The San Francisco Giants have reportedly agreed to a contract with right-handed pitcher Jordan Hicks worth $11 million a year. (Makes sense, Hicks was really good out of the bullpen for St. Louis and Toronto last year, and reliable relief arms are hard to come by in free agency.) The deal will run for four years. (Wow, that’s a long time.) It also contains $2 million a year in workload-based incentives that start at 100 innings per season, because the Giants (hold onto your butts) intend to use Hicks as a starter.

Fascinating! Read the rest of this entry »

Troy Taylor is an under-the-radar pitcher to keep your eye on in the Seattle Mariners system. A 22-year-old right-hander who was taken in the 12th round of the 2022 draft out of the University of California Irvine, Taylor impressed evaluators in the Arizona Fall League with a two-pitch mix that has him well-positioned for a future role as a big-league reliever.

“I’m a big fan of what he can do athletically, as a mover,” said a scout I spoke to. “His stuff is good. He’s a guy who probably ends up in the bullpen with the Mariners, and sooner rather than later.”

He’s already come a long way. Taylor was an infielder at Rancho Cucamonga’s Los Osos High School, and when he did occasionally take the mound — “I closed a couple of times” — all he really did was throw as hard he could. It wasn’t until he got to Cyprus Junior College, and then to UC-Irvine, that he “actually started learning how to pitch.”

Taylor has understandably learned a lot more about the nuances of his craft since signing with Seattle, but he nonetheless remains anything but a technician. Topping out at 98 mph and typically averaging “five and some change,” he still tries to throw his heater as hard as he can. He identifies as a power pitcher.

Adding a third pitch is a goal — the Mariners have him working on a changeup to use against left-handed hitters — but his fastball-slider combination will always be his bread and butter. The former is not only his best pitch, it has unique characteristics. Read the rest of this entry »

As you might have heard, the Yankees made a big splash early this offseason by trading for Juan Soto. It was one of the most impactful moves of the entire winter, and they struck quickly. Then, they went into hibernation. Their next major move didn’t come until yesterday, when they signed Marcus Stroman to a two-year deal worth $37 million, as Joel Sherman first reported.

As second acts go, it’s surely not what Yankees fans were hoping for. New York was linked to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and several other interesting pitchers were at least briefly connected to the team as well. But while Stroman is hardly the most exciting signing of the offseason, I think he’ll be an important cog in the team’s 2024 quest to get back to the playoffs, and that makes for a great fit in my opinion.

Let’s get something out of the way first: ZiPS doesn’t agree with me on this one. It thinks that Stroman is going to be a decidedly unexciting rotation option for the next two years:

In a word, yikes. That’s a desultory projection, the kind of starter that you’d be unhappy turning to in a playoff game. As you can see, the model would only have offered him about $25 million for the next two years rather than $37 million. But I’m not quite buying it, so let’s talk about why. Read the rest of this entry »

Monday is the first day of the new international signing period, so I’ve expanded and updated my evaluations of players from the class. An overview of the rules that govern signing international amateurs can be found on MLB’s glossary here, while more thorough and detailed documentation can be found starting on page 316 of the CBA and page 38 of the Official Professional Baseball Rules Book. Players have until December 15 to sign before this signing period closes.

Scouting reports, tool grades, and projected signing teams and bonuses for just shy of 50 players from the 2024 class can now be viewed over on The Board. Because the International Players tab has an apples and oranges mix of older pros from Asian leagues and soon-to-be first-year players, there is no explicit ranking for this amateur class on The Board. However, I’ve stacked the class with a ranking in the table below, and as usual, that ranking will live on the International Players dropdown of The Board after most of these guys have finished signing in the coming weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 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, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Given that he made just one All-Star team in his 13-year major league career (2006–13), and only once finished higher than 11th in the Cy Young Award voting, it’s tough to argue that James Shields was a star. The 6-foot-3, 210-pound righty was a reliable, high-quality workhorse for most of his career, totaling 200 or more innings 10 times and making 33 or more starts nine times, five of which included an ERA+ of 110 or higher. He earned — or rather borrowed from NBA legend James Worthy — the nickname “Big Game James” for strong performances in high-profile spots, and while it wasn’t always apt, he was renowned for his work ethic and competitiveness, viewed as a player who could mentor younger pitchers and help to transform the culture of a team. Shields helped both the 2008 Rays and 2014 Royals come out of nowhere to reach the World Series, and wound up at the center of a couple of pivotal trades. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Francisco Giants drafted Reggie Crawford as a two-way player, and so far they’ve allowed the 30th-overall pick in the 2022 draft to continue to both pitch and swing the bat. How much longer that will be the case remains to be seen, with the forthcoming season likely going a long way toward determining an answer. To this point, Crawford has had scant opportunity to do either. Thanks largely to Tommy John surgery, the 6-foot-4, 235-pound University of Connecticut product has logged just 19 innings and 111 plate appearances (71 of them in the Arizona Fall League) since signing a professional contract.

Eric Longenhagen described the left-left hurler/first-baseman as “a prospect of extreme variance” and “still more a developmental project than anything else” when assigning him a 40+ FV midway through last summer. That both his hitting and pitching potential factor into our lead prospect analyst’s assessment makes Crawford arguably the most intriguing young player in the Giants’ pipeline. If he performs capably on both sides in 2024, he’ll be among the most intriguing young players in baseball.

Crawford discussed his two-way aspirations in the final week of the Arizona Fall League season.

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David Laurila: To start, I’m interested in your thoughts on someone you’ve been playing against here in the Fall League. Carson Williams was highly regarded as a two-way player in high school, but has only played shortstop since Tampa Bay drafted him 28th overall in 2021. Could you see him succeeding at both in pro ball?

Reggie Crawford: “Oh, I’d imagine so. It just comes down to… I mean, for me the planning and the scheduling is probably the most difficult part. Someone who is that athletic and has those sets of tools, I don’t see why he wouldn’t be able to.” Read the rest of this entry »

Rhys Hoskins is a free agent, and it’s kind of weird. The 30-year-old first baseman spent 10 seasons in the Phillies organization, six of them (plus one full year spent on the injured list) with the major league club. For a time, he was one of the only bright spots on a completely moribund team, but eventually the big fella settled into a role as a supporting player and de facto table-setter for a lineup built around Bryce Harper. His achievements in that role include the Bat Spike home run, a three-run dinger off Spencer Strider in the 2022 NLDS — the Phillies’ first home playoff game in 11 years.

While it was surpassed in the imagination by Harper’s pennant-winning homer in the rain later that October, the image of Hoskins’ celebration lives on in memory as a highly localized version of the José Bautista bat flip for people who are deeply upset by the decline in the quality of Wawa’s sandwich bread since the chain went national. You want to watch the home run again? I do. Let’s watch it again.

Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Chicago Cubs.

Batters

Are the Cubs back to their mid-2010s form? That’s a bit of a stretch, but these Cubs showed they have a live pulse, not falling out of playoff contention until the final week of the 2023 season. Cody Bellinger, one of the reasons the offense was so potent (third in the National League in runs scored), turned out to be one of the best pillow-contract signings of all time. Perhaps a little too good, as it was enough for Bellinger to decline his side of a $25 million mutual option for 2024. The Cubs could still sign Bellinger, but even if they do, it’s not a great bet they’ll get the same production as last year. ZiPS is a bit more optimistic than Steamer, but it still projects a returning Bellinger to “give back” some of his contact and a significant chunk of his power. Read the rest of this entry »