, but refuses to follow his fellow fastballs and break toward the third base side. Then there’s the splitter that spins at a much slower rate and with less active spin, which translates to roughly the same amount of horizontal movement as his four-seamer, but with even more drop than the sinker. Yet another carbon copy, but with a small but crucial edit.

Martin uses the same theory to guide his approach to both righties and lefties: Fill the zone with the primary fastball(s), use one of the secondary fastballs as a threat inside, and pepper the bottom of the zone with splitters. Against right-handers the four-seamer and cutter are the pitches he consistently throws to all parts of the zone and the sinker backs the hitter off the inner half of the plate. Against left-handers, Martin stays away from the sinker, so the cutter becomes the weapon he aims inside, while the four-seamer and the splitter maintain their existing roles.

The job of each fastball is further etched in stone by Martin’s sequencing, visualized below. He starts an overwhelming majority of hitters with the four-seamer or cutter and sticks to those zone-friendly pitches if he falls behind in the count. But if he gets ahead, Martin starts mixing in the splitter and sinker. His results tend to be better if he gets to those splitter/sinker counts, but it’s unclear whether that’s because of the effectiveness of those pitches or because he gets too predictable in unfavorable counts.

The swing metrics indicate Martin’s cutter is his best option for getting swings (55% swing rate) that lead to either strikes (13% swinging-strike rate) or weak contact (27% hard-hit rate). The splitter is his overall best bet for a swinging strike (19%), but when hitters do make contact, it yields the highest hard-hit rate (70%). The sinker is most effective when thrown in the zone because it has the lowest out-of-zone swing rate (18%) and in-zone contact rate (78%) compared to Martin’s other offerings. And avoiding contact is key, since the sinker has the second highest hard-hit rate (67%) of the bunch.

Cole Sands

Sands has pitched 32 innings for the Twins this season. Those innings have amounted to a 4.22 ERA and a 3.30 FIP. His strikeout rate sits at 28% and his walk rate is a measly 3%. Sands’ season trajectory mimics Garrett’s: on a rocket to the moon in April, a crash landing in May, and now back up and cruising at altitude in June. At his peak, Sands was striking out Shohei Ohtani on three pitches, and Minnesota was considering stretching him out to start while managing injuries in the rotation; now he’s settled into a multi-inning relief role.

Digging into Sands’ repertoire via the pitch evaluation metrics, his cutter, curveball, and splitter all clock in right around average according to Stuff+, but RV100 favors the four-seamer and hates the curve and split. Comparing the curveball’s xwOBA (.305) to its wOBA (.372) suggests the pitch’s actual outcomes have been a bit unlucky compared to what’s expected based on the batted ball characteristics, which in turn is likely deflating its RV100. Meanwhile the four-seamer and sinker both have better wOBAs when compared to their xwOBAs, suggesting some good luck has swung their way and their RV100s might be a little full of themselves. Luck doesn’t explain the metrics’ diverging opinions on the splitter, suggesting something is amiss with Sands’ execution. Hopefully, this contradiction will untangle itself as we proceed.

In terms of the movement profile broken down in the table below, Sands, like Garrett, mirrors the spin of his breaking ball relative to the four-seamer, sinker, and splitter in an attempt to disguise their true identities until it’s too late for the hitter to react. And concealing those identities is necessary because, as with the other two pitchers, Sands’ pitch characteristics are far more average than overpowering. The furthest he deviates from average is with his extension, but unfortunately he deviates in the wrong direction. His 5.8-foot extension puts Sands roughly six to eight inches below league average. Releasing the ball farther from home plate gives the hitter more of a chance to identify the pitch’s trajectory, which likely explains the lower Stuff+ scores relative to what Garrett and Martin receive for comparable pitches. And while we’re talking pitch trajectory, the extra couple inches of drop on his splitter relative to an average right-handed offering of the pitch might be too much of a good thing; at times it dives too far, too quickly to really tempt hitters.

How the pitches move relative to one another is basically a hybrid of what we’ve seen so far from Garrett and Martin. The fastballs land on the movement plot in roughly the same orientation as the other two, aside from being stretched more vertically. Sands’ curveball operates similarly to Garrett’s sweeper, just with more drop.

Like Martin, Sands doesn’t throw his sinker to lefties, but beyond that omission, Sands attacks hitters in the exact same manner regardless of handedness. He aims to fill up the zone with his four-seamer, works arm side with the cutter and sinker, and keeps the ball down and/or to the glove side with the splitter and curve.

Sands mostly sticks to the standard sequencing playbook, but he’ll reach for any of his non-splitter offerings to begin a plate appearance. If he gets ahead, expect a heavy mix of splitters and curveballs; if he falls behind, expect him to thrown mostly cutters and four-seamers. His adequate command keeps him competitive, since even after falling behind, the average outcomes remain respectable and in line with the more favorable counts.

