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This holiday season, hit a home run with the baseball fan in your life and give the gift of FanGraphs! Gift Memberships are available for purchase, and come with all the perks. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2026 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

In an age when baseball is so obsessed with velocity, it’s remarkable to remember how recently it was that a pitcher could thrive, year in and year out, despite averaging in the 85–87 mph range with his fastball. Yet that’s exactly what Mark Buehrle did over the course of his 16-year career. Listed at 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, the burly Buehrle was the epitome of the crafty lefty, an ultra-durable workhorse who didn’t dominate but who worked quickly, used a variety of pitches — four-seamer, sinker, cutter, curve, changeup — moving a variety of directions to pound the strike zone, and relied on his fielders to make the plays behind him. From 2001 to ’14, he annually reached the 30-start and 200-inning plateaus, and he barely missed on the latter front in his final season.

August Fagerstrom summed up Buehrle so well in his 2016 appreciation that I can’t resist sharing a good chunk of it:

The way Buehrle succeeded was unique, of course. He got his ground balls, but he wasn’t the best at getting ground balls. He limited walks, but he wasn’t the best a limiting walks. He generated soft contact, but he wasn’t the best at generating soft contact. Buehrle simply avoided damage with his sub-90 mph fastball by throwing strikes while simultaneously avoiding the middle of the plate:

That’s Buehrle’s entire career during the PITCHf/x era, and it’s something of a remarkable graphic. You see Buehrle living on the first-base edge of the zone, making sure to keep his pitches low, while also being able to spot the same pitch on the opposite side of the zone, for the most part avoiding the heart of the plate. Buehrle’s retained the ability to pitch this way until the end; just last year [2015], he led all of baseball in the percentage of pitches located on the horizontal edges of the plate.

Drafted and developed by the White Sox — practically plucked from obscurity, at that — Buehrle spent 12 of his 16 seasons on the South Side, making four All-Star teams and helping Chicago to three postseason appearances, including its 2005 World Series win, which broke the franchise’s 88-year championship drought. While with the White Sox, he became just the second pitcher in franchise history to throw multiple no-hitters, first doing so in 2007 against the Rangers and then adding a perfect game in ’09 against the Rays. After his time in Chicago, he spent a sour season with the newly rebranded Miami Marlins, and when that predictably melted down, spent three years with the Blue Jays, earning one more All-Star nod and helping them make the playoffs for the first time in 22 years.

Though Buehrle reached the 200-win plateau in his final season, he was just 36 years old when he hung up his spikes, preventing him from more fully padding his counting stats or framing his case for Cooperstown in the best light. A closer look beyond the superficial numbers suggests that, while he’s the equal or better of several enshrined pitchers according to WAR and JAWS, he’s far off the standards. Like fellow lefty and ballot-mate Andy Pettitte, he gets a boost from S-JAWS, a workload-adjusted version of starting pitcher JAWS that I introduced in 2022. Thus far, I’ve only included Pettitte on one of my five ballots (one of seven including virtual ballots), though I’m mulling his inclusion this year — a thought process that’s taking place as the electorate grapples with shifting standards for starting pitchers following last year’s election of CC Sabathia and the candidacies of Félix Hernández (who debuted last year) and Cole Hamels (this ballot’s top newcomer). I’ve pledged to reconsider Buehrle as well; I’m 0-for-5 in voting for him thus far, and I’m hardly alone, as he debuted with 11% in 2021, scraped by with 5.8% the next year, and has barely regained that lost ground, receiving 11.4% in 2025. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and podcast scorekeeper Chris Hanel review the results of an under-25-pitchers draft Ben and Sam conducted a decade ago. Then (13:38) Ben and Sam banter about Ben’s physique, answer listener emails about doing a The Only Rule-style experiment 10 years later, discuss Sam’s revamped, unique approach to writing about baseball this year, and consider some possibilities for what we’ll remember about baseball in 2025. After that (1:05:57), Ben continues the sporadic “Baseball Jobs” series by interviewing 71-year-old John Yandle, the Giants’ left-handed batting-practice pitcher since 1985, about his transition from pitcher to BP pitcher, the keys to good BP, balancing his day job and his baseball side gig, anticipating starting-pitcher matchups, fending off advanced pitching machines, his incredible longevity, arm care in his 70s, the hitters who’ve complained the most, throwing BP to Barry Bonds, and more, followed by (2:01:20) a postscript.

