12:03

Dan Szymborski: Greetings all!

12:05

Dan Szymborski: I’m OK with it!

12:05

Dan Szymborski: I mean, I would have preferred Valdez

12:05

Dan Szymborski: but given no Valdez, I’d rather have additional starter depth than not

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things that people like to ask me about when it comes to the ZiPS projections is how they change over time. While knowing what the projections are now is, of course, highly useful, it’s also interesting to see who has changed the most in the algorithms, since they basically represent the players who we should feel differently about compared to how we did before. Knowing how changes in a player affect performance models can also reveal an interesting fact or two about how players develop and age.

After running through the hitters who have gained and declined the most in my piece yesterday, today I’ll look at the pitchers who have done the same. The methodology I’ve chosen here is a simple one: I’m ranking the difference in 2026 WAR as it’s projected now compared to what it was as of Opening Day 2025. For the decliners, I didn’t include the off-the-radar types. While it’s good to know if a fringe High-A prospect hit a wall at Double-A, it’s more impactful to see the declines among the more roster-relevant players than the poor fellow who saw his -1.0 WAR projection slip to -2.5 WAR. Also left out were guys whose decline in WAR is mostly the result of a major arm injury. It’s worth noting that there will be slight differences between ZiPS WAR and the WAR recorded here on FanGraphs. There are a few methodological differences that can move a few runs here or there, with the most notable being that ZiPS doesn’t purely use FIP, but rather estimates how much of an ERA-FIP discrepancy is attributable to the pitcher based on their history of outperforming or underperforming their defenses.

I’ll start with the gainers, diving deeper on a few of the standouts:

In 2024, I included Hunter Brown in my annual Booms and Busts column, and while he did break out that season, he has basically experienced a second breakout last year, going from a good pitcher to a legitimate Cy Young contender. There’s a lot to love about Brown — he misses bats, he doesn’t walk guys, and he’s difficult to hit hard — and nothing really to dislike. There are no hidden spiders lurking in the Statcast data to give you a jump scare, either. At this point, Brown is probably the most irreplaceable member of the Houston Astros, and if he doesn’t fit your definition of a legitimate ace, then there might only be one or two of them in baseball:

Jacob deGrom is the only pitcher who made this list primarily due to improved health, but I’m going to allow it, as we shouldn’t ignore what a few good late-career seasons would to do to buttress his Hall of Fame chances. Honestly, just adding some bulk to his stats and innings would do a lot; while the electorate has changed greatly in the last decade and will continue to do so, I’m not sure 75% of the voters would want to induct a starting pitcher with fewer than 100 wins. I mean, I still would have voted for him, but I’m weird. deGrom has dialed things back slightly in order to stay healthy, and so far it has been a good tradeoff; plus, he’s still throwing harder than the vast majority of pitchers out there:

The 2025 season saw Cristopher Sánchez take over as the ace of the Phillies’ rotation. Sánchez’s improvement was fairly consistent across the board, and it was supported by Statcast data. Especially interesting was his contact rate, which could support an even higher K/9 rate than the career-high 9.45 he posted last year, and didn’t come at the expense of anything else:

Garrett Crochet put up a Cy Young-esque season in 2024, but naturally, a projection system is going to be a bigger believer in a pitcher when he does something like that twice. Pitchers always come with injury risk, but getting through two healthy seasons does have real predictive value for guys coming off of serious injuries. By the end of his Red Sox contract, ZiPS thinks that Crochet will be around the level of Jon Lester and Mel Parnell in the Red Sox southpaw pecking order:

After a phenomenal debut for the Pirates in 2024, Skenes basically did it again in 2025, in 50 more big league innings, and with basically no meaningful regression toward the mean. ZiPS never hated Skenes or anything, but now it loves him even more than it did a year ago. Add in his age and contract situation, and he’s the most valuable pitcher in baseball:

While ZiPS doesn’t think Andrew Abbott is a potential ace, it’s fairly confident that he’s a reasonable no. 2 starter, with some upside remaining in his strikeout rate. He has been the ninth-best pitcher in the majors the last two seasons (minimum 200 combined innings) in hard-hit percentage against, which has enabled him to survive in a very good home run-hitting park and without a great offspeed pitch to befuddle righties:

Before we turn to the decliners, some rapid fire thoughts on the remaining gainers. Nolan McLean probably won’t match the numbers he put up in his first eight starts with the Mets this year, but that’s no reason to be skeptical of him. He improved across a full season in the high minors, facing little resistance from opposing hitters at Triple-A. We could very well be talking about McLean as a Cy Young contender in short order, mirroring Hunter Brown’s trajectory. Shane Smith was one of the highlights on a White Sox team that you probably didn’t watch much otherwise. With his velocity ticking up another notch in his first professional season as a full-time starter, and a changeup that seems almost cruel when it’s working, he’s a legitimate no. 2 starter with room to improve even further. Jesus Lúzardo’s sinker has become a real weapon, and his stats bounced back after an injury-riddled 2024 season. He looks set to get a pretty sizable pay day a year from now, lockout willing.

A sudden dip in strikeout rate from an older pitcher frequently spells imminent misfortune, but Merrill Kelly arrested that decline a bit, and should have at least another year or two as a decent mid-rotation option. ZiPS would still like to see Jacob Misiorowski lose another walk per nine off his stat line, and he may do just that; his 42% first-strike percentage improved to 51% at Triple-A in 2025, and then averaged nearly 58% for the Brewers. ZiPS sees a command collapse as a lot less likely than it did a year ago. Matthew Boyd was shockingly good in eight starts for the Guardians at the end of 2024, and though he didn’t post 10 strikeouts per game again in 2025, he was still good enough be a phenomenal bargain for the Cubs on a two-year, $29.5 million deal. If you believe ZiPS, he’s also pretty important, as the computer sees the Cubs’ rotation depth as one of the things that could stop them in their attempt to knock off the Brewers in the NL Central.

ZiPS knows enough to look at a minor league command pitcher with a healthy dose of skepticism, but Mitch Bratt’s control is so good, and he does miss bats, so the computer thinks there’s a decent chance that he’ll be its next control pitcher obsession after Dean Kremer. Adrian Houser is probably the most puzzling guy on this list for me, as he seems to struggle with a lot of the things ZiPS cares about; he doesn’t throw hard or miss bats, and he can get hit pretty hard. But ZiPS is designed to be more accepting over time when players consistently outperform their peripheral data, as Houser has done in all but his 2024 season. Jack Leiter didn’t dominate last season by any means, but he showed he’s a reasonable mid-rotation option, and he’s still kind of raw, meaning there’s upside left here.

I’m going to talk more briefly about the decliners than the improvers. After all, spring should be about hope, not depression, and there really aren’t any big surprises on this list:

ZiPS was holding out hope for Walker Buehler after a so-so comeback in 2024, but after a 2025 season in which he lost another strikeout per game, added another walk, and saw another tick of velocity evaporate into the Jered Weaver great beyond, ZiPS has gotten to the point where it’s noping out of expecting big things from him in 2026. You know you’re not having a good season when your team cuts you loose in the middle of a hot postseason race. Buehler’s numbers were so poor that I’m not sure he’s going to even have an easy time getting a pillow contract for 2026:

Unlike a lot of the pitchers on this list, ZiPS still believes in Quinn Mathews’ future, and his higher percentile projections are still very good. He remained damned hard to make contact against in 2025, but it’s very difficult to survive walking nearly 20% of the batters you face. With a first-strike percentage down in the low 40s, that brutal walk rate wasn’t flukey, either:

ZiPS always had Roki Sasaki done for a less sterling forecast than fellow NPB transplants Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shota Imanaga, but he turned out to be even more raw than the projections expected. There’s still a great deal of upside here, but it might take a while for the Dodgers to really find it:

After a successful initial return from Korea, the Cardinals hoped Erick Fedde would continue to be a solid no. 2/3 starter who could eat 160-180 innings. Instead, Fedde’s 2025 was an almost unmitigated disaster, with his strikeout rate plummeting and his walk rate nearly doubling. The Statcast data don’t offer any silver linings:

Sandy Alcantara has the privilege of being the best projected pitcher on the decliners list, as the computer still expects him to be league average in 2026. While he was a lot better than his 5.36 ERA indicated, Alcantara’s return from Tommy John surgery did not go smoothly, so there is significant risk here. I’m actually hopeful that he can comfortably beat his projections. He’s still a target to be traded, but I’m not sure a contender is the best fit for him, at least not one that would really need him to return to his form from a few years ago:

I’ll close with a few thoughts on a few of the more interesting remaining decliners. The computer was hoping that Davis Daniel would develop into a solid, back-of-the-rotation innings-eater given his decent history in the high minors, but he couldn’t even get Triple-A hitters out, which is kind of a useful prerequisite for big leauge success of any kind. Cal Quantrill leaving the Mile High City didn’t do anything to salvage him as an innings-eater, and he only landed a minor league deal this offseason. ZiPS was already projecting a big disappointment from Alexis Díaz in 2025, and he more than fulfilled those expectations, even walking seven batters a game in Triple-A. Neither the Dodgers or Braves had any success fixing him after the Reds threw in the towel, but he’s got at least one more chance remaining after signing a one-year deal with the Rangers.

Shane Drohan might be the least well-known of the three players the Milwaukee Brewers acquired in Monday’s six-player swap with the Boston Red Sox, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t talented, nor is it an indication that he lacks a big league future. Fully healthy and with a more diverse arsenal than he possessed prior to undergoing shoulder surgery 24 months ago, Drohan arguably profiles less as a long shot and more as a diamond in the rough. As my colleague Davy Andrews put it when assessing the deal, “The Brewers get the chance to work their magic on two young pitchers,” with the other being Kyle Harrison.

A 27-year-old southpaw whom the Red Sox took in the fifth round of the 2020 draft out of Florida State University, Drohan is coming off a 2025 season that saw him log a 3.00 ERA, 3.11 FIP, and 34.5% strikeout rate over 54 innings, the bulk of which came at Triple-A Worcester. Health was once again an issue, though this time it wasn’t his shoulder: The Fort Lauderdale native was out of action from early May until mid-August due to forearm inflammation.

Drohan discussed his arsenal, including how it was impacted by having gone under the knife two years ago, when the Red Sox held their annual rookie development camp at Fenway Park in mid-January.

———


David Laurila: I’ve seen your scouting profile, but how do you view yourself as a pitcher? What makes you effective?

Shane Drohan: “I think the biggest reason I’m effective is that I mix a lot. I have a large arsenal, five pitches, that I’m essentially comfortable throwing in any count. I’ll even throw curveballs, changeups, and sliders on 3-0. That puts a lot of pressure on the hitters, knowing that they can’t cancel out any pitch. I also attack both lefties and righties with my entire arsenal. I don’t limit myself against one side or the other.” Read the rest of this entry »

Scout long enough, and you’ll write every kind of report. Good ones, bad ones, accurate projections for the wrong reasons, misfires despite a good process. Like baseball itself, evaluating players is hard. You’ll be right plenty, but everyone has whiffs. While some reports miss the mark more than others, the ones that sting most are the ones you don’t learn from. Even the worst reports can turn into a positive if they change your thinking or provide a valuable lesson along the way.

Sometimes, these lessons are simple. Bet on the athletes. Be leery of the guy with a 55% contact rate. Others come in waves, sometimes over an extended period of time. Such was the case with Richy Valdez, a Royals pitcher with a live arm who was both the subject of the report with the greatest misalignment between the grade I submitted and what wound up happening, and the bridge between two lessons that made me a better evaluator than if I’d never come across him. We’ll come back to him in a second. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week was a huge one for the Tigers’ rotation. First, Framber Valdez agreed to terms on a three-year, $115 million deal, and then Tarik Skubal won a record-setting $32 million salary in arbitration. On Tuesday, the day before the team’s pitchers and catchers were scheduled to report to the Tigers’ spring training facilities in Lakeland, Florida, that rotation was in the news again, as Justin Verlander agreed to a reunion via a one-year deal. Shortly afterwards, the team revealed that Reese Olson, who was already reportedly behind schedule, recently underwent surgery for a torn labrum and will miss the season. Additionally, the Tigers added free agent outfielder Austin Slater on a minor league deal.