The swing metrics suggest Sands’ cutter is his best option for inducing weak contact (51% swing rate, 32% hard-hit rate), the four-seamer has the lowest in-zone contact rate (80%) to pair with the second highest in-zone swing rate (71%), and the curveball is best for forcing swings out of the zone (35%) that lead to either a strike (14% swinging-strike rate) or weak contact (25% hard-hit rate).

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With the four-fastball approach to relief pitching now fully dissected on the lab table before us, I can’t truly say we’ve discovered the next big thing that pitchers everywhere will be rushing to replicate. Though Garrett, Martin, and Sands are the only three relievers doing this out of almost 200, their approach is not as novel as those numbers suggest. What they’re actually doing is leaning on all of the classic pitching fundamentals: changing the hitter’s eye level, attacking the zone to get ahead in the count and then make the hitter chase, varying speeds, varying locations, keeping the hitter off balance. Most relievers execute these fundamentals using one or two overpowering pitches, or in lieu of dominant stuff, they cobble together a few crafty junk pitches. Garrett, Martin, and Sands pitch as if they were junkballers, but instead of throwing knuckleballs or Bugs Bunny changeups, they take their collection of middling fastballs and deploy them as junkballs. They mix and match movement profiles and velocities so hitters can’t sit on certain pitches or locations. They do all the same stuff every pitcher does; they just dress it up a little different. Which in and of itself is novel enough to still be impactful. After all, 10 Things I Hate About You is a singularly great movie, but it’s also a classic Shakespeare play, just dressed up a little differently.

Baseball is big business and no team is infinitely patient with players who are struggling. While teams won’t generally describe it in such blunt terms, at the beginning of the season, every player has some unknown, invisible amount of leeway when it comes to poor performance. Established role players and fringe starters who just squeezed their way onto the big league roster in March may find themselves in the Pacific Coast or International League come late April or early May as they feel the heat of a poor start. As summer approaches, the names facing demotion become bigger, especially when those players are younger guys who still have minor league options remaining. On Sunday night, two of those bigger names ran out of rope, at least for now: Spencer Torkelson and Edouard Julien are headed to Triple-A to play for smaller crowds in smaller towns.

Before we examine what this pair of demotions means, I thought I’d put some numbers to the broader phenomena. I looked at the preseason ZiPS projections for players optioned during the season over the last 10 years. In nine of the 10 seasons, June was the month in which the players with the most combined projected WAR were sent to the minors. That holds true on a rate basis as well, with 0.75 projected WAR per June demoted player the highest monthly average. Naturally, demoted players tend to be worse performers than those who keep their jobs. To use last year as an example, of the 1,091 demotions, only 19 involved players projected for at least 2 WAR. Just one such player, Brayan Bello, was optioned in April, but starting on May 10 with Jose Miranda, bigger demotions started populating the list, with Miranda, David Villar, Oswald Peraza, Brandon Pfaadt, Alek Manoah, Josh Rojas, and Luis Urías all hitting the minors from mid-May through the end of June. Only four two-win players were demoted in July, with Manoah’s second demotion on August 11 the final one. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re far enough into the 2024 regular season that a lot of the extreme flukes and outliers have tumbled back to Earth. Mookie Betts leads the league in position player WAR; Shohei Ohtani leads in wRC+; Patrick Corbin doesn’t quite lead the league in earned runs allowed, but he’s close, and everyone ahead of him on the leaderboard has made more starts.

Nevertheless, we do have a few surprises hanging around at or near the top of various leaderboards. I’d like to take a moment to highlight a few before they disappear. These (mostly) aren’t surprising rookies; rather, they’re players you’ve probably heard of, but might have forgotten about in the past few years while they sorted some stuff out. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

It would be an overreaction to declare a good-on-paper team dead in the water after 20 games, but the Twins certainly weren’t doing themselves any favors with their 7-13 start. A few games before that, I wrote about their anemic offense, which at that point was third worst in the league overall, and second worst against right-handed pitching. But, as the Twins seemingly have figured out, the best way to recover is to simply not lose again.

Since their 6-1 loss to the Tigers on April 21, Minnesota has won all 10 of its games. That lineup that was so bad? Well, with the help of some summer sausage, the Twins have beefed up their offense, which leads the majors with a 167 wRC+ since the streak began.

Nearly every position player on their roster has contributed during the 10-game span, with five hitters posting a wRC+ above 200 since the losing stopped: Trevor Larnach (241), Ryan Jeffers (233), Willi Castro (229), Edouard Julien (218), and Jose Miranda (210). Meanwhile, after a dreadful start to his Twins tenure, veteran first baseman Carlos Santana has caught fire, too, blasting all four of his home runs this season during the winning streak.

