The Rangers love a free-agent starting pitcher: Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi, Jon Gray, Andrew Heaney, Martín Pérez. And now Tyler Mahle. The 29-year-old righthander, previously of the Reds and Twins, has signed a two-year, $22 million contract with the Rangers. He will make $5.5 million in 2024 and $16.5 million in ’25, plus up to an additional $5 million in incentives depending on how many innings he throws in the latter season.

This news, which was exciting enough to draw approximately zero eyeballs away from the Shohei Ohtani introductory presser that started half an hour later, is a shrewd signing by the reigning world champions. I encourage you to click More and read anyway, but I’ll give away the ending, I don’t care: I really like this deal for the Rangers, as well as Mahle’s fit with the team. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 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.

As befits a player who spent 21 seasons in the majors and ranks 15th all-time in games played, Adrián Beltré really had two careers. In the first one, he was the prodigy who didn’t quite live up to expectations. Signed (illegally) by the Dodgers out of the Dominican Republic at age 15, he reached the majors at 19, became a free agent at 25 after one of the greatest walk years of all time, and disappointed at his next stop in Seattle. Through his age-30 season, he hadn’t made a single All-Star team, and he’d played in just one postseason series.

In his second career, which began with a brief stop in Boston before a longer stay in Texas, Beltré was a well-decorated and even beloved superstar. His elite defense carried over, and he emerged as a prolific slugger with exceptional contact skills, a team leader, and a fan favorite who won five Gold Gloves and made four All-Star teams while helping the Rangers to four playoff appearances and a pennant. He became the first Dominican-born player to reach the 3,000-hit milestone, as well as the career leader in hits among players born outside the United States, a surefire Hall of Famer in waiting. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th 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 and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Batters

The Pirates’ offense wasn’t particularly good in 2023, but they’re at least interesting in some ways. For one, their best offensive players are either signed for a long time (Bryan Reynolds, Ke’Bryan Hayes) or are very far from hitting free agency (Oneil Cruz, Jack Suwinski). Endy Rodriguez, one of the top catching prospects in ZiPS, is going to miss the season with UCL surgery, so it looks like the Pirates are making lemonades out of lemons and giving Henry Davis every chance to stick behind the plate before giving up and stuffing him in a corner somewhere. For a team that won’t spend significant amounts of money no matter what baseball’s economic system is, having that core already banked gives Pittsburgh lots of opportunities to play meaningful September baseball in a weak division. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve become increasingly fascinated by major league teams’ depth recently. The reasons for my fascination are all over the map. I’m always interested in looking for blind spots in our playoff odds, and a conversation with the big boss (hi David!) at the Winter Meetings got me thinking about how teams allocate playing time between starters and backups. I was already independently digging into how team strength changes throughout the year as their roster changes. The plight of various injured pitching staffs – and the triumph of the always-adding Rangers – was yet another angle on the problem.

To that end, I started looking at how much of each team’s playing time and WAR comes from their Opening Day rosters every year. I was looking for interesting trends, though I wasn’t exactly sure where to find them, so my plan was to keep an open mind and see what jumped out at me. But, uh, I didn’t expect this.

See, my first check was what percentage of each team’s total WAR in a given season came from their initial roster. In a given year, you might have a very healthy roster like the Blue Jays’ (88.6% of their total plate appearances plus total batters faced came from players who were in uniform for the first game), and thus end up with 91.5% of your WAR coming from that group. You might make a series of call-ups throughout the seasons like the Reds (58.9% of playing time on the Opening Day roster) and end up with only 63.9% of your WAR coming from that group. I thought that by taking averages of these, I might be able to learn something. Read the rest of this entry »

The Kansas City Royals had a disappointing season in J.J. Picollo’s first year as the team’s Executive Vice President/General Manager. Hampered by injuries and the underperformance of numerous promising young players, the AL Central club finished in last place with a dreadful 56-106 record. As Dayton Moore’s replacement — Picollo was promoted to the position on September 21, 2022 — told me during last month’s GM meetings, much more was expected.

