Let’s be honest: Dylan Cease is in the general baseball consciousness to such an extent right now because it’s all we have. The free agent class of 2023-24 was weak to begin with, and Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto have already signed. Juan Soto is now a Yankee. Tyler Glasnow got traded. Cease is such a focus because the shiniest free agents are gone and because if your team isn’t going to spend any money – Hi there, O’s! – he’s the best imaginable improvement.

Cease is a good pitcher with flaws. He’s a strikeout machine thanks to his glorious slider, and he’s made every start available to him for four straight years. He also walks far too many batters – partially thanks to his glorious slider – and despite sitting 95-97 mph, his fastball is remarkably hittable. Add that all up, and his aggregate numbers over that four-year span – 3.58 ERA, 3.70 FIP, 12.3 WAR in 585 innings – are excellent. But he always feels one bad start away from regression, one batter realizing that slider is unhittable away from a six-walk outing.

All that is to say that Cease probably isn’t the no-doubt ace that his 2022 season portended, but he’s a very good pitcher nonetheless. Steamer thinks he’s somewhere between the 21st and 40th best pitcher in baseball, which isn’t as good as his results, but I’m willing to take the over on that projection because a lot of it seems to rely on his home run prevention declining meaningfully. If your team has Cease as their second-best pitcher in 2024, they’re probably ecstatic about the top of their rotation. If they have him penciled in as their best pitcher, they might still be okay! He’s good, is my point. 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 final team is the Chicago White Sox.

Batters

In a certain way, this team is a bit more depressing than the Oakland Athletics. No, they’re not trying to peace out of Chicago, but I think the A’s front office is probably more realistic about the team’s immediate chances of winning than the Southsiders are. It’s always hard to gauge exactly what a team truly thinks of their outlook, but I get the impression that the White Sox think they will be at least halfway competitive in 2024. Realistically, though, a lot of things would have to go their way, even in a weak division like the AL Central.

The Pale Hose have a one-dude offense in a sport where that isn’t a thing. Luis Robert Jr. is in his prime right now, probably at his peak form. If the White Sox were actually rebuilding, he’s the guy they could trade to start meaningfully restocking the farm system. Instead, he’ll be a key cog in their quest to win 70 games. Read the rest of this entry »

The first two months of the offseason were entirely defined by one player: Shohei Ohtani. The two-way star’s departure for (the actual city of) Los Angeles had a particularly meaningful effect on his former club, which is in need of some major moves to be remotely competitive in his absence. To fill the Ohtani-sized hole on the roster, the Angels have signed… a 37-year old reliever, two different sidearmers named Adam, and a hurler whose claim to fame is having suffered multiple self-inflicted injuries as a result of frustration. In spite of these lackluster additions, ZiPS views this team rather favorably given the circumstances – nowhere near title favorites, but not complete embarrassments either. And while none of the relievers they’ve added thus far will really move the needle in either direction, their latest signing adds a significant high-leverage arm to the mix, with righty Robert Stephenson inking a three-year deal worth $33 million to come to Anaheim. 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, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

If the BBWAA voters are only as generous as the FanGraphs readers who participated in this year’s Hall of Fame crowdsource ballot, just two candidates will get the nod when the Hall announces the election results on Tuesday, January 23 at 6 PM Eastern — both of them newcomers. In this year’s edition of our annual polling, which drew the highest turnout of the six years in which we’ve conducted this exercise, Adrián Beltré and Joe Mauer both topped 75%, while five other candidates received at least 64% but fell short. That group includes Todd Helton and Billy Wagner, both of whom have reasonable shots at getting their tickets to Cooperstown punched this week. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros undoubtedly view their 2023 season as a disappointment. They won 90 games, their lowest full-season total since 2016. They won the AL West, but only via tiebreaker, and then lost a tight ALCS to the division rival Rangers. Viewed through the lens of Houston’s recent domination of the American League, even a solid result isn’t enough.

Just one problem: There weren’t a lot of obvious places for the team to improve. Their lineup is full of the guys who have been mashing for them for years. José Abreu might theoretically be a weak link, but he looked better in the playoffs, and it’s not like there are a ton of exciting first basemen available in free agency anyway. Michael Brantley’s retirement lets Yordan Alvarez DH more frequently, and between Jake Meyers and Chas McCormick, the team has outfielders to fill any voids out there.

Still, the Astros wanted to get better, and hats off to them for that. Could they use some pitching? Sure, of course, but their top duo of Justin Verlander and Framber Valdez is already great, and I really like both Hunter Brown and J.P. France as options behind them. If there was a weakness, it was a thin bullpen, but that can be fixed. Like, say, for example:

BREAKING: Star closer Josh Hader and the Houston Astros are in agreement on a five-year, $95 million contract, a source tells ESPN.

The deal contains no deferrals. It is the largest present-day value contract for a relief pitcher in baseball history.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) January 19, 2024

Read the rest of this entry »

Jace Jung is following in his brother’s footsteps, albeit via a distinctly different path. Unlike his older sibling, Texas Rangers 2023 rookie standout Josh Jung, the 23-year-old Detroit Tigers infield prospect isn’t a self-professed hitting nerd. Which isn’t to suggest he lacks the skills needed to one day wield an impact bat at the big league level. A top prospect in a solid Detroit system, the younger Jung is coming off of a first full professional season where he slashed .265/.376/.502 with 28 home runs and a 143 wRC+ between High-A West Michigan and Double-A Erie.

