Ben Lindbergh and Ben Clemens of FanGraphs banter about the latest positional drama regarding Rafael Devers, then discuss whether and why pitchers leaguewide are Yu Darvish-ing and Tyler Holton-ing—that is, throwing more pitch types, and varying their pitch types more based on batter handedness—before answering listener emails about home strike zones and combining bad teams to make a good team. Then (44:42) Ben continues the “baseball jobs” series by bringing on Adam Auer, major league dietician for the Brewers and former minor and major league strength and conditioning coach, to talk about how teams are improving player performance through nutrition, exercise, and recovery, followed (1:41:49) by Emory Brinkman, senior editor for Stats Perform, who discusses generating viral fun facts, parsing statistical qualifiers, and data-wrangling.
In the introduction to their 2023 Saberseminar presentation, Scott Powers and Vicente Iglesias hit on a fundamental truth about pitching: The variable that bests predicts the outcome of a pitch is the location where it crosses the plate. For a case study, look no further than this tweet from MLB.com’s David Adler about Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s splitters.
Hitters have swung 74 times at Yoshinobu Yamamoto's splitter this season …
If Yamamoto buries his splitter arm side, he’s probably getting a whiff. If it’s on the edge of the zone, it’s likely a foul ball. If it catches plate, it’s getting put in play. The location dictates the outcome.
Given this truth, pitchers who command the ball best ought to dominate. But there’s a catch. As Powers and Iglesias noted, the location is also the variable with the least predictive reliability. If you see a pitcher throw a fastball 98 mph, you can be pretty sure he is going to do it again. A dotted backdoor slider, on the other hand, does not guarantee an entire game of dotted backdoor sliders. Command is both the most important and the least reliable quality for a pitcher.
Scott Powers and Vicente Iglesias, 2023 Saberseminar
Nobody can nail the corners with every pitch. But pitchers can at least minimize the variance of their locations, finding relative reliability within the chaos of command. And in 2025, there is perhaps nobody more reliable than Jacob deGrom.
deGrom’s flat attack angle fastball and firm slider have (justifiably) built his reputation as a stuff monster. Even after easing up on the gas pedal this season, deGrom is still a darling in the eyes of the models. His overall Stuff+ is in the 80th percentile for starters with at least 30 innings pitched, fueled by his depth-y 89-mph slider. PitchingBot likes deGrom even more, ranking him in the top 10 among those pitchers. Over at Baseball Prospectus, the StuffPro model believes deGrom wields four pitches — his curveball and changeup, in addition to the heater and slider — that all grade out as plus.
deGrom’s unbelievable precision came to my attention while writing about Hunter Gaddis for a piece that was published on Monday. As part of my effort to discern whether Gaddis owed his early-season success to slider command (the verdict: inconclusive), I created a version of the Kirby Index for sliders to see where he landed. That metric measured the variance in release angles and release points and distilled those figures into a single score that captured command ability. Originally, it was designed for fastballs, which tend to be thrown to all parts of the strike zone. It perhaps works even better for sliders, which generally are thrown to fewer targets. Gaddis’ rank among his fellow pitchers was nothing remarkable, but deGrom’s name sitting at the very top caught my attention.
Minimum 50 sliders thrown to right-handed hitters.
As I wrote earlier this year, a more straightforward implementation of the Kirby Index would be to just measure the variance of the actual pitch locations. For this story, I calculated the standard deviation of the vertical and horizontal locations of a given pitcher’s sliders; once again, deGrom found himself at the top of the pack. Look at how much distance there is between him and the next closest pitcher:
Minimum 50 sliders thrown to right-handed hitters.
Random tangent here, but you have to admire Luarbert Arias for refusing to throw his junky 82-mph slider anywhere but inside the strike zone.
Anyway, measuring location densities, ultimately, could just point at pitchers who fill up the strike zone; the real test of command is a pitcher’s ability to hit his actual target. To that end, Driveline Baseball provided me with a sample of their proprietary miss distance data. Using Inside Edge tracking data, Driveline measures the distance from the intended target to the actual location of the pitch.
No surprise — deGrom’s slider miss distance ranked first among all pitchers. The league-average miss distance for sliders is about 12.5 inches; this year, deGrom is missing his target by under nine inches, nearly three standard deviations below the average. Any way you slice it, deGrom is commanding his slider like no one else in the sport.
