‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all through Fenway, every fan was insistent: “Get a first baseman, today.” Or, well, probably not – why would there be fans at Fenway when there are no games, anyway? Why Christmas week in particular? Why did they construct their sentence awkwardly to suit a rhyme scheme? But forget about how hard it is to open an article – or at least how hard I’ve made it seem with this one. There’s a trade afoot! The Red Sox have acquired first baseman Willson Contreras from the Cardinals in exchange for right-handed starter Hunter Dobbins and righty pitching prospects Yhoiker Fajardo and Blake Aita, as Jeff Passan first reported.

In a free agent market awash in slugging first base/DH types, Contreras flew under the radar this offseason. Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso were the top names at the position, and both secured the deals befitting that status. The Red Sox were clearly interested in adding some offense, particularly in the infield, and were linked to both sluggers before they signed elsewhere. But there are more ways to improve your team than on the open market, and a pivot to Contreras soon followed. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2026 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

The third and final multi-candidate pairing of this series is by far the heaviest, covering two candidates who have both been connected to multiple incidents of domestic violence. Read the rest of this entry »

What sort of production can we expect from Munetaka Murakami in 2026? This article walks through my steps in creating an MLB projection for the Yakult Swallows superstar.

With one day to go before his negotiation window closed, Murakami and the Chicago White Sox agreed on a two-year, $34 million deal; you can read Michael Baumann’s thoughts on the signing here. Both the dollar amount and the length fall well short of expectations: Ben Clemens projected him to land a seven-year, $154 million contract, while our median crowdsourced contract estimate was for six years and $132 million. Prior to Murakami’s posting, Eric Longenhagen highlighted his 80-grade raw power, as well as his major contact issues, in an October international players update. Both Eric and Ben saw first base as Murakami’s likely defensive home, something the White Sox have already confirmed for the coming season. ZiPS projects him for a .237/.363/.454 triple-slash line and a 126 wRC+. My own projection system, OOPSY, does not yet project NPB players, but that’s something I’m aiming to change with this article. So what might OOPSY expect from Murakami?

The first step in creating a Murakami projection was to review the literature. Previous research from team scouts, analysts, and the creators of other projection system tends to rate NPB as close to Triple-A in terms of its quality of competition. This serves as a good reference point for developing my own quality of competition estimate. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies made the playoffs in 2025. The Royals nearly did, and certainly hope to play in October in 2026. Teams like that rarely line up on trades, what with both sides aiming to do the same thing and all. But rarely isn’t the same as never. Philadelphia and Kansas City found something they agree on other than their taste in Super Bowl matchups (last year’s every year, naturally), coming together on Friday to swap relievers: Matt Strahm is heading to Kansas City in exchange for Jonathan Bowlan, as Robert Murray first reported.

Trades are all about two teams with mismatched goals. Who would trade a superstar? A team that isn’t competing at the moment and isn’t one or two players away from changing that. Who would let go of a promising outfield prospect? A team that’s set in the outfield and light on the mound. This trade is two playoff contenders trading relievers, so most of those considerations don’t apply. But there’s still a mismatch in goals and resources here; you just have to look a little more closely.

The Phillies bullpen boasts an embarrassment of riches. Jhoan Duran, the closer, is one of the best in the business, a lockdown reliever you can set and forget in the ninth inning. José Alvarado missed most of the 2025 season thanks to a suspension and injury, but he’s an excellent late-inning option in his own right when available, and he should be back at full strength in the upcoming year. It doesn’t stop there; the team recently signed Brad Keller, who broke out as a dominant single-inning option in 2025. Even without Strahm, that’s a fearsome top trio of relievers, perhaps the best in the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

Some rough edges need to be smoothed out, but Cam Collier could be contributing to the Cincinnati Reds offense in the not-too-distant future. Assigned a 45 FV by Eric Longenhagen, the 21-year-old corner infielder is coming off of a 2025 campaign in which he put up a 123 wRC+ over 396 plate appearances across three levels (primarily Double-A). Among the few downsides was a dearth of dingers — he went yard just four times — but that presents as a blip as opposed to a barometer. Our lead prospect analyst grades Collier’s raw power as above average.

I broached the power outage when I talked to Collier during his stint in the Arizona Fall League, where he concluded his campaign with the Peoria Javelinas. He’d hammered 20 homers with the High-A Dayton Dragons in 2024, so why so few of them in his third full professional season?

“I’ve tried to not think about it too much,” replied Collier, whom the Reds drafted 18th overall in 2022 out of Chipola College. “This year, I wanted to really get back to being a hitter. I wanted to have consistent good at-bats, and while that didn’t produce as many homers, it produced a lot more base hits. I was happy with that.”

The stat sheet reflects some of his targeted strides. After batting .248 with a 25.0% strikeout rate in 2024, Collier improved to .279 with an only-incrementally-higher 26.3% K-rate against a higher level of competition. Moreover, the exit velocities he produced when he squared up the baseball were impressive — which remained the case in the desert. At 113.1 mph, Collier had the hardest-hit ball in the Fall Stars Game.

