Wrights_Back: What would the Mets have to give up to get Cease – if he is available?
12:02
Dan Szymborski: I think the closer we get to the season, the more the Padres will hang onto him.
12:03
Dan Szymborski: The Mets would certainly have to give up something real. YOu can probably fatten the offer a bit with guys the Padres have more reason to like than the Mets.
12:04
Dan Szymborski: Like Clifford, who is probably more useful to San Diego, but you’re not going to land him with JUST Clifford
12:04
Dan Szymborski: I kinda get the idea that the mets are happyw ith their rotation, and not likely to meet a rich price
Spring is the time of year when we wax poetic about possibility. “Behold,” we say to ourselves as we remember the feeling of the sun’s warmth on our skin, “we have once again foiled the earth’s attempts to murder us with subzero temperatures and an unceasing barrage of unrelentingly cheery and/or horny Christmas songs. The time for survival is past; now is the time to thrive.” Among baseball players, pitchers stand alone in their capacity for reinvention. They have the chance to add a new weapon, and in so doing level up into an entirely new pitcher. After all, what are we if not a collection of our attributes? Maybe you used to be a sinkerballer, but once you added a slider, you evolved into an entirely new species: the sinker-slider guy.
I spent Wednesday afternoon trawling through search results and Jeff Zimmerman’s indispensable Mining the News feature looking for reports of new pitches. The fruits of that labor populate the table below, and they are legion. As it turns out, even MLB: The Show has finally added a sweeper. Beneath the table, I will spend a sentence or three on each of the 21 pitchers who is reportedly working on a new offering. Not all of these pitches will actually make it into a regular season game. Fewer still, possibly even none, will have a discernible impact on a player’s season or career. But that shouldn’t keep us from dreaming on them. There are some really big names here. Maybe Kevin Gausman’s new cutter will run interference for his four-seamer, returning him a while longer to the fraternity of undisputed aces. Who are we to deem any future unreachable before even attempting the journey? Read the rest of this entry »
For the third consecutive offseason, Justin Turner has signed to play for a new team. This time, he is heading to the north side of Chicago, after he and the Cubs agreed to a one-year deal worth $6 million earlier this week. Turner, who turned 40 in November, will likely split time at DH and 1B. The reason to add Turner at this stage in his career is straight forward: He can still hit at an above league average clip.
Considering Turner is entering his 17th major league season, you likely already know a lot about his game. His whiff and strikeout rates have stayed in the upper quartile even as he has aged, he doesn’t chase much, and has a great feel for spraying the ball to all fields. It’s the exact group of traits that a hitter without much explosiveness needs to survive this many years. Here is a quick reminder of his performance over the last handful of years to put into perspective where he is at right now:
Old Man Turner’s Still Got It
Season
wRC+
K% Percentile
Whiff% Percentile
Chase% Percentile
xwOBACON
VBA
2021
126
80th
88th
83rd
.383
36.9
2022
123
78th
78th
65th
.367
34.9
2023
115
77th
92nd
71st
.367
34.4
2024
117
74th
90th
72nd
.343
34.2
There is no doubt his contact quality has dipped. That’s likely a function of his bottom decile bat speed. But along with that has come improved whiff rates. This compensation represents a new version of how Turner has been successful with his current physical attributes. It’s a benefit to any team to plug in this type of hitter, especially because he is productive and essentially platoon neutral.
To be frank, though, I don’t think a full on, comprehensive analysis of Turner’s offensive game is completely needed at this point. We’ve seen what he can do and have a good idea what type of hitter he is now. Instead, I want to use this time to highlight what I think is the most impressive part of Turner’s game, the part that makes me enthusiastic to watch him in the twilight of his career: His ability to hit sinkers. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s common for readers to ask which of the players who aren’t on this year’s Top 100 might grace next year’s edition. Who has a chance to really break out? This is the piece for those readers, my “Picks to Click,” the gut-feel guys I think can make the 2026 Top 100.
This is the eighth year we’ve conducted this exercise at FanGraphs, and there are some rules. First, none of the players you see below will have ever been graded as a 50 FV or better prospect in any of our write-ups or rankings. Second, I can’t pick players who I’ve picked in prior years, though I can take players who other writers selected and I didn’t. For instance, I picked Jackson Baumeister last year, but he didn’t make the Top 100. I can’t select him again, but I would if I could. Brailer Guerrero made the Top 100 in the middle of last season, and then hurt his shoulder for the second time in two years and fell off. I can’t put him on here, no matter how much I like him. Read the rest of this entry »
It seems like just last week that Guerrero brought his bonkers power and elite hit tool up to the majors, but time flies. Should Guerrero choose to play elsewhere next season, losing him would be a definitive moment in Blue Jays history. Not just because of his star power and the hype that accompanied him since he first signed with the team as an amateur free agent, but because he’s Toronto’s best player by far. Read the rest of this entry »
As we’ve seen with the FanGraphs Depth Charts and ATC, averaging projections from multiple systems is a common approach for improved accuracy when forecasting performance for the current season. This article applies the same “wisdom of the experts” aggregation logic to combine peak projections from various systems — in this case, ZiPS, Clay Davenport’s projections, and OOPSY — to build a consensus top hitting prospects list.