The outcomes have been unassailable. So far, deGrom’s slider has returned a run value of -3.2 per 100 pitches thrown, the best mark for any slider thrown by a starting pitcher. Not only is he getting a bunch of swing and miss — a 38.1% whiff rate, as of this writing — it’s also grabbing a ton of called strikes. When batters do manage to put it in play, they can’t do much with it. The average launch angle on the pitch is just 2°; the xwOBA is a meek .227.
The harmless outcomes on balls in play are a function of deGrom’s targets. To right-handed hitters, he targets the classic low-away corner, breaking off the plate. Note the bimodal distribution on the heatmap — there’s a large concentration of sliders he’ll throw in the zone for strikes, and then another cluster right below the zone that generate chase.
These intentions can be seen in the filtered heatmap clusters. When deGrom throws sliders to righties in zero-strike counts, he tends to be in the zone:
In two-strike counts, he chases the swing and miss:
To lefties, deGrom shows a similar bimodal distribution, but the pattern appears reversed. In early counts, he’s aiming just below the zone; in late counts, he’s looking for called strikes. This sequence to Athletics rookie Nick Kurtz, which featured four sliders, gives a sense of the approach. On 1-0 and 2-0, deGrom tries to bait a chase, but the big lefty resists.
Down 3-0, deGrom fires a middle-middle heater in an auto-take scenario, then returns to the slider in a 3-1 count. Here, deGrom dials in his robotic precision, dotting the lower edge of the strike zone to bring the count full.
On 3-2, he goes there again. Kurtz takes it and pays the price. Though the superimposed strike zone on the broadcast says this pitch is just low, my sense is he deserves that call; if he’s consistently landing pitches within inches of his intended target, you sort of just have to hand it to him.
deGrom isn’t just painting with the slider. I calculated the Kirby Index for four-seam fastballs thrown to righties in 2025; incredibly, he also sits in first place on that list.
Minimum 50 fastballs thrown to right-handed hitters.
As nice as it would be to think that deGrom can be just as good even after dropping two ticks off the fastball, it just isn’t true. Absent improvement elsewhere, losing stuff will bring him back to Earth. But deGrom is far from stagnant. In 2019 — his last full big league season, amid the most dominant phase of his career — his fastball command measured as below average by miss distance. Six years later, it’s hard to argue his command is anything but 80-grade. And as long as the elbow cooperates, it will help him defy gravity.
Things did not go well for the Cubs’ Ryan Pressly on Tuesday night against the Giants at Wrigley Field. Chicago had clawed its way back from a fourth-inning, 5-2 deficit, capped by a two-run, ninth-inning rally that sent the game into extra innings. After an uneventful 10th, all hell broke loose in the 11th, as Pressly failed to retire any of the eight batters he faced. By the time the dust settled, nine runs had scored, and unlike the Cubs’ April 18 game against the Diamondbacks, where they answered 10 eighth-inning runs with six of their own on the bottom of the frame and won 13-11, this time they fell 14-5.
As you might expect, it took a bad break or two to blow the doors open in that 11th inning. Following a double by Heliot Ramos and an RBI single by Patrick Bailey, Brett Wisely laid down a sacrifice bunt toward the first base side of the mound. Pressly fielded the ball and made an awkward, backhanded flip to Carson Kelly, but the ball dribbled under the catcher’s glove. Ramos was safe at home and Wisely reached first, still with nobody out. Mike Yastrzemski walked to load the bases, and then Willy Adames was hit by a pitch to force in Bailey. On the replay, it looked like a wild pitch that had gotten by Kelly, which would have advanced the runners and scored the run nonetheless, but home plate umpire Bill Miller ruled the ball had grazed Adames. The call was upheld after the Cubs challenged it, adding another baserunner to the mix, and consecutive singles by Jung Hoo Lee, Matt Chapman, and Wilmer Flores brought in four more runs (two on Chapman’s hit). With the score already a lopsided 11-5, Cubs manager Craig Counsell mercifully gave Pressly the hook.