First and foremost, this is both a homecoming for Verlander, the best right-handed pitcher in team history by WAR (57.9), and potentially his last lap, as he’ll turn 43 on February 20, and will be the majors’ oldest player so long as Rich Hill doesn’t mount a comeback. Drafted out of Old Dominion with the second overall pick in 2004, Verlander debuted with a pair of starts for the Tigers in July 2005, then spent nearly 12 full seasons in Detroit (2006–17) before being traded to the Astros on August 31, 2017. During that time, he won the American League Rookie of the Year award (2006), as well as the AL MVP and the first of his three Cy Youngs (both 2011), while helping the Tigers to four division titles, a Wild Card berth, and two pennants (2006, ’12); he also threw the first two of his three no-hitters for them, in 2007 and ’11. He collected more hardware in Houston in the form of two Cy Youngs and two World Series rings, but while he may have cemented his Hall of Fame credentials elsewhere, odds are a Tigers cap will adorn his plaque.

According to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, Verlander’s contract is for $13 million, though $11 million of that is deferred on a schedule that begins paying out in 2030. While that will bring the average annual value of the deal down a bit, the Tigers now project to pay the Competitive Balance Tax for the first time since 2017; according to RosterResource, their $256.3 million estimated luxury tax payroll is squarely over the first threshold of $244 million. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been FanGraphs’ Lead Prospect Analyst since the summer of 2016, and enough time has now passed that many of the players from the early era of my prospecting here have had big league careers unfold (or fail to). Hindsight allows me to have a pretty definitive idea of whether my call on a player was right or wrong in a binary sense, and to gauge any gap that may exist between my evaluation and what the player ultimately became. Looking back allows me to rate my approach to grading and ranking players so that I might begin to establish some baselines of self-assessment and see how I perform compared to my peers at other publications. For the third year — the 2017 review is here, while the 2018 review is here — I have gathered the various Top 100 prospect rankings from seven years ago for the purposes of such a self-assessment, an exercise I call “How’s My Driving?” This is my audit of the 2019 rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things that people like to ask me about with the projections is how they change over time, rather than what they are. While knowing the actual projections is, of course, highly useful, it’s also interesting to see who has changed the most in the algorithms since they basically represent the players we should feel differently about than we did before. Knowing how changes in a player affect performance models quite often reveals an interesting fact or two about how players develop and age.

The methodology I’ve chosen here is a simple one: I’m ranking the difference in 2026 WAR as projected now against the 2026 projected WAR as of Opening Day in 2025. For the decliners, I didn’t include the off-the-radar types, because while a fringe High-A prospect hitting a wall at Double-A is good info to have, it’s more impactful to see the declines among more roster-relevant players than some poor fellow who saw his -1.0 WAR projection become a -2.5 WAR one.

I would have been very surprised if you had told me before last season that Jakob Marsee was going to snag a spot on my Rookie of the Year ballot, but he hit .292/.363/.478 (133 wRC+) in 234 plate appearances for the Marlins while playing solid defense in center field, good for 2.2 WAR. Though he wasn’t anywhere near as good in the minors prior to his call-up, his 2025 Triple-A wRC+ of 126 translates into a major league performance that would still be quite positive for a competent defensive center fielder, even if he doesn’t maintain the elite offensive output he showed with Miami. Naturally, Marsee does project to regress considerably, into about a league-average hitter, but all the projection systems still see him as a legitimate starter, which was not the case heading into last season.

Jacob Reimer gives the top of this list two Jakes, and I swear I really tried to make a joke involving the 1990 Chinatown sequel starring Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel, but was sadly unable to do so. The Mets may not feel too happy with the ending of their 2025 season, but Reimer’s breakout performance as a prospect is one of the positives they can take away. The presence of Bo Bichette and Brett Baty means that Reimer doesn’t have a clear path to playing third base for the Mets in the majors, but there’s room for him to grab a corner outfield spot, though I think that’s more likely in 2027 than this year.