Twins pitchers have been closer to good than great over these 10 games, with a 3.40 ERA and 3.56 FIP. They’ve kept opposing lineups in check despite some uncharacteristic struggles from ace Pablo López, who’s allowed seven runs combined over a total of nine innings in his last two starts. Flamethrowing closer Jhoan Duran, who returned from the IL with a scoreless inning on Tuesday in his first appearance of the season, should fortify the bullpen, and setup man Justin Topa is expected to be back soon.

But even the best of times can’t come without some heartbreak. Byron Buxton left Minnesota’s most recent win with soreness in his right knee, the same one he had two surgeries on last year. After entering camp healthy enough to play center field for the first time since 2022, he has appeared in all but two of the 30 Twins games so far this season, and was beginning to heat up at the plate following a slow start. They sent him for an MRI but have not yet announced the results. Buxton’s injury history is not encouraging, and depending on the MRI, he could join another often-hurt slugger, Royce Lewis, on the IL.

Things will get tougher for the Twins beginning Friday. Their winning streak has included a three-game sweep of the Angels sandwiched between two sweeps of the White Sox for the other seven wins — hardly stiff competition. Minnesota faces the Red Sox, Mariners, and Blue Jays for three games each before its next off day, and potentially having to continue the streak without Buxton could require even more creativity from manager Rocco Baldelli, who’s already using platoons at both corner outfield spots, second base, and DH. The hot-hitting Castro could see more time in the outfield if Buxton is out, and rookie Austin Martin, who was optioned when shortstop Carlos Correa returned from injury earlier this week, could come back up to carry some of the load.

Jacob Young and the Nationals’ Outfield Puzzle

When I played baseball, all I was good at doing was beating out infield grounders and bunting my way on so I could steal two bases and score on a hit. (I think I hit one ball in the air to the outfield in my whole playing “career”). North Chicago suburbs don’t exactly have a lot of catching depth in the youth ranks, nor could many infielders make a good enough throw to first to get me out, so I was a good player as long as I could actually make contact with pitches (which lasted until I was about 13). All of that to say: I love one-tool speedsters who don’t do much else on offense. I loved Tony Campana as a kid, was a Billy Hamilton believer for far too long, and now I’m hanging my hat on Nationals outfielder Jacob Young.

Young is 24 years old but comes with little pedigree; we’ve never ranked him as a top prospect within the Nationals organization since they drafted him in 2021 out of the University of Florida. He’s never been explosive with the bat: At Florida, he hit just eight home runs across 571 plate appearances with a metal bat. He had the same number of round-trippers in more than twice as many minor league plate appearances in the minors, and he’s still looking for his first major league dinger. But goodness, he can run.

Young was caught stealing for the first time in the majors on Wednesday, ending a 25-for-25 run to start his career. Those 25 steals came in just 54 games: a 75-steal pace over 162. His 98th-percentile sprint speed has buoyed his production, with a .306 average backed up by an xBA of .288. He doesn’t take walks, but he rarely strikes out, giving him enough of a floor perhaps to be a solid fourth outfielder.

When Victor Robles, Stone Garrett, Joey Gallo, and Lane Thomas return from injury (the first two are on rehab assignments), the Nationals will have some personnel decisions to make, but Young should stay for as long as he’s producing. Eddie Rosario has been absolutely awful (-19 wRC+); meanwhile, Alex Call has been great in limited time, but considering he was called up after Young, Call is probably behind Young on the depth chart. The rest of the puzzle may be harder to figure out without another injury, but it might be time for the feel-good Joey Meneses story to end when Gallo returns, and Gallo himself may have to perform better to keep his spot. All of that maneuvering could set up an outfield with Young, Robles, and Thomas, with Jesse Winker at DH and Gallo or Meneses playing first.

The Orioles Strike First

A four-game series this early in the season doesn’t tell us a whole lot about how a division race will turn out come October. So let’s not make any sweeping declarations about who will win the AL East just because the Orioles took three of their four games at home this week against the Yankees to move into first place. That said, the O’s looked like more complete team, though certainly the margin is tight.

Except for Thursday’s game, which Baltimore won 7-2, the pitching was excellent for both teams in this series. Interestingly enough, the only Orioles pitcher the Yankees beat was Corbin Burnes, who went six innings on Wednesday and whose only blemish was the two-run home run he allowed to Oswaldo Cabrera with two outs in the fifth. Those were the only runs scored in that game, as Luis Gil and the New York bullpen shut out the Baltimore bats. The score was flipped two nights earlier in the series opener, with the O’s shutting out the Yankees. In the second game of the series, Dean Kremer went seven innings and allowed two runs, both on solo home runs, in a 4-2 Baltimore win.

