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”
Audio interstitial 1: Philip Bergman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 2: Garrett Krohn, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Beatwriter, “Effectively Wild Theme”

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 »

Read the rest of this entry »

As you read this, baseball players across the world are flocking to Florida and Arizona. Pitchers and catchers have started reporting. Another annual rite: The last hitter among our Top 50 free agents just signed. Marcell Ozuna and the Pirates are in agreement on a one-year deal worth $12 million, as Jeff Passan first reported. The 35-year-old DH is the latest in a string of mid-market acquisitions, both in free agency and trade, as Pittsburgh improves its lineup in support of Paul Skenes and a dynamic pitching staff.

Allow me to say the obvious thing first: Even with their other moves, the Pirates needed another bat, and it’s great they got one. We project Ozuna as the best hitter on the entire roster. That’s not the kind of acquisition you generally make with a one-year deal in February. The Pirates might be starting from a low base, but that doesn’t make it any less important that they improve. They only have Skenes under team control for so long! This deal makes them better by more than anything else they could have done this week. There are no better free agents remaining, no likely trade targets with greater potential impact. But that’s not an entire article, so let’s consider this deal more deeply.

Ozuna is coming off of a down 2025 where he played through a serious hip injury. It was the latest dip in a career of highs and lows, both on and off the field. In 2024, he finished fourth in NL MVP voting after a majestic offensive season, posting a .302/.378/.546 line and a 154 wRC+. That was his second straight season of offensive success, and for Ozuna, a strong rebound from two years in the doldrums. In 2021, he missed most of the season with a broken hand. That season ended with a 20-game suspension under the league’s joint domestic violence policy, and Ozuna then struggled through a below-replacement 2022 that also saw him arrested for a DUI; he later pled no contest and paid a fine. The Braves looked for alternatives – and then of course, two years later, he nearly won MVP. Read the rest of this entry »

Clearly, none of those people who argues that the day after Super Bowl Sunday should be national holiday is in charge of the Brewers or the Red Sox. Things got complicated very early this week, as Milwaukee and Boston announced a six-player trade on Monday morning.

The Brewers received infielder David Hamilton and left-handed pitchers Kyle Harrison and Shane Drohan. The Red Sox received infielders Caleb Durbin, Andruw Monasterio, and Anthony Seigler, along with Milwaukee’s competitive balance Round B draft pick. The headliner of the deal is Durbin, who will slot in as Boston’s everyday second or third baseman. When you factor in that Boston also traded for Willson Contreras, signed Isiah Kiner-Falefa, and claimed Tsung-Che Cheng off waivers, the Red Sox have now added more than an entire infield this offseason. Don’t worry; their infield situation is still plenty complicated. Harrison headlines the package going to Milwaukee. The Brewers get the chance to work their magic on two young pitchers, and they get to add to their collection of speedy, scrappy, undersized infielders.

It was an odd trade in some ways. All six players were on 40-man rosters already. The Red Sox got the comp pick (as of now, the 67th pick in the draft) even though they were also getting the biggest name, a player who will go straight from Milwaukee’s starting lineup into their own. The left-handed Hamilton has a few more tools than the right-handed Monasterio, but the two are at least comparable; it’s likely that the handedness of the two players affected Boston’s willingness to part with him. You could argue that the Brewers gave up more than the Red Sox, but that they needed what they got much more. The Red Sox have one of the deepest rotations in the league, so Harrison is going from a team that would have struggled to find room for him to a team that will likely need him to hold down a rotation spot from day one. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Happy pitchers and catchers day to all, even if your team — those besides the Diamondbacks, White Sox, Giants, Braves, and Red Sox — reports tomorrow or Thursday instead of today

12:02

Jay Jaffe: You can check that information here if you don’t know. https://www.mlb.com/news/spring-training-2026-first-workout-dates

12:03

Jay Jaffe: If you missed it, my latest piece was a tribute to a pair of rubber-armed lefties from the 1960s and ’70s, namely Mickey Lolich (who passed away last week) and Wilbur Wood (who passed away in mid-January). https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-300-a-tribute-to-the-ultra-durable-mic…

12:04

Jay Jaffe: A few of you asked/requested I write about Wood but I was swamped by Hall of Fame coverage at the time so couldn’t get to it but… well, Father Time remains undefeated.

12:06

Jay Jaffe: Lolich is the third member of the Tigers for whom I’ve written a tribute during my time at FanGraphs after AL Kaline and Bill Freehan. From the 1968 Cardinals I also wrote up Lou Brock, Orlando Cepeda, and Bob Gibson when they passed. The World Series took place before I was born but I’ve got a pretty decent working knowledge of it.

12:07

Jay Jaffe: anyway, next on my plate is a roundup of some smaller transactions as camps open. We’ll see just who that contains when the bell rings. And now, on with the show…

Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of people think this job is about immersing oneself in the glorious, vibrant culture of baseball. Feeling the sun on your face, schmoozing with athletes, learning the finest intricacies of a children’s game. And it is, to some extent. Some people think this job is about the craft of writing, and ingesting and disseminating knowledge. It is, to some extent. Some people think this job —at least how we do it here at FanGraphs — is about math, the unforgiving exactitude of numbers. And again, it is, but only to an extent.

The more time I spend doing this job, the more I’ve come to believe it’s about the rules. Sometimes literally — once a week I answer a question for our Members Only mailbag, and it usually has something to do with “Why hasn’t anyone thought to do X?” The answer, more often than not: Because they’re not allowed.

So I’ve found myself spending lots of time with two documents: The major league rulebook and the collective bargaining agreement. The latter document is of interest to most fans because of the ways in which it governs transactions. This is where the minimum salary is established, along with the competitive balance tax and rules about arbitration — the minutiae of which made headline news just last week.

Those are the headline details — the big-money sections, literally — that will likely capture the public’s imagination over the next several months. But the CBA is first and foremost a covenant between labor and capital to govern workplace conditions, and it is herein that you’ll find all manner of fascinating tidbits that fans would never notice or care about, but are important to the everyday lives of the players. Read the rest of this entry »