If you’re not familiar with Jerry Weinstein, you should be. He is a catching coach legend. After decades with the Rockies, he recently jumped to the Cubs, and lucky for us, he’s quite active online talking about catching philosophies and training. One thing he has discussed recently is “slam dunk” framing.

Some cues in baseball are universal, and slam dunk framing is one of them. It looks just like how it sounds: Catchers take their glove and quickly snap it down as if they were dunking a basketball. What’s the intention? By moving their glove down in a quick, fluid motion on pitches at the top of the zone, they’re attempting to give the impression that these pitches are lower than where they actually crossed the plate.

While this could easily just be another solo Patrick Bailey framing post, there is one other guy in particular, Cal Raleigh, who deserves to squat in the spotlight. To set the stage, here are the leaders in Strike% in Zone 12 (the upper third in the shadow zone) last season: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not every day that a piece of baseball news makes just about everyone go, “Oh, yay, that’s nice!” but the Mariners pulled it off less than 72 hours before the start of their season. Cal Raleigh is sticking around for the long run.

Raleigh’s new contract runs from, well, now, through the end of the 2030 season, and will pay him $105 million over those six years, plus a $20 million vesting option for 2031. The extension buys out Raleigh’s previous $5.6 million arbitration settlement, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, who was first to report it. Read the rest of this entry »

The last few years, I’ve had a pre-Opening Day tradition of making five bold predictions about the upcoming season. It’s a good way to talk through some of the players and teams where my opinions are different from the crowd. But bold predictions are a boom industry – the entire FanGraphs staff will be making some tomorrow, and I already drafted 10 of my own on Effectively Wild. So Meg and I came up with a great substitute: five big questions about the season. These aren’t the only big questions I have. They aren’t even necessarily the biggest questions in baseball. But they’re five storylines that I think are unresolved, and their answers will have a lot to say about how the 2025 season goes.

1. Are the Rays still the Rays?
The Rays have been doing the same player-swapping roster construction trick for more than a decade now. They operate on a shoestring budget, they consistently find ways to trade their surplus for great value, and their pitching development is some of the best in the game. They’re constantly churning out top prospects, and even after graduating Junior Caminero, they boast one of the best farm systems in baseball.

That prospect pipeline keeps on delivering, but in 2024, the wins didn’t follow. The team finished below .500 for the first time since 2017, and got outscored by 59 runs in the process. The Rays didn’t do much this winter – trading Jeffrey Springs, and signing Danny Jansen and Ha-Seong Kim were their big moves. We’re projecting them to finish last in the AL East – albeit still above .500. What happened to the 90-win perpetual juggernaut? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mookie Betts’s unwanted weight loss, new Statcast data on batter positioning, and whether hitters should generally move back in the box, then recap Cal Raleigh’s extension and a smattering of other buzzer-beating transactions before discussing (35:46) some of their favorite moves of the offseason. Then (1:10:31) they talk to FanGraphs writer Davy Andrews about his origin story as a writer, his greatest hits so far, and the “We Tried Tracker,” his effort to compile all the times a team reportedly tried (but failed) to acquire a player.

Audio intro: Beatwriter, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial: Davy Andrews, “Edouard Julien, Are You Gonna Rule Again?”
Audio outro: Ted O., “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Ohtani article
Link to Dodgers article 1
Link to Mookie article 2
Link to Mookie article 3
Link to Petriello article 1
Link to Petriello article 2
Link to Adler article
Link to Ben on moving the mound
Link to MLBTR on Raleigh
Link to Raleigh dumper thread
Link to notable transactions
Link to Ben’s Grantland article
Link to TFPIOT Tumblr
Link to Tracker wiki
Link to Too Far From Town posts
Link to Target Field post
Link to cleat cleaners post 1
Link to cleat cleaners post 2
Link to Davy’s FG archive
Link to Seinfeld clip
Link to We Tried Tracker
Link to WTT posts
Link to predictions vote

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As someone who runs a lot of projections, I’m used to being very wrong. Of the approximately 4,000 players projected every season, some 800 or so will fail to meet their 10th-percentile projection or exceed their 90th, meaning ZiPS, and by extension Dan Szymborski, will be/look horribly wrong. There’s still time before the start of the regular season to put myself into even greater jeopardy, meaning it’s time for my annual list of favorite booms and busts. The concept for these is simple, in that these are my picks for players to change how they are currently perceived. Sometimes it’s because of a projection, sometimes because of a hunch, a gut feeling, or just something I think projections might not be capturing. Since we’re going on a limb here, there will be some epic failures, and maybe [prayer emoji] even a success or two.

As usual, let’s start with a quick review of last year’s picks, this time the pitchers.

Last season was one of my weaker years, though there were a few highlights, mainly Hunter Greene and Hunter Brown. Maybe all I need are more guys named Hunter in baseball. I said I’d eat Cincinnati chili if Nelson finished the season with an ERA above four, but he missed almost the entire year with thoracic outlet syndrome, so I’ll need a ruling from the comments whether I have to face my meaty fate or if I get a mulligan because of the injury.

