Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Atlanta Braves. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth 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 and Meg Rowley banter about a fresh wave of “breakout candidate” crimes, Jerry Dipoto’s latest Meg-maddening comments, the rise of the “kick change,” how ball/strike calls differ from other boundary calls, Barry Bonds’s comments about Shohei Ohtani, and more. Then they preview the 2025 Atlanta Braves (50:56) with 92.9 The Game’s Grant McAuley, and the 2025 Miami Marlins (1:35:27) with Fish on First’s Kevin Barral.
This year’s Padres lineup may not be made entirely out of current and former shortstops, but on Wednesday, they added one to the fold. Jose Iglesias, who revived his career with the Mets last season in impressive fashion while also scoring an unlikely pop hit with “OMG,” has agreed to a minor league deal with the Padres, one with a non-roster invitation to their major league camp.
Iglesias headed last week’s roundup of prominent position players still on the free agent market. That’s a particularly funny sentence to write, not only since this spring hasn’t exactly offered the second coming of the Boras Four, but because Iglesias (who did hire Scott Boras to represent him this past offseason) wasn’t in the majors at all in 2023 after playing with six different teams over the previous six seasons. Nonetheless, I led my overview with the 35-year-old infielder because his 2.5 WAR — a career high, accumulated in just 85 games — was tops among the group and because the arc of his 2024 season was so compelling.
Coincidentally enough, during Iglesias’ absence from the majors in 2023 he spent about six weeks with the Padres’ Triple-A El Paso affiliate. This came after he’d signed a minor league contract with the Marlins and gone through spring training with them; he opted out a few weeks into April without ever playing a regular season game within their organization. From there, he signed that minor league deal with the Padres, hitting .317/.356/.537 in 28 games at El Paso. He opted out twice to test the free agent waters but didn’t catch on elsewhere, and played his last game of the season on June 7. Read the rest of this entry »
What follows is a brief summary of the modern history of the Atlanta Braves: six straight division titles from 2018 to 2023. That includes a World Series championship in 2021 and back-to-back 100-win seasons the following two years. I was tempted to caveat this by saying all this would’ve looked even more impressive if the Dodgers hadn’t ruined the curve, but in the 2020s, the Braves have been right there with them. Here’s a coincidence that’s nonetheless useful from a literary perspective: Brian Snitker is now one spot ahead of Bobby Cox on the career managerial winning percentage leaderboard.
In 2024, the Braves were still good, but not quite as good as before. There were reasons for this. After years of unusual lineup stability, everyone got hurt except for Marcell Ozuna, Matt Olson (who had a down year by his standards), and Orlando Arcia (who had a down year by Yuniesky Betancourt’s standards). Still, the Braves finished six games behind a Phillies team that came out of the gate like the 2001 Mariners but ended the season like, well, pick any subsequent Mariners team. The Braves needed a Game 162 win to grab a Wild Card berth, and didn’t do much with it, bowing out in straight sets to the Padres. Read the rest of this entry »
As you well know, this is the time of year when we talk about how projection systems are inherently conservative. Why isn’t Shohei Ohtani projected for a 12-win season? Because while that’s possible, it’s not the likeliest outcome once you’ve considered all the many factors that go into a baseball season. Projections aren’t meant to be thrilling. They’re meant to predict the future with the smallest margin for error possible. They’re regression machines. They crunch the numbers, they look to the past to see how similar scenarios have played out, and then they stop and say, “Hmm, we should probably hedge our bets here.” They don’t predict crazy edge cases. They don’t predict all-time records. Except apparently, this year they do.
If you stroll over to the ZiPS Depth Charts projections, you’ll find two Cincinnati Reds pitchers at the top of an extremely important column: hit-by-pitches. ZiPS DC expects Nick Lodolo to lead the league with 21 HBPs and Hunter Greene to be right behind him with 19. That part’s not particularly surprising. Greene led baseball with 19 HBPs in 2024, and even though he hit the IL four different times, Lodolo tied for second with 18. But Greene and Lodolo are not alone. Back in November, the Reds traded for Brady Singer, who hit 10 batters with the Royals last season and is projected to hit 10 more in 2025, tied for the 13th-highest projection. They also added Nick Martinez, one of three Reds projected to hit six batters. Then there are another five Reds projected for five HBPs. That’s eight different pitchers projected to hit at least five batters. According to Stathead, only 26 teams have ever accomplished that feat, rostering eight different pitchers who hit at least five batters. In all, ZiPS DC expects the Reds to hit 124 batters. The all-time record is 110, set by the 2022 Cincinnati Reds. The 2024 Cincinnati Reds are tied for 12th all-time with 93 (though they trailed the Mets for the NL lead by one).