My conversation with the Royals’ top executive came almost exactly a year after I first spoke to him about the vision he had for the team. I was curious about two things. First, how has the revamped pitching program we discussed in November 2022 progressed? Second, how does he view his first year on the job?

———

David Laurila: We talked about your vision for the team, including the pitching development process, at last year’s GM Meetings. Have things gone pretty much as expected?

J.J. Picollo: “There is more to it than you realize. As much as you think you might be prepared for the lead role, you’re learning along the way all the time. Being able to make decisions quickly, and being able to communicate effectively across all departments in the organization, was a challenge. Looking back on it, last year we were heavily involved with our managerial search [and] a new pitching coach. The entire fall, right up to Christmas, we were hiring. We shared the vision of the organization in different ways.

“If I had to do it over again, we would have had organizational meetings in January. We’d have had that large group gathering so that the communication was clear on what we’re about and what we’re trying to accomplish. This year we did that. We actually did that the week after the season ended, so I feel a lot better about this offseason. I feel like it’s going to slow things down a little bit more this year. But again, there are a lot of things involved in this job. It’s a very different position than being an assistant.” Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, the Dodgers hit the motherlode, signing Shohei Ohtani to a landmark 10-year contract. Turns out, though, MLB didn’t award them the 2024 World Series just for doing that. There’s still baseball to be played, and while the Dodgers certainly aren’t short on tremendous hitters, they do need some serious help on the pitching side. Enter the Rays:

BREAKING: The Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays are in agreement on a trade to send RHP Tyler Glasnow and OF Manuel Margot to the Dodgers for RHP Ryan Pepiot and OF Jonny Deluca — contingent on Glasnow signing an extension with L.A., which is expected, sources tell ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 15, 2023

I’m not sure that I’m making a strong enough statement. The Dodgers need help on the pitching side, and they need it badly. Before this trade, their depth chart looked like this:

That’s dire. It’s a mixture of injury risk, light workloads, unproven arms, and pitchers who check multiple of those boxes at once. Ohtani obviously won’t pitch next year. Walker Buehler hasn’t pitched since June 2022, looked bad in that 2022 season, and is their nominal ace. Bobby Miller is the only other guy the team seems to trust, and they’ll need plenty of volume from him, but he made 26 starts last year to get to his 138.2 innings, so it’s not like there’s a ton more in the tank. If the Dodgers’ lineup is Boardwalk and Park Place, their rotation looks more like Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 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 my previous multi-candidate roundup, I paired two lefties who haven’t gotten much traction on Hall of Fame ballots thus far in Andy Pettitte and Mark Buehrle. As a means of completing my coverage of the major candidates before the December 31 voting deadline, it made sense to group them into a single overview and invite readers wishing to (re)familiarize themselves with the specifics of their cases to check out last year’s profiles. Today, I’m doing the same for a pair of elite hitters who would already be enshrined if not for their links to performance-enhancing drugs: Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez.

Like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, both sluggers have transgressions that predate the introduction of drug testing and penalties in 2004. Via The New York Times (Ramirez) and Sports Illustrated (Rodriguez), both reportedly failed the supposedly anonymous 2003 survey test that determined whether such testing would be introduced. Had they not pressed their luck further, both might already be in Cooperstown alongside 2022 honoree David Ortiz, who reportedly failed the survey test, too. Alas, Ramirez was actually suspended twice, in 2009 and ’11; the latter ended his major league career, though he traveled the globe making comeback attempts. Rodriguez was suspended only once, but it was for the entire 2014 season due to his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal and his scorched-earth attempt to evade punishment.

Ramirez debuted with 23.8% on the 2017 ballot and only last year topped 30%. Rodriguez debuted with 34.3% in 2022 but barely inched up in ’23. Given that Bonds and Clemens topped out in the 65–66% range in 2022 and then were passed over by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee the following year, nobody should be holding their breaths for these two to get elected anytime soon. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th 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 and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Atlanta Braves.