The biggest difference right now seems to be on offense, specifically that the Orioles have the more dynamic lineup. The two teams have produced about the same at the plate this season, based on wRC+, but the Yankees — as they’ve been for years — are more reliant on the home run. Five of New York’s six runs in the series came on homers, with only one dinger — the one Cabrera hit — coming with someone on base. Conversely, the O’s are better equipped to string hits together to score without the long ball.

Anthony Volpe represents the only real base-stealing threat on the Yankees — though after swiping two bags Wednesday, Juan Soto has four steals already this season — and overall, they’re the second worse base-running team in the majors by BsR, with only three players (Volpe, Cabrera, and Gleyber Torres) grading out as above average. Meanwhile, the Orioles rank fourth in BsR, and Gunnar Henderson alone has been worth 2.4 runs on the bases. Relatedly, the Yankees have hit into more than four times as many as double plays as the Orioles have this year, killing potential rallies before they really have a chance to get started.

Three out of every four FanGraphs and RotoGraphs staff members picked the Twins to make the playoffs, with 18 of us predicting them to win the AL Central. (Yes, I was one of them.) And who could blame us? Sure, Minnesota lost Sonny Gray and Kenta Maeda from last year’s division-winning team, but the Twins would also get a full season of Chris Paddack, a revamped and improved bullpen, and — hopefully — a full year of Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa, and Royce Lewis anchoring what looked like a strong lineup.

So, naturally, those plans went awry almost right away. The bullpen has been ravaged by injuries, Lewis hurt himself on Opening Day and will be out for yet another extended stretch, and Correa, who was off to a strong start after recovering from his plantar fasciitis that bugged him all of last year, is now on the IL with a strained oblique. Not helping matters is that Buxton isn’t hitting, striking out 36.1% of the time with an anemic wRC+ of 51. The injuries to Lewis and Correa (not to mention Max Kepler, though his stay looks like it’ll be for the minimum 10 days) have eroded Minnesota’s depth, and Buxton’s poor performance is emblematic of the lack of production from the rest of the lineup.

Entering Thursday, the 6-11 Twins had the league’s third-worst wRC+, at 80, and that’s with Correa’s 165 wRC+ in 44 plate appearances. Young lefties Edouard Julien (99 wRC+) and Alex Kirilloff (151 wRC+) are doing their part, which may make you think (as I did when I started researching this column) that the Twins are awfully exposed against left-handed pitching. But they’re actually doing fine (95 wRC+) against southpaws, with both of those lefties beating up on same-handed pitching, albeit in small samples. Additionally, Buxton’s struggles have not carried over to his 13 plate appearances against lefties, and Ryan Jeffers and Manuel Margot are also hammering them.

You probably know where this is heading, then. The Twins are horrible against righties (76 wRC+). In fact, the bumbling White Sox (73 wRC+) are the only team that has been worse against righties than Minnesota. Buxton has a 31 wRC+ across 48 plate appearances vs. righties, and Willi Castro’s 50 wRC+ against righties would look good only in comparison to the marks of some of his teammates and because it is significantly better than his -24 wRC+ vs. lefties. Meanwhile, Margot, Christian Vázquez, and Kepler have all been essentially useless against righty pitching, with wRC+ numbers below zero.

So, what exactly can the Twins do? It’s an uninspiring answer, but not much. Correa and Lewis won’t be back anytime soon. Buxton is going to be given every chance to swing his way out of his slump, and as long as he stays healthy, the Twins should be cautiously optimistic that he’ll turn things around. Aside from that, their best hope is that Kepler will be much more productive when he returns from his knee contusion, which may well have affected his hitting. Matt Wallner was optioned to Triple-A after starting his season terribly (2-for-25 with 17 strikeouts), and surely there’s hope that he’ll come back looking more like the guy who had a 144 wRC+ in 254 plate appearances last year. Otherwise, there won’t really be any saviors rising up from within. Austin Martin is already up in the majors, and Brooks Lee hurt his back and has yet to play a minor league game this year. The Twins will have to make due with what they have until guys get healthy or they find a way to swing a trade or two sometime this summer. In the meantime, it’s not looking great.

Meet the Mets’ Breakout Reliever

Early season leaderboards are always fun, and in just about all cases they shouldn’t be viewed as indicative of what’s to come for the remaining 90% of the season. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take note of surprising players at or near the top of them. So, who leads all relievers in strikeout percentage? The resurgent Craig Kimbrel? The hellacious Mason Miller? Nope, atop the list is Reed Garrett, who didn’t even make the Mets’ Opening Day roster. He wasn’t even one of the last cuts; he was optioned on March 15, a full two weeks before the season started. But since getting the call on April 1 he’s been nearly unhittable, with a ridiculously low wOBA allowed of .177.