I had read reports that his exit velos and hard-hit rates were plus, so I brought that up as well. Was it perhaps a little counterintuitive that his slugging percentage (.384) and home run totals were as low as they were? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cincinnati Reds. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the sixth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh brings on ESPN senior MLB insider Jeff Passan to discuss the ins and outs of the newsbreaking business—how he reports and announces news, how newsbreaking in baseball differs from newsbreaking in other sports, conflicts of interest, the ills of social media, work-life balance, aging, his flirtation with switching to the basketball beat, and more—plus Jeff’s thoughts on ESPN’s relationship with MLB, the biggest surprises and questions of this hot stove season, and the outlook for a lockout. Then (1:06:55) Ben talks to The Athletic’s Sam Blum about what he learned from covering the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Tyler Skaggs against the Angels, which was settled just before the jury reached a verdict.

Audio intro: Nate Emerson, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial: Grant Brisbee, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Kite Person, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Jeff’s last EW appearance
Link to Jeff’s newsbreaking origins
Link to Jeff’s gravy tweet
Link to aging research
Link to article about aging
Link to Woj comments
Link to Schefter comments
Link to Shams comments
Link to Shams profile
Link to Shams vs. Woj feature
Link to Passan NBA report
Link to exhibit 49 info
Link to more exhibit 49 info
Link to ESPN-MLB deal
Link to ESPN-NFL deal
Link to ESPN evolution
Link to Jeff’s trade tweet
Link to news about Jeff’s son
Link to The LAT on the settlement
Link to Sam on the settlement
Link to Sam on Trout
Link to MLB testing change

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A new day dawned in Major League Baseball on Sunday, as the top international player in this free agent class has signed with — that’s right — someone other than the Dodgers!

The White Sox, yes, believe it or not, the White Sox, have landed Munetaka Murakami. Per Jeff Passan, the 25-year-old corner infielder, late of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows of NPB, will make $34 million over the next two seasons. We had him ranked 12th on our Top 50 Free Agents list, with an estimated contract AAV of $22 million. Ben Clemens predicted he’d get seven years, our readers six.

It’s one of the biggest discrepancies you’re likely to see, and for good reason. Murakami is, in my opinion, the no. 1 most interesting player in this class, and while I’m shocked his contract dropped this far below expectations, I’m not at all surprised by the extent to which he’s divided popular opinion. Read the rest of this entry »

World Baseball Classic managers were made available to the media during the Winter Meetings, and I took that opportunity to ask Chinese Taipei’s Hao-Jiu Tseng about some of the best arms in Taiwan. I had specific pitchers in mind, but opted to begin with an open-ended question rather than cite any names. The response I got was likewise non-specific.

“I hope all pitchers from our team can be known by all baseball fans,” Tseng told me via an interpreter. “There are so many young pitchers. Most of them are still playing at the minor league level, but this tournament can help them improve their skills and experience, and someday grow into great players at a top level.”

The first pitcher he mentioned when I followed up was Wei-En Lin, a 20-year-old left-hander in the Athletics system who was featured here at FanGraphs back in August. The second was the hurler I was most interested in hearing about
.
“Jo Hsi Hsu pitches in the [Chinese Professional Baseball League], ”Tseng said of the recently-turned-25-year-old right-hander, who had a 2.05 ERA and 120 strikeouts, with just 78 hits allowed, over 114 innings for the Wei Chuan Dragons. “He is a posted player this offseason. Right now he is eligible to negotiate with foreign clubs. He possibly will transfer his contract to Japan or America. He is the ace of the CPBL. Read the rest of this entry »

As is often the case the week after the Winter Meetings, there has been a flurry of transactions for us to cover at FanGraphs since we got back from Orlando. So many relief pitchers came off the board. The Padres re-signed Michael King on Thursday night while Meg’s Seahawks were staging an absolutely stupid comeback against my Rams; San Diego followed that up yesterday by signing a Korean infielder with the musical name, Sung-mun Song. Earlier this week, the Twins signed Josh Bell to hit in the middle of their order, while the Phillies added Adolis García to replace right fielder Nick Castellanos, who is still technically on the roster but definitely won’t be when the season starts. The two moves inspired Michael Baumann to compare them to babies putting every single thing they see into their mouths. Lovely.

Then, yesterday, two big trades went down. Eric Longenhagen has you covered on the Rays-Orioles swap that sent Shane Baz to Baltimore, while Brendan Gawlowksi analyzed the three-team trade between the Rays, Pirates, and Astros. Of course, there are a number of high-profile free agents still out there, including four of the top five on Ben Clemens’ Top 50 list and six of the top 10.

We won’t be covering any of that in today’s mailbag; you can find all the relevant buzz in Jon Becker’s latest edition of the Matrix Reloaded column. Instead, we’ll answer your questions about the position players with the most WAR who never made an All-Star team, whether baseball should use WPA as pitcher wins, the windup, and more. But first, 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 »