Most people have never been traded. Most people find a job and go there until they find a better one (or until they move or they get fired or they can’t take it anymore or they die). I don’t have any friends or relatives who showed up for work one day only to be told, “Oh, you don’t work here anymore. We’ve decided you work for the competition.” It must be even weirder for Joey Loperfido, who got traded from the Astros to the Blue Jays at the deadline in 2024 and is now getting traded back. Somewhere out there is an elephant who got pregnant the day the Astros traded Loperfido to the Jays, and that elephant won’t give birth until June.

The 26-year-old Loperfido is headed back to the Astros in a one-for-one lefty-hitting corner outfielder swap for Jesús Sánchez. Sánchez must be feeling like the subject of buyer’s remorse, too, as the Astros traded for him at the 2025 deadline, a mere 197 days ago. Any humans who got pregnant the day of that trade still have another month or so before they actually have to assemble the crib. As starkly as it outlines the differences between the life of a baseball player and the life of a human with a regular job, the trade makes its own sense. We’re going to start in Toronto, because although it involves a lot of platoon finagling, the situation there is simpler. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is our list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. The scouting summaries were compiled with information provided by available data and our own observations. 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.

All of the prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.

And now, a few important things to keep in mind as you’re perusing the Top 100. You’ll note that prospects are ranked by number, but also lie within tiers demarcated by their Future Value grades. The FV grade is more important than the ordinal ranking. For example, the gap between Nolan McLean (no. 3) and Sal Stewart (no. 34) is about 30 spots, and there’s a substantial difference in talent between them. The gap between Stewart and Luis De León (no. 64), meanwhile, is also 30 numerical places, but the difference in talent is relatively small. You may have also noticed that there are more than 100 prospects in the table below, and more than 100 scouting summaries. That’s because we have also included the 50-FV prospects whose ordinal rankings fall outside the top 100, an acknowledgement both that the choice to rank exactly 100 prospects (as opposed to 110 or 210 or some other number entirely) is an arbitrary one, and that there isn’t a ton of daylight between the prospects who appear in that part of the list. Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Mathis is a small-town kid from the South hoping to make it big on Chicago’s North Side. His upside is evident — Mathis possesses projectable tools, including plus raw power — but there are question marks, as well. Drafted 54th overall in 2024 by the Cubs out of the College of Charleston, the 22-year-old corner infielder will enter the 2026 campaign with a smattering of experience above the amateur level. He had Tommy John surgery following his junior season, then was limited to just 194 plate appearances last year (128 with Low-A Myrtle Beach and 66 in the Arizona Fall League) due to a right elbow sprain. The degree to which he’ll have success against professional pitchers as he climbs the minor-league ladder is uncertain.

His future position is also in question. While he was drafted as a third baseman, Mathis was primarily a first baseman in college… when he wasn’t pitching. Prior to going under the knife, Mathis was a two-way player who showed plenty of promise on the mound thanks to a fastball that reached the mid-90s. Over 100 collegiate frames, he fashioned a 3.60 ERA with 90 strikeouts and just 30 walks.

When I caught up to him in the AFL, I asked Mathis if he still thinks about standing atop a clump of dirt sixty feet, six inches away from home plate. I also wanted to hear his thoughts on a what-if:

Had his elbow been healthy, might he have been drafted and developed as a pitcher?

“I mean, yeah, for sure,” Mathis responded to the first question. “It’s something I could fall back on, but hopefully I won’t have to resort to pitching again. At the time of the draft, my hitting skills were farther above where my pitching was, and the Cubs and I saw eye to eye with that, so it’s what we wanted to do moving forward.

“I don’t know,” he said to the second. “I mean, I got to pitch two strong years in college (he was solely a position player in his final collegiate season due to the damaged UCL) and don’t really know what would have happened that junior year. But yeah, I think we made the right decision.”

How well he develops as a hitter — particularly if he ends up at first base rather than at the hot corner — will help determine if it was the right choice. Moreover, his ability to elevate will go a long way toward his reaching, or failing to reach, his ceiling. Mathis understands that.

“We’ve definitely been working on getting the ball in the air a little more,” he told me. “A little bit of it is bat path, but the majority of it is pitch selection, getting pitches that I can drive. I have a flatter swing, so while I’ve had some success on balls down in the zone, pitches up in the zone play more to my swing.”