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2026 Baseball Operations Summer Intern

POSITION OVERVIEW:
The Baseball Operations Internship program offers hands-on experience across the operations domain. Interns will contribute to both daily functions and longer-term growth of the department. The program will look to enhance candidate expertise and help build strong foundations across the broader baseball operations infrastructure. Interns will support a wide variety of day-to-day processes and projects within the operations domain.

These processes may include supporting the baseball operations chief of staff and leadership, baseball strategy, baseball initiatives, and both major and minor league operations. This role is designed to build a strong baseball operations foundation, combining curriculum and project-based education, day-to-day project and task execution, and exposure to decision-making processes at the highest level of the game. Prior baseball experience is not mandatory for success in this role.

TIMELINE AND LOGISTICS:
Applications must be submitted by December 16th, 2025 to ensure consideration. This is a Summer Internship program running from late May to early August+, pending candidate availability. The hourly rate for this position is $20.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Assist with day-to-day baseball operations, including helping with administrative duties, strategic initiatives, content development, logistical management, and research. 
• Prepare and maintain information and materials for key front office decision making and operation. 
• Support content generation for leadership decision making and communication.  
• Provide strategic and logistical support for important baseball events such as the MLB Draft and Trade Deadline. 
• Operate and train critical player tracking and player development technology. 
• Conduct market research relevant to emerging projects for baseball strategy and initiatives groups. 
• Creatively pursue ways to improve operations processes and generate ideas for future team projects. 
• Develop core baseball operations competencies through hands-on experience, education, and mentorship. 

COMPETENCIES DEVELOPED:

• Analytical Thinking: Develop a strong knowledge of modern baseball metrics, development practices, and evaluation skills. 
• Communication & Teamwork: Work effectively across groups, presenting information clearly to varied constituents and collaborating in a fast-paced environment. 
• Task Prioritization & Execution: Proactively manage multiple tasks under pressure with high attention to detail, balancing project urgency and impact.   
• Innovation & Adaptability: Develop proficiency with cutting-edge technology within and outside of baseball, while contributing ideas for process improvement and optimization.  
• Growth Mindset: Show humility, curiosity, and commitment to continuous personal and professional development. 

ADDITIONAL QUALIFICATIONS:

• Willing to work nights, weekends, and holidays. 
• Ability to multitask in stressful situations. 
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint. 
• Experience with SQL, R, Python is a plus but not required. 
• Fluency in Spanish is a plus but not required. 
• Current undergrad or graduate students entering their final year of studies is preferred, but open to all applicants. 
• Prior baseball or sport experience is not required. 

OUR CULTURE
All Baseball Operations staff are expected to excel across universal competencies related to problem solving, teamwork, communication, and time management, as well as values such as honesty, humility, relentlessness, and a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

This internship is designed as a pathway for motivated individuals to grow skills in preparation for future roles in Baseball Operations. Interns will complete the program with meaningful real-world experience, professional mentorship, tailored education from curriculum and project-based learning opportunities, and the opportunity to contribute directly to the success of the Boston Red Sox.

At the Boston Red Sox and Fenway Sports Management, we go beyond embracing diversity. We’re committed to living by our values, strengthening our community, and creating a workplace where people genuinely feel like they belong.

Too often, job seekers don’t apply to positions because they don’t meet every qualification. If you love this role and are great at what you do, we encourage you to apply. Your unique skills and experiences might just be what we’ve been looking for.