The onslaught didn’t stop. Reliever Caleb Thielbar entered and finally recorded the first out by striking out Christian Koss before serving up an RBI double to Ramos. Bailey added a sacrifice fly before David Villar, pinch-hitting for Wisely, struck out. The Cubs went down in order against Kyle Harrison in the bottom of the 11th, and that was that. Read the rest of this entry »
I didn’t expect this from Wilyer Abreu. Don’t get me wrong. I love Abreu and I spent much of the offseason writing about him. I even developed a (literal) sliding scale to tabulate just how often and how intensely he dirtied his uniform. Abreu is a high-effort player who absolutely deserved the Rookie of the Year votes and Gold Glove he got last season. But I worried about him too. Abreu has done nothing but hit and play great defense since his 2023 debut, but he’s a lefty who’s been strictly platooned, and he only recently reached a full season’s worth of big league plate appearances. He seemed like a regression candidate, and that was before a gastrointestinal illness cost him a chunk of spring training and several pounds. The Red Sox weren’t even sure he’d be ready to start the season, but he was and he’s raked from day one. After this hot start, should we be all-in on Abreu?
First, I was worried a bit about Abreu’s defense. I didn’t expect him to turn into a pumpkin. He really was the best right fielder in baseball last season by pretty much any measure you can think of, and I expected him to remain great. Although he’s not a speedster, his instincts and effort have allowed him to make three three-star catches, two four-star catches, and one five-star catch this season. However, a ton of his value last year came from nine assists, and as I wrote in the Positional Power Rankings, that’s a volatile stat. You can’t just expect someone to rack up assists year after year, if for no other reason than the fact that word gets out about a rocket arm like Abreu’s. Those gaudy out totals would turn into smaller credits for keeping runners from taking extra bases. Or so I thought. Read the rest of this entry »
Lucas Giolito is looking to return to form following elbow surgery that cost him all of last year. Now 30 years old and in his first season on mound with the Boston Red Sox, Giolito has made a pair of starts — one solid, another squalid — in which he has surrendered 15 hits and nine runs over 9 2/3 innings. At his best, he’s been a top-of-the-rotation pitcher. From 2019-2021, the 6-foot-6 right-hander fashioned a 3.47 ERA and a 3.54 FIP while making a team-high 72 starts for the Chicago White Sox.
Turn the clock back 10 years, and Giolito sat atop our 2015 Washington Nationals Top Prospects list. Our then-lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel was understandably bullish about Giolito, writing that the 2012 first-round draft pick had true no. 1 upside.
What did Giolito’s FanGraphs scouting report look like at the time? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what McDaniel wrote and asked Giolito to respond to it.
———
“Giolito was nationally known by scouts all the way back to when he hit 95 mph at age 15.”
“I always threw hard,” Giolito said. “I was one of the hardest throwers in Little League and everything like that. I started long tossing a lot around the time I got to high school, and just kept building and building. I think I hit 90 when I was 14, and then 95 maybe closer to my 16th birthday. So yeah, it kept going up until I blew my elbow out.
“Probably,” Giolito responded when asked if the velocity was too much, too early. “There wasn’t too much understanding on the medical side, like strengthening, stability — all the stuff that we’re doing now to maintain the little muscles, the big muscles, to support your body when it’s outputting that much force. I was also very skinny. My shoulder blades winged out. I didn’t have much muscular development at that age, but I was moving very fast. It eventually caught up to me.”
“[He] was in the running to go 1-1 as one of the top prep pitchers of all time, until he was shut down with a sprained UCL in his elbow. This led to an expected Tommy John surgery one outing after he signed for an $800,000 overslot bonus as the 16th overall pick.”
“I remember having an outing where I think the Astros’ GM came to see me pitch in person,” Giolito said. “I pitched really well that day. I was on top of the world. It was like, ‘Oh my God, I might be the first-overall pick if I just continue what I’m doing for the rest of the season.’ It was the next outing, or maybe two outings later, where I hurt my elbow. I had to shut down. We didn’t want to do the full TJ yet, because we thought that would hurt me in the draft. Plus, if I was going to get TJ, I wanted to be in a professional organization where you get access to the best care. I tried to rehab it.
