Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago White Sox. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my 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 »

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 Boston Red Sox.

Batters

After three years fumbling around the .500 mark and being firmly out of the AL East discussion, the Red Sox returned to the playoffs for the first time since 2021, and were still fighting for the AL East title as late as early September. The season ended with the unsatisfactory conclusion of dropping the Wild Card Series to the Yankees in three games. The Red Sox are a team I have lot of conflicting emotions about. I still don’t think the Mookie Betts situation was handled all that well, and I think they’ve missed some upside opportunities by generally being very quiet at trade deadlines. I also wonder if the whole Alex Bregman–Rafael Devers situation earlier this year could have been avoided with better communication. But this is also a franchise that does big things to improve the team; trading for Garrett Crochet was a huge play, signing Bregman last year was bold, and acquiring both Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras from the Cardinals in separate swaps this offseason were shrewd moves to target specific team problems. I guess the best way to describe the franchise now is “unsentimental.”

However they got here, ZiPS projects the lineup to be an incredibly solid, deep group, with the weakest spots — second base, third base, and catcher — still projecting to be average or better. This isn’t just an artifact of aggressive playing time projections, either, as ZiPS sees a lot of value in the the stable of backups and role players. That Boston was able to send prospects to the White Sox sufficient to land Crochet last offseason while still graduating several prospects to the majors reflects how quietly excellent the organization’s developmental pipeline has been.

One can see why there’s so much talk about a possible Jarren Duran trade that may or may not involve Ketel Marte. Duran will get plenty of playing time in Boston, but he’s probably even more valuable to a team like Arizona than the Red Sox, who are without any real outfield holes now that Roman Anthony has successfully reached the majors. Kristian Campbell’s projection has taken a big hit, due to a lousy major league debut and a surprisingly underwhelming performance at Triple-A after his demotion; he still projects to have a solid future, though it may not be in Boston. I’m not predicting Trevor Story to be as healthy as our Depth Charts expect, but it was nice to see him get a fully healthy season in for the first time in a while.

Adding Contreras was a particularly nice deal. If Duran is more valuable to another team than Boston, then Boston is arguably one of the absolute best places for Contreras. No, he isn’t a star, but the Red Sox are prime contenders, and that means they need certainty here rather than someone who could possibly bring higher upside. The Sox cobbled together replacements at first base after Triston Casas ruptured his patella, but that’s a tough position to cobble together offense for on the fly, and Red Sox first basemen only combined for a .244/.305/.386, -0.7 WAR line, easily the worst production at the position of any playoff team this year. Casas’ injury in 2025 and a fractured rib in 2024 cost him a lot of playing time, and even if there’s an expectation that he can turn things around, Boston is in a tough position to actually have to count on that. I still think Casas can have success in the majors, but it may simply be with a franchise that can take a riskier approach.

I’m actually mildly annoyed there isn’t more to complain about, since I’m a man who likes snark, and since I’m from Baltimore, any Red Sox success may hinder the Orioles.

Pitchers

If you asked me after the World Series what the Red Sox most needed in the pitching department, I’d have said a true no. 2 starter between Crochet at the top and their deep stable of mid-rotation starters. They addressed their biggest offensive weakness with a trade, and they did the same thing here, acquiring Gray from the Cardinals. And as with the Crochet trade, they did it without giving up anyone they desperately did not want to lose; Brandon Clarke could be a real plus for the Cardinals someday, but there are a lot of things that need to happen for him to get there.

Crochet has the second-best WAR projection for a pitcher in ZiPS, behind only Tarik Skubal, so there’s no ZiPS reasons to question Crochet’s bonafides as a beast of an ace. No other members of the rotation besides Crochet and Gray get amazing projections, but there are a lot of absolutely useful projections, good enough to make the Red Sox and most of their fans happy. Brayan Bello is a dependable number three, and ZiPS places Payton Tolle, Connelly Early, Kutter Crawford, Kyle Harrison, Patrick Sandoval, and Johan Oviedo in roughly the same tier of average-ish performance. Basically, pulling any two out of the hat gives the Sox one of the better 4/5 situations in the majors. And you can argue that basically all of them have an upside scenario that would at least put them at Gray-level performance, though I’m a little less bullish on Oviedo. A bunch of arms with question and upside is the Dodgers’ approach, and I think it’ll work well here.

