FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: November 22, 2025
Hello, and welcome to the mailbag! Matt Martell is taking some well-deserved
vacation, so I’m piloting things in his stead. This week saw the hot stove flicker to life. The Mariners re-signed Josh Naylor to a five-year, $92.5 million deal, which inspired Davy Andrews to relaunch the We Tried tracker. The Orioles and the Angels got together on a surprising challenge trade, swapping Grayson Rodriguez and Taylor Ward, while the Braves brought back Raisel Iglesias on a one-year, $16 million contract, then traded utility infielders with the Astros, acquiring Mauricio Dubón in exchange for Nick Allen.
It was also a week that saw a variety of roster-related deadlines come and go. Teams had until Tuesday to protect eligible prospects from the Rule 5 draft by adding them to their 40-man roster, while Friday brought the non-tender deadline. Tuesday also saw four players accept a qualifying offer. Brandon Woodruff, Trent Grisham, Gleyber Torres, and Shota Imanaga will return to their prior teams on one-year contracts worth $22.025 million, removing them from the free pool. As Michael Baumann noted in his piece on the subject, that breaks the previous record of three players set in 2015; 144 qualifying offers were extended to pending free agents in the first 14 years of the system, with only 14 accepted.
We’ll cover every major signing and trade in the weeks ahead, but this week’s mailbag isn’t focused on transactions. Instead, we’ll contemplate a player who underperformed in 2025, the relative volatility of relievers and starters, and a controversial Hall of Fame case. Before we do, though, I’d like to remind you that 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, send me 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.
The bullpen game talking points are a pet peeve of mine as well. And yes if someone was talking about it I’m sure it was John Smoltz. He keeps saying that if you run one you expect everyone to be perfect. I keep replying to my TV, no you don’t. Is there any game ever that you enter into saying we have to give up zero runs today? No. If one of the relievers doesn’t have it, they give up some walks or a few runs and then you take them out. Doesn’t preclude you from still winning the game. It drives me crazy.