FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: August 30, 2025
Hello, and welcome to this week’s mailbag! Matt Martell is on a well-deserved
vacation, so I’m piloting things in his stead. Matt picked a pretty good time to get some R&R; with about a month left in the season, the playoff field is basically set. As Michael Baumann noted in his piece yesterday, “there has not been a playoff race so settled this early in the season as this year’s National League. At least not in the past 12 seasons. There’s always been someone with some hope in each league, even in the two-Wild Card rounds, and especially in that hateful COVID-necessitated 16-team bracket from 2020. Not this year in the NL. Barely, this year, in the AL.” Entering play on Friday, the Reds trailed the Mets by four games for the final NL Wild Card spot; their playoff odds sat at a paltry 4.4%. The Junior Circuit didn’t offer much more intrigue; the Royals, sitting three games back of the Mariners for the third Wild Card in that league, had playoff odds of just 12.6% as the long weekend loomed.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no fun to be had. Kyle Schwarber hit four home runs in one game this week! Jonah Tong and Payton Tolle made their major league debuts! There’s Hi-Chew aplenty! And while we basically know who will be playing October baseball, both of the West divisions remain unsettled.
Your questions this week don’t specifically concern the playoff race, though two of them involve key players on teams that hope to make deep postseason runs. We’ll also zoom out to contemplate how many teams could finish .500, as well as the future of public pitching analysis. Before we do, though, I’ll remind you all that while anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, be sure to send us an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Meg is the editor-in-chief of FanGraphs and the co-host of Effectively Wild. Prior to joining FanGraphs, her work appeared at Baseball Prospectus, Lookout Landing, and Just A Bit Outside. You can follow her on Bluesky @megrowler.fangraphs.com.
I think players and agents got wise to their minimum earning potential and stopped offering such steep discounts to buy out the early free agency years. If a good player with a great prospect pedigree doesn’t suffer a career ending injury, they are going to make a lot of money any way they go, so it’s hard for the club to low ball them. They have a little leverage.
I think Lucas Giolito is almost a worst case scenario for a guy who turned down one of those deals. Prior to 2021, after 2 all star level years, the White Sox reportedly offered him 4/$50M guaranteed with the potential for 5/$67M with an option for 2025. He decided to bet on himself. He put up 4.1 fWAR in 2021, but only 2.7 in ’22 and ’23 combined, was so bad he was waived by the Angels to save a little money, then needed Tommy John. Despite that, the Red Sox gave him 2/$38.5 with a $14M option for 2026. His career earnings after this year are $63.5M. They would have been about $73M if he took the deal in 2021.
So he lost out on about $10M, but that probably doesn’t change his lifestyle. Had he won that bet on himself, he probably would have signed a huge deal. Burnes, Fried, and Nola are the closest comps and they all got at least $150M guaranteed. Even if Giolito wasn’t quite as good as them, he was 2 or 3 years younger than any of them and there are precious few perennial 4 win starting pitchers hitting free agency these days. So the upside benefit was clearly much bigger than the downside risk.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but I’m not sure if Giolito is the best example. Back of the rotation starters who’ve demonstrated the ability to throw a lot of innings are still fairly valuable, especially when they have a history of being better than that and are still prime, or prime-ish, age like Giolito.
For pitchers, the worst-case scenario is pretty clearly blowing out their arm while still pre-arbitration. For hitters, I think it’s something like if Tim Anderson or Eloy Jimenez turned down the extensions they signed with the White Sox, and then ended up washing out in the manner they did in real life.