Four years ago, Arte Moreno explored a sale of the Angels. No firm bids materialized, and he ended that exploration the following year. Three years later, however, the tide has suddenly turned. On Tuesday, Moreno agreed to sell the team to multi-sport owner Stan Kroenke in a deal that values the Angels at $4 billion, a record-setting price for the sale of a majority stake in an MLB team.

They say it never rains in Southern California. They also say that when it rains, it pours. Consider those two adages, and then apply them both to the recent ownership changes in MLB. Earlier this year, Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano bought the Padres at a $3.9 billion valuation. Kroenke’s purchase of the Angels sets a new record, the team-sale equivalent of a free agent signing a contract that guarantees them $1 million more than the previous high. It’s a boom time to be selling baseball teams. In fact, these two sales might have set records for transfers of controlling stakes, but the Yankees blew the competition away earlier this year when they sold a minority share to Apollo, a private equity group, at a valuation of roughly $10 billion. It’s a boom time for baseball ownership in general, in other words.

Moreno purchased the Angels in 2003, in the wake of their World Series title. His relationship with both the city of Anaheim and the fans of the team is complicated. At first, his free-spending ways made up for his desire to rebrand the club as a Los Angeles concern. The team was quite successful in the beginning of Moreno’s stewardship, averaging 90 wins in the first 10 years after he purchased the club. That was the best stretch in Angels history by far; they made the playoffs five times, more than the four they’d racked up in the prior 42 years the franchise existed before Moreno bought it. Read the rest of this entry »

In a team sport, everyone involved — players, media, fans — has their own outlook on individual awards. Personally, I think they mean a lot. Yes, the player’s ultimate goal is to serve the team, but when individual effort is only tenuously related to team success, I think it’s worthwhile to recognize outstanding individual performances when they come.

But even I struggle to get too worked up about MLB’s Player of the Week awards. I get the press release in my inbox every week, but I usually check the headline, mark it read, and forget about it forever. As far as I know, there’s no cash prize or physical trophy involved; winning Player of the Week is more like getting all A’s on your report card than winning an Olympic medal. Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever I write a State of FanGraphs post, I see some version of this comment: “I’m already a FanGraphs Member, but I’d like to give FanGraphs more money. How can I do that?”

We deeply appreciate that some of you want to offer us more support than our standard annual Membership, and now there’s a way, with the FanGraphs MVP Membership. The price is $500 a year and you get the following:

• All the usual FanGraphs Membership benefits
• A gift exclusive to FanGraphs MVP Members
• An annual call for MVPs with me and other FanGraphs leadership on the state and direction of the site
• An optional tag on your comments indicating that you’re an MVP Member

Assuming that you’re already a site Member, this Membership will replace your current Membership, with your prorated remaining time credited to the initial $500 price. This way, if your $80 Membership just renewed, you don’t have to pay $580 to become an MVP Member.

Philosophically, we’re positioning FanGraphs MVP Membership as a way to further support our work, and receive some special recognition in the process. FanGraphs will become better with your additional support, but your individual FanGraphs experience won’t be better than any other Member’s. We feel this is an important distinction to make, and also an important distinction to be up-front about.

This year’s exclusive gift is a 14-ounce FanGraphs-branded Yeti mug with a ceramic interior:

When I showed the prototype to folks at a recent FanGraphs staff gathering, it was deemed “quite nice.” It will be laser etched with the FanGraphs logo, the year you became an MVP Member, and your MVP Member number, which is assigned in the order you sign up for an MVP Membership. In future years, we may have different gifts. We’ll think more about that this offseason, solicit feedback from MVP Members, and make an announcement as to what’s next before the first anniversary of FanGraphs MVP Membership.

Regardless, we won’t sell these FanGraphs Yeti mugs outside of MVP Membership. They are exclusive to FanGraphs MVP Members.

That said, we know that many existing Members who want to further support the site would prefer to buy more FanGraphs-branded merchandise to do so. We’re actively working on some new merch that isn’t tied to FanGraphs MVP Membership, as well as restocking some of our existing items, and should have more information soon!