“Going into the draft, I had no idea,” added Giolito, a product of Harvard-Westlake High School. “I thought I’d be picked somewhere in the first three rounds, that a team would take a flier on me. I didn’t know I’d be in the first round. That was kind of the beginning of the pre-draft-deal era, but I literally was watching the draft on the TV when they said my name. That was when I found out I was drafted in the first round.
“The Nationals picked me. I was a prep arm with a blown-out elbow, which is a big, big risk. I have Stephen Strasburg to thank, because he was a big prospect who came up, blew his elbow out, got Tommy John, and had a relatively successful recovery from that. The Nationals kind of saw me in that same vein. It was, ‘OK, we’ll get this guy. He’ll have TJ, but we feel confident with this.’”
“The stuff was all the way back this year as he dominated Low-A at age 19/20 in his first full year coming off of surgery. The Nationals were understandably conservative with pitch and innings counts.”
“My first full season back they had my innings count at 100,” Giolito recalled. “I got to 100 innings and they shut me down, and that sucked, because our team was so good. Our starting rotation consisted of me, Reynaldo López, Nick Pivetta. Austin Voth was in the rotation, but he got sent up to High-A at some point that year. We had a really nasty one-two-three with me, Reynaldo, and Nick, but then I got shut down with a few weeks left in the season and had to be a cheerleader. We ended up losing in the playoffs.”
“His knockout curveball, which gets 65 or 70 grades from scouts, is his signature offspeed pitch.”
“Not any more,” replied the righty. “I still have it, but I don’t throw it as often. I always say that Tommy John gave me my changeup. When I was recovering I messed around with changeup grips a lot and found one that was comfortable. I threw it a lot in that same season you mentioned, that Low-A season. I threw a ton of changeups, because the curveball made my elbow hurt that first season back.
“My curveball was good in the minor leagues — I still used it — but we mixed that changeup in a lot. Over time, especially when I developed the slider, the changeup really became the big pitch for me.”
“He has true no. 1 starter upside.”
“Yeah, I mean, I had that with the White Sox for a couple of years,” Giolito said. “I still have confidence that I have true no. 1 starter upside. I just have to come back from this thing and develop some good consistency.”
Charlie Morton has been about to retire for a while now. The lanky curveball specialist first made headlines in the early 2010s; he’d been struggling over his first three major league seasons, so he came up with a novel, but hilariously simple, solution: Copy what Roy Halladay was doing. It worked for a while, but injuries piled up, and it wasn’t until Morton landed with the Astros in 2017 that he really, truly put it together.
In the first season of a two-year deal with the Astros, Morton set new career highs in wins, WAR, and strikeouts. He not only won a championship for the first time in his career, he was the winning pitcher in Game 7 of both the ALCS and the World Series, and got the last out of the season in the latter case. He turned 34 five days after the Astros’ championship parade, and by the following spring he was already musing publicly about hanging up his spikes. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. For once, I don’t have a fistful of double plays to show you. I don’t even have that many great catches. The baseball I watched this week was disjointed and messy, the regular season at its finest. Making the easy plays tough? We’ve got that. Bringing in your lefty to face their righty slugger? Got that too. Doubles that weren’t? Collisions between out-of-position players? Yes and yes. So thanks Zach Lowe for the wonderful article format, and let’s get started.
1. Tell ‘Em, Wash
I mean, how hard could first base be? Incredibly hard, of course. The Red Sox and Rangers are both on to their respective Plan Bs at first base after Triston Casas ruptured his patellar tendon and Jake Burger got sent down to Triple-A. No big deal defensively, right? Each team plugged in a utility player — Romy Gonzalez for Boston and Josh Smith for Texas — and moved on with life. Look how easy first is:
It’s a baseball-book bonanza! Ben Lindbergh rounds up the authors of three new baseball books for conversations about their work and our relationships with the past. First he talks to John W. Miller about his biography of Earl Weaver, The Last Manager, Weaver’s wiring and sabermetric intuition, and the diminished role and reputation of managers. Then (48:16) he brings on Will Bardenwerper to discuss his book, Homestand, the contraction of the minor leagues, and baseball as a social bond. Finally (1:29:52), Jacob McArthur Mooney joins to explore his new novel, the Northern, the baseball card wars, and road/coming-of-age stories.