Garrett, 31, put up a 7.11 ERA in 44.1 MLB innings before this year, and there wasn’t really anything that we were publicly aware of that made anyone think a breakout was coming. But it’s not hard to see where Garrett’s success has come now that we’ve got the data. He’s deemphasizing his two fastballs, throwing his four-seamer and sinker a combined 26% of the time, with his sweeper, splitter, and slider giving hitters fits.

The splitter — which he’s nearly tripled in usage since 2022 — has been especially lethal, with two-thirds of swings against the pitch coming up empty. The radically different pitch mix makes for changes that look sticky and should allow Garrett to continue his rapid ascent up the bullpen hierarchy. Once viewed as an up-and-down pitcher by virtue of having an option remaining, he looks here to stay.

Leiter Gets Lit Up in Poor Debut

Well, not every MLB debut can go swimmingly. Jack Leiter’s first game as a Ranger started off well enough, with two strikeouts in a scoreless first. But the wheels came off soon after; he allowed four runs in the second and three more in the third and his day ended after just 11 outs.

To my eye, the stuff looked just fine, with his fastball up to 98 mph and averaging 96, but he just didn’t have feel for his offspeed pitches. Hitters really weren’t fooled overall. His 28% CSW rate was right at league average, but it was only 21% on his curveball, slider, and changeup, which made up 47 of his 85 pitches.

Whether Leiter sticks around in the rotation remains to be seen. The Rangers already have six healthy starters as it is, and Cody Bradford’s IL stay should be a short one. And let’s not forget that Tyler Mahle, Max Scherzer, and Jacob deGrom are all lurking for returns later in the season as well.

Adam Cimber is one of those pitchers that you notice, yet don’t spend too much time thinking about. The arm angle catches your attention, but at the same time, the side-slinging right-hander is neither overpowering nor a prolific ninth-inning arm. Working most often in the seventh and eight innings throughout his career, Cimber has a pedestrian mid-80s fastball and a meager 18.0% strikeout rate. Moreover, he’s been credited with just 23 wins and seven saves since debuting with the San Diego Padres in 2018.

Amid little fanfare, and with the exception of an injury-hampered 2023, he’s been one of the most reliable relievers in the game. Now 27 years old and with his fifth team — Cimber signed a free agent deal with the Los Angeles Angels over the winter — the University of Washington product has made 327 appearances, more than all but 13 hurlers during his big-league tenure. Killing a lot of worms along the way — his ground ball rate is north of 51% — he’s logged a 3.46 ERA and a 3.81 FIP over 304 innings.

Speaking to Cimber during spring training, I learned that he began throwing sidearm when he was 14 years old, this at the suggestion of his father, who felt he’d need to do something different if he hoped to make his high school team. Role models included Dan Quisenberry and Kent Tekulve — “my father grew up in that era of baseball, the 1970s and 1980s” — as well as a quartet of more-recent sidearmers and submariners.

“For the longest time it was Darren O’Day, Joe Smith, and Steve Cishek,” said Cimber, who has made four appearances this year and allowed one run in four-and-two-thirds innings. “But the pitcher I grew up watching that really helped me after I dropped down was Brad Ziegler. That was way back in the day. They’re all different in their own way — they went about it in a different way — but it’s always great to learn from guys that went before me.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Minnesota Twins had a strong start to the season, taking two of three games against the Kansas City Royals. But the positive results came with the unfortunate revelations that Royce Lewis will miss at least the next month, and likely longer, with a severe right quad strain, and right-hander Anthony DeSclafani will miss the entire season after undergoing flexor tendon surgery.

If you want to know why the Twins finally defused all the jokes last fall by winning their first playoff games in more than two decades, Lewis is one of the best answers. After nearly four years of injuries kept him mostly off the diamond, Lewis finally returned last May, though he landed on the IL twice more in 2023; an oblique strain in early July cost him about month and a half, and a hamstring strain in the middle of September prematurely ended his regular season. Still, he raked whenever he was healthy, slashing .309/.372/.548 with a 151 wRC+ and 2.4 WAR in just 58 games (239 plate appearances). His flow of pure, unadulterated awesomeness continued in the postseason as he hit four homers in six games.