Prospective employees will receive consideration without discrimination based on race, religious creed, color, sex, age, national origin, handicap, disability, military/veteran status, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or protected genetic information.

To Apply
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Boston Red Sox.

The Tampa Bay Rays have signed outfielder Cedric Mullins, late of the Mets and Orioles, to a one-year contract worth $7 million. This deal makes a lot of sense if you look at Mullins’ overall numbers from 2025: 17 home runs, a 10.0% walk rate, and a 94 wRC+ from a guy who can run well enough to play center.

That sounds like a pretty good player, and for just $7 million. Inflation’s so bad these days that $7 million is reliever money on the free agent market — not even good reliever money — and for that the Rays got themselves a fringe-average center fielder. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 22nd consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Washington Nationals.

Batters

Washington’s rebuild continued in 2025, but unfortunately, not a lot of progress was made. The young offensive core of James Wood, Dylan Crews, CJ Abrams, and Luis García Jr. didn’t take any huge steps forward, and two of them, Crews and García, arguably both took second steps in the wrong direction. That foundational talent really added only Daylen Lile in 2025, and the offensive holes from a year ago largely remain in place as the team turns toward 2026. MacKenzie Gore still looks like a legitimate no. 2 starter, but it seems as likely that he’ll be traded as it is that he’ll return to the Nationals rotation in 2026. As for the rest of the pitching, I’d prefer not to talk about that until I have to.

At least on the offense, unlike for those of a lot of baseball’s cellar dwellers, the Nats aren’t really abysmal anywhere. Problem is, there’s not much greatness here, either. Wood is the closest to that; he’s a burgeoning star who ended the year with fine numbers, but he only just completed his first full season and still has plenty of developing to do. He struggled after participating in the Home Run Derby as players tend to do* and only hit seven home runs in the second half. He’s not multi-faceted in his offensive contributions, at least not yet, but he can hit-ball-smash-ball with the best of them, and is the best player on the team.

*That was just to see if you’re paying attention. Of course that’s not actually a thing.

The rest of the Nats offense, though, features a lot of adequate-to-decent players who awkwardly fit into the lineup. Abrams is easily the best of the rest, but you’d also much rather have him playing an easier defensive position than shortstop. García’s not a particular adept second baseman, either, and simply doesn’t hit well enough to have value at first. Andrés Chaparro could be a great fit at third if he could play third… so he’s not.

Jacob Young is a solid glove in center, but if he’s hitting like he did in 2025 instead of in 2024, he’s only a fifth outfielder in the majors. Brady House is not likely to be an offensive plus at third base. Crews still has a ton of upside, but 2025 served as an icy cold shower to his prospectitude. ZiPS is basically in full-on nope mode with Keibert Ruiz at this point.

Nor is there likely to be immediate help from the minors. Eli Willits and Luke Dickerson are not going to make an impact instantly, and ZiPS just doesn’t see any big bats lurking on the farm. Sure, Robert Hassell III got a special logo for the depth chart, but that’s mostly because I just rewatched Rocky III a few weeks ago and it amused me.

Pitchers

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OK, that might not fool Meg and Matt, so I may have to actually talk about the pitching.

(Editor’s note from Matt: It’s not that it didn’t fool me so much as I don’t speak code and didn’t understand it. So yes, Dan has to talk about the pitching.)

The most interesting starting pitchers outside of Gore, in ZiPS’ eyes, are Cade Cavalli and DJ Herz, the only two starters it projects with an ERA under 4.50. Cavalli is the most interesting in my eyes as well, as he can still hit the high-90s, and being a Mike Mussina partisan, I’m going to give a lot of leeway to a guy with a mean knuckle-curve. Problem is, there are a lot of unknowns given his missed time due to a UCL tear, and he just wasn’t that great at getting out Triple-A hitters this past year. Herz is currently out with his own Tommy John surgery.