Overview
Earlier this offseason, I published OOPSY’s top hitting prospects by peak projected major league wRC+. You can check out the article for a detailed explanation of the methodology, but the short version is that peak projected wRC+ is essentially a 2025 projection, except with extra aging added to it in order to forecast how good each prospect will be at their (late-20s) peak. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a player who signed an extension (Geraldo Perdomo), a player who didn’t sign an extension (Vladimir Guerrero Jr.), a player who’s switching positions (Mike Trout), and a player who’s not switching positions, at least for now (Rafael Devers), plus an update on Meg’s updated beliefs about Shohei Ohtani’s dog. Then (48:42) they talk to Eric Longenhagen about FanGraphs’ top 100 (well, 102) prospects list and much more.
Geraldo Perdomo is not leaving Arizona any time soon. On Monday night, Mike Rodriguez reported that the Diamondbacks and their switch-hitting shortstop had agreed to a contract extension, which is for four years and $45 million, includes a club option for a fifth season, and starts in 2026, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. The 25-year-old Perdomo has just over three years of big league service time, so the deal will buy out his final two arbitration seasons and at least the first two years after he would’ve reached free agency. Perdomo was an All-Star in 2023, and he put up 2.0 WAR in 2024 despite an April knee injury that limited him to 98 games. He’s now set to spend the entirety of his 20s providing the Diamondbacks with a throwback blend of solid shortstop defense and an absolute refusal to swing the bat.
Perdomo got a cup of coffee in 2021 and played his first full season in 2022, running a 59 wRC+ that limited him to just 0.3 WAR. In 2023, he earned an All-Star nod on the back of a torrid, BABIP-fueled start that saw him with a 200 wRC+ on May 3. He quickly came back to earth, but ended up running a 117 wRC+ in the first half and a 74 wRC+ in the second half, for an overall mark of 98 and 2.3 WAR. Perdomo missed just over two months due to a torn meniscus in 2024, but he put up a 101 wRC+ and his second straight two-win season. Essentially, he’s been a bit better than league average for two seasons now, and that was enough to convince Arizona to lock him down for the entirety of his prime. Perdomo and the Diamondbacks had already avoided arbitration by agreeing on a $2.55 million salary for 2025, and the new deal will add a $5 million signing bonus to that. He’ll receive a $5 million salary in 2026, then $8 million in 2027, $11 million in 2028, and $13 million in 2029. The Diamondbacks also have a $15 million club option for 2030, with a $3 million buyout should they choose not to exercise it. There are also incentives for a top-10 finish in the MVP voting.
That’s a pretty big commitment, even bigger when you consider the fact that the Diamondbacks have shortstop Jordan Lawlar, whom Eric Longenhagen just ranked our 14th overall prospect. Let’s talk about why the Diamondbacks feel Perdomo is worth extending, even if it means blocking the best prospect in their system.
Personally, I think Perdomo is one of the most fascinating players in the game. He came up as a glove-first shortstop prospect, and he certainly looks the part, but the advanced defensive metrics have been split on his performance for his entire career.
Geraldo Perdomo Advanced Defensive Metrics
Year
DRS
FRV
DRP
2022
-3
0
6.4
2023
-3
1
-3.4
2024
10
-1
4.2
For his first two seasons, DRS thought he was costing the Diamondbacks runs. Then in 2024, the season when he missed time due to a major leg injury, it thought he was one of the best shortstops in baseball. Statcast has pretty much seen him as neutral throughout his three-year career, while DRP thinks he’s been great with the exception of 2023. Clearly, though, the Diamondbacks believe in his defense.
On offense, Perdomo is just plain weird. I know I summarized his overall offensive performance earlier, and those numbers are pretty standard – he’s been right around league average for two straight seasons – but it’s important to understand how he got to those numbers. For starters, Perdomo cannot stop bunting. Over the past three seasons, Perdomo has laid down 66 bunts, the most in baseball. His 33 sac bunts are also the most in the game; only three other players have even reached 20. His 15 bunt hits rank eighth, but among the 61 players with at least six bunt hits over that period, his 23.8% bunt hit rate ranks dead last. Even more damning, he leads baseball with 52 foul bunts. According to Baseball Savant, those fouls have cost the Diamondbacks four runs. That’s the worst number in baseball.