Spending your own money is fun, but spending someone else’s money is even better! When it comes to extending major league contracts, unless you’re a billionaire, or a millionaire with a lot of millionaire business partners, you pretty much have to live vicariously through those other parties. Keeping talent wearing your uniform, of course, has more utility than a simple splendiferous shopping spree, since the players you want to retain are unlikely to get less expensive when they hit free agency. The Toronto Blue Jays did their own impressive feat of cash-splashing last month, when they gave Vladimir Guerrero Jr. half a billion bucks or about $700 million puckaroos, maplebacks, or whatever it is that Canadians call their money. Yes, comments section, I’m aware they’re dollars.
For this year’s edition, I’ve chosen seven players to sign to long-term deals with their current clubs, and in all seven cases, I believe an extension would be mutually beneficial for both the player and his respective team. I’ve included the up-to-date ZiPS projections for each player, as well as the contract that ZiPS thinks each player should get, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that I think the player will end up with that figure or even sign an extension.
Tarik Skubal, Detroit Tigers – Seven years, $240 million
ZiPS Projection – Tarik Skubal
Year
W
L
ERA
G
GS
IP
H
ER
HR
BB
SO
ERA+
WAR
2026
13
7
2.79
29
29
174.0
141
54
14
33
193
149
4.7
2027
13
7
2.88
29
29
172.0
144
55
15
33
186
144
4.5
2028
12
7
2.99
28
28
165.3
143
55
15
31
174
139
4.1
2029
11
7
3.12
28
28
158.7
140
55
15
30
161
133
3.7
2030
10
8
3.26
28
28
154.7
141
56
16
29
153
127
3.4
2031
10
7
3.50
27
27
149.3
142
58
16
29
143
119
2.9
2032
9
8
3.56
26
26
144.0
139
57
16
29
135
117
2.7
After his unanimous selection as the AL Cy Young winner last season, Tarik Skubal isn’t doing anything in 2025 that would make him less expensive on a long-term deal. When I ran ZiPS late last summer, Skubal just barely beat out Logan Webb for the most rest-of-career projected WAR among active starting pitchers, and he has maintained a very slight edge since. The AL Central is just ripe for some team to dominate the rest, and even if the Tigers don’t spend like they did during the Mike Ilitch years, they don’t need to dish out $300 million a year to be the big dog in this division. Skubal gives Detroit a weapon that no other AL Central team can match, and at this point, he’s probably no more of an injury risk than is any other pitcher. Outside of Javier Báez, the Tigers have very little guaranteed money on the books (Colt Keith’s deal wouldn’t even hamstring the Pirates or A’s), and if they’re looking going to spend to keep one player on the team long term, who else could it be?
Wyatt Langford, Texas Rangers – Nine years, $239 million
ZiPS Projection – Wyatt Langford
Year
BA
OBP
SLG
AB
R
H
2B
3B
HR
RBI
BB
SO
SB
OPS+
WAR
2026
.272
.349
.488
522
84
142
28
5
25
89
57
112
19
134
4.1
2027
.270
.348
.488
541
89
146
29
4
27
93
60
113
19
133
4.2
2028
.269
.349
.489
555
92
149
30
4
28
96
64
112
18
134
4.3
2029
.270
.352
.490
560
93
151
31
4
28
97
66
111
17
135
4.4
2030
.268
.351
.485
557
92
149
31
3
28
96
67
109
15
134
4.3
2031
.266
.351
.479
549
91
146
30
3
27
93
67
107
14
132
4.1
2032
.265
.350
.477
535
87
142
29
3
26
90
65
105
13
131
3.9
2033
.265
.350
.477
516
84
137
28
3
25
86
62
102
11
131
3.7
2034
.265
.350
.471
516
82
137
28
3
24
85
62
103
10
130
3.5
ZiPS was famously in love with Wyatt Langford coming into 2024, projecting him for 2.6 WAR just a few months after he was drafted out of Florida. The projection looked cringe early on as Langford struggled, but after returning from the hamstring injury that cost him most of May, he went on a tear, hitting .261/.334/.452 for a 122 wRC+ and 3.0 WAR the rest of the way. He finished the year off with a flourish, hitting eight homers and putting up nearly a 1.000 OPS in September. Langford has a 145 wRC+ this season and is already at the 1.0-WAR mark, and with nearly two years until he hits even salary arbitration, this is the best time for he and the Rangers to come to a deal that buys out some of his free agent years. He is projected to be the Rangers’ most valuable player in the long term, and they have demonstrated a willingness to spend top dollar on their best guys.
