I don’t know everything about baseball, but I know this: When a player’s name is in a headline that ends with the phrase “Stares Down Oblivion,” that’s not a good sign. That happened to Joey Gallo four weeks ago, as Michael Rosen wrote a lovely tribute to a popular player whose career seemed to be nearing its end. If the headline weren’t ominous enough, little of what followed augured good things: A table that showed Gallo posting the two highest single-season whiff rates of the decade; a comparison to Ken Griffey Jr. and Andruw Jones, but only during their time with the White Sox; a metaphor about hanging off a cliff by one’s fingertips.
Gallo went 2-for-20 for the White Sox in Cactus League play, and while a minute batting average is nothing new, Gallo’s secondary skills — the talents that made him an impactful big leaguer — were not in evidence. Both of his hits were singles, and he drew just one walk.
The man might swing from his heels, but he’s smart enough to read the signs. So on Sunday, he posted a video of old defensive highlights to X with the caption, “It’s been fun outfield,” with a peace sign emoji. A retirement announcement, perhaps? It seems Gallo also realized he’d been ambiguous, so 11 minutes later he sent a follow-up post: “Just to be clear, I will be pitching.” Read the rest of this entry »
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA — For the Los Angeles Dodgers, being able to pay so many stars comes with a hidden value that one general manager has called “the unseen part of spending.”
The Dodgers have impact players like Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Blake Snell on big contracts. As their luxury tax bill goes up, and as they sign free agents with qualifying offers attached to them, the Dodgers lose out on draft picks and bonus pool money for international free agents.
But they’ve made up for some of the future value that they’ve lost. The Dodgers are known for their buying moves, but they can also sell with the best of them.
“When they go out and acquire players, that makes other good players available,” said Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, who has been a part of one of those deals with the Dodgers. “They’ve done a really good job of going out and getting good prospects.” Read the rest of this entry »
The 2024 season was a strong year for catchers. Altogether, they produced 13.2% of all position player WAR, their largest piece of the pie in 10 years. Their collective 91 wRC+ was also the highest it has been in a full season since 2014. I’d posit that had something to do with starting-caliber catchers taking the field a bit more often, rather than ceding significant playing time to their backups. After watching teams cut back on catcher playing time for several years, we’re finally starting to see that trend reverse a bit. Read the rest of this entry »
Angelina Alcantar/News Sentinel-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
The SEC opened conference play this past weekend and there were a bunch of great matchups. The most surprising result was Tennessee’s sweep of Florida, as both teams entered the series ranked in the top 10. At this point, the Volunteers look like the best team in college baseball. Outside of the SEC, Stanford’s Japanese phenom Rintaro Sasaki hit his first career home run on Saturday, and we saw a four-homer day from Northwestern’s Trent Liolios.
Sticking to the theme of last week, these notes are on draft-eligible players who are not currently listed on The Board, as it’s still too early to rank them, but who nonetheless should hear their names called this July. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to the 2025 positional power rankings! As is tradition, over the next week and a half, we’ll be ranking every team by position as we inch closer to Opening Day next Thursday. This is always something of a funny exercise. You read FanGraphs regularly, after all — a fact for which we are very grateful — and are well-versed in the various signings, trades, and injuries that have occurred over the offseason. You know that Juan Soto is now a Met, that the Diamondbacks signed Corbin Burnes, that the Red Sox traded for Garrett Crochet, and that Gerrit Cole needs Tommy John surgery. And yet, you’re still keen to know more about the game and what it might look like between now and October. The positional power rankings are our answer to that impulse.
This post serves as an explainer for our approach to the rankings. If you’re new to the exercise, I hope it helps to clarify how they are compiled and what you might expect from them. If you’re a FanGraphs stalwart, much of this will be familiar, but I hope it’s a useful reminder of what we’re up to. If you have a bit of time, you’ll find the introduction to last year’s series here. You can use the navigation widget at the top of that post to get a sense of where things stood before Opening Day 2024, a spring that saw a rash of pitcher injuries and a couple of notable free agents remain unsigned until just before the season began.
