Chase Lee is now a Blue Jay after enjoying a mostly successful 2025 rookie season as a Tiger. The 27-year-old, sidewinding right-hander made 32 relief appearances with Detroit, logging a 4.10 ERA, a 24.3% strikeout rate, and a 6.1% walk rate over 37-and-a-third innings. He allowed 32 hits, seven of which left the yard, and was on the winning end of four of five decisions. Toronto acquired him in exchange for 24-year-old farmhand Johan Simon in mid-December
He was originally in the Rangers system. Texas took Lee in the sixth round of the 2021 draft out of the University of Alabama, only to move him to Motown at the 2024 trade deadline as part of the Andrew Chafin deal. Lee then headed into last season with Eric Longenhagen calling him a “a sinker/slider sidearmer who has posted strikeout rates up around 30% his entire minor league career… a high-probability up/down look reliever.” That proved accurate. Lee rode the Detroit-Toledo shuttle multiple times, making 23 appearances as a Mud Hen.
Talking to him Jays camp on Friday, I learned that the well-educated hurler places a high value on the information he gets from hitters.
“That’s where pitchers get a lot of their information,” the Alabama graduate told me. “When I’m working on new pitches, new shapes, new locations — whatever it may be — I normally go to the hitting coaches. It’s like, ‘Hey, if your team were to face me, what would the plan be?’ I take that, then it’s, ‘OK, how can I mess up that plan?’
“I did this the other day,” the former walk-on to the Crimson Tide baseball team added. “I talked to Cody Atkinson, who is one of our hitting coaches here. I knew Cody in [the Texas Rangers organization]. I asked him to write me a 30-second report on what he would tell hitters to do if we were on different teams and I was coming into a game. He said he would tell them to look in a certain location, for these two pitches. If I were to instead throw a fastball up, or a fastball in, that would ruin the entire plan.” Read the rest of this entry »
George Lombard Jr. Photo: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the New York Yankees. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the sixth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve now spent nearly a quarter of a century working with baseball projections, and in that time, I’ve always been struck by the certainty with which so many people view them. People are far more certain than they should be that great teams will be great, star players will be stars, and so on. However, one of the things that comes from working with projections for a big chunk of your life is that you develop a painful awareness of how much of the future cannot be known until it actually happens.
As in most seasons, we enter without a general conception of which teams will be the best. We may pretend everyone starts off with a clean slate, but absolutely nobody expects the Rockies to be better than the Dodgers. But even if that particular scenario is extremely unlikely, every one of the top teams has a scenario in which things fall apart. These clubs have a vested interest in protecting against that potential downside, as much as possible, so I thought it would be interesting to look at the doomsday scenario for some of the best teams in baseball.
To get an idea, I did a full seasonal simulation of the ZiPS projected standings, and instead of looking at the standings overall, I looked at the bottom 20% of outcomes to see what we could glean from the results. According to ZiPS, every team except the Dodgers misses the playoffs when it performs no better than its 20th-percentile win total.
Philadelphia Phillies: Rotation Depth
This almost seems counterintuitive given just how good the rotation projections are for the Phillies, but the projections are not enthusiastic about their depth here. And what makes that especially worrisome is that with so much uncertainty around the health of Zack Wheeler and the performance of Aaron Nola, Philadelphia is probably going to need that depth more than it did last year. This time around, the Phillies are missing Ranger Suarez, who signed with the Red Sox during the offseason. Andrew Painter was healthy in 2025, but one cannot ignore that he was rather middling against Triple-A hitting. The outfield looks like a problem, as well, but it generally has been, and ZiPS is a fan of Justin Crawford.
If Philadelphia adds one of the innings-eaters still available in free agency, ZiPS sees the team’s outlook improve, much more than I expected. Just having someone like Lucas Giolito, Tyler Anderson, or even Patrick Corbin around did a lot to alleviate the rotational downside. It may come down to which of these pitchers is open to a swing role or a minor league deal with an opt-out date. And yes, I do think it feels weird to suggest Corbin as an upgrade for a team in 2026.
New York Mets: Right Field
The Mets certainly don’t dominate in either the rotation or bullpen projections, but ZiPS is fairly confident that both of these units will hold up over the course of the season. Despite a solid projection for Carson Benge in right field, the range of outcomes is quite high, and in the simulations where Benge struggles, ZiPS has trouble competently filling in right field. Tyrone Taylor is an underwhelming option, and ZiPS thinks Brett Baty would have a tough time defensively in the outfield. With no particularly interesting outfielders available in free agency, the best solution might simply be making sure Jacob Reimer gets some time in the outfield. New York’s roster just isn’t really set up to get him time at third base, where he probably is most valuable. But he also represents the most tantalizing 2026 upside of any player the Mets have in the minors, so they ought to try and be open to promoting him aggressively, and getting a little weird with it, if need be.