With the preseason hope that Lewis would get 581 plate appearances (per our Depth Charts), that was enough to project the Twins to rank fifth at third base in our positional power rankings. He got through the spring healthy and was in the Opening Day lineup for the first time ever, batting third and playing third. His 2024 debut was his career in microcosm: He blasted a no-doubt dinger in his first plate appearance, lined a single his second time up, and got hurt before he had a chance to bat again; that injury occurred almost immediately, while he was rounding second when the next batter, Carlos Correa, hit a double. Read the rest of this entry »

When free agent Matt Chapman signed with the Giants this past weekend, most of my analysis focused upon the ups and downs of his 2023 season and the nature of his contract, which looks comparatively team friendly. One thing I underplayed in the analysis was the extent to which San Francisco’s winter stands out relative to the competition. Even before the addition of Chapman, the Giants had spent more money on free agents than any other team besides the Dodgers, and likewise project to receive more WAR from those additions than any team besides their longtime rivals.

Based on the data in our Free Agent Tracker, the Giants have now committed $261.25 million in guaranteed salaries: $113 million to center fielder Jung Hoo Lee, $44 million to righty Jordan Hicks, $42 million to DH/outfielder Jorge Soler, and $8.25 million to catcher Tom Murphy; this accounting does not include the major league salaries that shortstop Nick Ahmed or lefty reliever Amir Garrett will get if they make the big league roster; last month, they each signed minor league deals as non-roster invitees. San Francisco’s additions may not be as eye-catching as signing either Carlos Correa or Aaron Judge would have been last offseason, and the team still projects for a middle-of-the-pack 82 wins after going 79-83 last year, but the Giants may not be done spending some of the money that was burning a hole in their pockets. They remain interested in Blake Snell, especially in the wake of injuries within their rotation.

Of course, the Dodgers blow the field away when it comes to spending, even if we stick to the adjusted salaries once deferred money is factored in, with a total of $853.2 million: $437.83 million to Shohei Ohtani (down from a sticker price of $700 million), $325 million to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, $20.434 million to outfielder Teoscar Hernández (down from $25 million), $10 million to Clayton Kershaw (with incentives that can increase the value significantly for both 2024 and ’25), $9 million apiece to Ryan Brasier and Jason Heyward, $8 million to Joe Kelly, $7 million to James Paxton, and $4 million to Enrique Hernández.

Here’s a look at the 30 teams’ free agent spending. Note that, as above, these figures factor in the applicable deferrals but not incentives, escalator clauses, or split-contract salaries from minor league deals:

As you can see, five teams committed less than $10 million each this winter, and of the bottom seven teams, four (the Orioles, Rays, Twins, and Marlins) made the playoffs last year. Free agency isn’t the only route to improve a team, but particularly with regards to the Orioles, one can empathize with fans who are disappointed that last year’s success hasn’t translated into a shopping spree to improve their odds of getting back to the postseason.

The 30 teams have committed a total of $2.74 billion to free agents so far, and even though that figure will increase once Snell and Jordan Montgomery sign, overall spending will still be lower this offseason than in recent ones. Based on the data at RosterResource, teams spent $4 billion last offseason ($2.22 billion on the top 12 free agents alone) and $3.22 billion in the lockout-interrupted offseason of 2021–22. For this winter, spending works out to an average of $91.38 million per team, but that figure is skewed by the top teams to such an extent that the median is just $49.25 million; only nine teams exceeded the mean.

Beyond the dollars, I thought it would be worth revisiting some free agent accounting we’ve done in the past, regarding WAR added and lost in free agency. This isn’t quite as straightforward as it sounds, as we’ll soon see.

This is the most basic accounting, lumping together players signed to major league deals and those who had to settle for minor league ones; the latter inflates the counts of some of these teams well into double digits. It’s worth noting that where players spent time with multiple teams in 2023, I’ve only counted their WAR with their last team on the outgoing side, but their full-season WAR on the incoming side. Consider the case of Jeimer Candelario, who produced 3.1 WAR for the Nationals and then 0.2 WAR for the Cubs. To these eyes, crediting the Reds as adding a 3.3-WAR player properly conveys the impact of a substantial addition. The question is whether to count the Cubs as losing 3.3 WAR (via a player they acquired without intending to retain) or 0.2 WAR (reflecting the transient nature of a late-season addition). I went with the latter option.

The total number of outgoing free agents shown above (277) doesn’t include 11 additional players from the KBO and NPB, eight of whom have signed (all but Trevor Bauer, Adam Plutko, and Yasiel Puig), meaning that from among that total, 73 — about 25% — are unsigned. Most of the unsigned are fairly low impact players, in that just 13 produced at least 1.0 WAR last year, with Montgomery (4.3), Snell (4.1), Brandon Belt (2.3), Mike Clevinger (2.2) and J.D. Martinez (2.2) the only ones above 2.0. Meanwhile, 35 of them produced zero or negative WAR, though to be fair, that was often in limited opportunity.