Mathis went on to say that while he used to have “kind of the same swing, no matter the pitcher,” he has come to realize that adjustability is a necessity against higher-quality hurlers. There is a mental component to it as well as a mechanical.

“I’ve kind of had to change my approach,” said Mathis. “Not so much change my swing, but rather change the thought process behind it. You can’t just have the same approach and swing over and over again. Pitchers watch film as much as we do, so they’re out there playing their pitches off our swings.”

Where he grew up plays into how he approaches the game of baseball itself.

“I come from a small town — it’s called called Cataula — and our county only has one high school [Harris County High School in Hamilton, GA],” Mathis explained. “I don’t know the total population of my hometown, but everybody knows everybody. Knowing that I have a whole town of support behind me, a whole county of support, means a lot. When I go out there, I’m not just playing for me, but for also for them. I’m representing my town.”

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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Jason Giambi went 23 for 37 against Darren Oliver.

Al Oliver went 11 for 19 against Vern Ruhle.

Bob Oliver went 11 for 21 against Diego Segui.

Joe Oliver went 8 for 15 against Rheal Cormier.

Ollie Brown went 15 for 30 against Jerry Reuss.

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Jackson Baumeister had a lot of promise when he was drafted 63rd overall by the Baltimore Orioles out of Florida State University in 2023. What he didn’t have was an understanding of pitching analytics. I learned as much when I talked to the 22-year-old right-hander during the Arizona Fall League season, where he was making up for innings lost due to a shoulder ailment.

“In high school, even in college, I had no idea what pitch metrics were,” admitted Baumeister, whom the Tampa Bay Rays acquired from their A.L. East rivals in July 2024 as part of the Zach Eflin deal. “We were a little behind the curve in college when it came to TrackMan, Rapsodo, and stuff like that. I was completely raw coming into pro ball. When I got drafted, it was basically, ‘Hey, I don’t know any of the words or numbers you’re saying to me.’ I basically had to do this whole little master class of pitch metrics.”

Baumeister’s lessons began in Baltimore’s introductory draft meetings, and from there he continued to pick up knowledge, including in bullpen sessions where he would learn about the readings he saw on the iPad. Before long, he “understood what those numbers meant, and what the Orioles were telling me about things like what the sweet spot was for all of my pitches.”

When he signed, Baumeister’s bread and butter pitches were his fastball and curveball, the latter of which has been supplanted by a slider as his primary secondary offering. And while his mid-90s heater remains his best pitch, the way he utilizes it is far different.

“In college, my coaches preached throwing the low-and-away fastball,” explained the erstwhile FSU hurler. “For a guy like me who rides the ball pretty well and gets a lot of induced vertical break, that wasn’t ideal. Getting into pro ball, it became ‘Throw your fastball at the top of the zone.’ I also have a pretty low release, so by locating the ball at the top of the zone, I get a lot of swing-and-misses.

“My release height is lower than six feet,” continued Baumeister. “I get down into the 5-5, 5-6 range, and then I’m around 17 or 18 [inches] of vertical break on average with my fastball. Velo-wise, I think I averaged 95 [mph] this past year, but I can reach back to 97-98 on a good day. It’s my best pitch, no doubt.”

Backing off on his curveball usage and throwing more sliders was a Rays directive. His current organization also altered the shape of his slider. Whereas he used to throw a sweepier version, he now throws more of a gyro. Along with the four-seamer, gyro, and lesser-used curveball, the righty also has a changeup in his arsenal. That has also undergone a tweak. Last season he began working on a kick-change to replace what had been a more traditional two-seam circle.

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A quiz:

Ichiro Suzuki has the most singles since the turn of the century (2000), while Albert Pujols is tops in both doubles and home runs. Which player has the most triples? (A hint: he had 517 stolen bases and 145 home runs.)

The answer can be found below.

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NEWS NOTES

The upcoming SABR Analytics Conversation, which will take place in Phoenix from February 27-March 1, will include a seven-person Arizona Diamondbacks front office panel. More information can be found here.

SABR’s John McMurray recently conducted an oral history interview with Greg Maddux. The transcript and video recording can be found here.

Roy Face, a right-hander who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1953-1968, and then briefly for the Detroit Tigers and Montreal Expos, died earlier this week at age 97. A standout on Pittsburgh’s 1960 World Series championship club, Face is the franchise’s all-time leader in pitching appearances (802), relief wins (94), and saves (188). As mentioned here in Sunday Notes two weeks ago, his 18 relief wins in 1959 are an MLB record.