New York Yankees: Injuries
The Yankees’ outcomes are weird, in that their bad seasons were mostly ones in which Aaron Judge, for whatever reason, ended up with fewer than 300 plate appearances, and only occasionally something else. Getting limited innings from Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón was already baked into the cake, and ZiPS thinks there are enough fourth-starter types to patch up any rotation holes that might pop up. The problem is, just how do you replace Judge? I’m not sure there’s a scenario where the Yankees can do much to mitigate any risk there, for the simple reality that in a tightly projected division, suddenly losing six wins is likely to drop them out of the AL East divisional race. At the very least, the Yankees should hold off on shopping Spencer Jones for help elsewhere, but it wouldn’t fix a Judge loss.
Baltimore Orioles: Rotation Quality
Baltimore has potential aces in both Trevor Rogers and Kyle Bradish, but that word potential is an unpleasant adjective. Adding Pete Alonso and Taylor Ward really stabilizes the offense, which was a concern last year, but the rotation is an issue. The Orioles finished with a bottom five rotation in the ZiPS simulations more often than all other AL East teams combined. There’s nothing on the farm that helps this, and I think that with the Orioles increasingly pushing their chips in, they ought to be aggressive at taking the opportunity to loot struggling teams of their top pitching, even if the prospect hit would be tremendous. I think there are even scenarios, though not many, in which it might make sense for the O’s to trade either Adley Rutschman, assuming he has a bounce-back season, or Samuel Basallo.
Boston Red Sox: First Base
The good news is that ZiPS sees the Red Sox as the most stable of AL contenders, with the lowest percentage of sub-.500 seasons of any AL team. The rotation isn’t the best in baseball, but it may be the most bulletproof one, and that isn’t even counting on getting lots of innings from pitchers like Payton Tolle and Connelly Early, who would be Plan As in most rotations in baseball. In fact, when the Red Sox had their worst performance, it was almost entirely the offense that fell short, and not necessarily from the position you might expect.
Most people have focused on third base because of the loss of Alex Bregman, but Caleb Durbin is actually a decent option. Plus, if Durbin struggles, Marcelo Mayer could very likely provide what the former isn’t. Where there is real downside risk is at first base. I liked the Willson Contreras acquisition, too, and he’s probably going to be at least solidly average in 2026, but he’s also going to be 34 in May. It’s an age where you look at the long left tails of the outcome distribution for non-elite first basemen, and there’s always a real risk of a very sudden plummet off a cliff. Triston Casas hasn’t played in a game since last May — and won’t even play in any spring training games this year — and he has a real mixed history.
What to do? That’s a lot trickier. Boston obviously isn’t going to replace Contreras before he has that downside year. But this team should be ready for that possibility, and if the surplus of pitching turns out to be real, the Sox will have a position of depth from which to trade.
Chicago Cubs: Rotation Quality
The outlook improved with the addition of Edward Cabrera, but ZiPS still has the Cubs with the weakest rotation of the 10 teams listed here. In the ZiPS simulations, the rotation was largely the source of the Cubs’ worst seasons. There aren’t really any exciting starters left out there in free agency, but I think I’d do what I suspect the Cubs are already thinking of doing: giving Ben Brown’s upside as a starting pitcher more serious consideration. He allowed too many home runs and had a high BABIP on a really good defensive team, but it’s guys like that who tend to come out of nowhere quickly (see Corbin Burnes in 2019). Brown has swing-and-miss stuff, and I think given the potential, I’d rather see him starting at Triple-A than pitching in relief in the majors.
Houston Astros: Outfield Corners
Not counting 2020, for obvious reasons, the 686 runs the Astros scored in 2025 represented their fewest since 2014. A full, healthy season of Yordan Alvarez would be incredibly helpful, but the team’s also not likely to wring another 135 wRC+ out of Jeremy Peña. Not helping matters is that Joey Loperfido and Cam Smith project as one of the weakest corner outfield tandems in the majors in 2026. Smith surprised many, including me, in the early months last year, but an OPS that fell shy of .500 in the second half is highly concerning. There’s a chance that the Astros get little from their outfield corners, which is a problem for a team with a middling offense that just lost ace Framber Valdez in free agency. In some 30% of simulations, the Astros got a sub-90 wRC+ out of their corner outfielders, and in those runs, they had a .475 winning percentage. If there’s a team that should aggressively go after either Jarren Duran or Wilyer Abreu, it’s Houston.