While the eight foreign players who have signed are counted in the total number of signed free agents above, they didn’t produce any WAR within MLB. Thus, the fact that three teams outrank the Dodgers in terms of net free agent WAR comes with the caveat that the Los Angeles total doesn’t include Yamamoto.

I’ll come back to that issue, but first let’s note the teams at the extremes. Ahead of the Dodgers are three teams who had a bunch of players hit the open market, but who were at best minimally productive in 2023, and who all went out and made at least a few solid moves. Of the dozen Reds to test free agency, including the still-unsigned Joey Votto, only Harrison Bader produced even 1.0 WAR in 2023, and he nonetheless was 0.2 wins below replacement after being acquired from the Yankees. On the other side, in addition to Candelario, the team shored up its pitching by adding starters Nick Martinez and Frankie Montas, relievers Brent Suter and Emilio Pagán, and more — not big moves, but enough to put them at the top. The Cardinals shed five players, most notably Dakota Hudson, and overhauled their rotation by adding Sonny Gray, whose 5.3 WAR as a Twin tied Kevin Gausman for the AL lead, as well as Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn; they also added Keynan Middleton to the bullpen and staffed their bench with Brandon Crawford and Matt Carpenter. Of the eight Royals who became free agents, only Zack Greinke produced 1.0 WAR, but they beefed up their pitching, with starters Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha; their lineup, with Hunter Renfroe; and their bench, with Adam Frazier and Garrett Hampson to their bench. These moves won’t win them the division, but they’re at least proof of life.

The Dodgers’ figures on both sides of the ledger are inflated by their keeping Brasier, Enrique Hernández, Heyward, Kelly, and Kershaw, but they did shed the still-unsigned J.D. Martinez and Julio Urías, replacing them with the market’s two most expensive players. The Diamondbacks re-signed Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and didn’t lose anybody who produced at least 1.0 WAR for the team, while the only departing Giant to meet that threshold was Sean Manaea.

At the other end of the spectrum, it’s striking that the bottom five teams include three AL postseason participants plus one NL team that barely missed it. Whether they won it all or fell short, their offseasons have resulted in some downsizing of payrolls and perhaps expectations.

In the wake of last year’s $255 million flop, the uncertainty regarding their local broadcast deal, and the death of chairman Peter Seidler, the Padres gutted their pitching staff, with Snell, Lugo, Martinez, Wacha, and closer Josh Hader among those departing, along with catcher Gary Sánchez, whom they plucked off the scrapheap and who had his best season since 2019. Most of the money they’ve spent this offseason was on their bullpen, with Wandy Peralta, Japanese lefty Yuki Matsui and Korean righty Woo-Suk Go joining the fold. The Twins shed Gray, Kenta Maeda, and Tyler Mahle from their rotation, and both Donovan Solano and Michael A. Taylor remain unsigned but unlikely to return; meanwhile their most impactful addition is first baseman Carlos Santana. The Blue Jays let Chapman depart, along with Belt, Hicks and Whit Merrifield; they cobbled together a lower-cost third base solution, which includes the incoming Justin Turner and Isiah Kiner-Falefa, retained center fielderKevin Kiermaier, and took a flier on Cuban righty Yariel Rodriguez, who spent three seasons in NPB. The Rangers may still re-sign Montgomery, but for now he counts only on the outbound side, and they also shed relievers Aroldis Chapman, Chris Stratton, and Will Smith, plus catcher/DH Mitch Garver. Their rotation is full of question marks as they bank on Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, and Mahle having strong returns from surgery. Veteran righty David Robertson should bolster the bullpen, and Garver’s departure is mitigated by the eventual arrival of top prospect Wyatt Langford.

Since the impact of the foreign free agents isn’t reflected in the table above, I took one more look at the landscape using projected WAR on the incoming side. Instead of taking it straight from our Free Agent Tracker — that uses Steamer, which is available in time for the opening bell of the offseason, but not ZiPS, which takes longer to prepare — I took the more labor-intensive route by swapping in our Depth Charts projections, which takes an average the two systems:

Despite accounting for Yamamoto, the Dodgers actually fall in the rankings due to known injuries (Ohtani won’t pitch in 2024, while Kershaw could be out until August) and regression (Brasier and Heyward, particularly), while the Giants surpass them with the addition of Lee. Also notable on the upper end are the Mets, mainly due to anticipated rebounds from Manaea, Bader, and Luis Severino. On the other side, the Orioles stand out more than in the previous table, mainly because the only free agent they signed to a major league deal, Craig Kimbrel, is projected to regress. Given that both Kyle Bradish and John Means have been sidelined with elbow injuries to start the season, it seems possible the O’s could add a low-cost starter who might boost their standing here a bit.