Gary Blaylock, who pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals and New Yankees in 1959, died earlier this month at age 94. The Clarkton, Missouri native appeared in 41 games and went 4-6 with a 4.80 ERA. He was the pitching coach for the Kansas City Royals when they captured the World Series in 1985.

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The answer to the quiz is José Reyes, with 131 triples. If you guessed Carl Crawford, he had 123 triples, as well as 480 stolen bases and 136 home runs.

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Mike Daly was featured here at FanGraphs on Wednesday, the subject at hand being the current state of San Diego’s prospect pipeline. Left on the cutting-room floor from my conversation with the club’s assistant director of player development was what he learned from his year as a minor-league manager. Daly was at the helm of the High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps in 2024.

“I learned a lot,” said Daly, whose résumé also includes extensive scouting experience. “First and foremost, it gives you a greater appreciation, and empathy, for what players and the staff go through from spring training all the way to the end. And the season is long. You understand that from a front office perspective, but until you’ve lived it, you don’t truly understand it.”

Daly went on to mention the speed of the game, and how managers frequently need to make decisions on short notice. Experiencing that firsthand reinforced the importance of pre-game planning and talking through various scenarios prior to the team’s taking the field. He also received a reminder that patience is a virtue when it comes to development.

“In the past, I was sometimes guilty of coming into an affiliate for a week and maybe trying to expedite, or push, some action with the staff regarding certain development of players,” Daly admitted. “What you learn from being in that dugout for a full season is that the process of development really does take time. It certainly made me better in terms of asking questions.”

Writing the reports that are sent to the front office after a game is a markedly different experience from being on the receiving end.

“Yes,” acknowledged Daly. “When you’re writing that manager report, especially after a tough loss… let’s just say it’s a lot different sitting in the dugout than it is sitting behind the plate [as a scout] or in the office. Until you walk in those shoes… again, you understand, but you don’t truly understand. I’m very thankful to have had an opportunity to do it.”

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A random obscure former player snapshot:

Ice Box Chamberlain had a fascinating career. Born in Warsaw, New York in 1867, the right-hander went on to pitch for six major league teams across the 1886-1896 seasons, registering a record of 157-120. His best year was 1889, when he went 32-15 while throwing 421-and-two-thirds innings for the American Association’s St. Louis Browns.

Chamberlain — his given name was Elton —had some especially notable games. Twice he pitched both right- and left-handed in the same contest, making him, along with Larry Corcoran and Tony Mullane, one of three pre-1900 hurlers to toe the rubber in ambidextrous fashion. On May 30, 1894, Chamberlain not only went the distance for the Cincinnati Reds in a 20-11 loss to the Boston Beaneaters, he was taken deep four times by Bobby Lowe. In doing so, Lowe became the first player in big-league history to hit four home runs in the same game.

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

MassLive’s Christopher Smith wrote about Kyle Boddy and how the Boston Red Sox have been implementing Driveline philosophies.

CBS Sports’s Dayn Perry weighed in on Chaim Bloom’s rebuild in St. Louis, and where the Cardinals go from here.

Cy Young was born in a town of roughly 400 people in Ohio’s Tuscarawas County, and his 35-acre boyhood farm is now up for sale. Joey Morona has the story at Cleveland.com.

What would MLB look like with a salary cap? Evan Drellich delved into that question at The Athletic.

The Athletic’s Katie Woo wrote about how “The Harvard of umpire schools” is closing as changing times favor tech over tradition.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Ollie Bejma played for the St. Louis Browns from 1934-1936, and for the Chicago White Sox in 1939, logging 202 hits and a .245 batting average. Humble as those numbers are, they didn’t dissuade legendary cartoonist (and big-time baseball fan) Charles Schultz from featuring him in a February 21, 1974 Peanuts comic strip. Asked who played shortstop for the pennant-winning St. Paul Saints in 1938, Woodstock replied to Snoopy that it was Ollie Bejma.

Blaine Durbin played in 32 games and logged 14 hits in 51 at-bats while suiting up for three teams across the 1907-1909 seasons. His first two seasons were spent with the Chicago Cubs, who won the World Series in each of those years. The last of Durbin’s seasons was split between the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates, the latter of which won the World Series.

