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.

Because of his size — officially 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds, but by his own admission, a couple inches shorter — Dustin Pedroia was consistently underestimated. Though he took to baseball as a toddler and excelled all the way through high school and at Arizona State University, scouts viewed him as having below-average tools because of his stature. He barely grazed prospect lists before reaching the majors, but once he settled in, he quickly excelled. He won American League Rookie of the Year honors while helping the Red Sox win the 2007 World Series, then took home the MVP award the next year, when he was just 24.

Over the course of his 14-year career, Pedroia played a pivotal role in helping the Red Sox win one more World Series, made four All-Star teams, and banked four Gold Gloves. Understandably, he became a fan favorite, not only for his stellar play but because of the way he carried himself, radiating self-confidence to the point of cockiness, and always quick with a quip. “Pedie never shuts up, man,” Manny Ramirez told ESPN Magazine’s Jeff Bradley for a 2008 piece called “170 Pounds of Mouth.” Continued Ramirez, “He’s a little crazy. But that’s why we love him. He talks big and makes us all laugh.” 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 New York Yankees.

Batters

The Yankees aren’t the flashy spenders they used to be, but they still put very good teams on the field year after year, and the memory of their rather down 2023 is now another season further back in the rear view mirror. Most fanbases would be happy with a 94-68 season, but with New York no longer the big dogs when it comes to payroll, there’s an odd portion of the faithful who have come to believe that the team is fundamentally broken and needs to bunt a lot more and stop using analytics, which is a bit like wanting to fix your constantly running toilet by converting your toolshed into an outhouse. In reality, the Yankees are just a normal really good franchise these days.

The offense, of course, starts, ends, and runs through Aaron Judge. I don’t think I need to spend too much time cataloguing his merits, other than to note that he’s already passed the bus test for me — as in, if he got hit by a bus tomorrow, he’s already done enough in his career to be Cooperstown bound as far as I’m concerned. It is a little odd, though, that when we talk about players who have established their Hall of Fame credentials, we always seem to have them meet their demise via some mishap with mass transit. Read the rest of this entry »

The major league phase of the 2025 Rule 5 Draft was held Wednesday at the Winter Meetings in Orlando and concluded with 13 players being selected to join new organizations. Below are our thoughts on those players. The numbers you see in parentheses represent each team’s 40-man roster count entering the draft.

Before we get to the reports, our annual refresher on the Rule 5 Draft’s complex rules. The draft proceeds in reverse order of the standings from the most recent season. Players who signed their first pro contract at age 18 or younger are eligible for selection after five years of minor league service if their parent club has not yet added them to the team’s 40-man roster; for players who signed at age 19 or older, the timeline is four years. Those clubs that select a player must not only (a) pay said player’s former club $100,000, but also (b) keep the player on their 26-man active roster throughout the entirety of the following season, with a couple of exceptions that mostly involve the injured list. If a selected player doesn’t make his new team’s active roster, he is offered back to his former team for half of the initial fee. After the player’s first year on the roster, he can be optioned back to the minor leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

After a somnambulant first day of the Winter Meetings, one of the buzzier rumors involved free agent first baseman Pete Alonso getting in his car, driving up I-4 from his home in Tampa to Orlando, and pitching himself in person to the Red Sox and Orioles.

Apparently, those meetings went well. The drive from New York to Baltimore mostly takes place on expensive toll roads, but Alonso now has an extra $155 million to put on his EZ Pass account. Big Pete, the Polar Bear, the face of the Mets’ franchise, is bound for Baltimore on a five-year contract. Read the rest of this entry »

Re-signing Kyle Finnegan to the two-year, $19 million contract that was reported Tuesday night makes a ton of sense for the Tigers. Reliable relievers don’t grow on trees, and the 34-year-old right-hander has a track record that includes 90 saves and 3.65 ERA over the past three seasons, a span in which he’s averaged 63 appearances annually. Moreover, prior to suffering an abductor strain that landed him on the shelf for much of September, Finnegan pitched well after being acquired from the Washington Nationals at last summer’s trade deadline.

Finnegan won’t need to do all of the heavy lifting at the backend of Detroit’s bullpen. Will Vest emerged as the club’s primary closer last year, racking up 23 saves and registering a 3.01 ERA and a 2.71 FIP over 68 2/3 innings. He then shoved in October, too, allowing just three baserunners over eight scoreless frames between the ALDS and ALCS. As things currently stand, Vest and Finnegan profile as a formidable right-handed duo to finish off games for a starting staff that may or may not include Tarik Skubal. Reports are rampant that the Tigers are considering trading the back-to-back Cy Young Award winner, who is heading into the final year of his contract. Doing so would not only be bold, but it also would greatly impact the team’s chances of contending in 2026.

The success Finnegan had upon reaching Detroit — a 1.97 FIP and a 34.8% strikeout rate in 16 appearances — was influenced by meaningful tweaks to his pitch usage. He already had those alterations in mind when he changed teams. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pittsburgh Pirates, rebuffed in their totally-serious, no, we-mean-it courtship of Kyle Schwarber, have found another way to spend in the free agent market. Gregory Soto is the lucky recipient of a one-year, $7.75 million contract.

Soto missed the cut for our Top 50 free agent list, which included 14 relief pitchers, including lefty specialist Hoby Milner. But before you go and say, “Yikes,” and run away, give me an opportunity to explain. 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 San Francisco Giants.

