In the few weeks following the conclusion of the World Series, with no meaningful major league games on the calendar until March, our collective attention shifts quickly to hot stove season. But as eager as we are to start slotting free agents into new rotations, bullpens, and lineups, there’s a bit of paperwork to take care of before the full extent of the winter’s class is even known. Teams have exclusive five-day windows with their departing clients, players and teams decide to opt in or out of optional contract years, and qualifying offers are issued and routinely rejected.

This past Friday was one of the final deadlines of MLB’s early offseason, by which teams had to choose whether or not to tender contracts to players on their 40-man roster with fewer than six years of service time. Those tendered contracts will remain under team control in 2024, but those whom teams declined to offer contracts were added to the free-agent pool and will look for work elsewhere. By the end of the day, a majority of teams had at least one extra empty 40-man spot, and dozens of players — headlined by two-time All-Star Brandon Woodruff — were newly available.

Woodruff, who is recovering from a shoulder surgery and will miss most of the upcoming season, is certainly the standout arm in this year’s cohort of non-tenders, but he’s not exactly the prototypical non-tender. In this year’s crop, there are a number of interesting low-profile arms who are looking to re-establish themselves as bullpen contributors with another big league opportunity after injuries or stretches of underperformance. Let’s take a look at a handful of guys who will be hoping to find good fits as low-risk potential contributors over the next few months. Read the rest of this entry »

If you were hoping for a return to larger Hall of Fame classes after a lean few years for candidates on the BBWAA ballot, this is your year. After the writers elected just two candidates in the last three cycles — nobody on the 2021 ballot, then David Ortiz and Scott Rolen in the two years since — it’s extremely likely we’ll get multiple honorees this year, a reminder of the unprecedented flood of 22 honorees in seven years from 2014–20. The list of newcomers is headed by 3,000-hit club member Adrián Beltré and six-time All-Stars Joe Mauer and Chase Utley, while the top two returnees, Todd Helton and Billy Wagner, are both within reach of the magic 75% threshold.

It’s officially ballot season, as the BBWAA unveiled its 26-candidate slate on Monday. Over the next six weeks I’ll profile all of the ones likely to wind up on voters’ ballots ahead of the December 31 deadline, with a small handful of profiles trickling into January. I’ll be examining their cases in light of my Jaffe WAR Score (JAWS) system, which I’ve used to break down Hall of Fame ballots in an annual tradition that’s almost old enough to drink. The series debuted at Baseball Prospectus (2004-12), then moved to SI.com (2013-18), which provided me an opportunity to go into greater depth on each candidate. In 2018, I brought the series to FanGraphs, where my coverage has become even more expansive.

Today I’ll offer a quick look at the biggest questions attached to this year’s election cycle, but first… Read the rest of this entry »

Admit it: you had a feeling it might go this way. Aaron Nola is headed back to Philadelphia. After a short trip to free agency, he re-signed with the Phillies for seven years and $172 million, as USA TODAY’s Bob Nightengale first reported. He’s the first domino to fall this offseason, but this was hardly a shocking outcome. The move makes a lot of sense for both team and player, which helps explain why it came to pass so swiftly.

Let’s start with the team side of things. The Phillies are bona fide World Series contenders, and they’re built to win right this minute. Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, and J.T. Realmuto are all at or near the peak of their careers. Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos are in the same boat. The Philly offense is so good right now that it would be borderline criminal not to contend, and that’s clearly been the team’s plan. They made the World Series in 2022, then went out and added Turner in the offseason to bolster their squad.

If they didn’t act this offseason, they’d be moving in the wrong direction. The Phillies’ recent regular seasons may have been built around an excellent offense, but their playoff plan has been all about pitching. Nola and Zack Wheeler have each been October workhorses; taking advantage of off days, they’ve started 19 of the team’s 30 playoff games in the last two years. Giving the ball to elite starters that frequently takes pressure off both the rest of the rotation and the bullpen, the team’s two great weaknesses. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency has been ongoing for two weeks now, but for the most part, the big dominoes are yet to fall. While teams certainly have their sights set on the likes of Shohei Ohtani and Cody Bellinger, the early offseason has been defined by smaller moves and signings made around the non-tender and Rule 5 protection deadlines.

The players being exchanged aren’t the most notable members of their respective rosters, yet they’ll still impact the quality of their teams in the upcoming season. We’ll be knocking out many of the more intriguing pitchers who have changed hands in this two-part series. Read the rest of this entry »

The non-tender deadline isn’t usually an event that screams star power. The players involved are pre-free agency, making them cheap and controllable — qualities that appeal mightily to big league GMs. So if there’s even a question about whether a player is worth retaining or trading, as opposed to cutting loose, that usually means the player is neither good nor particularly promising.