Obvious AL Rookie of the Year Nick Kurtz has the third-most-improved projection, but unlike Marsee, I had at least an inkling that this might happen. He was one of those players I dread projecting, because when a player has almost no professional experience but an obvious role in the majors, I have to project largely based on college data, which are quite volatile even when you make corrections for conference quality. I noted this in the A’s ZiPS rundown for 2025.

I have no idea if the Nick Kurtz projection is too high, too low, or just right given he has played almost no professional baseball. ZiPS does know his Wake Forest numbers, but college translations are more speculative than crypto currency with meme names.

People have made big sums of money on speculative investments (though I wouldn’t recommend trying to do so), and Kurtz paid off wonderfully for the A’s. After 2025, there’s little doubt about his ability to hit major league pitching. True story: Kurtz is one of only two players I have analyzed under penalty of perjury. I was called for jury duty last October — annoying, during the first few games of the playoffs — and since having “journalist” on your jury questionnaire appears to be something that leads lawyers and the judge to check up on you, I got directly called upon by the defense attorney during voir dire to give my analysis on Roman Anthony’s chances of winning the AL Rookie of the Year award. Strangely, after 90 seconds of my baseball analysis and another question which involved responding to the judge that I couldn’t claim that I wouldn’t be at least slightly distracted with baseball playoff thoughts, I ended up as Juror #2. Hopefully, I was less distracted than Jack Warden’s character in a similar situation. At least I can confidently say that, unlike Nicholas Hoult’s character in Clint Eastwood’s film Juror #2, which was released just before my selection, I was not directly involved in the case.

If Kurtz is as good this season as he was in 2025, he might find his way onto this list again next year!

Sal Stewart crushed it in the minors last year, and was more than respectable for the Reds, and I think there’s a reasonable chance that he fully seizes the job at first base from Spencer Steer fairly early in the season. ZiPS never hated Geraldo Perdomo, but he would’ve been a legitimate MVP candidate last year in a world without Shohei Ohtani, and I’m still a bit flabbergasted that a lot of baseball didn’t seem to notice.

ZiPS thought Ben Rice would hit well entering last season, but his projection took a pretty big dip from his defense at first base, stemming from some really poor minor league defensive numbers. (ZiPS uses ball location data and estimates a catch probability for minor league players.) His glove at first was fine in 2025, so that worry didn’t come to pass, and he beat his offensive projections anyway, meaning we should be even more excited about his bat now. He’ll likely add some WAR to this projection depending on how many stray appearances he gets behind the plate; ZiPS is seeing him here as solely a DH.

ZiPS projected Cal Raleigh to be a star in 2025, but even that turned out to be an undersell, as he put up one of the greatest seasons for a catcher in the history of baseball. Naturally, that has bumped his projection quite a bit, and unless something bad happens or his decline is steeper and earlier than expected, Raleigh has surprisingly started to build a legitimate Hall of Fame case. It’s certainly helpful that he’s a real catcher, not a DH engaging in some baseball-equipment-fetish cosplay.

Zach Cole was hardly a big name prospect, but he destroyed the high minors in 2025, and seemingly has solidified a fourth outfielder job in a Houston position group that’s shallow enough that he could conceivably grab a full-time spot if he works out well. Getting to run with the full-time job at third for the Rays, Caminero busted out for 45 homers and a spot in the middle of the lineup written in permanent marker. Yeah, it’s too bad he didn’t end up a shortstop in the majors, but let’s not be too greedy.

Dylan Jasso and Zach Ehrhard are the two most obscure names on the list, and while they have the weakest projections, they both now have a pretty good shot at being useful role players in the majors. Jasso is probably not going to hit enough to play first base regularly, but if his defense plays at second or third in the majors, he could be a Joey Wendle-esque Useful Dude.

Every year that Aaron Judge decides to skip the whole aging thing and instead put up a historically great season, he’s likely to end up this list the following February. Time always wins in the end, but I’m always happy to see someone give it a good thrashing on the way.