If you have the means and love FanGraphs, an MVP Membership is a great way to support the site you’ve come to rely on while getting a nice mug you can brag about. And whether it’s as an annual or monthly Member or an MVP, we’re extremely grateful for all of our Members. You are the reason we’re able to continue to grow and improve the unique combination of data and editorial content that is FanGraphs.

Baseball fans are often unhappy with projections, and they seem to enjoy sharing that unhappiness with me. That’s hardly surprising, of course — projections have large error bars (which we try to express when discussing them), and on some level, they represent a computer saying mean things about players you might like. You probably aren’t shocked by this, though you might be surprised to learn that the time of year I get the most complaints is during the stretch run rather than the preseason. And while some of the complaints I hear are about projections that missed the mark, the majority are about how little the in-season projections have changed since the start of the year. It can be frustrating when a player who is slugging .500 despite a preseason SLG projection of .350 only has a rest-of-season SLG projection of .400. Clearly, the conventional wisdom says, the projections are too slow to change.

Ben Clemens has written a number of pieces auditing our playoff odds, and while they aren’t as meticulously perfected as a 1996 Lexus, they’re pretty darn good. These calculations rely heavily on our in-season projections, which at their gooey, caramel center are an attempt to combine what we knew about a player or team before the season (in the form of preseason projections) with what we’ve learned since.

The relevant question then becomes how much a few months of performance should change what we thought about a player in March. And as it turns out, it’s less than the folks who find projections frustrating might think. When it comes to ZiPS, the preseason projections, both for teams and individual players, are more predictive of rest-of-season performance than season-to-date numbers. That holds true even very late in the season, when there’s been a lot of cumulative in-season performance to look at. I’ve tested preseason projections versus in-season performance as late as September 10 each year, and the preseason projections never clearly do worse than the in-season stats. Since we’re right at the start of September, I thought this would be a good opportunity to look at how the ZiPS preseason projections stack up against March-through-August performance when it comes to projecting what happens in the final month of the season.

And to be clear, I don’t think this preseason edge is exclusive to ZiPS; I expect that Steamer and PECOTA perform similarly well. It’s just that I have a rather unique level of access to ZiPS. But data is more important than a simple claim, so let’s dig in. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, and welcome to the first chat of September! Which means that yes, you’ve been called up to the majors and added to the roster.

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about Tristan Peters, a former Savannah Banana (from their days in wood-bat collegiate summer leagues) and unheralded prospect who’s been one of the top rookie position players in the game this season. This was a fun one to put together https://blogs.fangraphs.com/tristan-peters-has-gone-bananas/

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Last week, I did my annual Hall of Fame progress update, dividing players into those who have had rough seasons that have hurt their cause (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-a-rough-year-for-gian…) and those who have helped their cause (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-chris-sale-and-others…)

12:05

Jay Jaffe: I’m mulling writing something about position players pitching, which is on the rise again. So, let’s do a quick, unscientific poll…

12:07

Jay Jaffe: Position Players Pitching It’s fine, please chill out (40.9% | 36 votes)   Never, except in an extra-innings emergency (30.6% | 27 votes)   The rules (trailing by 8 or more, up by 10 or more in 9th) need to be tighter (28.4% | 25 votes)   Total Votes: 88

12:07

Jay Jaffe: Let’s see how that does with our readers here (small sample size noted)

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Jacobs is emerging as a prospect to watch in the Detroit Tigers system. A third-round pick last year out of Arizona State University, the 22-year-old southpaw is currently on a five-game run at High-A West Michigan in which he has fanned 33 batters while allowing just 10 hits and two runs across 26 frames. Moreover, he has gone 15 scoreless over his last three starts.

His overall numbers are solid. On the season, the erstwhile Sun Devil has logged a 34.4% strikeout rate, a 3.50 ERA, and a 3.80 FIP over 87 1/3 innings, all but 16 2/3 of them with his current club. Jacobs made his professional debut with Low-A Lakeland in April, but earned a promotion by the end of the month.