Unlike a lot of sites’ season previews, we don’t arrange ours by team or division. That is a perfectly good way to organize a season preview, but we see a few advantages to the way we do it. First, ranking teams by position allows us to cover a team’s roster from top to bottom. Stars, everyday contributors, and role players alike receive some amount of examination, and those players (and the teams they play for) are placed in their proper league-wide context. By doing it this way, you can more easily see how teams stack up against each other, get a sense of the overall strength of a position across baseball, and spot the places where a well-constructed platoon may end up having a bigger impact than an everyday regular who is good rather than great. We think all of that context helps to create a richer understanding of the state of the game and a clearer picture of the season ahead. Read the rest of this entry »
Jackson Jobe supplied a quality quote when asked about last weekend’s three-straight-heaters punchout of Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr..””I’m done with trying to dot a gnat’s ass,” he told a small group of reporters. “It’s, ‘Here’s my stuff. If you hit it, good. Odds are, probably not.”
Jobe is a student of the art and science of his craft, so I proceeded to ask him where he feels he is in terms development. Has the 22-year-old Detroit Tigers right-hander essentially settled into his mound identity, or is there still work left to be done in the pitch lab?
“I’d like to think I got it pretty much all fine-tuned,” replied Jobe, who is No. 9 on our Top 100. “Now it’s just learning the best way to use it, the best way to sequence it. I put my stuff up against anyone in the league on paper, to be completely honest. It’s just a matter of learning how to harness it.”
Asked about any recent changes to his pitch metrics, the rookie of the year candidate cited his slider. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about completing the season preview series, then preview the 2025 New York Yankees (7:48) with Gary Phillips of the New York Daily News, and the 2025 Chicago White Sox (1:04:41) with Sox Machine’s James Fegan.
In his piece on Tuesday, Michael Baumann described a “true sicko” of a baseball fan as one who has strong opinions on players signed to minor league contracts with spring training invites. If simply having an opinion on those players makes me a sicko, having opinions on the demarcation between those who do and don’t make Opening Day rosters means I probably need to be double vaccinated against whatever sickness that is.
Opening Day for all but two teams is less than two weeks away, so that means front offices are soon going to have to start finalizing their major league rosters. Many of the guys who don’t make the big league club will remain with their current organizations, but a good chunk of NRIs who don’t make the cut will have the chance to opt out of their minor league contracts and seek a major league deal with another team.
As stated in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, all XX(B) free agents — those with at least six years of service who ended the year on a 40-man roster — who ultimately sign minor league deals can opt out of their contracts six days before Opening Day (March 20); teams have until the March 22 to add them to the MLB roster or injured list or instead release them. Plenty of non-XX(B) NRIs also have opt-outs, though some of those may have gone unreported. Considering this, and for the sake of convenience, let’s assume that all of the NRIs mentioned in this piece are able to opt out if they do not make the major league roster out of camp.
Today, we’ll run through the NRIs who could end up in a different organization and possibly make an Opening Day roster. Because Baumann covered the NRI players who are projected to make Opening Day rosters, according to RosterResource, I’m going to do the opposite and touch on only the NRIs who, at least for now, are not projected to have a 26-man spot come the start of the season.
At least a few of these grizzled veterans would probably be upgrades over the catchers on some clubs, but even if they are, front offices will have to consider whether the new backstop’s talent outweighs the current one’s familiarity with the team’s pitchers. Catchers are almost never moved at the trade deadline because of the challenges that come with having to learn a new pitching staff on the fly, and while it’s true that the above catchers would have more time to get caught up than they would if they were joining a new team at the end of July, they’d still need to develop relationships with more than a dozen pitchers during the regular season, rather than in February bullpen sessions or exhibition games. A few of these backstops may well opt out of their current minor league contracts, but I wouldn’t expect them to sign a major league deal immediately unless an injury occurs and opens up a spot.
Teams That Could Come Calling: Rockies, Padres, Red Sox, Marlins
Most of the players in this group have had strong showings this spring; all except Chavis and Rodgers have posted a 125 or better wRC+. To what extent that matters, well, that’s up to you, but the point is that there’s at least a little bit of intrigue and plenty of experience. Rodgers was a somewhat surprisingly non-tendered by the Rockies this offseason, and it was even more surprisingly that had to settle for a minor league deal and an NRI, but he may yet find the MLB deal he should have earned all along despite an iffy small-sample Grapefruit League performance. Lopez and Ahmed have a long track record of fantastic glovework, too, especially useful for teams scrambling to find bench help in response to injuries or demotions.
