Cal Raleigh’s tremendous season ended with the elimination of the Mariners from the ALCS, but that hasn’t meant the disappearance of high-impact hitting from catchers during the postseason. So far in the World Series, both the Blue Jays’ Alejandro Kirk and the Dodgers’ Will Smith have been central to their teams’ respective offensive attacks, building on their stellar contributions during the regular season.

Neither Kirk nor Smith had seasons on the level of Raleigh, but the same is true for nearly every other catcher in AL/NL history. That said, the two starting backstops in this World Series each made their respective All-Star teams and ranked second and third in the majors in catcher WAR behind Raleigh’s 9.1. The 26-year-old Kirk hit .282/.348/.421 (116 wRC+) while clubbing a career-high 15 home runs, and he also posted the majors’ second-highest marks in Statcast Fielding Run Value (21) and our own framing metric (11.3 runs), with the latter fueling his career-high 4.7 WAR. The 30-year-old Smith spent much of the season vying for the NL batting title, finishing at .296/.404/.497 with 17 homers and a 153 wRC+, his highest over a full season and the second-best mark on the team behind Shohei Ohtani. Despite subpar defense (-8 FRV and -6.8 FRM) and just 10 plate appearances in September, he produced a solid 4.1 WAR.

The Dodgers couldn’t get Kirk out on Friday night in Toronto, as he not only went 3-for-3 but also drew a first-inning walk that helped set the tone for the Blue Jays, even though it didn’t lead to a run. Facing Blake Snell with two outs and runners on the corners, Kirk got ahead 3-1, then fouled off four straight pitches before finally laying off a curveball in the dirt. His tenacious plate appearance lasted nine pitches; by the time Snell retired Daulton Varsho on a fly ball to end the threat, the two-time Cy Young winner had thrown 29 pitches.

Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent seasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract crowdsourcing project, with the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2025-26 free agent market.

In recent years, we’ve added a few features to these ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor league contract, or won’t receive one at all. If there is a player option, team option, or opt out in a player’s contract, you’ll be able to indicate whether you think he will remain with his current team or become a free agent. Numbers are prorated to full season where noted. Unless otherwise indicated, the projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2026 Steamer600 projections.

Below are ballots for 10 of this year’s free agents — in this case, a group of pitchers, including some of the best hurlers to reach free agency this winter. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent seasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract crowdsourcing project, with the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2025-26 free agent market.

In recent years, we’ve added a few features to these ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor league contract, or won’t receive one at all. If there is a player option, team option, or opt out in a player’s contract, you’ll be able to indicate whether you think he will remain with his current team or become a free agent. Numbers are prorated to full season where noted. Unless otherwise indicated, the projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2026 Steamer600 projections.

Below are ballots for 10 of this year’s free agents — in this case, a group of position players, including the winter’s top free agent. Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Young Sr. played for several well-respected managers while suiting up for seven major league teams across the 1992-2006 seasons. He’s since coached under a handful of others. His past two seasons were with the Los Angeles Angels, although that tenure has possibly come to an end. Ron Washington is no longer at the helm in Anaheim due to health reasons, and it is not yet known who newly named manager Kurt Suzuki will have on his coaching staff. At age 58 and with a wealth of knowledge gleaned from three-plus decades in the game — his resumé includes working as a broadcast analyst — Young is facing an uncertain future.

I had both his future and his past in mind when I sat down with him this summer. Young has the requisite experience and communication skills required to lead a big league team of his own, so I was interested in what he’s learned from the managers he’s played for and worked alongside throughout the years. Here is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity.

———

David Laurila: You played for a number of managers. What commonalities did the best of them share?

Eric Young Sr.: “From my point of view, they were leaders. They were also calm leaders, especially in difficult times. Each manager had a different, and a special, characteristic that I was able to observe. You had your quiet ones. You had your more vibrant ones. I could go through each of the managers I had and tell you something about them that stands out, and that people can relate to.”

Laurila: Tell me something about Tommy Lasorda. Read the rest of this entry »

This postseason, I’m continuing my use of a new format for our managerial report cards. In the past, I went through every game from every manager, whether they played 22 games en route to winning the World Series or got swept out of the Wild Card round. To be honest, I hated writing those brief blurbs. No one is all that interested in the manager who ran out the same lineup twice, or saw his starters get trounced and used his best relievers anyway because the series was so short. This year, I’m skipping the first round, and grading only the managers who survived until at least the best-of-five series. So far this year, I have graded the efforts of A.J. Hinch and Aaron Boone, as well as Craig Counsell and Rob Thomson, while Dan Szymborski scrutinized Pat Murphy’s performance. Today, it’s Dan Wilson’s turn.