He entered the year with a relatively low profile. When our 2026 Tigers Top Prospects list came out in late February, Jacobs ranked just 24th with a 40 FV. Fast forward six months and it’s hello helium. Recently asked for a scouting update, Eric Longenhagen called the Huntington Beach native an “arrow up guy,” adding that he now merits a 40+ FV.

How has Jacobs changed since signing with the Tabbies last summer? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s easy to forget that the trade deadline isn’t actually the last chance for teams to reload before the postseason. Players can join a team through waivers as late as August 31 — Monday, for those of you who, like me, have trouble keeping track of the calendar — and still be eligible for the playoffs.

It’s common practice for teams to put expensive vets on the wire to see if anyone will bite and take the contract off their hands. The Angels famously flooded the waiver wire in 2023, as their last-ditch effort to load up for a playoff run with Shohei Ohtani left backfired in a matter of days. This year, the biggest name on the move was Luis Robert Jr., who’s bound for Baltimore. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to give you a little cheat sheet for writing about deadline moves. If you’re talking about a seller who traded a player for a minimal return and you’re looking for silver linings, you can mention “opportunity.” It has two big advantages. First, it’s nebulous and hard to disprove. If you make a claim about a specific player, it might be wrong. If you say that a roster spot is an opportunity, how will someone counter that? But more importantly, roster spots really are opportunities, so your analysis will have the advantage of being correct. Case in point: Nate Lavender.

If you’re wondering who that is, that’s exactly what I’m getting at. Lavender debuted on August 4, the day after the Mets sent half the team out of town at the trade deadline. He was one of five Mets pitchers called up that day, a hockey-style line shift in the bullpen. Not all of them panned out. Xzavion Curry and Chayce McDermott are back in the minors. Jefry Yan has a fun strikeout celebration and a 5.18 FIP. But Lavender has been good enough that he’s worked his way from his big league debut into a setup role in three weeks. Opportunity, indeed.

A quick recap of Lavender’s minor league career: He was the Mets’ 14th-round draft pick in 2021, climbed the minor league ladder despite below-average velocity and stuff, and then blew out his elbow early in the 2024 season. He had an internal brace surgery that summer, and then the Rays plucked him away in the Rule 5 draft that December. They parked him on the 60-day injured list for the entirety of the 2025 season, as a bone spur in his elbow delayed his rehab. When the year ended and the 60-day IL disappeared, the Rays returned him to the Mets rather than place him on their 40-man roster. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the research Meg saw on her trip to Saber Seminar, a vintage Max Scherzer start, Tarik Skubal’s espresso-machine maneuver, a Kevin McGonigle double and rule 9.06(f), an international signing scandal (or in truth, two), MLB’s proposals for reworking offseason signings and roster rules, legal wrangling regarding prediction markets, WPBL difficulties, a Chris Sale gem, a costly FARTBAT, outfield additions, whether Shohei Ohtani will pitch again, the first team eliminated from division-title contention, and more.

Audio intro: Philip Tapley and Michael Stokes, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Luke Lillard, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Saber Seminar site
Link to Scherzer start
Link to espresso article 1
Link to espresso article 2
Link to article on player frugality
Link to McGonigle hit article
Link to @ScoringChanges explanation
Link to Posnanski post
Link to old EW on automatic singles
Link to ESPN report on signing scandal
Link to MLB proposal article 1
Link to MLB proposal article 2
Link to Baumann on MLB proposals
Link to NHL holiday roster freeze
Link to MLB prediction-market deals
Link to latest legal decision
Link to prediction-markets piece 1
Link to prediction-markets piece 2
Link to WPBL standings
Link to WPBL article 1
Link to WPBL article 2
Link to Sale article 1
Link to Sale article 2
Link to Sale game page
Link to Baldwin game precedents
Link to FARTBAT article
Link to FARTBAT wiki
Link to MLBTR on Pham
Link to Pham vs. Myers spat
Link to MLBTR on Cave
Link to MLBTR on Robert Jr.
Link to Ohtani update
Link to Reddit Rockies post
Link to Curt’s Bluesky post
Link to Cowser catch clip
Link to Cowser catch article
Link to The Sun Never Sets

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