Aroldis Chapman has some downside risk due to age, but he was terrific in 2025, when he cut out the walks that had long plagued his profile as his sinker increasingly became a larger part of his arsenal. It’s rare to see pitchers change what makes them successful as they approach 40, and outside of those age concerns, there’s no real reason to worry about him. The days of experimenting with Garrett Whitlock as a starter might be over, but he successfully came back from injury as a dynamite setup man. Likewise, Jordan Hicks is best used as a reliever. Of the projected bullpen, ZiPS is really uneasy about only Zack Kelly. It also thinks that Ryan Watson, a Rule 5 reliever picked up in a trade with the A’s, was a sneaky-good move.

All told, ZiPS thinks the Red Sox ought to eclipse 90 wins and be seriously in the fight for the AL East title. ZiPS also thinks that Boston has less downside than its competition, and an awful lot would have to go wrong for this team to go back to where it was from 2022-24.

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.

Another day, another Met out the door. Jeff McNeil, who to this point had spent his entire 13-year professional career in the Mets organization, is now an Athletic. The 33-year-old second baseman and outfielder is headed to Sacramento (or, to use the Athletics’ official branding, Parts Unknown), in exchange for 17-year-old pitching prospect Yordan Rodriguez. The Mets will pay down $5.75 million of the $15.75 million due to McNeil in 2026, and if the A’s decline McNeil’s club option for 2027, Steve Cohen will cover the $2 million buyout.

At the time of the trade, McNeil was the Mets’ active leader in games played, plate appearances, and hits. If you want a sense of how the Mets’ offseason is going, here’s a fun fact. In the past 30 days, the franchise has had four active leaders in those categories: Brandon Nimmo, who was traded to Texas just before Thanksgiving; then Pete Alonso, who signed with the Orioles during Winter Meetings; then McNeil; and now Francisco Lindor. All that upheaval without playing a single game.

All told, 16 of the 63 players who suited up for the Mets in 2025 have departed since the end of the season. Come February, “Meet the Mets” might be more than a song. They’re going to have to spend the first week of camp wearing name tags and doing icebreakers. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all through Fenway, every fan was insistent: “Get a first baseman, today.” Or, well, probably not – why would there be fans at Fenway when there are no games, anyway? Why Christmas week in particular? Why did they construct their sentence awkwardly to suit a rhyme scheme? But forget about how hard it is to open an article – or at least how hard I’ve made it seem with this one. There’s a trade afoot! The Red Sox have acquired first baseman Willson Contreras from the Cardinals in exchange for right-handed starter Hunter Dobbins and righty pitching prospects Yhoiker Fajardo and Blake Aita, as Jeff Passan first reported.

In a free agent market awash in slugging first base/DH types, Contreras flew under the radar this offseason. Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso were the top names at the position, and both secured the deals befitting that status. The Red Sox were clearly interested in adding some offense, particularly in the infield, and were linked to both sluggers before they signed elsewhere. But there are more ways to improve your team than on the open market, and a pivot to Contreras soon followed. 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.

The third and final multi-candidate pairing of this series is by far the heaviest, covering two candidates who have both been connected to multiple incidents of domestic violence. Read the rest of this entry »

What sort of production can we expect from Munetaka Murakami in 2026? This article walks through my steps in creating an MLB projection for the Yakult Swallows superstar.

With one day to go before his negotiation window closed, Murakami and the Chicago White Sox agreed on a two-year, $34 million deal; you can read Michael Baumann’s thoughts on the signing here. Both the dollar amount and the length fall well short of expectations: Ben Clemens projected him to land a seven-year, $154 million contract, while our median crowdsourced contract estimate was for six years and $132 million. Prior to Murakami’s posting, Eric Longenhagen highlighted his 80-grade raw power, as well as his major contact issues, in an October international players update. Both Eric and Ben saw first base as Murakami’s likely defensive home, something the White Sox have already confirmed for the coming season. ZiPS projects him for a .237/.363/.454 triple-slash line and a 126 wRC+. My own projection system, OOPSY, does not yet project NPB players, but that’s something I’m aiming to change with this article. So what might OOPSY expect from Murakami?