Batters

The 2025 season was an odd one for the Giants, as they lurched in and out of playoff contention at various points. A solid start kept San Francisco in the mix in the early months, lurking just a few games out in the NL West for a surprisingly long time. The team’s high water mark came in mid-June, when a victory over the Dodgers briefly got them into a first place tie, but just a few weeks later, they found themselves nine games out and falling to .500 faster than Bitcoin prices in 2014. It only took a week to trim that deficit down to four games, but a couple of significant losing streaks wiped out that work going into the trade deadline. The Giants traded Camilo Doval, Tyler Rogers, and Mike Yastrzemski at the deadline, and the team treaded water just enough to find themselves in the Wild Card race at the very end of the season thanks to the New York Mets really Metsing it.

After that kind of season, finishing at .500 feels like the universe getting the exact right result for a change. ZiPS does see a lot of sources of optimism in the offense, and thinks the Giants likely underperformed their actual talent level in 2025. Both Matt Chapman and Willy Adames finished the season with All-Star-caliber numbers, especially impressive for Adames considering how much he struggled in the early going. ZiPS actually thought both of them underperformed their peripheral statistics, a pretty decent divergence from Statcast, which wasn’t quite as optimistic. ZiPS has been high on Chapman and Adames in recent years anyway, and sees both as leading All-Star contenders next season. 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.

For the past several election cycles, as a means of completing my coverage of the major candidates before the December 31 voting deadline, I’ve grouped together some candidates into a single overview, inviting readers wishing to (re)familiarize themselves with the specifics of their cases to check out older profiles that don’t require a full re-working because very little has changed, even with regards to their voting shares. Today, I offer the first such batch for this cycle, a pair of elite hitters who would already be enshrined if not for their links to performance-enhancing drugs: Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley break down Scott Boras’s Winter Meetings wordplay and discuss the Kyle Schwarber and Edwin Díaz deals, a smattering of starting-pitcher signings, the Pirates as supposed spenders, the latest on the Ippei Mizuhara TV series, a Lane Kiffin canine conspiracy, and a Johanfran Garcia nickname.

Audio intro: El Warren, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Guy Russo, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Boras on EW
Link to Boras on Imai
Link to Boras on Suárez
Link to Boras on Bregman
Link to Boras on Alonso
Link to more on Alonso
Link to “Wood” song
Link to Boras on Gallen
Link to Boras on Skubal
Link to Boras on Bellinger
Link to Bellinger quote transcription
Link to quote about news timing
Link to FG post on Schwarber
Link to NL fWAR leaders
Link to FG post on Díaz
Link to Friedman’s “heavy lifting” quote
Link to over/under draft results
Link to Pirates offer story
Link to Boras on the Pirates
Link to Pirates/Marlins spending story
Link to Ippei show update
Link to FG post on Matz
Link to MLBTR on Grissom
Link to MLBTR on Ponce
Link to MLBTR on Weiss
Link to MLBTR on Kay
Link to MLBTR on Anderson
Link to HUAL on Kiffin
Link to Kiffin dog story 1
Link to Kiffin dog story 2
Link to report on Juice
Link to post on Juice’s account
Link to Cruella de Vil wiki
Link to Garcia brothers story
Link to Patreon gift subs
Link to Secret Santa sign-up

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No player, not even Bryce Harper, has personified the Phillies’ recent run of four straight trips to the postseason more than Kyle Schwarber. Faced with the prospect of losing their signature slugger to the division rival Mets, Philadelphia instead retained Schwarber on a five-year, $150 million deal, news of which enlivened the Winter Meetings here in Orlando on Tuesday.

Schwarber, who turns 33 on March 5, hit .240/.365/.563 and led the National League with 56 home runs and 132 RBI while playing in all 162 games in 2025. He set career highs in home runs, RBI, games played, slugging percentage, wRC+ (152), and WAR (4.9). The last of those marks owed plenty to manager Rob Thomson’s limiting him to eight games in left field, where he’s a major liability, having totaled -37 FRV and -34 DRS in 2022–23. Only Shohei Ohtani took more plate appearances as a designated hitter in 2025 than Schwarber’s 687.

Schwarber’s season — which propelled him to a second-place finish in the NL MVP voting behind Ohtani (who won unanimously) — may have been a career year, but it was no fluke. Thanks to his ongoing work with hitting coach Kevin Long, who joined the Phillies just a few months before Schwarber signed his four-year, $79 million deal with them in March 2022, he has evolved from a pushover against lefties into a top threat in those matchups. From 2015–21 with the Cubs, Nationals, and Red Sox, Schwarber hit just .214/.324/.361 (86 wRC+) in 584 plate appearances against lefties, making 100 PA against them just twice and topping a 100 wRC+ against them only in the last of those seasons, during which he bounced from Washington to Boston. He has topped 200 plate appearances against lefties in all four of his seasons with the Phillies, and he was an above-average hitter against them in each of the last three. Over the past two years, his 524 plate appearances against lefties led the majors, while his 157 wRC+ (.275/.385/.547) and slugging percentage both ranked second behind Yordan Alvarez (albeit in just 247 PA). By comparison, he hit .244/.365/.525 (143 wRC+) against righties in that span. Read the rest of this entry »