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of the outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies or unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but guys like Bryce Miller and Addison Barger have also been great this October. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Josh Naylor is important because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. Read the rest of this entry »

Rhett Lowder has his eyes on Yoshinobu Yamamoto as he works back from a pair of injuries that wreaked havoc on his 2025 campaign. Expected to be a part of the Cincinnati Reds’ starting rotation, the 23-year-old right-hander instead experienced a forearm issue in the spring, and that was followed by a more serious oblique strain. He ended up pitching just nine-a-third innings, all of them down on the farm.

Lowder is currently taking the mound for the Arizona Fall League’s Peoria Javelinas, and I caught up with him following a recent outing to learn what he’s been focusing on. Along with making up for lost innings, what is he doing to make himself a better pitcher?

“There are a couple things in the delivery, trying to take some pressure off the arm and the oblique, helping set myself up to be healthy,” replied Lowder, who’d logged a 1.17 ERA over six late-season starts with the Reds in 2024. “I’ve watched a little bit of Yamamoto and how he moves. Everything looks so effortless when he throws. I’ve tended to leak a little bit to the third base side, then compensate by over-rotating. That puts more pressure on the oblique, which is a rotational muscle, so I want to be more direct toward home plate with my delivery.”

Being direct to home plate is a common goal for pitchers. Appearance of effortlessness aside, what specifically made Yamamoto a point of study? Read the rest of this entry »

Opportunity knocks for everyone. In some cases, opportunity knocks, rings the doorbell, shouts into your Ring camera, tosses pebbles at your bedroom window, then goes out to its convertible in the driveway and starts singing “Thunder Road.”

Kevin Gausman and Yoshinobu Yamamoto were both terrific, but all duels end with one man standing and the other getting stabbed. Yamamoto twirled his second straight complete game, giving him the first streak of playoff complete games in 24 years. Gausman fell off the tightrope in the seventh inning, as home runs by Will Smith and Max Muncy put the visiting team in front for good. The Dodgers’ 5-1 win wasn’t as splashy as Toronto’s home run party the night before, but it evens the series.

Gausman was all but out of the first inning. He had two strikes on Freddie Freeman, who’d fouled off a splitter at his ankles, then a middle-middle fastball, then another heater up at his hands. Gausman went back to the splitter, the pitch that made him famous, and buried another. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Meg banter about Ben’s trip to a World Series-obsessed city, whether Game 1 of a best-of-seven series can be “must-win,” the Jays-as-underdogs narrative, the global audience for the matchup, and a few factors they’re following throughout the series, before reacting to two California clubs’ managerial hirings: the Angels’ choice of Kurt Suzuki and the Giants’ choice of Tony Vitello (plus a postgame postscript).

Audio intro: Gabriel-Ernest, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Philip Tapley and Michael Stokes, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to “Must-win” article
Link to best-of-seven probability
Link to ZiPS odds
Link to Bichette article
Link to Mickey Stanley article
Link to global viewership
Link to Pharrell announcement
Link to Pharrell performance
Link to Hoffman names
Link to Snell fashion
Link to subjective age
Link to plate-tapping promo
Link to Ben on SP as RP
Link to Pujols/Angels article
Link to Suzuki hiring
Link to Minasian story
Link to HVAC story
Link to Trout testimony
Link to Hundley article
Link to Vitello article
Link to Baumann on Vitello
Link to “eyes of the world” message

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The Blue Jays and Dodgers players arrived at the World Series with wildly different points of view. The Dodgers are the seasoned defending champs with multiple former MVPs and Cy Young Award winners, dealing with the gravity of global expectations. The Blue Jays, though they have a few vets with World Series experience, are mostly a legion of talented upstarts who’ve reached unfamiliar heights. They also bear the weight of a city (and perhaps an entire country) that has waited three decades to return to the World Series. In a raucous Rogers Centre atmosphere in Toronto, the Jays harnessed the energy of that weight and used it to hammer the crap out of the Dodgers in a decisive 11-4 Game 1 victory. Read the rest of this entry »

When the World Series opens on Friday night at the Rogers Centre, Blake Snell will take the ball for the Dodgers against the Blue Jays, hoping to replicate the success he’s had thus far in October. After an injury-shortened regular season, the two-time Cy Young winner has thoroughly dominated opposing hitters through his first three postseason starts, putting together one of the most impressive October runs in recent memory.

Runs — remember those? — have been hard to come by during Snell’s starts this postseason. He surrendered two during the seventh inning in the Wild Card Series opener against the Reds after holding them scoreless on one hit and one walk (against nine strikeouts) through the first six frames. Since then, he’s logged 14 consecutive scoreless innings, six against the Phillies in Game 2 of the Division Series and then eight against the Brewers in Game 1 of the Championship Series. He allowed just one hit in each of those last two starts, and while he walked four Phillies (and again struck out nine), he didn’t walk a single Brewer while punching out 10.

Read the rest of this entry »