Toronto Blue Jays: Rotation Depth
Even with the loss of Anthony Santander to shoulder surgery, ZiPS still sees the Blue Jays’ rotation as their biggest pain point. There are simply a lot of question marks once you get past Dylan Cease and Kevin Gausman, something I mentioned a bit in Toronto’s ZiPS rundown in January. In a lot of the sims, the team got next to nothing out of any of Cody Ponce, José Berríos, Shane Bieber, and Max Scherzer, whether because of injury, decline, or general performance issues. If Sandy Alcantara looks anywhere near his old self with the Marlins in the early months, I think the Jays ought to be one of his suitors. At the very least, Alcantara would do well with an infield that has Andrés Giménez and Ernie Clement.
Seattle Mariners: Outfield Corners
As with the Astros, ZiPS sees Seattle’s corner outfield spots as having the most downside. Unlike the Astros, ZiPS doesn’t view it as truly a doomsday scenario. After the Red Sox and Dodgers, ZiPS considers the Mariners to be the contender with the least downside. Randy Arozarena’s projection distribution is pretty interesting, with the bottom falling out of him once you get under the 15th-percentile projection or so; while his 20th-percentile OPS+ is a non-disastrous 94, it drops to 70 for the 10th-percentile level. As for Victor Robles, he’s been all over the place in his career, and the Plan Bs in the organization are unimpressive. I think Seattle’s strong enough that it doesn’t necessarily have the same need to be aggressive as Houston does, but this is still a potential point of weakness that could pose an issue.
Los Angeles Dodgers: Black Swans
It’s really hard to kill the Dodgers. I argued after the 2024-2025 offseason, a very busy one, that the Dodgers weren’t really improving their average outcome so much as drastically raising their floor. I stand by it; they’ve added Kyle Tucker and Edwin Díaz while losing nobody who was crucial to the 2025 team. That doesn’t mean they’re going to be projected to win 105 games or anything, but it does mean that in most of their worst projected outcomes, they’re still a playoff contender. Their 10th-percentile projection, for example, is 86 wins. Their 2% chance of finishing below .500 is the smallest percentage I’ve ever projected, a record that now goes back more than 20 years. Doomsday for the Dodgers may require an actual doomsday scenario like societal collapse, nuclear war, or a vacuum metastability event. Since I do not know how to prevent any of those, there’s nothing more I can add.
The baseball season will soon be upon us, which means it’s time for an age-old question: How long until the best hitter’s reign ends? This year, and seemingly every year of late, that means Aaron Judge. You can quibble about who the best overall player is, but Judge is pretty clearly the best offensive player on the planet. Over the last four years, he has a composite 204 wRC+, miles clear of the competition, and he just put up that exact number in 2025. In 2026, we think he’s going to be the best hitter again, obviously.
Will we in 2027, though? It depends, of course. If Judge looks like his usual self this year, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking the crown. I wanted a little bit more rigor than that, however, so I dusted off the Marcel projection methodology. Marcel is what Tom Tango dubbed the minimum sufficient projection system. It’s as simple as taking the last three years of performance, weighting them, and tossing in some league average.
Let’s take Judge’s last few seasons as an example. I grabbed his wOBA and plate appearances for 2023-2025 and threw them into a table. Then I calculated league average across those three years (the exact calculation uses some weighting to match Judge’s playing time by season). That looks like this:
Aaron Judge, Marcel Projections
Year
PA
wOBA
2025
679
.463
2024
704
.476
2023
458
.420
League Average
600
.313
Turning those into a Marcel projection is simple. Multiply the most recent year’s plate appearances by five, the next-most-recent year’s by four, the next by three, and the league average by two. Take a weighted average of these new values. The result is Judge’s 2026 Marcel projection – which works out to a .440 wOBA. That tracks logically, which is the point of Marcel. It’s really close to what you and I would think about a player’s skill. Post a wOBA above .450 for two straight years, and I’ll expect you to come back to the pack a little but still do something outrageous the next year.
Using this methodology, here are the top projected hitters for 2026:
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Team USA’s pre-WBC warm-up games, follow up on spring training ballpark naming rights, and discuss Jurickson Profar’s second PED suspension in as many seasons, then preview the 2026 New York Yankees (20:07) with The New York Daily News’Gary Phillips, and the 2026 St. Louis Cardinals (59:53) with The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Derrick Goold.
