The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the navigation tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Like Barry Bonds with regards to position players, Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time. Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander spent all or most of their careers in the Deadball Era, before the home run was a real threat, and pitched while the color line was still in effect, barring some of the game’s most talented players from participating. Sandy Koufax and Tom Seaver pitched when scoring levels were much lower and pitchers held a greater advantage. Koufax and 2015 inductees Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez didn’t sustain their greatness for nearly as long. Greg Maddux didn’t dominate hitters to nearly the same extent.

Clemens, meanwhile, spent 24 years in the majors and racked up a record seven Cy Young awards, not to mention an MVP award. He won 354 games, led his leagues in the Triple Crown categories (wins, strikeouts, and ERA) a total of 16 times, and helped his teams to six pennants and a pair of world championships.

Alas, whatever claim “The Rocket” may have on such an exalted title is clouded by suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs. When those suspicions came to light in the Mitchell Report in 2007, Clemens took the otherwise unprecedented step of challenging the findings during a Congressional hearing, but nearly painted himself into a legal corner; he was subject to a high-profile trial for six counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress. After a mistrial in 2011, he was acquitted on all counts the following year, and in March 2015, he settled a defamation lawsuit filed by former personal trainer Brian McNamee for an unspecified amount. But despite those verdicts and resolutions, the specter of PEDs hasn’t left Clemens’ case. Read the rest of this entry »

Bubba Chandler has a bright future. Currently ranked fifth on our Top 100 — he remains rookie-eligible — the 23-year-old right-hander broke into the big leagues with the Pittsburgh Pirates in late August and showed why he is one of the game’s top pitching prospects. Featuring a fastball that averaged 98.9 mph, Chandler fashioned a 4.02 ERA, a 2.66 FIP, and a 25% strikeout rate over 31 1/3 innings. Five of his seven outings were stellar. Bookending back-to-back bumpy efforts against the Brewers and Dodgers, he allowed just 10 hits and two runs over 24 2/3 frames, fanning 25 batters and issuing a lone free pass along the way. At his best, the 2021 third-round pick out of Bogart, Georgia’s North Oconee High School was flat out dominant.

Back in February, the personable flamethrower was featured here during our annual Prospect Week in an interview titled “Bubba Chandler Addresses His Power Arsenal.” We heard from him again in early September, that time learning why he is done playing catch with Paul Skenes. Today, we’ll hear from him on his initial impressions of pitching in the majors. Our conversation took place as the calendar was turning to September.

———

David Laurila: What have you learned since getting called up from Triple-A?

Bubba Chandler: “I don’t want to say the game is harder, but it is definitely a lot more thinking. Pitch-to-pitch thinking goes into it. Something I’ve learned is that at each level you go up, the less and less mistakes you can make. Up here, I’ve made a couple of mistake pitches that were hit pretty hard, whereas in Triple-A they might have gotten fouled off. So it’s kind of, how many mistakes can I limit myself to in a game? They’re going to happen, but when are they going to happen? Are they going to happen with guys on base? Are they going to happen with no one on base? Stuff like that.” Read the rest of this entry »

All relief pitchers are failed starters. In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes. All great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice… the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Therefore: In the future, all relief pitchers will be starting pitchers for 15 minutes, twice: First as failure, then as tragedy.

This jumble of aphorisms is what plopped out of my head when I read a bit of surprising news: The Detroit Tigers are interested in Ryan Helsley — reasonable enough, since he’s been a good high-leverage reliever for several years — as a starting pitcher.

Whoa. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Warren Schaeffer staying on as Rockies manager, the Mets’ and Rangers’ Brandon Nimmo–Marcus Semien swap, and their memories, thoughts, and feelings concerning Alex Rodriguez, inspired by the new, three-part HBO docuseries Alex vs. A-Rod. Then (58:35) they talk to the co-directors/EPs of Alex vs. A-Rod, Gotham Chopra and Erik LeDrew, about how the docuseries sausage was made and their insights into A-Rod’s psyche.

Audio intro: Jonathan Crymes, “Effectively Wild Theme 2”
Audio outro: Gabriel-Ernest, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to MLBTR on Schaeffer
Link to Baumann on the trade
Link to Alex vs. A-Rod trailer
Link to stream Alex vs. A-Rod
Link to Alex vs. A-Rod IMDb page
Link to Gotham’s IMDb page
Link to Erik’s IMDb page
Link to latest HUAL episode
Link to Munch King bag
Link to “gun” etymology
Link to 1993 Levy article
Link to Secret Santa sign-up

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The New York Mets are trading outfielder Brandon Nimmo to the Texas Rangers in exchange for infielder Marcus Semien, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported Sunday night. You don’t often see one-for-one trades involving two players with a combined 66.9 career WAR in their past, but this deal was made possible by the combined $173.5 million owed Nimmo and Semien in the future.