Kyle Tucker, Chicago Cubs – Eight years, $203 million
ZiPS Projection – Kyle Tucker
Year
BA
OBP
SLG
AB
R
H
2B
3B
HR
RBI
BB
SO
SB
OPS+
WAR
2026
.260
.354
.474
546
89
142
27
3
28
92
79
92
22
128
4.4
2027
.260
.353
.471
535
86
139
26
3
27
88
77
90
20
127
4.2
2028
.252
.346
.447
519
80
131
25
2
24
82
74
88
17
119
3.4
2029
.249
.343
.436
497
76
124
23
2
22
75
71
85
15
116
3.0
2030
.245
.339
.423
468
68
115
22
2
19
67
66
82
12
111
2.4
2031
.240
.333
.401
434
61
104
20
1
16
59
60
78
10
104
1.7
2032
.238
.331
.397
391
54
93
18
1
14
52
54
71
8
102
1.4
2033
.235
.327
.389
345
46
81
15
1
12
44
47
63
6
99
1.0
ZiPS was notoriously grumpy about Kyle Tucker back in March, but it’s coming around on him fast, and the gap between ZiPS and Steamer from the preseason has narrowed by two-thirds. No, the Cubs aren’t going to be able to sign him for $203 million; if he were willing to sign for that amount of money, I suspect the congratulatory press conference announcing his signing would have been months ago. But there is a dollar amount that will do the trick, and while that figure almost certainly won’t be as high as what Guerrero Jr. signed for, the fact that so few impact bats will hit free agency over the next few years gives Tucker a great deal of leverage. Now that Guerrero’s off the market, ZiPS projects Tucker to have the best 2026-2028 wRC+ of any player who is set to enter free agency after either this season or next. The second-best outfielder is Cubs teammate Seiya Suzuki, who has a 10-point shortfall compared to Tucker, not to mention that Suzuki is a much worse defender.
MacKenzie Gore, Washington Nationals – Six years, $123 million
ZiPS Projection – MacKenzie Gore
Year
W
L
ERA
G
GS
IP
H
ER
HR
BB
SO
ERA+
WAR
2026
11
9
3.70
30
30
165.3
147
68
19
56
193
110
3.1
2027
10
10
3.77
29
29
160.0
146
67
19
52
184
108
2.9
2028
10
9
3.82
28
28
157.7
146
67
19
50
176
107
2.7
2029
9
10
3.90
28
28
152.3
144
66
19
48
165
104
2.5
2030
9
10
4.01
28
28
150.3
145
67
19
48
158
102
2.2
2031
8
9
4.16
26
26
138.3
137
64
18
44
141
98
1.9
The Nationals aren’t contenders yet, but when you look at their offensive core, you see the fuzzy edges of a lineup that will get Washington back to playing October baseball. While the rotation has actually been surprisingly solid so far this season, pitchers like Jake Irvin and Mitchell Parker are overperforming their peripheral numbers, and we can’t bank on either of them to be a true ace. MacKenzie Gore, on the other hand, has peripherals that are even better than his excellent early-season stats — and he currently leads the league in strikeouts. That’s no fluke, either, as hitters simply aren’t making much contact against the former first-rounder. Gore’s 66.3% contact rate, if maintained, would be the 11th-best number among ERA qualifiers over the last decade, just behind former teammate Patrick Cor… OK, let’s stop that sentence before it gets dark. That Gore has two more years of cost control remaining gives the Nats an opportunity to absorb some risk on the injury front in order to get a better deal for a pitcher who looks like he’ll get rather expensive in a couple of years.