J.D. Martinez had 6,865 PAs, 1,741 hits, and 3,172 total bases.
Nick Castellanos has 6,950 PAs, 1,742 hits, and 2,977 total bases.

Mike Piazza had 7,745 PAs, a .308 BA, and 779 extra base hits.
Magglio Ordonez had 7,745 PAs, a .309 BA, and 741 extra base hits.

The St. Louis Cardinals signed Leon Durham as a free agent on today’s date in 1989. The erstwhile Chicago Cubs slugger — he had 135 home runs and a 125 wRC+ for the Northsiders from 1981-1987 — proceeded to record just one hit in 18 at-bats with the Cardinals. Suspended for failing a drug test, Durham never again played in the majors.

The New York Yankees signed Jeff Reardon as a free agent on today’s date in 1994. The righty reliever, who recorded 367 saves while playing for seven teams across 16 seasons, went on to appear in 11 games for the Yankees, earning a win and two saves in what proved to be his final hurrah. Reardon is the only pitcher in MLB history to allow exactly 1,000 hits in his career.

Players born on today’s date include Larry Yount, who appeared in one MLB game… yet never actually appeared in an MLB game. A right-hander, the older brother of Hall of Famer Robin Yount took the mound for the Houston Astros on September 15, 1971, but was injured while warming up and never delivered a pitch to a batter. Because he had been announced, Yount’s name is in the record books with one official appearance.

Also born on today’s date was Carlton Molesworth, a left-hander who logged a 14.63 ERA while appearing in four games for the Washington Senators in 1895. A teenager when he took the mound in the majors, Molesworth subsequently played 17 seasons in the minors as an outfielder, suiting up for teams including the Binghamton Bingos, Schenectady Electricians, and Shamokin Coal Heavers.

Slicker Parks had a humble MLB career. Appearing in 10 games for the Detroit Tigers in 1921, the right-hander from Dallas Township, Michigan went 3-2 with a 5.68 ERA over 25-and-a-third frames. He fared far better down on the farm. In 1926, Parks went 19-14 with the International League’s Jersey City Skeeters.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone, and welcome to the first mailbag of spring training. It’s fitting that this annual day of love coincides with the return of baseball, because all of us are madly in love with this sport. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be spending part of your Saturday reading a Members-only mailbag on a website dedicated exclusively to covering our game. Really, baseball is the game of love. Our fandom begins as passionate affair, and then like any lasting relationship, it requires daily commitment, growing stronger over time. It rewards patience, hard work, and finding joy in both the mundane and the extraordinary. It isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it. How can you not be romantic about baseball?

Speaking of love, nobody I know loves college baseball like Michael Baumann. With Friday marking the start of the college season, he previewed the action to come in two pieces. First, he ran through the seven college teams you need to know in 2026, and then went deep on what he dubbed, “The Ridiculous Firewagon Offenses of College Baseball.” The opening of spring camps also means it’s Prospect Week here at FanGraphs. If you missed any of our coverage, you can find Eric Longenhagen’s audit of our 2019 Top 100 list, David Laurila’s interviews with Cardinals assistant GM Rob Cerfolio and Padres assistant director of player development Mike Daly about their respective farm systems, Brendan Gawlowski’s reflections on what he learned from his worst scouting report during his time as a Pirates pro scout, and Eric’s updated 2026 draft rankings. Early next week, we’ll have our Top 100 Prospects list, as well as those from both ZiPS and OOPSY, along with fantasy rankings and plenty of other prospect coverage. So be sure to come back to the site to check it all out.

That’s the last you’ll read about love and Prospect Week in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about the cost of 1.0 WAR, the legality of a dog playing first base, the number of balls players hit in their careers, and whether a full team of free agents could beat the Rockies. Before we do, though, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring (training) has sprung, and with it comes another chock-full-of-transactions Matrix Reloaded. I’ll keep the weekly roundups going as long as the transaction gods give me things to write about, but the free agent market is all but completely picked over now. As always, summary statistics can be found at the bottom of the Matrix.

A Panoply of Primary Pitchers

With so many starting pitchers signing in the past week, I’ll structure this opening section a little differently than usual, going over each pitcher/team combo in a vacuum and then rounding up which teams could still use starters and who’s left to be signed.