Carson Roccaforte is an interesting outfield candidate for the Royals, and while we should be suspicious of high-walk, low-contact minor leaguers, he’s also fast enough and a good enough defensive center fielder that he could escape being one of those walk-heavy prospects that just don’t work out. After a dynamite first full professional season, Twins first-rounder Kaelen Culpepper has quickly become one of the projection system’s favorites, and he will appear prominently on the ZiPS Top 100 next week.

Many were disappointed in Drake Baldwin’s projection going into the 2025 season, and I assured people that it could go up quickly if he had a big season. He earned his Rookie of the Year award, and since my pants are not on fire, his projection did in fact improve quickly.

And now, the frowny portion of our proceedings.

ZiPS had been banging the Eguy Rosario drum for a while. It didn’t think anything crazy like he’d be a superstar, but he was an infielder in his early 20s with experience at all four infield positions who had shown impressive power in the high minors, even after making proper adjustments for the Pacific Coast League. In a few cups of espresso in the majors, he wasn’t overmatched either, with a .783 OPS and five homers in just 100 plate appearances. But after not making the Padres roster at the start of 2025, he had a disaster of a season, with his bat first disappearing so quickly that he was sent down to the Arizona Complex League for a spell, and finished the season with a combined .192/.266/.297 line across four minor league levels. Quite shocking for a guy coming off a .900 OPS season for Triple-A El Paso! Naturally, that has sent his stock collapsing faster than any market crash I can compare it to in order for this analogy to work. Rosario was recently designated for assignment, and despite this, he’s probably worth a pickup for a rebuilding team.

ZiPS still likes Brayden Taylor’s glove quite a lot, but his struggles upon promotion to Double-A has caused his chances of hitting well enough to start in the majors to take a big hit, especially since he wasn’t young for the level. My colleague David Laurila wrote about Taylor’s season on this very website last week.

Thayron Liranzo was acquired by the Detroit Tigers in the 2024 Jack Flaherty trade with the Dodgers (along with Trey Sweeney), and the hope was that he would be pushing for a catcher/DH role-player spot at this point, but he struggled to hit at Double-A, a bad sign for a catching prospect who is far from a guarantee to be able to handle the position in the majors. The only silver lining is that catching prospects tend to have fairly odd developmental patterns, as catcher is the position where the physical aspects of playing the position defensively appear to have a real effect on offensive development.

Jarred Kelenic’s projections get notably worse every season, and this year isn’t an exception. It’s bad enough that he’s barely hit at all in the majors, but he’s struggling a bit more every year against minor league pitching. Kelenic’s Triple-A wRC+ by year: 147, 127, 116, then after a full year in the majors in 2024, a 62 in 2025. He turns 27 this summer, so the once-reasonable “don’t panic, he’s just 22!” arguments no longer hold water. I’m not sure he can even crack the White Sox roster on merit.

I was hopeful that Enrique Bradfield Jr. would be the eventual successor to Cedric Mullins in Baltimore, but while he’s fast and can handle center field defensively, he can’t afford to be a middling contact hitter, since he needs to put the ball in play to leverage his speed effectively. He’s certainly not compensating his whiffs with power.

If you’re still wondering why the Orioles aggressively brought in Pete Alonso and Taylor Ward, note how many of them are here. Alongside Bradfield, there are four more O’s, giving them a third of this list. Joining Bradfield are Jackson Holliday, Heston Kjerstad, Colton Cowser, and Alfredo Velásquez. If this list stretched out to 30 players, we’d also add in Payton Eeles (acquired in November), Coby Mayo, and Tyler O’Neill. I can’t say whether or not the Orioles pay any attention to the ZiPS projections, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their methods had similar concerns about their non-Henderson offensive players.

The Padres farm system is currently ranked among the worst in the majors, but that isn’t the fault of their scouting or player development departments. Rather, it is because A.J. Preller keeps trading away quality prospects in an effort to boost the big league roster. Just last summer, San Diego’s president of baseball operations dealt Leo De Vries — the best prospect moved at the deadline in the opinion of Eric Longenhagen — as well as Braden Nett, Boston Bateman, Ryan Bergert, and several others. One year earlier, Jakob Marsee and Robby Snelling were among the youngsters moved.