Logan Gilbert, Seattle Mariners – Six years, $121 million
ZiPS Projection – Logan Gilbert
Year
W
L
ERA
G
GS
IP
H
ER
HR
BB
SO
ERA+
WAR
2026
10
7
3.41
31
31
184.7
155
70
24
43
193
114
3.6
2027
9
7
3.49
29
29
173.0
148
67
23
40
176
111
3.2
2028
8
7
3.56
27
27
162.0
143
64
22
38
159
109
2.8
2029
8
6
3.64
26
26
148.3
133
60
20
35
142
107
2.4
2030
7
7
3.80
26
26
144.3
135
61
21
34
134
102
2.1
2031
6
6
3.95
22
22
127.7
123
56
19
31
115
98
1.6
To paraphrase Saint Augustine of Hippo: Jerry Dipoto, give me a Logan Gilbert contract extension, but not yet. You should probably never sign a pitcher who is currently on the IL with a flexor strain to big deal, so unlike the other extensions here, I wouldn’t suggest that the Mariners do this tomorrow. But if Gilbert comes back without problems or red flags, Seattle should sign him long term, especially with pitchers like George Kirby and Bryan Woo farther away for free agency and Luis Castillo not the talent he was as few years ago. ZiPS projects Gilbert to rank 10th among pitchers in five-year WAR, and of the others in the top 10, only Gilbert, Skubal, and Webb are eligible for free agency within the next three years. ZiPS prices Gilbert a bit lower than Gore, simply because the former is older and comes with a little less upside.
Steven Kwan, Cleveland Guardians – Six years, $111 million
ZiPS Projection – Steven Kwan
Year
BA
OBP
SLG
AB
R
H
2B
3B
HR
RBI
BB
SO
SB
OPS+
WAR
2026
.297
.371
.413
560
86
166
24
4
11
65
61
60
15
124
3.8
2027
.292
.367
.404
552
83
161
24
4
10
63
60
58
13
120
3.4
2028
.286
.361
.396
536
79
153
23
3
10
60
58
56
12
116
3.0
2029
.282
.359
.389
514
75
145
22
3
9
56
56
54
10
114
2.7
2030
.276
.353
.379
485
69
134
20
3
8
51
53
51
9
109
2.2
2031
.272
.350
.370
449
62
122
19
2
7
46
49
49
8
106
1.8
Steven Kwan is not a traditional corner outfielder, but even with his lack of power, he’s blossomed into an All-Star left fielder. Kwan is one of the most valuable contact hitters in baseball, and he makes the most of his elite contact ability by not falling into what I call the David Fletcher trap: Being so good at making contact that you hit a lot of pitches that you shouldn’t swing at. On the contrary, Kwan is a rather disciplined hitter for someone with his bat-to-ball skills; his career walk and chase rates are better than the league average. He plays solid defense in left field and gets as much out of his middling speed as is possible. The Guardians don’t like signing big deals, but José Ramírez isn’t impervious to the effects of aging, and the Guardians will have serious issues if they have to replace the production of both J-Ram and Kwan at the same time.
Hunter Brown, Houston Astros – Six years, $105 million
ZiPS Projection – Hunter Brown
Year
W
L
ERA
G
GS
IP
H
ER
HR
BB
SO
ERA+
WAR
2026
11
7
3.35
28
25
153.0
133
57
15
50
153
123
3.2
2027
11
7
3.35
27
24
150.3
132
56
15
48
148
123
3.1
2028
10
7
3.44
26
23
149.3
133
57
16
47
143
120
2.9
2029
10
7
3.55
26
22
144.3
130
57
16
45
135
116
2.7
2030
10
7
3.66
26
22
142.7
131
58
16
45
131
113
2.5
2031
9
7
3.76
23
20
131.7
124
55
16
41
117
110
2.2
Is Hunter Brown an ace now? I get asked that question in my chats three or four times a week now, and for the most part, I’ve avoided answering it because I knew that this piece was coming. So the answer is: Yes, yes he is. We have yet to see him carry a workload of 180-200 innings in a season, but at the moment, he’s on track to get there this year. And besides, volume is becoming less and less a part of an ace’s job description. Over the last calendar year, Brown ranks sixth in baseball with 5.1 WAR. During that span, he’s totaled 185 2/3 innings in 30 starts and posted a 16-6 record with a 2.28 ERA and a 2.89 FIP. Brown makes less than a million this year, and he’s still a long way away from fabulous riches. Buying out a few of his free agency years could be a good idea for both Brown and the Astros.
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