Thanks to our tools at FanGraphs, free agency is easy to track, even if I’ve made it more labor-intensive for this exercise. It’s hardly the only route by which teams improve, however. For example, the Orioles traded for Corbin Burnes, who may outproduce any of the starters who were signed. But in the big picture, the patterns I’ve illustrated offer us plenty of hints about what to expect from the upcoming season.

Even with an extra day in February this year, Matt Chapman remains unsigned, his free agency having lingered past the start of exhibition season. Admittedly, the soon-to-be-31-year-old third baseman is coming off of an uneven season marked by a late slump related to a finger injury, but he’s been reliably productive throughout his seven-year career, with good-to-great defense bolstering his value at the plate. Meanwhile, his former (?) team, the Blue Jays — who reportedly offered him a nine-figure extension before he hit free agency — have cobbled together an uninspiring solution at third base.

Chapman isn’t the only remaining free agent who could provide a significant upgrade, but he’s by far the best position player remaining on the shelves, and the combination of his absence and the Blue Jays’ needs stands out as I turn to the American League edition of my roundup of the most glaring holes on contending teams (the National League edition is here). For this exercise, I’ve highlighted the spots that per our projections — which combine ZiPS and Steamer as well as playing time estimates from RosterResource — fall below a combined 2.0 WAR on teams whose Playoff Odds sit at or above 25%.

Why 2.0 WAR? That’s the rough equivalent of average play across a full season, but because of the general tendency to overproject playing time and keep even the weakest teams with positive WARs at each position (in reality over 10% of them will finish in the red), our position player Depth Chart values at the team level are inflated by about 20%. That is, instead of having a total of 1,000 WAR projected across the 30 teams, and 57% of that (570 WAR) allocated to position players, our Depth Chart values currently add up to about 682 WAR. Thus, I am discounting the team values that you see on the Depth Chart pages by 20%, and focusing on the lowest-ranked contenders among those whose adjusted values fall below that 2.0 WAR threshold. The individual WAR values cited will remain as they are on the Depth Chart pages, however, and it’s worth noting that many of the players here — particularly youngsters with shorter track records, including some from our Top 100 Prospects list — don’t project particularly well but still have considerable upside. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Dodgers traded for Tyler Glasnow this offseason, he wasn’t the only player the Rays sent west. Manuel Margot also joined Los Angeles, where he would to fill Jonny DeLuca’s old role as a righty-hitting outfielder capable of playing any of the three spots. Yet, Margot wasn’t exactly a snug fit for the Dodgers; his inclusion in the trade felt more like a way for Tampa Bay to shed salary. It seemed likely that Los Angeles would flip him to another team before the start of the season.

That’s exactly what happened on Monday, when the Dodgers sent Margot and minor league infielder Rayne Doncon to the Twins in exchange for minor league shortstop Noah Miller. Los Angeles also agreed to cover $6 million of Margot’s $10 million salary for 2024, along with the $2 million he’d be owed if Minnesota doesn’t exercise its team option for 2025, as Aaron Gleeman reported. So, in trading Margot, the Dodgers are saving $4 million; naturally, they promptly turned around and signed Enrique Hernández to a one-year, $4 million deal.

You can almost analyze the Dodgers’ side of this trade in a box, because the things being exchanged are so similar. In fact, to make my analysis make sense, you have to know how close the prospects are in value, so let’s start there. Doncon is a 20-year old middle infielder who spent 2023 at Single-A Rancho Cucamonga struggling against older pitchers. Want a prospect novel? Eric Longenhagen has one for you:

Doncon was a 2021 and 2022 backfield prodigy who looked like he could become a slugging middle infielder. His bat speed, body projection, as well as his struggles on defense and with chase, prompted Alfonso Soriano pipe dreams and more level-headed Esteury Ruiz comparisons at the time. Doncon had a mediocre 2023 with the bat – .215/.283/.368, albeit with a career-high 14 homers – but looked much better on defense. He currently has the actions and arm strength for shortstop, but he’s still young and has a lot of room on his frame, which means he may yet outgrow that position and move to either second or third. Doncon’s pitch recognition is not great, and he’s a bit more chase and whiff prone than is ideal, but he has good power for a hitter his age and is probably going to grow into more. The longer he can stay at short, the better chance he gives himself at being a useful big leaguer despite his flaws. The Twins have two seasons to develop Doncon before they have to decide whether to expose him to the Rule 5 draft, and realistically, they have another year or two beyond that to let him barbecue on the 40-man if they really want to. He adds an element of upside to their system as well as an element of risk. He is not likely to have a meteoric rise. Instead, he is a slow-burning, high-variance prospect.

Read the rest of this entry »