Batters

Gosh, what do you even say about this lineup? The top six starters — Ronald Acuña Jr., Sean Murphy, Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Michael Harris II, and Ozzie Albies — basically get you two-thirds of the way to a playoff spot all by themselves. ZiPS puts a 50/50 season in reach for Acuña, and his projected WAR is more than a win better than anyone else in baseball. Eight of his top 10 comps ought to be Hall of Famers (Betts is still playing), and ZiPS now has him finishing with a mean career projection in excess of 650 homers, with nearly 600 stolen bases and more than 3,000 hits. And he’s locked up for the next five years, so there’s no chance of him taking a mystery plane ride to a sushi restaurant in Toronto.

You could lop Acuña off the top and this would still look like one of the top teams in baseball. The other five guys mentioned so far are all in their primes, and only Olson has hit age 30. ZiPS isn’t completely sold on Orlando Arcia, though it does have greater confidence in him being a league-average player than it did before last season; the computer is still casting a side eye at Marcell Ozuna, whose production has been rather up-and-down over the years. The only real weak spot in the starting lineup is Jarred Kelenic’s tepid projection; even with his performance slumping after April, I expected a rosier outlook, though this isn’t out of whack with what Steamer sees for the former Mariner.

Vaughn Grissom is on the depth chart in a sub role, but I can’t help but think that he ought to be a prime trade candidate this winter. David Fletcher is a suitable backup who can fake being a starter for a while if need be, and ZiPS sees the team’s other minor league shortstop options as more than adequate candidates for being dragooned into utility duties. I can’t say exactly why Atlanta pulled the trigger, but ZiPS certainly sees the lure of Ignacio Alvarez and Luke Waddell over hanging on to Braden Shewmake and Nicky Lopez.

The farm system is pretty empty when it comes to hitters, but the Braves are only looking for emergency reinforcements.

Pitchers

Spencer Strider and Max Fried are a scary one-two out of the rotation, and ZiPS sees Charlie Morton and Bryce Elder as perfectly adequate complementary talent, even after the latter’s late-season swoon. Allan Winans looks like a reasonable no. 5 starter and Ian Anderson ought to be back sometime in 2024. ZiPS is less bullish about AJ Smith-Shawver, but that projection would still be just fine for a fifth or sixth starter. With the offense looking nearly otherworldly, it would definitely make sense to focus any trade talks or cash splashings on bringing in another pitcher or two. And not just for 2024; Fried and Morton are both free agents after this season and Morton is in his 40s now. It would be a lot of fun to see the Braves go after someone like Yoshinobu Yamamoto with all the savings they’ve gotten from the very team-friendly contracts Acuña and Albies signed.

Reynaldo López is the wild card here, and it’s still uncertain how the Braves will use him when push comes to shove. ZiPS projects him to have a 4.20 ERA if he’s used as a full-time starter compared to a 3.10 mark as a full-time reliever.

The bullpen isn’t flashy, but it’s deep and perhaps still underrated. ZiPS forecasts all of the Braves’ relievers with ERA+ numbers over 100 until you get pretty far down the depth chart (Daysbel Hernández). Even Aaron Bummer (who White Sox fans seem to hate more than any person or thing that has ever existed, at least if my social media after the trade is any indication) projects for a nice little bounce-back season and a sub .600 OPS against lefties. The relief corps will also get a reinforcement or two depending on who ends up getting starts this year.

The depth chart suggests a >100 win projection, which is exceedingly rare in ZiPS (or any projection system). That number will probably come down a bit, as I’m not quite as bullish on the Iron Man playing time as the depth charts are, and I suspect a few more closer-to-replacement names will get some plate appearances/innings in 2024. Still, this is a very dangerous team. Unfortunately for the Braves, being a very dangerous team only gives you about a 20% chance of winning the World Series, baseball being baseball.

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.

Here are how the ZiPS percentiles worked out in 2023 for pitchers and hitters in in 2023.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2024 due to injury, and players who were released in 2023. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Belgian Death Metal Skiffle Band that only plays songs by Franz Schubert, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.33.

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.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.