When the Yankees re-signedCody Bellinger in late January, they more or less committed to running back the same outfield they used in 2025. And why not? Even with limited contributions from their reserves, the primary trio of Bellinger, Trent Grisham, and Aaron Judge combined to produce a major league-high 16.6 WAR. But with secondary roles still up for grabs, New York added outfielder Randal Grichuk to its options last week, signing the 34-year-old veteran to a minor league deal with a non-roster invitation to spring training.
The signing of Grichuk isn’t exactly out of left field, so to speak. While the Yankees do have 23-year-old switch-hitter Jasson Domínguez — who spent all of last season with the Yankees and made 93 starts in left but was reduced to a bench role by September — and 24-year-old prospect Spencer Jones on their 40-man roster, both have minor league options remaining (two for the former, three for the latter). If the primary trio is healthy, and if primary designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton is able to answer the bell often enough (yes, that’s a load-bearing if), the Yankees would prefer that their youngsters continue to develop by playing regularly, if not in the Bronx than at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre.
“I would concede it’s in his best interest to be getting everyday reps,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said in mid-February regarding Domínguez, who placed 16th on our Top 100 Prospects List last spring as a 55-FV prospect despite having been moved from center field to left, then hit a modest .257/.331/.388, (103 wRC+) in 429 plate appearances. While the Yankees tolerated worse from left fielder Alex Verdugo in 2024, when Domínguez was coming off Tommy John surgery on his right (throwing) elbow, between his league-average offense and his struggles in left field (-7 DRS, -9 FRV in 793 innings), he was an afterthought in September. He made just four starts and totaled 20 plate appearances in the final month of the regular season, before getting just one postseason plate appearance. (He made the most of it, lacing a leadoff double into the right-center gap in the bottom of the ninth inning of an elimination game with the Yankees down four runs.) Domínguez’s 0.6 WAR — which matched Verdugo’s 2024 output in about 200 fewer plate appearances — indicates he still has enough to work on to justify another stint in the minors. Read the rest of this entry »
On Friday afternoon, the Yankees and Paul Goldschmidt agreed to a one-year deal worth $4 million, as ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported. Friday in the early evening, I began contemplating how I’d like my career to end. These are related incidents.
Three years ago, Goldschmidt stood at the pinnacle of the game. He’d just won NL MVP on the back of a spectacular all-around offensive season, carrying the Cardinals to the playoffs in a rousing capper to his long, decorated career. It was his eighth straight season receiving MVP votes, and brought his career WAR total to 52. Have you ever considered retiring at the top of your game? With two years left on his contract, Goldschmidt must have given the idea some thought. Finish those two out well, get a bit more hardware, and ride off into the sunset toward Cooperstown.
The next two years didn’t cooperate, however. In 2023, Goldschmidt managed 3.4 WAR, a gentle decline, but the Cards collapsed, finishing last in the NL Central for the first time in 33 years. The following season was even worse; Goldschmidt hit .245/.302/.414, for a 100 wRC+, easily the worst mark of his career. The Cardinals missed the playoffs again and tilted toward a rebuild. Goldschmidt didn’t fit in St. Louis anymore. But he couldn’t go out like this, with an outlier down season, the worst of his career, closing out his time in the majors. And so he departed for New York in free agency on a one-year, $12.5 million contract. Read the rest of this entry »
Last summer, an article titled Mark Gubicza Tackles a Challenging Career Quiz ran here at FanGraphs. In it, the Los Angeles Angels broadcaster did his best to answer matchup-specific questions from his playing days —- he pitched in the big leagues from 1984-1996 — such as which batter he allowed the most hits to, and who took him deep the most times. Along with taking a stab at the answers, Gubicza shared entertaining anecdotes about some of the hitters that were mentioned.
He isn’t the only pitcher-turned-broadcaster I challenged with (a version of) the quiz. Later in the season, I sat down with David Cone who, much like his 1980s-1990s contemporary, had fun stories to share.
I first asked the New York Yankees broadcast analyst which batter he faced the most times. Cone failed to come up with the correct answer, first guessing Will Clark (76 plate appearances), and then Juan Gonzalez (57), to who he recalled surrendering several gophers.
The answer is Roberto Alomar, against whom he matched up 93 times. What does he remember about facing the Hall of Fame second baseman?
“The thing that stands out — and he was a teammate of mine, too — is that Robbie was one of the best at picking up tipped pitches,” Cone told me. “Maybe a pitcher was doing something with his glove, and you kind of knew that Robbie would see that. But a lot of times he was using it as a bluff. Alex Cora does it to this day. You want the pitcher to think you have something on him, which gets into his head. It’s psychological warfare, and Robbie was the best at that.”