All that goes out the window, apparently, when it comes to a pitcher who just underwent shoulder surgery. The Atlanta Braves, who went all Marie Kondo on their 40-man roster as the weekend approached, sent Kyle Wright to the Royals in exchange for Jackson Kowar. The same day, the Milwaukee Brewers did them one better and flat-out non-tendered two-time All-Star Brandon Woodruff. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve already heard it from me. You’ve already heard it from a lot of people. You’re going to keep hearing it all offseason. This is a tough year for teams that want to add offensive firepower in free agency. Unless you’re really into Cody Bellinger or Matt Chapman, it’s Shohei Ohtani or bust, and according to my math, there are 30 teams and only one Ohtani.

That’s a bleak reality, but it paints with too broad of a brush. That description makes it sound like every team who needs a hitter to play anywhere is in equally dire straits. That’s not true, though. If you’re looking for a third baseman or a righty power bat with questionable defensive value, you have options. If you want to sign an intriguing young corner outfielder who might pay dividends a few years down the road, Jung-hoo Lee is a solid choice. But if you’re looking for a catcher – sorry, pal, nothing to see here.

Every year is a bad year for free agent catchers. In the last five years, three catchers have hit the open market after a 3-plus WAR season or its 2020 equivalent: J.T. Realmuto, James McCann, and Willson Contreras. Realmuto was a perennial All-Star when he re-upped with the Phillies, and Contreras has been a valuable offensive contributor for quite some time, but McCann only barely qualifies; he put together a nice season over 111 plate appearances in 2020. If you’re looking for a star catcher, free agency is the wrong place to set your sights. Read the rest of this entry »

My September 10 Sunday Notes column included Chris Antonetti addressing his team’s 2023 offensive struggles. According to Cleveland’s President of Baseball Operations, “The problem isn’t power, the problem is that we need to score more runs.” While I don’t necessarily disagree with the exec’s opinion, it is nonetheless true that the Guardians hit the fewest home runs of any team and finished fourth from the bottom in runs scored. Moreover, they finished 76-86 after going 92-70 in 2022.

I revisited the issue, at least in part, during this month’s GM meetings. I asked Antonetti’s second in command, Mike Chernoff, if the club needs to reassess some of its philosophies going forward.

“If you rewind the clock one year, we felt like we massively outperformed industry expectations,” Cleveland’s General Manager told me “We won 92 games with the youngest team in baseball. This year, we again had the youngest team in baseball. We hit a few unfortunate and untimely injuries with some of our starting pitching, but at the same time we transitioned three young starters in [Gavin] Williams, [Tanner] Bibee, and [Logan] Allen to the major-league team. We just didn’t perform as well offensively. So we don’t feel like wholesale changes are necessary. We feel like we have a really strong foundation off of which to continue building, but we also don’t have a lot of room for error as a small-market team.”

Industry expectations are one thing, in-house projection systems are another. With that in mind, I asked Chernoff if the 2022 Guardians outperformed their own projections, and if the 2023 club underperformed them. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the possible significance of this year’s unanimous award votes, the public unveiling of Shohei Ohtani’s dog, what they learned (and didn’t learn) from the new ESPN documentary Shohei Ohtani: Beyond the Dream (21:42), and where they’d prefer for Ohtani to sign (1:01:16). Then (1:10:42) they conduct the ninth EW free-agent-contract over/under draft.

Audio intro: Gabriel-Ernest, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: The Gagnés, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to AL MVP voting
Link to NL MVP voting
Link to Posnanski on unanimity
Link to Ohtani dog video
Link to refurbished Furby
Link to dog diving and fetching
Link to 2017 Ohtani finalists
Link to Ohtani destination ranking
Link to Beyond the Dream trailer
Link to Beyond the Dream info
Link to “and I took that personally”
Link to Sabathia doc
Link to story on Ohtani and M’s
Link to MLBTR top 50 list
Link to FG top 50 list
Link to drafts/competitions sheet
Link to over/under draft wiki
Link to Petriello on Bellinger
Link to Sheehan on Bellinger
Link to draft results
Link to Secret Santa sign-up sheet

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Late Thursday night, after the final horn had sounded on the last West Coast NHL game, new White Sox general manager Chris Getz consummated his first trade in his new role, sending sinker-balling lefty reliever Aaron Bummer to Atlanta for a five-player variety pack of “second division” players and reclamation projects. The new White Sox are headlined by 26-year-old 2019 All-Star righty Michael Soroka, 28-year-old infielder Nicky Lopez, and 25-year-old lefty starter Jared Shuster, all of whom can be reasonably expected to impact the 2024 squad. Chicago also acquired 25-year-old infielder Braden Shewmake, who is also on the 40-man roster, and 2023 undrafted free agent starter Riley Gowens, who is more of a developmental project from the University of Illinois. Read the rest of this entry »