The bunting is genuinely a problem, but it fits perfectly with Perdomo’s overall approach at the plate, because that approach could be best summed up as “Try with all your might to avoid swinging.” Perdomo is one of the most passive players in all of baseball. Our database goes back to 2002, and since then, Perdomo’s 39.2% swing rate ranks 48th out of the 1,129 batters with at least 1,000 plate appearances. That puts him in the fifth percentile. Over the past three seasons, it’s the sixth-lowest mark in the game. Perdomo is the exact kind of player whom Robert Orr’s SEAGER metric was built to expose. In 2024, SEAGER had him in the 77th percentile in terms of selectivity, but it put him in the second percentile in terms of taking hittable pitches. In other words, Perdomo’s unwillingness to swing at strikes is way more extreme than his ability to lay off balls.
Keep in mind that SEAGER was meant to assess a player’s ability to do damage, and, well, that’s just not Perdomo’s game. He runs some of the lowest contact quality numbers in baseball. However, he makes tons of contact. Not only that, but over the past two seasons, he’s run a foul rate of nearly 43%, one of the higher marks in the game. It’s nearly impossible to get him to swing and miss, even when he swings and doesn’t put the ball in play. So even though pitchers attack the zone like crazy, he runs excellent walk and strikeout rates. If I’m making it sound like every single part of Perdomo’s game is at one extreme or another, well, yeah, that’s pretty much how it is. His Baseball Savant sliders are either bright red or bright blue. He’s all patience, no power. He’s the rare player who runs an incredible squared-up rate but an unimpressive line drive rate. Because Perdomo puts tons of balls in play, he’ll always have the chance at posting a great BABIP and putting up a three- or four-win season, but unless he decides to try attacking the ball, there’s not much ceiling here.
I am so, so curious to see what it would look like if Perdomo were to start attacking the ball. He’s still young, and I really do think it’s possible that he has the capacity to be more than an average hitter. I’m sure the Diamondbacks remember clearly how well it worked out when he was pulling everything in sight at the beginning of the 2023 season, and maybe they’ll try to help him become that player again. Still, I don’t think we should expect that going forward. I think the Diamondbacks are paying for floor rather than ceiling. However he gets there, if Perdomo keeps performing like a two-win player, the contract will work out well for both sides. If he can remain a solid defender and a league-average bat, he’s a really useful player, even if he pushes Lawlar to third base. In the meantime, we all get to enjoy watching Perdomo live at the extremes in order to perform right at the mean.
There’s one thing that unites almost all great center fielders: They end their careers somewhere else. Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, and Ken Griffey Jr. combined for zero defensive innings in center field in their last major league seasons. Even Willie Mays, the greatest of all time, who played 25% more innings at the position than anyone else, made 11 of his last 12 regular-season starts at first base. Maybe that’s how he knew it was time to retire.
So anyone with an iota of sense knew this was coming someday for Mike Trout. It’s been obvious since he arrived in the majors as a callow but wide teenager, looking more like Mike Alstott than Mike Cameron. And anyone who didn’t see the signs then surely got the hint as the injuries started to pile up. Trout last played more than 140 games in a season in 2016, last qualified for the batting title in 2020, and has missed an average of 96 games a season since 2021.
The Millville Meteor told reporters Monday that he’d recently met with GM Perry Minasian and manager Ron Washington to discuss — to borrow an idiom from basketball — load management. It would’ve been irresponsible not to. Read the rest of this entry »
The first baseball cap I remember buying was a gorgeous Orioles throwback. I’m not sure what exactly drew me to it. Maybe it was my mom’s lifelong Orioles fandom. Maybe it had to do with the crisp colors. Maybe I’d just listened to noted ornithological transporter Jay-Z on the drive to West Town Mall. “Before Mitchel and Ness did it/I was moving birds like an Oriole fitted/I’m Cal Ripken Jr., let’s get it” always got me excited to watch some baseball. Whatever the reason was, though, that hat called out to me, so I paid an exorbitant price for something I ended up not wearing very frequently.
I’m telling you this story for a few reasons. First, I want to establish my bona fides as someone who has always had a soft spot for the O’s. Second, I get to show my age a bit — I was in high school when The Blueprint 2 came out. Third, who doesn’t like telling stories? But the main reason is that ledes are hard to write, and I want to talk about the O’s today. To quote Jay-Z: Let’s get it.
A recent Ken Rosenthal article had me double-checking payroll lists and salary tables. The Orioles – the Orioles!! – were listed as the team who increased its payroll by the most from 2024 to 2025. I looked at that for a little bit, looked at the data to confirm that the never-errant Rosenthal had, in fact, not erred, and then I let out a long puzzled sigh. It’s true! The O’s have opened the purse strings this winter. There are a few ways to calculate payroll, but based on the yearly expenditures listed in RosterResource, here are the top five payroll increases across the majors:
Dan Szymborski: And away we go!
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