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.
I like to dunk on Smoltz as much as anyone (he’s a terrible announcer and never changes his prior assumptions – including those that are wrong) but there is absolutely risk when using 6 pitchers in a post-season game that you are increasing the chances that one of them will pitch badly than if you used 2 or 3. Not the least of which is that you are throwing worse pitchers out there and reducing the number of arms you have for late-inning matchups or extra innings.
Like Smoltz, I often find it maddening when a postseason relief pitcher pitches a great inning in like 9 pitches, and then the manager brings in someone else for the next inning. Sees to me you’d be better off sticking with a pitcher who is throwing well, all else being equal, to one who may or may not.
That said, bullpen games are usually only chosen when it is better than the alternative (a bad or tired starter).
There’s just no evidence that this is a suboptimal strategy overall, and your “aligned with Smoltzy” comment is not backed by available evidence. Pitchers just pitch well until they don’t; there is no “pitched 9 good pitches” that should inform how we think about their next 9.
> there is absolutely risk when using 6 pitchers in a post-season game that you are increasing the chances that one of them will pitch badly than if you used 2 or 3
But that risk is often curtailed by having a shorter leash. Higher risk, lower impact per occurrance of the risk.
> Sees to me you’d be better off sticking with a pitcher who is throwing well, all else being equal, to one who may or may not.
There is no connection between innings like this.
Pete Rose has been banned since Buster Posey was in kindergarten. Maybe longer. It’s commonly accepted wisdom that you cannot bet on baseball and be involved with baseball in any capacity. I don’t know how anyone could possibly not know this, especially since a couple of players are staring down lifetime bans themselves right now and bans for gambling have been part of baseball for over 100 years.
I might be proven wrong about this but it seems there are few constituencies of any baseball writers, owners, front office executives, managers, or Hall of Famers who think a *manager* who bet on games and lied about it for 15 years afterwards should be honored. The only exception that I know of is the Reds organization itself.
Is there anyone other than the Reds organization who might potentially have a vote in a Hall of Fame election who has indicated support for his induction? I am sure there will be more eventually, and I am sure there is someone I missed but I just don’t see it crossing a 75% threshold. That’s a high bar.
I hope you are correct. I’ve long been sick to death of Pete Rose.
Unfortunately, a constant megaphone is given to a retrograde 78 year old to opine on any stupid idea rattling in his head – and then quislings give in – or else this wouldn’t even be an issue.
The good news is that he won’t pay attention to this matter long enough for it to get any further.
I think the chances of Pete Rose being elected took a serious hit over the last few months with the betting scandals to date in a variety of sports. I don’t think the MLB can condone having someone inducted for the very same conduct they are trying to get a handle on with leagues giving out lifetime bans.
Joe Jackson’s case is definitely complicated but but it’s always been assumed that he did not take part in the scheme but failed to report it. That poses a new question how many players knew or currently know of their teammates that might be involved in betting. Do you think no other team members in Cleveland knew when it appears Clase recruited Ortiz? Who else might he have approached or felt out? Who else knew they were sneaking in cell phones? Where does that line of inquiry end. Obviously throwing the world series is in a class of it’s own but it’s not that much different than prop bets where the outcome is entirely predetermined.
Joc Pederson looked really heavy to me when I saw him on TV in June. Later in the season he didn’t look quite as bad.
I was thinking the same thing. It isn’t like he plays defense at all anymore, which is funny because he was a good CF defender for a while, but he certainly didn’t look like an athlete build wise this year. He wasn’t even like the heavy athletic build w muscle and fat, like Trout, or even Schwarber. Those guys are overweight but very clearly strong by build just carrying extra fat. Instead Joc had the kinda belly that wasn’t round it just sort of was loose skin that sagged. It was shocking to see on a pro athlete, so much so I can’t think of any other examples. Maybe a pitcher?
He played 19 innings of 1st base and 3 innings of RF this year. If you want to call that no defense at all… actually I’m ok with that