His left-handed stroke has long been his calling card. A three-year stalwart at Texas Tech University — the same school Josh attended — Jace put up an 1.116 OPS as a collegian before being taken 12th overall by the Tigers in the 2022 draft. That he’s continued to bash in pro ball is anything but a surprise. Possessing a plus power profile, he is in many ways a mirror image of his right-handed-hitting brother, though again, not when it comes to having an analytic approach to the craft. As he explained to me late in the Arizona Fall League season, Jace is a proponent of keeping things as simple as possible.

———

David Laurila: Your brother told me that you’re not nearly as much of a hitting nerd as he is. How much do you study hitting?

Jace Jung: “I’ve actually gotten into it a lot more this year, trying to figure out what pitchers’ pitches do. At the same time, when I get up to the plate, I mostly just trust my swing. I know that what it comes down to for me is rhythm and timing. So really, I try to keep it as simple as possible when I get up there. I just try to hit the baseball.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Detroit Tigers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth 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 »

Billy Wagner has a chance to be voted into the Hall of Fame this year. As I type these words on Saturday evening, the erstwhile left-handed reliever — this in his penultimate appearance on the BBWAA ballot — is polling at 80.0% with nearly half of the electorate having disclosed their choices. If he finishes at or above the 75% threshold required for induction he will become the ninth closer enshrined in Cooperstown.

Many will argue that closers — at least not those named Mariano Rivera — don’t belong in the Hall of Fame. The reasoning, by and large, is lack of innings thrown (Wagner has just 903), which factors into comparably low WAR totals (Rivera has 38.6, whereas workmanlike starters such as Kenny Rogers and John Lackey are north of 40). Add in a rule that allows for what might be deemed “cheap saves” and the argument against closers is understandable.

Personally, I don’t think there are enough closers in the Hall of Fame. It’s not as though the role isn’t important, and it certainly isn’t recent. The first 15-save season came exactly 100 years ago, with Firpo Marberry doing the honors with the Washington Senators (the right-hander added two more saves in that year’s World Series). Marberry subsequently logged the first 20-save season in 1926, and by career’s end he’d led the American League in saves and appearances six times each. Marberry isn’t in the Hall of Fame, but when you factor in his historical significance — ditto his higher JAWS score than all of Rollie Fingers, Lee Smith, and Bruce Sutter — he arguably should be.

If a “closer” with Marberry’s statistical résumé — he finished with 99 saves and 148 wins (56 of them as a reliever) — could be deemed Hall-worthy, what about a Wagner contemporary like John Franco? While not as overpowering as Wagner, Franco did amass 424 saves — two more than the on-the-doorstep Hall of Famer’s total, and the most ever for a southpaw. Moreover, it ranks fifth-most all-time, while his 1,119 appearances ranks third-most. With the caveat that JAWS isn’t bullish on his credentials, Franco presents an intriguing case. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the offseason doldrums and this winter’s free-agent activity compared to last year’s, the Josh Hader and Robert Stephenson signings (with a contract over/under draft update), a bleak week in sports (and non-sports) media, pitcher/catcher technique and the automated strike zone, and the invasion of players named Jackson, followed by Stat Blasts (1:14:48) about Hader’s strikeout splits by out count, “minimum journeymen,” the longest palindromic win-loss sequences, and the most consecutive games started at catcher.

Audio intro: Ian H., “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Lobner Facebook post
Link to Jake/Jordan FA tweet
Link to MLBTR on Graveman
Link to MLBTR on Hader
Link to MLBTR on Uwasawa
Link to MLBTR on Stephenson
Link to RP K% post-6/2
Link to over/under draft results
Link to The Ringer on SI
Link to apocalypse sign article
Link to The Atlantic on Pitchfork
Link to L.A. Times layoffs story
Link to Axios on media layoffs
Link to Defector on VC greed
Link to The Nation on ESPN/NFL
Link to Tango on intended location
Link to Ben on Lincecum in 2014
Link to Eno on command in 2018
Link to Tango on catcher location
Link to Tango on catcher lunges
Link to Tango on framing
Link to EW Episode 2054
Link to EW Episode 1851
Link to BA on Jacksons
Link to Jackson baby name data
Link to strikeout splits Stathead
Link to leaguewide strikeout splits
Link to minimum journeymen sheet
Link to palindrome Reddit question
Link to palindromic records sheet
Link to C start streak sheet
Link to C start % averages
Link to catcher ironmen page
Link to FG post on qualified catchers
Link to Ben on catcher fatigue
Link to study on player rest
Link to FG post on qualified catchers
Link to Stat Blast on qualified hitters
Link to Frankie Hayes SABR bio
Link to Young Sheldon spinoff story
Link to Stat Blast song cover
Link to all Stat Blast covers

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Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Patreon supporter Nick Taber banter about Nick’s baseball background and MLB’s most hated teams, then (19:41) answer listener emails about baseball’s newsbreakers as secret newsmakers, a baseball mercenary who plays for multiple teams in the same city (or who has it out for one particular opponent), whether we would remember the year with the last perfect game, making early playoff rounds longer than late rounds, a player whose stats improve depending on how much money he’s paid, allowing teams to choose the number of defenders in the field, picking the preferred way for Shohei Ohtani to specialize (if he had to choose one), a super-philanthropic free agent, and more.

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

Link to Cowboys collapse article
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Link to EW Episode 2109
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Link to EW Episode 2108
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Link to 2020 donations article 1
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Link to listener emails database
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