OK, on to the picks, before I get sidetracked into a 700-word rant about my chili proclivities. Read the rest of this entry »

It might not be long before Captain Kirk is the captain of the Starship Blue Jays. Alejandro Kirk made his MLB debut in September 2020. The only players who have been with the team for longer are Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, both of whom could leave in free agency next winter. If that were to happen, Kirk would become the longest-tenured Blue Jay just days before his 27th birthday. He could end up holding that title for quite some time, too. On Saturday, Kirk and the Blue Jays reportedly agreed to a five-year, $58 million extension. The deal, which begins in 2026, buys out the backstop’s final arbitration season and his first four free agent years, running through his age-31 campaign.

A 23-year-old Kirk burst onto the scene in the first half of 2022. He hit .315, slugged 11 home runs, and walked more often than he struck out over 83 games. His 155 wRC+ ranked sixth among qualified AL batters, far ahead of the next-best catcher. The fact that he was splitting catching duties, and thus DHing on the regular, cut into his overall defensive value, but still, Kirk ranked among the top-10 AL players in WAR. Fans voted him to be the starting catcher for the AL All-Stars, and the honor was well deserved.

Yet, Kirk has never looked like that middle-of-the-order threat since. He produced a 95 wRC+ in the second half of 2022. He followed that up with a 96 wRC+ in 2023 and a 94 wRC+ in 2024. To save you some strenuous mental math, I can tell you that averages out to a 95 wRC+ since the 2022 All-Star break. That means Kirk has been about 5% less productive at the plate than the average hitter, but, to his credit, still 5% more productive than the average catcher. His 10.3% walk rate is great, while his 12.0% strikeout rate is elite. Only seven batters (min. 1,000 PA) have a lower strikeout rate in that span, and none of them boasts a walk rate in the double digits. Unfortunately, the plus power that made Kirk such a complete hitter in the first half of 2022 has vanished: Read the rest of this entry »

At first glance, this might seem like a list of the best pitchers in baseball rather than a list of the best rotations. That’s the thing I noticed most when writing this article; nine of the top 10 pitchers in the game according to our projections can be found on these 15 teams. It’s not that good pitchers inherently make for good pitching staffs, though that’s certainly part of it. It’s more that the concentration of top pitchers on top teams reflects a strategic optimization of limited resources.

A good pitcher on a bad team is just bad business in today’s game. Pitchers are highly sought after in trade, which makes them worth their weight in prospects, so to speak. They’re also fragile – one sore elbow, and bam, 18 months go down the drain. That gives teams with good pitchers but bad playoff chances a clear incentive: maximize the value of your top pitcher by trading them before they get injured. And rebuilding teams almost never sign top pitchers in free agency; it’s safer to anchor yourself around a hitter. Can you draft and keep one of these top-tier arms? Absolutely, and you’ll see some of those on this list, but the prevailing trend is that of established aces migrating towards contending teams. Read the rest of this entry »

As spring training ends and rosters are finalized, one team’s flotsam and jetsam becomes another team’s reserve outfielder. Such was the case this past weekend as two outfielders who were in camp with the Brewers but deemed superfluous subsequently found homes within the AL Central. The Brewers traded Mark Canha to the Royals and released Manuel Margot, who signed a deal with the Tigers.

When camps opened last month, the 36-year-old Canha and the 30-year-old Margot were both still free agents, but within a two-day span in late February, Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold inked them to minor league deals with non-roster invitations to spring training. Ultimately, the team decided to head into the season with a starting outfield of Jackson Chourio in left, Garrett Mitchell in center, and Sal Frelick in right, with designated hitter Christian Yelich and switch-hitting second baseman/outfielder Isaac Collins also in the mix, and Blake Perkins recovering from a fractured right shin. As free agents who ended last season on major league rosters, signed minor league deals this past offseason, and had at least six years of service time, both Canha and Margot had the first of three opt-out dates looming on March 22.

This was Canha’s second go-round with the Brewers, who acquired him from the Mets on July 31, 2023, and played him regularly down the stretch on a squad that claimed a Wild Card spot. Canha was on a $26.5 million, two-years-plus-option deal at the time; after that season, the Brewers flipped him to the Tigers in exchange for righty prospect Blake Holub, and Detroit picked up his $11.5 million option for 2024. During the first four months of the season, Canha made 30 starts at DH, 29 at first base, 19 in left field, and 11 in right field. He mustered less power than usual, hitting a modest .231/.337/.350 (101 wRC+) with seven homers in 377 plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

I always get excited to take my first look at my half of the starting pitcher Positional Power Rankings. I come in with preconceived notions of each rotation, usually with a solid handle on the top eight to 10 options for every team, as I’m no doubt buried in multiple fantasy drafts when Meg sends everything out. And yet I never cease to be amazed. I’m not saying the projections are infallible, but seeing the numbers laid out versus my mental snapshot of each team is sobering. There are always teams I’m surprised to see in my section, and rankings that absolutely shock me at first blush. Read the rest of this entry »

During the last week of spring training, after rosters have been more or less settled, some teams will find they have more pitchers than they can use at the moment. There’s a no. 6 starter who’s pitched well enough to earn a job, but there’s no room for him on the roster and he’s out of options. Good news: Another team needs a pitcher and is willing to trade a minor league depth infielder, say, to jump the waiver line and trade for yours.

I find this process oddly heartwarming, because everyone benefits: Both teams get a more balanced roster, and the pitcher in question gets a spot on a major league roster instead of getting DFA’d. Professional baseball is usually a zero-sum competition, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help your friends out. Read the rest of this entry »