That isn’t to say the cupboard has been left bare. While admittedly on the lighter side, the system does include a number of promising players. Mike Daly plays an important role in their development. Currently the club’s assistant director of player development, Daly has two-plus decades of experience in professional baseball, serving not only in player dev positions, but also as a scout and, for one season, a minor league manager.

Daly discussed the state of the Padres pipeline in a recent phone conversation.

———

David Laurila: A.J. trades a lot of prospects. What is the process when prospective deals are discussed? I assume the player development and scouting departments have at least some say?

Mike Daly: “I can’t speak for A.J., but there is a lot of continuity. There are a number of people that have been with A.J., with the organization, for a number of years: Josh Stein, Pete DeYoung, Chris Kemp, to name just a few of the leaders. A lot of scouts come into our system and are able to see our players, and spend time with our players and our coaches. Certainly, our R&D department has a heavy say on our players. They know their value. They know what their projections look like. And then there are a lot of conversations amongst the PD group. So, whenever decisions are made about trading players, there are many voices factored in as we try to make the best decision for the organization.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about new (and encouraging) details about MLB.TV registration, Justin Verlander returning to the Tigers, the rites of spring training, and the Rafael Devers trade in retrospect, before previewing the 2026 Milwaukee Brewers (20:50) with The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Curt Hogg, and the 2026 Texas Rangers (1:08:28) with MLB.com’s Kennedi Landry.

Audio intro: Ian Phillips, “Effectively Wild Theme”
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Link to MLB.TV sign-up details
Link to in-market streaming details
Link to MLBTR on Verlander
Link to over/under draft
Link to EWStats post 1
Link to EWStats post 2
Link to late-signing pitchers post
Link to Casas post
Link to Lindor injury story
Link to Schwellenbach injury story
Link to Jays injuries story
Link to Ben on spring injuries
Link to Crochet announcement
Link to FG post on Durbin deal
Link to FG projected standings
Link to BP projected standings
Link to team payrolls
Link to Brewers offseason tracker
Link to Brewers depth chart
Link to team SS projections
Link to team 3B projections
Link to MLBTR on Contreras surgery
Link to 2025 catcher WAR leaderboard
Link to 2025 catcher IP leaderboard
Link to Sam on Brewers grounders
Link to NL RotY voting
Link to Curt’s author archive
Link to Curt’s podcast
Link to Rangers offseason tracker
Link to Rangers depth chart
Link to SP depth charts
Link to RP depth charts
Link to Burger article
Link to 2025 team batting age
Link to 2025 team pitching age
Link to Kennedi’s author archive

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Final rosters for the 2026 World Baseball Classic were announced late last week, so aside from small changes due to injuries or insurance eligibility decisions, we now know who will be suiting up for each nation when the tournament begins early next month. In this series of posts you’ll find a team-by-team breakdown with notable players, storylines to monitor, and speculation on the serious stuff, such as how the squad will fare on the field, as well as commentary on some of the less serious stuff, like uniforms and team aura.

First, a quick refresher on how the WBC works and all the important details for this year’s edition. Twenty nations qualify for the tournament based on performance either in pool play during the previous WBC or during qualifying events last spring. The 20 teams are divided into four pools of five teams for the first stage of the tournament, which runs from March 5 to March 11. Team pool assignments were made last April and attempted to prioritize competitive balance (understanding that final rosters were not yet known), with host nations assigned to pools playing in their home countries. This year, pool play will be conducted at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Daikin Park in Houston, the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, and LoanDepot Park in Miami.

During pool play, each team plays the other four teams in its assigned pool, and the two teams with the best record in each pool advance to the Knockout stage. During the Knockout stage, the remaining eight teams are placed into a single-elimination bracket that will determine the overall winner. The first round of bracket play will take place on March 13 and 14, with the semifinals on March 15 and 16, and the championship game on March 17.

Read the rest of this entry »