Orioles Sign Chris Bassitt for One Year, $18.5 Million

• Davy Andrews’ Write-Up of the Deal
• Updated Roster Projection
• Updated Payroll Projection

In my head, the Orioles went from being “the team likeliest to sign Framber Valdez” to “well, maybe they’re content with their rotation options because I’m not sure there’s a big enough upgrade left now” to “well, how do they sort this all out with Bassitt?” Nobody deserves to get bumped from the rotation if the sextet of Bassitt, Kyle Bradish, Trevor Rogers, Shane Baz, Zach Eflin, and Dean Kremer all make it out of spring training healthy, so it’s no surprise that a six-man rotation is on the table. Read the rest of this entry »

While winning three World Series with the Dodgers, Max Muncy and Enrique Hernández have both made their marks in October, with the former setting the franchise record for postseason home runs (16) and the latter doing so for games played (92). Both will remain in Dodger Blue for awhile longer, with a chance to increase those totals — and chase a third consecutive championship. On Thursday, a day ahead of their pitchers and catchers reporting to Camelback Ranch, the Dodgers announced that Muncy has agreed to an extension for 2027, and that Hernández, a free agent, will again return to the fold. A day earlier, Los Angeles announced that it had re-signed righty Evan Phillips, who missed last year’s postseason run due to Tommy John surgery and was non-tendered in November. Amid the ensuing roster crunch, the Dodgers designated catcher Ben Rortvedt for assignment for the second time this winter, and traded previously DFA’d lefty Anthony Banda to the Twins for international bonus money.

That’s a lot to pick through, creating ripples up and down the roster. We’ll start with Muncy, who with the retirement of Clayton Kershaw is now the longest-tenured Dodger, having joined the team in 2018. The 35-year-old slugger was already signed for 2026, because in November the Dodgers picked up the $10 million option on his previous two-year, $24 million extension. His new contract — his fourth extension in the past six years, all of them so team-friendly that he’s never had a base salary above $13.5 million — guarantees him another $10 million, with $7 million for his 2027 salary and another $3 million as a buyout for a $10 million club option for ’28.

Those are bargain prices given the production and track record of Muncy, who has evolved from a cast-off by the A’s into a two-time All-Star and a pillar of the Dodgers lineup. While he was limited to 100 games in 2025 due to a bone bruise in his left knee — suffered on July 2, moments before Kershaw notched his 3,000th career strikeout — and then an oblique strain in mid-August, he hit .243/.376/.470 with 19 home runs in 388 plate appearances. Both his 137 wRC+ and 2.9 WAR were his highest since his All-Star 2021 campaign, but hardly out of character. Limited to 73 games in 2024 due to an oblique strain and a displaced rib, he hit .232/.358/.494 (133 wRC+) with 15 homers and 2.3 WAR in just 293 plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the first day of the 2026 college baseball season, and to celebrate, I’m cutting the ribbon on our 2026 draft rankings and scouting reports. They’re now live on The Board, so head over there for all of these players’ tool grades and blurbs. In this piece, I’ll touch on several individual players who I think are among this year’s best and most interesting prospects for readers to watch and monitor over the next five months as we approach July’s draft in Philadelphia (I can’t wait). I’ll also discuss the class as a whole from a talent standpoint, as well as which teams are in position to have a huge draft.

First, some quick housekeeping on the rankings. I’ve got 51 players on The Board right now. I’ve hard-ranked the players with a 40+ FV and above, while the 40-FV players are clustered by demographic below them. Draft-eligible sophomores are denoted with an asterisks. At this stage in the draft process, players are more in neighborhoods or clusters. It’s too early to have many dozens of players ordinally ranked in a way that won’t change drastically between now and draft day, especially once we get beyond the players who fit within the first two rounds. More players will be added to The Board as the spring progresses.

This is also your reminder that we now have college leaderboards on the site, as well as college player pages, all of which I will be wearing out this spring as the class produces another season of data. Read the rest of this entry »

The rosters for the 2026 World Baseball Classic were announced late last week, so aside from changes due to injuries or insurance eligibility decisions, we now know who will be suiting up for each country 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.

If you missed the post covering Pool A, or you need a quick refresher on how the WBC works, you can catch up on that here. And the post covering Pool B is right over here.

