FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: November 8, 2025
Happy first Saturday of the offseason, everyone. To celebrate the occasion, you get two mailbag columns this week! The first ran on Monday and wrapped up a thrilling World Series. In today’s edition, we’ll move on from the Fall Classic and answer your questions about several teams that finished in last place this season. We’ll also cover small-market teams and some of the structures that are in place to encourage them to spend more on their rosters.
The first question we’ll answer today is about a player we’ve featured before in this column. In fact, some are calling him the Patron Saint of the Mailbag, an honor second only to his status as the worst major league player ever.
But before we continue, I’d like to remind you all 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.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
Thank you for brightening my Saturday morning
Excellent!
Appreciate the details of revenue sharing!
My argument is that the only way to get small market teams to spend more without permanently handicapping them is to insist that every dollar be spent on *guaranteed contracts.* Not “overall player salaries.” Not “club options.” It can be extensions or in free agency but if it’s a pre-arbitration minimum salary or if you had to tender a player in arbitration to get there it doesn’t count.
Everything else can be gamed. Maybe this can be gamed too, but it will be a whole lot harder to avoid a grievance. And the consequence for not spending that amount of money on that specific thing is anything that doesn’t get spent goes straight to the players pension fund.
There are a lot of teams that are going to be spending more in thatsituation. A lot more.
Mandating a guaranteed contract only spend of $105 mil (150% of $70 mil) would be a tall ask among the current owner crop.
That said, by my Cot’s based reckoning of CB tax 40 man payrolls – which is what I assume the owners consider “payroll” (including $17 million in Estimated player benefits) – then 3 clubs (Tampa 96.5, ChiSox 90.3, & Miami 84.9) – fell below this threshold in ‘25, with Pittsburgh (105.7) right there. While Tampa faced a local revenue challenge in Steinbrenner Field this year, which I expect will largely be made up by increased Revenue Sharing $, the other 2 were flat to slightly up in attendance in ‘25. Pittsburgh took a self-inflicted hit of about 12% here too, again likely covered by RS $.
It seems at least these 3 clubs could be subject to a grievance, no?
It seems to me at least that a floor system that dings teams of a % of RS revenue with a payroll under an agreed threshold, a sort of poverty tax structure along the lines of the luxury tax, might be a 1st step in this direction.
I think $105M is probably a good salary “floor”, where if you’re not spending up to that level you’re not really trying.
I was thinking $70M as the required amount to be spent on guaranteed salaries. I figure that if you have an entire roster of minimum salary types you’re at about $25M, so there would be a little bit of room for arbitration and split salaries and other things beyond that before you add $70M on top of it.
But somehow the Marlins’ 40-man roster $ amount was $70M all on its own despite half of it being pre-arbitration, which is higher than I expected. That means $70M guaranteed puts the Marlins up well over $105M. But on the bright side it would *really* incentivize teams like the Marlins to offer guaranteed deals before arbitration, so maybe that is more of a feature than a bug.
In terms of revenue recipients that really are egregious in not spending enough, it’s really four teams: The A’s, Rays, Marlins, and Pirates, and if you made an argument for the Guardians as #5 I wouldn’t object. In past years I would have included the Reds and Tigers but they are doing a little better. The Brewers could also spend more but not much, and I think the Royals are pretty close to their limit right now.
I went to look up the teams that had the highest K%+ per year, which I figured would be more relevant than the basic K% to answering whether opposing pitchers are setting career highs. It is mostly very bad teams. And the 2015 Cubs, who won 97 games or something like that.
The 2025 Angels were 15th on this list. This was a team that struck out *a lot*, but apparently in a more consistent fashion than the Rockies (who were a few spots below them).
Those Cubs worked counts as good as any team. And that was still an era where you needed to get good innings out of every starter.
Today when you work a starter up to 80 pitches in the 4th, if the game is close you still may have to face three innings of guys who throw triple digits with movement.
Rays fans are curious about identifying an inexplicable, panicked-looking long-term contract handed out in the past 20 years. Was the Franco contract one because they knew they probably won’t have to pay it off? Or are you thinking of HSK?
This seems to be along the lines of “every warning label you see on a ladder is because somebody injured themselves doing that dumb thing.”
I’m in no position to propose an alternative to Bill Bergen as worst player ever, but two points are worth considering. 1) managers sent him out, 11 seasons in a row for triple digit plate appearances; and 2) his defensive numbers are outstanding [career boWAR = -15 (!); career bdWAR = +14.6 (!!)]. As to 1, as Bill James noted, you have to be a pretty good pitcher to lose 20 games (I think in reference to Jack Fisher’s 1965 campaign when he went 8-24, gave up the most earned runs in the league (111), but still produced 2.1 bWAR). James’ point is that only a decent pitcher gets sent out that often. Similarly, someone thought Bergen was worth putting behind the plate for 941 games, notwithstanding his anemic bat. (Casey Stengel pointed out that if you don’t have a catcher, you have an awful lot of passed balls.) As to 2, WAR suggests his defense came close to offsetting his offense, indicating he was about replacement level. While that’s not great, there are lot’s of guys who were replacement level or worse, none of whom amassed 3,200 PAs or threw out over 1,000 base stealers (48.3%).
I think the best thing about Bill Bergen is that he is not Marty Bergen.
(When this came up earlier I think I settled on Doug Flynn or Neifi Perez as the worst ever, depending on how you think of it)
Nor Edgar Bergen nor Candice Bergen
I wasn’t aware that Bill and Marty Bergen were related to Edgar and Candice (Bill and Marty were brothers). But to my knowledge Marty Bergen is the only one who murdered his spouse and children. Which would mean I would also take Edgar and Candice Bergen for my team over Marty Bergen.
I will die on Pat Rockett island!
It’s not your fault it ended up this way, but the sequencing of comments makes it look like 1) Pat Rockett also murdered his spouse, and 2) that you have very strong feelings about the relative merits of baseball-playing murderers
Technically, if you don’t have catcher, you should have zero passed balls. Can’t get past someone who isn’t there.
What the White Sox should be spending money on is pre-arbitration extensions for Colson Montgomery and Kyle Teel, but since they did that with the last group and most of them became bad before the extension ended they may be wary of doing that again.
But something tells me Kyle Teel and Colson Montgomery won’t completely go in the tank like Eloy Jimenez did. That was pretty special.
Even if they do it’s not a tragedy. This is the time to get a FA year or 2 locked up
They should also be spending on one or two year deals on bounceback candidates who they can trade at the deadline if they get hot for three months, or just cut loose if they don’t. The risk there is minimal and the potential return is a prospect that they might (won’t) develop.
I think they will be better next year assuming Colson Montgomery is real, that Vargas maybe turned a corner, and that the SP works out. But I dont think they will be good till Jerry dies or sells the team.
They should. They need to leverage their roster holes for improvement. The down side is the team will always feel like a farm team as long as they keep doing it.
My brother said, “Maybe Bill Bergen was really good at pitch framing.”
The suggestion being the Internationale with Lenin on the preview made me guffaw, thanks Michael
I realize now that I don’t know, was the Kris Bryant service time debacle the impetuous for the PPI? Or is that a chicken/egg thing?
honored to have my question answered again and i will forever be grateful that the Angels are not the Rockies