Department: Baseball Systems Reports To: Director, Baseball Systems Job Status: Full-Time, Non-Exempt
Overview:
Building upon our storied legacy, the New York Yankees look to attract the best possible talent not just on the field, but in the front office as well. It is our shared responsibility to maintain the first-class reputation associated with the franchise in all aspects of our business.
The New York Yankees organization is accepting applications for an experienced Full-Stack Software Engineer in their Baseball Operations department. Candidate should have 5+ years of full-stack development experience building front-end data-driven web applications using REST services and JavaScript MV frameworks like React, Angular, or Vue.js. Candidates should possess not only the technical skill, but the design sensibilities needed to create a compelling and efficient user experience.
Primary Responsibilities:
Assist in the design and implementation of web-based tools and applications utilizing data, video, and visualizations for baseball operational personnel, including front office staff, scouts, coaches and ultimately players.
Write clean, concise, testable code in a variety of languages (primarily JavaScript/TypeScript, HTML, C#, SQL) utilizing best practices in software engineering.
Perform code reviews and collaborate with other developers (both junior and senior) as well as Data Engineers to deliver best-in-class software solutions.
Utilize AI and code-assistance tooling where advantageous but recognize where these tools are detrimental and that all code submitted is your work product.
Interface with all departments within Baseball Operations (scouting, player development, coaching, analytics) to build tools and reporting capabilities to meet their needs.
Work with major and minor league pitching, hitting and player tracking datasets, college and other amateur data, international baseball data, and many other baseball data sources.
Qualifications and Experience:
Bachelor’s degree (B.S.) in Computer Science or related field.
MUST have 5+ years of experience with data-driven web application development using all the following:
JavaScript MV frameworks (React/Angular/Vue.js/etc.), with React preferred.
Consuming and writing REST API services in platforms like Node.JS, .NET, Flask, etc.
ORM data access frameworks, like Hibernate, Entity Framework, SQLAlchemy, etc.
Relational databases, particularly Microsoft SQL Server
Demonstrated ability to develop clean and concise UI/UX web applications with attention to detail and a compelling data visualization experience.
Proficient in SQL data structures, query writing, CRUD operations, and various database design principles.
Familiarity with various IDEs (Visual Studio, VS Code, Cursor, etc) and how to leverage them to develop code efficiently.
Thorough understanding of Git operations, as well as general CI/CD best practices and DevOps tooling.
Knowledge of Cloud Platform services (in particular AWS and Azure), with a general understanding of how to leverage these services.
Knowledge of the software development lifecycle (requirements definition, design, development, testing, implementation, verification), Agile, and industry best practices.
Excellent communication and problem-solving skills – must be able to break down a complex task and put together an execution strategy with minimal guidance.
Familiarity with typical baseball data, basic and advanced metrics, tracking system (Trackman, Hawkeye, Statcast, etc.) data structures a plus.
The salary range for the position is $125,000-$145,000. This includes a comprehensive benefits package.
This description is intended to describe the type of work being performed by a person assigned to this position. It is not an exhaustive list of all duties and responsibilities required of the employee. The New York Yankees are an Equal Opportunity Employer. The Company is committed to the principles of equal employment opportunity for all employees and applicants for employment.
Our long national nightmare is over. After weeks of back and forth between Cody Bellinger and the New York Yankees, it’s official: He’s staying in the Bronx. The two sides have agreed to a five-year, $162.5 million deal with opt outs after the second and third seasons, a $20 million signing bonus, and a full no-trade clause, as first reported by Jeff Passan.
This fit was so obvious that it almost had to happen. The Yankees need offense, and they’d prefer it to come in the form of a left-handed outfielder who can cover center field in a pinch. They’re already familiar with Bellinger, who just put up a 5-WAR season in pinstripes. No other teams needed this exact type of player as much, at this current moment, as they did. Likewise, Bellinger was probably going to have to sign with the Yankees to get the deal he wanted. Now that that foregone conclusion has been reached, let’s unpack how this all fits together.
This contract is the culmination of a long, decorated career that was conspicuously lacking in free agency appeal. Bellinger burst onto the scene in 2017 with 39 homers for the Dodgers, taking Rookie of the Year honors in the process. He then went fully supersonic in the homer-happy 2019 season, with the rocket ball propelling him to 47 homers, a 161 wRC+, and NL MVP honors. Disaster struck in the 2020 World Series, however. Bellinger dislocated his shoulder celebrating a home run, and his performance fell off a cliff immediately after. Read the rest of this entry »
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