Now, I need to back off this claim for a minute. If you’ve looked closely at ZiPS DC, you’ll know that the system projects more innings for each team than are actually available. The projections have the Reds throwing 1,753 innings, but over the past couple years, the average team has thrown right around 1,440. For a counting stat like this, we need to cut all our numbers by roughly 18%, and that brings the Reds’ projection down to 102 HBPs. That would still be the third-highest total in baseball history – truly a bonkers number when you consider that it’s merely their 50th percentile projection, meaning they’re just as likely to go over it as they are to go under it – but it would no longer be a record.
With 102 HBPs, the 2025 Reds would still trail the 2022 versions of themselves; back when they were so young and hopeful, and maybe even still dabbing occasionally. They’d also trail the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, whose starting rotation featured five different pitchers with at least 10 HBPs: Frank Bates (23), Jim Hughey (22), Charlie Knepper (15), Crazy Schmit (14), and Harry Colliflower (11). The Spiders Hit (by Pitch) Squad is pictured below, and I think we can all tell which one is Schmit.
We all know the case for the why the Reds might not hit their projections: injuries. Lodolo has struggled with more than his fair share of ailments, and Greene battled elbow soreness in August and September. If those two can’t combine for something like 220 innings, the Reds aren’t going to hit the record. On the other hand, nobody would call you crazy (Schmit) for expecting the Reds to blow past both the projection and the record. For starters, ZiPS DC pegs Lodolo for only 126 innings, and we’re reducing it by 18%, which brings his workload down below 104. He threw more innings than that last season, even as he made those four different trips to the IL. If Lodolo can make a full 30 starts, this thing’s in the bag, but for our purposes, he doesn’t even need to be fully healthy. If he can just be marginally healthier than he was in 2024 – and you’ll be shocked to hear this, but he’s apparently in the best shape of his life – he’s going to get a lot more innings, and no one hits more batters on a per-inning basis than Lodolo. After all, his name is literally Spanish for “I hurt it.”
Lodolo is projected to hit 1.5 batters per nine innings. Not only is that the most among all starters, it makes him one of just four starters projected to hit more than a batter per nine. The others: Chase Dollander, José Soriano, and, you guessed it, Greene. Between Hunter and I Hurt It, nominative determinism says the Reds are the team to beat (or rather, to be beaten by).
Using our fancy new historical ZiPS projections, you can also go back and look at that record-setting 2022 Reds team. You’ll find that those Reds also were projected for 124 HBPs. It’s kismet! However, if you dig down, you’ll notice that their projections were actually based on 2,439 innings; nearly a thousand more than a typical team’s workload and nearly 700 more than the 2025 Reds are projected to throw. Once you prorate their numbers for a normal 1,440-inning season, the 2022 Reds were projected to hit just 73 batters! They had to massively overperform their projections in order to plunk their way into the record books. ZiPS thinks these 2025 Reds are much, much more bloodthirsty.
The Reds are the first and oldest professional baseball team. Since 1882, Baseball Reference credits them with hitting 5,897 batters, 123 ahead of the second-place Phillies. ZiPS projects Philadelphia to plunk a paltry 58 batters this season, 44 fewer than the Reds. Even if the Reds disappoint us all and throw the ball over the plate at a non-record-breaking pace like a bunch of boring, competent belly itchers, they’re almost certain to add to their all-time lead. At least that’s what the projections say.
As I write this, the winter free agency period has essentially drawn to a close. Out of the top 50 free agents I highlighted before the offseason began, 48 have found homes — sorry, David Robertson and Kyle Gibson. Per RosterResource, only five free agents – including the two holdovers from the top 50 – accrued 1 WAR or more in 2024 and haven’t yet signed new deals. In other words, all the signing that is going to happen basically has, so it’s time to look back and see how you and I did at predicting the deals players would sign.
I like to evaluate my own predictions in service of making better ones in the future, dividing them up into a few categories. First, I break signings down by position, because the market for relievers and second basemen is different. Second, I look at both average annual value and total guarantee. There’s no set ratio for how to relate those two, so looking at each independently seems best to me. Finally, I look at both the individual predictions (how close to the actual contract that a player signed my predictions came), as well as the overall trend (how my aggregate predictions for each position group did compared to the total amount they received).