Gore, of course, is easily Washington’s best pitcher, and there’s a decent chance I’ll be writing about him again in another team’s projection article this winter, if you catch my drift. He was victimized by the team’s defense, putting up one of the least deserving 5-15 records in major league history.

At best, ZiPS sees the rest of the rotation as passable fifth starters. A returning Josiah Gray is unlikely to be the savior.

The bullpen is a very average one, but it certainly feels better than some of the pens the Nats have rolled out over the years, including when they were actually a good team. Jose A. Ferrer gets a solid projection, and Clayton Beeter, PJ Poulin, and Julian Fernández all look at least serviceable. That’s pretty much where the excitement ends, but in truth, a team that will have to do some work to hit 70 wins probably doesn’t really need a great stable of relievers.

Washington’s outlook isn’t as utterly bleak as it is for some of baseball’s other terrible teams, considering there are a few real players on this roster. (Yes, the bar is that low.) However, this rebuild has not gone well, and the Nats feel as far away from contention as they were two or three years ago. They could surprise and win 75-80 games with some luck on offense, but I don’t think they have a chance to find enough to pitching to do any better than that.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on Bluesky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the sixth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a busy December for free agent relievers. Ryan Helsley and Devin Williams, two of the most interesting names on the market, each signed with new clubs, and they each got multi-year guarantees despite shaky 2025 results. The next shoe to drop wasn’t quite as heralded of an option, but he too got multiple years and beat market consensus. The signing in question: Emilio Pagán and the Reds agreed to a two-year, $20 million deal, with an opt out after the first year.

Pagán was a far more effective reliever in 2025 than either of the two splashier names ahead of him. He had one of the best seasons of his career at age 34, in fact: 68 2/3 innings pitched, a 2.88 ERA and 3.72 FIP in hitter-friendly Cincinnati, and 32 saves in his first full-time closing job since 2019. He bounced back from an injury-interrupted 2024 with better fastball velocity and better pitch shape across the board, and got richly rewarded for it with a 30% strikeout rate. Is he homer-prone? You bet, thanks to a 0.51 GB/FB ratio. But a .200 BABIP and a solid HR/FB% (10.8%) meant that he actually allowed fewer homers per nine innings (1.31) than his career mark (1.51), and not by a small amount, despite pitching in a launching pad.

When things are going well for him, Pagán makes everyone think they can hit a home run, then pulls the rug out. He runs his four-seamer high and spots a heavy splitter off of it, a classic fly ball pitcher mix. It’s one of those strategies that looks awful when it isn’t working, and yet seems to come through most of the time anyway. More specifically, Pagán went through a three-year stretch of terrible form from 2020-2022, posting a 4.61 ERA and 4.71 FIP. Then he broke out in 2023 and has been solid since. The weirdest part of it all? His stuff and command metrics barely budged between those two wildly different stretches.

Reversals like that go a long way toward explaining why reliever performance is so difficult to predict. When Pagán has it, he’s a worthy late-inning reliever. His ERA- was 40th among relievers last year, and it’s 60th over the past three years, even with his ineffective 2024 in the mix. He’s pitched like you’d expect a closer or setup man to, in other words. His FIP tells a broadly similar story, and I’m willing to believe that pitchers with his extreme tendencies outperform their FIP in the long run. If you get good Pagán, he’s a very useful bullpen piece, the kind any team would love to have in the bullpen and many fringe contenders would love to have as a closer.

That’s the calculus from the Reds’ perspective. They’ve managed their payroll tightly in the early years of Elly De La Cruz’s team control window, hovering around the $100 million mark with wiggle room in either direction. With that budget constraint in mind, the top five or so relievers in this free agency class were presumably off the board. The next tier down is a mixture of interesting pop-up arms, aging closers, and reclamation projects. Would you rather have Kenley Jansen or Pagán? Seranthony Domínguez? Kyle Finnegan? Phil Maton? Maybe Drew Pomeranz? I think I’d take Pagán or Jansen over the field – I ranked them that way in my Top 50 Free Agents list – and as an added bonus, he’s already familiar with Cincinnati. I’d take Raisel Iglesias over him – rankings, again – but he signed for one year and $16 million, probably outside of this team’s price range. The Reds probably could’ve gotten some solid lefty specialists for the $10 million or so annual salary that they gave Pagán, but that’s not what they were in the market for this winter. They needed a bankable closer, and in the aisle they were shopping in, there weren’t that many options.

