FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: September 27, 2025
There is still a lot to play for as we enter the final weekend of the regular season. How exciting! As I sit down to write this mailbag on Friday afternoon, two division races and three Wild Cards are still in play between the two leagues. In the American League, four teams are fighting for three spots, while three National League clubs are competing for the final spot in the senior circuit.
Of course, we’ll be watching more than just the standings over the next few days. Will Cal Raleigh get to 62 or 63 home runs this season? If he does, will it be enough for him to win the AL MVP award over Aaron Judge? Personally, I will be watching to see if Corbin Carroll hits three more triples. He enters Friday’s game with 17 on the season, and he already has more than 30 doubles, 30 home runs, and 30 stolen bases. My preseason bold prediction was that Carroll would become the fifth 20/20/20/20 player ever, and the first since Jimmy Rollins and Curtis Granderson both did it in 2007. Carroll probably won’t get there, but he’s close enough that I’ll be paying attention.
Before we get to this week’s mailbag, I have one quick programming note to mention. We’ll still be doing our weekly mailbag during the postseason, but we might move around the specific day it runs depending on the playoff schedule. Our plan is to do one before every postseason round, beginning with the Division Series. And as always, I’d like to remind all of 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.
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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.
If the players did a “wildcat strike”, would MLB void only some contracts, I.E., those of contracts that are underwater, like Kris Bryant or Masataka Yoshida?
This is exactly what I was thinking. The Mets aren’t going to let Soto go, but the White Sox would happily tell Benintendi that he was in violation of labor law to get out of their commitment for 2027.
I would definitely be interesting in hearing a lawyer’s take on this, because there are two possibilities:
1) They can void any contracts (this is what you are thinking)
2) They can void all contracts but not pick and choose
This is all in the realm of theory since there is basically no way the players will wildcat strike. But in case #2 I would be curious to see which owners would vote for termination of all guaranteed contracts and which ones wouldn’t.
The Orioles would because it would just be Tyler O’Neill, the Royals and Brewers would not because they don’t want to lose Bobby Witt and Jackson Chourio.
The Padres would have a tough choice, since they have Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis Jr but are also broke (and Merrill would be under team control still) and would probably love to not have to pay Bogaerts or Machado.
In theory the D-Backs would vote against because of Carroll and Marte but the owner philosophically believes in sticking it to the union, so who knows.
I assume the Dodgers and Phillies would vote against because they’re happy with how their team is constructed and it would take a lot of work to reassemble the stars. I would probably put the Yankees and Mets in that category too, but I’m not sure.
The Angels would vote in favor for a large number of reasons, but mostly because Moreno is reactionary and because he viscerally dislikes Rendon.
I have no idea what the Rays would do.
A longer term strategy for the players would be to divide the owners, as there are clearly those interested in profit by competing (LAD, NYM, et al) and those interested in profit by depraved noncompetitiveness (PIT, COL), and that tension can be exploited.
I don’t really know that there is anyone in that first category aside from LAD and NYM. There are other teams that have the resources and pressure to invest in the team and they do to some extent, but they clearly don’t care as much about it as LAD and NYM. And they typically align with the rest of the league on policy and labor issues. I don’t think there’s any way to divide and conquer with NYY / PHI / TOR / TEX / ATL / HOU / BOS / CHC / SFG all sticking with the rest of the league on policy.
> but mostly because Moreno is reactionary and because he viscerally dislikes Rendon.
Not even sure if this was meant to be funny but I literally LOLed.
If they could do that, and maybe they could, I don’t think it would likely work well if the goal is to end the wildcat strike. I’m guessing the players wouldn’t come back without an agreement honoring previous contracts. I guess it is possible but not likely, that if the players are massively overplaying their hands, something like this could happen but I could also see all the teams that don’t have significant underwater contracts not being for this either, from a competitive standpoint.
Yes, I don’t see the players returning without a resumption of previously executed contracts paid in full beyond the period of games lost due to the strike. I can’t see players allowing a subset of players to lose their guaranteed contracts allowing owners to pick or choose which contract(s) to honor in a new CBA.
Also, I really appreciate the thorough explanation Michael Baumann to my question. Seems like fans are generally apt to support the owners based on poll results of fans (at MLB trade rumors) indicating they support the entire 2027 season be cancelled for the owners to win on their demand to implement a hard salary cap vs. the de-facto luxury tax soft cap in place now, which few teams including top revenue teams like Boston (12th in 2025 payroll) and the Cubs (11th, both per Cots Contracts) choose to cross on a regular basis.
Add to it the judicial and political climate which seems to favor ownership, vs. 1995 when Judge Sonia Sotomayor ruled against most owners attempts to field scab players to start the 1995 season. Seems as a once avid fan every stance by the owners since 1994 has worked against the long term interests and growth of the game (revenue sharing incentivizing tanking and a growing permanent class of non competitive teams, cheapening of the regular season through expanded playoffs, reduced to eliminated access of regular season OTA broadcasts, or even paid for broadcasts with exclusive deals for Amazon Prime, Apple, contraction of minor league / non complex league levels, caps to international player spending, qualifying FA offers and subsequent lost draft picks, “luxury” tax, etc..
The owners one role is acting as financial and managerial stewards of the game, and yet this 2027 Armageddon is primarily due to the fact the owners cannot effectively manage the long term interests of baseball. They, not the players, cannot agree how to best manage revenue allocation between the majority of small to mid market teams ($250M-$350/$400M annual revenue) vs. the half dozen teams with substantially more local revenue at the top. Their solution is to further reduce player’s share of MLB revenue, and further exclusion of “non game day” revenue such as real estate, gambling, separate ownership of Local TV and streaming platforms, as part of the “revenue sharing” they consider part of CBA negotiations.