This year, I made all of that back-checking more rigorous. I put all of my predictions, as well as every crowdsourced one, into a giant spreadsheet. I noted all the contracts that were signed, made adjustments for deferrals, and ignored non-guaranteed money. I compared each actual contract to our predictions. I also gathered some of the best non-FanGraphs predictions I could find, looking to outlets like ESPN, The Athletic, and MLB Trade Rumors. Below, you’ll find how both the crowd (you) and I did, as well as the best non-FanGraphs entrant in each category. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether the challenge system will inevitably pave the way for full ABS, the degrees of difficulty for two-way Travis Hunter vs. two-way Shohei Ohtani, and (very briefly) reinstating Pete Rose. Then they preview the 2025 Philadelphia Phillies (36:58) with The Athletic’s Matt Gelb, and the 2025 Cleveland Guardians (1:19:49) with The Athletic’s Zack Meisel.
If the winter is a time for dreams, the spring is a time for solutions. Your team may have been going after Juan Soto or Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani, depending on the offseason, but short of something going weird in free agency (like the unsigned Boras clients last year), if you don’t have them under contract at this point, they’ll be improving someone else’s club. However, that doesn’t mean that spring training is only about ramping up for the daily grind. Teams have real needs to address, and while they’re no doubt workshopping their own solutions – or possibly convincing themselves that the problem doesn’t exist, like when I wonder why my acid reflux is awful after some spicy food – that doesn’t mean that we can’t cook up some ideas in the FanGraphs test kitchen.
This is the first piece in a three-part series in which I’ll propose one way for each team to fill a roster hole or improve for future seasons. Some of my solutions are more likely to happen than others, but I tried to say away from the completely implausible ones. We’ll leave the hypothetical trades for Bobby Witt Jr. and Paul Skenes to WFAN callers. Also, I will not recommend the same fix for different teams; in real life, for example, David Robertson can help only one club’s bullpen. Today, we’ll cover the 10 teams in the East divisions, beginning with the five in the AL East before moving on to their counterparts in the NL East. Each division is sorted by the current Depth Charts projected win totals. Read the rest of this entry »
Austin Adams threw a higher percentage of sliders than any pitcher in baseball last season. In 56 relief outings comprising 41 1/3 innings, the 33-year-old right-hander relied on his signature offering 73.8% of the time. The heavy usage wasn’t an outlier for Adams. Since breaking into the big leagues in 2017, his 77.2% slider percentage is tops among hurlers to throw at least 100 innings.
His overall numbers have been solid. Pitching for five teams, including the Athletics last year, Adams has a 4.10 ERA, a 3.98 FIP, and a 31.6% strikeout rate over 155 2/3 career innings. He’s challenging to square up consistently, and he’s held opposing batters to a .199 batting average. Command has been the fly in the ointment, and not just because of his higher-than-ideal 13.9% walk rate. Adams plunked 13 batters last season, and in 2021 with the Padres, he outlandishly logged 24 HBPs in 52 2/3 frames.
Now in big league camp with the Red Sox after signing a minor league deal in January, Adams sat down to talk about his slider(s) at Boston’s spring training facility in Fort Myers.
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David Laurila: You throw a ton of sliders. Why?
Austin Adams: “The reason I throw so many sliders is because I enjoy having a job in baseball. It’s my best pitch. I try to take each one of my pitches, individually, in a vacuum. For me, it’s not necessarily about setting things up. I’m not saying that’s not a thing. What I’m saying is that it’s harder to quantify. My highest-graded pitch is my slider — metrically it’s a really good pitch — so I’m going to throw it the majority of the time. It’s what gives me the best opportunity to get outs.”
When David Appelman announced on Monday that we were adding college stats to our player pages and leaderboards, more than one person reached out to congratulate me personally. I had nothing to do with the conception or implementation of this blessed happening, but it is true: FanGraphs having college stats could not be more up my alley.
I wanted to play around with the new leaderboard, but this early in the season, there’s little to be gleaned. No pitcher has made more than four starts; no team has played more than 14 games. And most of the action we’ve seen so far has been nonconference throat-clearing, mismatches between blue bloods and mid-majors. The numbers will tell, but not for another few weeks.
So I decided to go back to the roots of the sabermetrics movement. Our college leaderboards might not have all the latest fancy Statcast stuff, but we’ve got FIP and K% and all sorts of things you wouldn’t take for granted if you’ve ever had to calculate a pitcher’s WHIP by hand on the back of a box score in a MAC press box. When we got all that stuff in the pro game, what did we do with it?
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