The Mets and Rangers are both top-10 payroll teams and recidivist whales in the free agent market (with the caveat that the Mets are somewhat more top-payroll than the Rangers are), so this is not a straight-up salary dump. Indeed, only a trivial amount of money — $5 million moving from New York to Texas, according to Jon Heyman — is changing hands. That greases the skids, but it’s only about 5% of what Nimmo’s owed, and less than 3% of the total remaining value of the contracts being moved.

Semien and Nimmo have both been excellent players in the recent past, as reflected in their compensation. Semien is on a seven-year, $175 million contract he signed with the Rangers before the 2022 season; Nimmo had a .385 career OBP, and was coming off a 5.5 WAR season, when he signed with the Mets a year later for $162 million over eight years. Read the rest of this entry »

How much will the ABS challenge system hurt the ability of catchers to frame pitches? That question has been bouncing around my brain for quite a while now. I’d been waiting for the offseason to really dive into the numbers, and, well, we’re here. It’s the offseason. But now that I’ve dug into all the data I could find, I think the entire premise of that question might be flawed. I thought that correcting a couple of ball-strike calls a game would erase a couple of well-framed pitches. This would no doubt hurt the better framers more than it hurt the worse ones, simply because they earn more strikes and would have more to lose. At the same time, the lesser framers would have juicier pitches to challenge, boosting their numbers a bit. As a result, the gap between good and bad framers would shrink, furthering a trend that’s been going on since we first gained the ability to quantify the value of pitch framing. It would still be valuable, just not quite as valuable as it used to be. But I’m not so sure anymore. Let’s start with the data.

I pulled all the major league framing data I could. I pulled league-wide and individual catcher called strike rates both inside and outside the strike zone for the majors and for Triple-A, which in 2025 used the same challenge system we’ll see in 2026. I can tell you that 26 catchers got a significant amount of playing time in both Triple-A and the majors last season, and their called strike rate on pitches in the shadow zone in the majors fell by an average of 1.4 percentage points within the zone and 1.7 percentage points outside it relative to what it was in the minors. So while the Triple-A strike zone may be tighter, pitch framing is still harder in the majors. But the only data about how the challenge system has actually worked in the minors and in spring training of 2025 comes from MLB press releases, and it’s extremely sparse.

Of course, that data definitely exists. Baseball Savant guru Tom Tango wrote up a bunch of interesting takeaways from it on his blog a month ago. As you’d expect, players are more likely to challenge calls in higher-leverage moments, in the later innings, and on pitches that decide the outcome of an at-bat. For that reason, they tend to be less successful in those situations; they’re not challenging because they’re sure they’re right, but because they really want the call to go the other way. Tango also broke down some catchers and batters who were particularly good or bad at challenging. Not only did he provide their stats – poor Zac Veen challenged 24 pitches and got just three overturned – but Tango showed that Savant will be rolling out challenge probability numbers next year, using the distance from the edge of the strike zone to calculate the likelihood that any particular pitch will get challenged, and that any particular challenge will be successful. From there, it’s easy to calculate how much challenge value each batter or catcher creates above the average player. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday was a key deadline in the offseason calendar: the last day that teams could non-tender players instead of offering them a contract in arbitration. It’s something of an annual tradition. Once a year, a bunch of guys whose names inspire you to think “oh, he’s not bad” nonetheless get non-tendered because their performance doesn’t measure up to their projected salary. This year, the non-tender group was larger than I’m used to, so I think it merits a recap.

One classic archetype of the players who get non-tendered is the older breakout who then regresses toward the mean in subsequent years. An example: Adolis García, probably the most famous player in this group, burst onto the scene as a 28-year-old rookie in 2021, piling up 10.6 WAR in his first three full seasons. He starred on the 2023 World Series champion Rangers, blasting eight home runs and a record 22 RBI, and taking home ALCS MVP honors.

The next two years weren’t so halcyon, with García posting an aggregate 89 wRC+ and 0.6 WAR. Heading into his age-33 season, it’s hard to expect a return to his peak form; our projection systems think he’s more of a fourth outfielder than an everyday starter these days. The problem, from Texas’ standpoint, is that García earned $9.25 million this season in his second year of arbitration. He stood to make at least that much in his last pass through arb. The Rangers quite reasonably looked around for alternatives. Several free agent corner outfielders with similar projections were available, and probably for less. And Texas likely went into the Friday deadline with some idea that the Marcus Semien/Brandon Nimmo salary swap was on horizon, which meant fewer outfield openings; given that backdrop, García’s non-tender isn’t a big surprise. 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 Chicago White Sox.

