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.
__
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.