The first step in creating a Murakami projection was to review the literature. Previous research from team scouts, analysts, and the creators of other projection system tends to rate NPB as close to Triple-A in terms of its quality of competition. This serves as a good reference point for developing my own quality of competition estimate. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies made the playoffs in 2025. The Royals nearly did, and certainly hope to play in October in 2026. Teams like that rarely line up on trades, what with both sides aiming to do the same thing and all. But rarely isn’t the same as never. Philadelphia and Kansas City found something they agree on other than their taste in Super Bowl matchups (last year’s every year, naturally), coming together on Friday to swap relievers: Matt Strahm is heading to Kansas City in exchange for Jonathan Bowlan, as Robert Murray first reported.

Trades are all about two teams with mismatched goals. Who would trade a superstar? A team that isn’t competing at the moment and isn’t one or two players away from changing that. Who would let go of a promising outfield prospect? A team that’s set in the outfield and light on the mound. This trade is two playoff contenders trading relievers, so most of those considerations don’t apply. But there’s still a mismatch in goals and resources here; you just have to look a little more closely.

The Phillies bullpen boasts an embarrassment of riches. Jhoan Duran, the closer, is one of the best in the business, a lockdown reliever you can set and forget in the ninth inning. José Alvarado missed most of the 2025 season thanks to a suspension and injury, but he’s an excellent late-inning option in his own right when available, and he should be back at full strength in the upcoming year. It doesn’t stop there; the team recently signed Brad Keller, who broke out as a dominant single-inning option in 2025. Even without Strahm, that’s a fearsome top trio of relievers, perhaps the best in the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

Some rough edges need to be smoothed out, but Cam Collier could be contributing to the Cincinnati Reds offense in the not-too-distant future. Assigned a 45 FV by Eric Longenhagen, the 21-year-old corner infielder is coming off of a 2025 campaign in which he put up a 123 wRC+ over 396 plate appearances across three levels (primarily Double-A). Among the few downsides was a dearth of dingers — he went yard just four times — but that presents as a blip as opposed to a barometer. Our lead prospect analyst grades Collier’s raw power as above average.

I broached the power outage when I talked to Collier during his stint in the Arizona Fall League, where he concluded his campaign with the Peoria Javelinas. He’d hammered 20 homers with the High-A Dayton Dragons in 2024, so why so few of them in his third full professional season?

“I’ve tried to not think about it too much,” replied Collier, whom the Reds drafted 18th overall in 2022 out of Chipola College. “This year, I wanted to really get back to being a hitter. I wanted to have consistent good at-bats, and while that didn’t produce as many homers, it produced a lot more base hits. I was happy with that.”

The stat sheet reflects some of his targeted strides. After batting .248 with a 25.0% strikeout rate in 2024, Collier improved to .279 with an only-incrementally-higher 26.3% K-rate against a higher level of competition. Moreover, the exit velocities he produced when he squared up the baseball were impressive — which remained the case in the desert. At 113.1 mph, Collier had the hardest-hit ball in the Fall Stars Game.

I had read reports that his exit velos and hard-hit rates were plus, so I brought that up as well. Was it perhaps a little counterintuitive that his slugging percentage (.384) and home run totals were as low as they were? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cincinnati Reds. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my 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 »

Ben Lindbergh brings on ESPN senior MLB insider Jeff Passan to discuss the ins and outs of the newsbreaking business—how he reports and announces news, how newsbreaking in baseball differs from newsbreaking in other sports, conflicts of interest, the ills of social media, work-life balance, aging, his flirtation with switching to the basketball beat, and more—plus Jeff’s thoughts on ESPN’s relationship with MLB, the biggest surprises and questions of this hot stove season, and the outlook for a lockout. Then (1:06:55) Ben talks to The Athletic’s Sam Blum about what he learned from covering the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Tyler Skaggs against the Angels, which was settled just before the jury reached a verdict.

Audio intro: Nate Emerson, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial: Grant Brisbee, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Kite Person, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Jeff’s last EW appearance
Link to Jeff’s newsbreaking origins
Link to Jeff’s gravy tweet
Link to aging research
Link to article about aging
Link to Woj comments
Link to Schefter comments
Link to Shams comments
Link to Shams profile
Link to Shams vs. Woj feature
Link to Passan NBA report
Link to exhibit 49 info
Link to more exhibit 49 info
Link to ESPN-MLB deal
Link to ESPN-NFL deal
Link to ESPN evolution
Link to Jeff’s trade tweet
Link to news about Jeff’s son
Link to The LAT on the settlement
Link to Sam on the settlement
Link to Sam on Trout
Link to MLB testing change

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