The five teams competing in Pool C — Japan, South Korea, Australia, Czechia, and Chinese Taipei — will play their games in Tokyo from March 5 to March 10. The two clubs with the best records after playing each of the other four will advance to the Knockout stage, where they will compete in a single-elimination bracket against the six teams that advance from the other pools. Read the rest of this entry »

The pros are still moseying on down to Florida and Arizona for training camp, but the college baseball regular season starts today. I’ve long been an evangelist for the college game, and it’s hard to overstate how much more accessible it has become just in the past 15 to 20 years. Basically every power conference game gets aired either on cable or streamed on ESPN+ or a similarly accessible provider. I remember having to calculate OPS by hand from the press box in the mid-teens; now FanGraphs has wRC+ for every Division I player, while D1Baseball puts out batted ball stats.

And the quality of play is better now than it’s ever been. That’s true in most sports; societal standards of nutrition and fitness only tend to go up over time, as does the human understanding of science. And the past decade has seen not one revolution in college baseball but several. Professional-quality, data-driven coaching techniques have hit the amateur game. The truncation of the draft to 20 rounds and the imposition of bonus caps have led more elite prospects to college baseball, and the loosening of transfer policy has led more players to find programs where they can flourish.

In every way that matters, Division I baseball is more like the professional game than it’s ever been. So the statistical environments of the two forms of baseball should be pretty similar, right? Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, I took a high-level look at the Mets’ offseason overhaul. I thought it came out well, and readers also seemed to like it, so I’m going to use that same rubric to take a look at the Red Sox today. As before, I’ll be focusing on wrapping all of the team’s decisions up together and evaluating across several axes. As I put it last time:

“How should we evaluate a front office, particularly in the offseason when we don’t have games to look at? I’ve never been able to arrive at a single framework. That’s only logical. If there were one simple tool we could use to evaluate the sport, baseball wouldn’t be as interesting to us as it is. The metrics we use to evaluate teams, and even players, are mere abstractions. The goal of baseball – winning games, or winning the World Series in a broad sense – can be achieved in a ton of different ways. We measure a select few of those in most of our attempts at estimating value, or at figuring out who “won” or “lost” a given transaction. So today, I thought I’d try something a little bit different.”

I’m not going to give Boston a single grade. Instead, I’m going to evaluate the decisions that Craig Breslow and the Red Sox made on three axes. The first is what I’m calling Coherence of Strategy. If you make a win-now trade but then head into the season with a gaping hole in your roster, that’s not coherent. If you find yourself on the borderline of the playoffs and then start subtracting, that’s not coherent. It’s never quite that simple in the real world, but good teams make sets of decisions that work toward the same goal.

Next, Liquidity and Optionality. One thing we know for sure about baseball is that the future rarely looks the way we expect it to in the present. Preserving an ability to change directions based on new information is important. Why do teams treat players with no options remaining so callously? It’s because that lack of optionality really stings. Why do teams prefer high-dollar, short-term contracts over lengthy pacts in general? It’s because you don’t know how good that guy is going to be in year six, and you certainly don’t know how good your team will be or whether you’ll have another player for the same position. All else equal, decisions that reduce future optionality are bad because they limit a team’s ability to make the right move in the future. One note on optionality: It’s not the same as not having any long contracts. Long contracts to key players actually improve flexibility, because “have a few stars” is a key part of building a championship team. Not having a star under contract when you need one is almost as much of a problem as having too many aging veterans, and I’ll consider both versions of flexibility.

Finally, maximizing the Championship Probability Distribution. We like to talk about teams as chasing wins, but that’s not exactly what’s going on. Teams are chasing the likelihood of winning a World Series, or some close proxy of that. That’s correlated with wins, but it’s not exactly the same. Building a team that outperforms opponents on the strength of its 15th-26th best players being far superior to their counterparts on other clubs might help in the dog days of August, when everyone’s playing their depth pieces and cobbling together a rotation, but that won’t fly in October. Likewise, high-variance players with decent backup options don’t show up as overly valuable in a point estimate of WAR, but they absolutely matter. Teams are both trying to get to the playoffs as often as possible and perform as well as they can after arriving there. That’s not an easy thing to quantify, but we can at least give it a shot.

The Sox came into the offseason with a pretty clear problem to solve. Alex Bregman opted out of his deal and returned to free agency, which left the roster in a particularly unbalanced state. Boston’s best four position players were all outfielders – Roman Anthony, Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela, and Wilyer Abreu. The infield was relatively barren. Trevor Story and Romy Gonzalez were the only two holdovers who notched even 250 plate appearances in the dirt. Rafaela played nearly as many games in the infield as Marcelo Mayer, the team’s top shortstop prospect, last year. Read the rest of this entry »