Teams That Could Come Calling: White Sox, Angels, Yankees, Mets
There’s a range of defensive competence here — Marisnick and Almora can play a mean center field, but even in the corners you really don’t want a ball hit Rosario’s way these days — but they all have some sort of intriguing skill. Gallo, as has always been the case, has massive boom-or-bust potential; it’s been far more bust than boom lately, a trend that’s continued this spring training — he’s struck out over half the time. Thompson has probably been the MVP of the Grapefruit League with six (!) homers and has the best shot of making the roster of his current team.
Teams That Could Come Calling: White Sox, Tigers, Mariners
Managers wouldn’t want these guys playing the field much, but every member of this trio has mashed in the not-too-distant past. Despite his inconsistency, Bauers was a threat in the middle of the Brewers order at times last year. Cooper was an All-Star in 2022 and hit a career-high 17 home runs in 2023. If Jiménez is healthy — a big if but still — he boasts more upside than any other hitter in this article. Teams with open time at DH could do worse than sign one of these bats.
Teams That Could Come Calling: White Sox, Yankees, Mariners, Blue Jays, Padres, Giants
Have a last-minute injury at any one of seven positions? Not liking how your existing options are performing on either side of the ball? One of these players might be your savior, albeit the most modest savior in human history. Hampson, Biggio, and Vargas all saw a lot of MLB action last year, and Hampson played everywhere besides catcher. (He even pitched a scoreless inning!) He and Haggerty also have plus speed and can steal a base or two off the bench if needed.
Teams That Could Come Calling: All of the clubs mentioned above, as well as some others, should be interested in the versatility that these players offer.
Teams in need of 25-plus starts should just see if they can work out a late deal with Kyle Gibson or Lance Lynn. But the benefit of signing one of the above arms for a handful of starts is that they’ve been in camps, pitching in games, staying on schedule and in their routines. By contrast, Lynn and Gibson almost certainly won’t be ready to open the season in a rotation. Houser specifically strikes me as an intriguing option; his fastball velocity is up this spring compared to last year with the Mets, but the only way I can see him making the Rangers’ rotation to start the season is if one or more of their starters gets hurt. Sure, some of those pitchers are injury prone (hello, Jacob deGrom and Tyler Mahle), but if they remain healthy through the end of camp and Houser opts out for a major league deal elsewhere, another club could scoop him up before a Texas starter goes down.
Teams That Could Come Calling: Athletics, Rockies, Red Sox, Braves, plus any team who wants a multi-inning reliever.
I saved the best for last, and not just because it’s the longest list of players by far. Look at those names! I bet you didn’t even know Neftalí Feliz was still kicking around in affiliated ball. Heck, even I didn’t know that until I saw he signed with the Mariners. Jesse Chavez is hoping for yet another one last hurrah. (Justin Verlander is the only active player older than Chavez.) Meanwhile, a lot of the arms in their early 30s or late 20s are just trying to extend their careers for as long as possible or recapture successes from earlier this decade.
Teams That Could Come Calling: Take your pick of any of the 30 clubs. Teams always need relievers!
Ronald Acuña Jr. did something we’ve never seen in 2023, becoming the first player to combine at least 40 homers and 70 stolen bases in the same season en route to NL MVP honors. Unfortunately, Acuña followed up that spectacular season by doing something we had seen before when he tore his anterior cruciate ligament. Having already torn his right ACL just before the All-Star break in 2021, he tore his left one last May 26. While he was playing defense for the first one and stealing a base for the second, the end result was the same: season-ending surgery and a massive hole in the Braves’ lineup. The team has taken his rehab more slowly this time around. Acuña will start the year on the injured list, and likely miss the first month if not more.
When Acuña reported to camp in mid-February, the Braves said that he wouldn’t play in any Grapefruit League games. The 27-year-old slugger has since been cleared for some baseball activity, and has been entertaining onlookers with his long-distance home runs in batting practice, building a legend in the process. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Ken Suguria, Braves manager Brian Snitker claimed that one Acuña homer cleared a video board beyond left center field at CoolToday Park, the team’s spring facility — a shot that would have traveled at least 450 feet.
“[Hitting coach Tim Hyers] was saying he was in the cage the other day and [Acuña was] whistling that bat around like guys would do a Wiffle bat,” Snitker told reporters. “He’s probably as strong as he’s ever been right now.” Read the rest of this entry »
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