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 San Francisco Giants.

Batters

If they don’t make any other moves this offseason, the Giants would enter 2024 without any serious holes in the lineup and pretty good depth at most spots. Problem is, they would also enter 2024 without a whole lot of ceiling in the offense. It’s certainly not from lack of trying; the Giants were within striking range of landing Aaron Judge last winter and Shohei Ohtani this one. But the bottom line is that they’re short on impact offensive talent. While Jung Hoo Lee and Patrick Bailey have the best overall projections, a lot of that is defensive value. Wilmer Flores‘ .265/.337/.446 triple-slash is the best on the roster, and even at Oracle Park, that’s rather underwhelming. And the awkward thing is that there really aren’t players available in free agency who can flip this script. The Giants can only upgrade the offense with a legitimate star, yet the only way left to get one is to trade for one. Read the rest of this entry »

Craig Breslow is restructuring the Red Sox pitching program. Hired in October to replace Chaim Bloom as Boston’s Chief Baseball Officer, the 43-year-old erstwhile reliever is doing so in multiple ways, and that includes having effectively cloned himself with a Twin. Earlier this month, Boston’s new top executive lured Justin Willard away from Minnesota to be the team’s Director of Pitching — the same role Breslow held in Chicago when he worked to revamp the Cubs’ pitching development process just a few years ago.

That Breslow’s approach is largely data-driven and comes with an adherence to bat-missing qualities is a big reason why Willard was brought on board. Much like the Yale graduate who hired him, Willard — a former college hurler with an MBA from Radford University — is both well-versed in analytics and an advocate of arsenals rife with plus raw stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

The Giants shored up their catcher situation late Monday, signing Tom Murphy, formerly of the Mariners, to a two-year contract worth $8 million. A third-round pick by the Rockies, that club had little playing time available for him due to the presence of superstars like Tony Wolters and Nick Hundley. At risk of becoming an organizational player, he found a new home with Seattle, which paired him with Omar Narváez and watched the home runs flow like alcohol in Belltown. In four seasons of timeshare catching there, Murphy hit .250/.324/.460 with 38 homers in 807 plate appearances. Patrick Bailey (rightly) remains the starting catcher in San Francisco, but he now has a high-quality junior partner when rest or the occasional offensive oomph is needed.

Since Murphy’s initial season with the Mariners (2019), his best in the majors to-date, he’s suffered a run of injuries that have prevented him from seizing larger portions of a starting job. A broken foot in the COVID-shortened 2020 ended his season before it began, and a shoulder injury cost him most of ’22. By the time he was healthy again, Cal Raleigh had become a key part of the lineup and earned the lion’s share of the playing time.

Bailey is the no. 1 catcher in San Francisco, a deserving Gold Glove finalist in his rookie season. What he isn’t is an offensive powerhouse. ZiPS projects 2.4 WAR from him in 105 games, but that’s largely driven by a defensive projection of 13 runs better than the average catcher, not a projected .226/.294/.361 triple-slash. And that’s where Murphy comes in, both spelling Bailey on rest days and giving the Giants the tactical opportunity to get a better bat in the late innings when they’re facing a deficit and could use an additional hitter. Also helping Murphy in getting plate appearances is the Giants long being a team that has protected the health of its starting catchers; Buster Posey only started 120 games there once in his career. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Ben Clemens broke down the trade that sent Tyler Glasnow to the Dodgers, as well as the extension that Glasnow signed soon afterward. In this article, our focus is the conditional option at the very end of the contract. Before the 2028 season, the Dodgers have a $30 million team option. If they decline to exercise it, Glasnow has his own $21.5 million player option. When I read about the structure of the options, my first thought was to wonder why this doesn’t happen all the time. Here’s how Ben interpreted the situation:

“It seems likely to me that one of those two will be exercised; in my mind, it’s a five-year, $135 million deal with a $10 million kicker if he’s pitching well in year four. The circumstances where neither side exercises their option just feel much less likely than one side or the other being an obvious yes.”

I was inclined to agree. It is sort of like a performance bonus: Pitch well and we’ll bring you back for $30 million, but if you don’t, then you’ll be back for $21.5 million. The $8.5 million difference is a lot of money, but it’s also small enough that, depending on the market and their own particular health and performance, a player might not be certain that they’d make it up in free agency. It might just be easier and safer to stick around. The more I thought about it, though, the more wrinkles I saw. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the New York Yankees. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth 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, Meg Rowley, FanGraphs’ Michael Baumann and Ben Clemens, and Chris Hanel play a quick round of “College Baseball Player or U.S. Space Shuttle Astronaut,” banter about the Braves’ series of recent, red-paper-clip-style trades (5:21) and the Diamondbacks re-signing Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (14:13), and then revisit, dissect, and score their bold preseason predictions from March (16:22).

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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 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.

Before Joe Mauer began starring for the Twins, there was Torii Hunter, and before Chase Utley began starring for the Phillies, there was Jimmy Rollins. Hunter, a rangy, acrobatic center fielder who eventually won nine Gold Gloves and made five All-Star teams, debuted with Minnesota in 1997 and emerged as a star in 2001, the same year the Twins chose Mauer with the number one pick of the draft. The pair would play together from 2004 to ’07, making the playoffs twice before Hunter departed via free agency. Rollins, a compact shortstop who carried himself with a swagger, debuted in 2001 and made two All-Star teams by the time he and Utley began an 11-year run (2004–14) as the Phillies’ regular double play combination. The pair helped Philadelphia to five NL East titles, two pennants, and a championship, with Rollins winning NL MVP honors in 2007 and taking home four Gold Gloves.

Hunter and Rollins both enjoyed lengthy and impressive careers, racking up over 2,400 hits apiece with substantial home run and stolen base totals. From a Hall of Fame perspective, both have credentials that appeal more to traditionally-minded voters than to statheads. But in their time on the ballot, they’ve gotten little traction, with Hunter topping out at 9.5% in his 2021 debut and Rollins only breaking into double digits in ’23. Not much has changed regarding their electoral outlooks this time around; both are likely to be far outdistanced by their former teammates, whose advanced statistics are much stronger despite comparatively short careers. Still, these two may persist on the ballot, with enough support for us to keep reliving their careers and discussing their merits on an annual basis. There are far worse fates for Hall of Fame candidates. Read the rest of this entry »

Arizona took one of the few quality outfielders available in free agency off the market over the weekend, re-signing outfielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to a three-year contract worth a guaranteed $42 million. Gurriel gets an opt-out after the second year of the contract, and the Snakes get a $14 million option for a fourth season. While he didn’t have a star-level season for Arizona in 2023, he was a steady contributor in left field and designated hitter, putting up a .261/.309/.463 triple-slash en route to 2.1 WAR.

Gurriel wasn’t the primary reason that Arizona surprised a lot of people in 2023, but he filled a hole in the Diamondbacks’ lineup. In 2022, Arizona designated hitters combined to hit .215/.320/.382. And Jake McCarthy’s struggles — he had a .481 OPS in April — ensured there was plenty of time for Gurriel in the field. While nobody will ever confuse Gurriel with Kevin Kiermaier with the glove, he had the best defensive season of his career by OAA. If you prefer DRS or UZR, he was one of the best defensive left fielders in baseball. I’m not going to go nearly that far, but the combination of respectable work with both leather and wood left Gurriel a league-average starter overall.

In 2024, Gurriel will likely play a similar role, splitting time at left field and DH. The estimates of Ben Clemens (3/45) and our crowdsource (3/36) did well here. Even in a free-agent market with few impact hitters, an ordinary player hitting 30 years old without a ton of defensive value was never likely to set the market on fire. Read the rest of this entry »