This team really does need relief arms. The Reds didn’t have to cover many bullpen innings in 2025, but even then they struggled to piece it all together. Pagán, Tony Santillan, and Graham Ashcraft formed an effective three-headed monster at the top, but the rest of the pen was ineffective even in limited time. With a bandbox for a home stadium, it’s hard to expect a similarly limited need for relief pitching in 2026. This was the path of least resistance for a team that really does need to do something to challenge for the NL Central title in 2026 and build on its surprising 2025 Wild Card berth.

Now, the risks? They’re real. It was only a year ago, after his down 2024 performance, that Cincinnati fans were lamenting Pagán’s decision to pick up his player option for 2025. More innings and a .200 BABIP turned that frown upside down, but it’s not like it’s impossible to imagine an ineffective Pagán. Would you be shocked if he had an uneven, homer-prone 55 innings in 2026 and then picked up his option? I certainly wouldn’t be. We just saw that!

That leaves me in the situation of liking this deal more for Pagán than for the Reds, and yet I’d make this offer if I were in their shoes anyway. Figuring out which relievers will be good in a year’s time is incredibly difficult. If it were easy to solve, the Dodgers wouldn’t have signed Tanner Scott and Blake Treinen last winter and then spent this entire October hiding them. Despite that difficulty, relievers are integral to a contending club. If you aren’t winning the close games, it’s hard to make the playoffs. The Reds likely wouldn’t have done that last year if not for Pagán.

With that backdrop, what were the Reds supposed to do? Sign a different, similar guy for slightly less? Sign two reclamation projects on one-year, $5 million deals? It’s not even like the second year is that much of a disaster; in a year’s time, they’re going to be contending with a core built around De La Cruz and looking for relievers, and I don’t think the market rate is likely to plummet in the meantime or anything. Sure, you might get bad Pagán in 2026 and then have him opt in, but the inherent volatility of relievers means that even that isn’t a tragedy. It worked out last time!

There’s some chance that Cincinnati could have waited longer, negotiated more stingily, and reached a slightly more team-friendly deal with him. So far, Pagán is the early signing whose market has most outstripped my projections. But who cares? What were the Reds going to do, save a million dollars or two? From their perspective, the risks were greater, because if they dragged their feet in negotiating with Pagán and he signed elsewhere, they’d suddenly be sifting through a variety of relievers they’re presumably less interested in with a strong need to find a deal. I’d prefer to overpay slightly for a guy I’m comfortable with than hunt for unknown bargains to fill an essential role, and it seems the Cincinnati front office thinks similarly.

I’m not convinced that this is a great long-term way to run a team. It certainly wouldn’t be my preference in a vacuum; I’m a Rays/Dodgers/Brewers-style bullpen guy at heart. I love reclamation projects and throwing a lot of relievers at the wall to see what sticks. I love betting on guys with elite stuff and seeing if they can figure out how to throw strikes, or betting on guys with elite command and seeing if they can figure out how to throw harder.

I’m also not running the Reds, staring at two superstars in De La Cruz and Hunter Greene and trying to make the playoffs again after a miracle run. Sure, it would be great to build an incredible pitching development system from the ground up. But it’s December, and the season starts in four months, and that’s not enough time to overhaul an entire organization, not even close. The Reds needed a reliever. They got a guy they’re comfortable with at a rate that won’t force them to cut back elsewhere. Maybe it’s a slight overpay, and maybe he’s more volatile than his 2025 results would suggest, but for the Reds? He’s just what they needed.

Read the rest of this entry »