Batters

The 2025 White Sox performed the very weird dual feat of being one of baseball’s most improved teams compared to 2024 and losing more than a 100 games. There wasn’t much in the way of quality baseball on the South Side, but the Sox actually had enough things go their way this time around that they didn’t perform at the low end of their talent level. There were even a few things to like about the team, enough to motivate fans to turn on a game out of more than morbid curiosity.

One thing you’ll notice when looking at the depth chart below? No negative numbers! That’s a pretty low baseline, but the Sox have added enough talent that they’re clearly better than any of the teams in the International League. There are still questions about Colson Montgomery, and he likely won’t ever be a favorite to put up a good batting average or on-base percentage, but his power arrived and he can credibly play shortstop. The power has most certainly not arrived for Chase Meidroth, but he’s shown he can hack it at second base, he’s fairly disciplined at the plate, and he’s a pretty solid contact hitter. He doesn’t have a lot of star potential, but if the batting average creeps up a bit, he can be a useful OBP-heavy second baseman.

The White Sox haven’t figured out their catcher spot yet, but Kyle Teel probably has the best average outlook and the highest upside, so hopefully he’ll be given every chance to push out the competition and seize control of the job. Surprisingly, ZiPS thinks Luis Robert Jr. still has a decent amount of upside left, and the Sox might as well play him and see, since I don’t believe any team is going to be willing to pay the Pale Hose what they’d want to part with him. Miguel Vargas is fine as a stopgap third baseman, and he showed that many analysts had given up on his bat too quickly, but he’s still too much of a tweener: not good enough defensively to be plus at third, and not really interesting as a hitter if used at first base or designated hitter.

Of all the left-fielders in baseball, Andrew Benintendi is one of them. Lenyn Sosa will mostly play first base since the White Sox don’t have an obvious place to play him otherwise and he kinda hits, and right field and DH will largely be populated by whoever’s hanging around on the roster and isn’t starting elsewhere.

This offense will almost certainly be one of the worst in baseball in 2026, but I’d much rather watch this group than the one the team had entering 2024.

Pitchers

Chicago’s pitching staff was actually kinda adequate-ish in 2025, enough so that they mostly kept the games interesting. Shane Smith won’t make anyone forget Garrett Crochet, but he took a big step forward this season, and the team ought to be able to just stick him in the rotation and watch him pitch like a reasonable no. 2 starter. (I will note that there’s a bit of a disagreement between ZiPS and Steamer on Smith, with ZiPS the sunnier projection.)

Noah Schultz’s outlook has come down quite a bit in the projections thanks to some walk issues that popped up this year. In his first stint with Double-A Birmingham in 2024, he never allowed more than two walks in an outing, but he did that in seven different starts this year in his second Double-A go-around. He had mixed results after getting promoted to Triple-A Charlotte, but his time there was plagued by tendinitis in his knee. Still, Schultz only turned 22 a few months ago, so it’s too early to panic about his projection.

The rotation is basically no. 4/5 starters as far as the eye can see: If you couldn’t see the names on the projections for Davis Martin, Sean Burke, Jonathan Cannon, and Duncan Davitt, you probably wouldn’t be able to guess who is who. But on the plus side, the Sox are deep with these kinds of pitchers, and if a couple of them can have Smith-sized breakouts, the rotation might start to come together for the next few years. Hopefully the team is patient with Schultz and Hagen Smith, as neither of them is likely to be successful in the majors right away.

In terms of the bullpen, ZiPS is easily the most intrigued by Grant Taylor and would like to see him eventually get a chance at starting. But he ought to be fine in the ‘pen, and Jordan Leasure, Mike Vasil, and Brandon Eisert are an unexciting trio, but at least the games will end. The projections aren’t great, but for my part, I’m probably the most interested in seeing a healthy Prelander Berroa, as I still think that he’s one of the more interesting arms in the org.

The White Sox might keep their losses in the 90s in 2026, but I’d probably place the likelihood of a Cinderella season as being far lower for them than a lot of teams in that tier, such as the Nationals. While it’s not the kind of thing you actually want to say in a press release, I hope the Sox aren’t too obsessed with the exact number of wins they get next season, and focus on making their team a long-term contender instead of, say, pushing for .500 in 2026. We’ll see.

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 Milwaukee Brewers. 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 »