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Last week, I wrote about the overcrowded NL MVP ballot. Eight different position players finished within 1.0 WAR of the top spot on our leaderboard, more than in any other year since WAR was introduced. The MVP nearly always goes to one of the top position players by FanGraphs WAR. Thus, this past year presented us with one of the most hotly-contested MVP races in recent memory, regardless of how voters ultimately cast their ballots.

To have so many worthy choices for the award is exciting, even if we already know that Paul Goldschmidt emerged as the winner, with Manny Machado and Nolan Arenado placing second and third, respectively. As I wrote last Friday, “such a close race between so many contenders compels us to look beyond the go-to methods we might normally rely on to pick a winner. It allows us to think about how we measure value. It’s a chance to get creative.” I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a fun challenge to me. Now, from the headline and the image at the top of this piece, you can already guess who I would’ve picked. But indulge me for just a moment longer so I can explain how I came to that decision. On a ballot full of deserving choices, how was I to single out one name as the most deserving of all? Read the rest of this entry »

Over the years, plenty of FanGraphs articles have started out with a writer clicking around on the leaderboards looking for something interesting. Only the truly great articles, however, come about when the writer distractedly clicks on the wrong leaderboard because they’re busy baking adorable miniature cakes. With that auspicious beginning, let’s talk about pitchers hitting in the era of the universal designated hitter.

We’ll start with a simple question: Who was the best hitting pitcher in 2022?

Did you think it was Shohei Ohtani? Oh sweet, naïve reader. You make me laugh. It wasn’t Ohtani. That would’ve been the right answer if the question had been, “Who was the best hitting pitcher in 2022 (minimum two plate appearances)?” But that wasn’t the question, and you have fallen right into my trap. (Don’t worry; nothing bad happens if you fall into the trap. In fact, there’s candy down there.) Read the rest of this entry »

The hot stove is set to simmer while teams take stock of their roster situations and the free-agent market. That means it’s the perfect time to see how each team stacks up against each other. Because these rankings are entirely data driven (based on the Depth Charts projections), there will be some wonky placements, particularly for teams that had significant players leave via free agency earlier this month. Think of these as a glimpse at which teams are close to being ready for 2023 and which teams might have a lot of work to do before thinking about next season. We’ll run these power rankings a couple of times during the offseason as a way to check in on how teams are shaping up heading into Opening Day.

A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), their pitching (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by starter and reliever IP share), and their defense (RAA) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. For these offseason power rankings, I’ve used each team’s projected stats based on their Depth Charts projections which are entirely powered by the 2023 Steamer projections at this point. I’ve also used the projected fielding component of WAR that appears on our Depth Charts projections as the defensive component for each team in lieu of RAA.

With a young core locked up for years and very few holes on the roster, the Braves are essentially ready to run everything back in 2023. The biggest departure so far is Dansby Swanson; outside of him, Atlanta’s entire starting lineup and rotation will be returning in 2023.

The Braves’ biggest hindrance to improving their roster this offseason is their payroll, which is already butting up against the competitive balance tax. If they want to bring in a new shortstop or re-sign Swanson, they’ll either have to blow past the luxury tax threshold or find creative ways to cut costs. That appeared to be the reason behind trading away Jake Odorizzi last week. And with Vaughn Grissom’s strong rookie showing, there might already be a Swanson replacement in the organization anyway.

It’s surprising to see the Rays this high in the rankings, but their deep and flexible roster means they have few gaps to fill, and some good projections for their young core puts them already ahead of some of their closest division rivals. More importantly, the players they did lose to free agency all have in-house replacements already established or close to debuting — a big benefit of their robust development pipeline. That depth is a double-edged sword, however. Facing a 40-man roster crunch ahead of this week’s Rule 5 roster deadline, Tampa made four trades just in the last week, though none of them had much impact on the overall projections. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 1001

Hot Stove season is upon us and we are ready to start picking apart transactions, but not before we talk about the Kansas City Royals.

• To kick things off, David Laurila welcomes Joel Goldberg, broadcaster and reporter for the Royals. David didn’t put Bobby Witt Jr. on his AL Rookie of the Year ballot this year, but he and Joel discuss how the best is certainly yet to come for the young phenom. The pair also talk about the underrated Scott Barlow, top prospect Maikel Garcia, the promise of a new ballpark, and how Kansas City was Salvador Perez’s town before it belonged to Patrick Mahomes. We also get insight into Dayton Moore’s legacy now that he has left the organization and J.J. Picollo has become the new president of baseball ops. [3:53]
• In the second half, Ben Clemens is joined by Eric Longenhagen to talk about the early roster moving and shaking. The duo discuss glove-first center fielders who can’t hit enough for the majors, the Marlins struggling to develop players with a good approach at the plate, and Ben’s recent article about what would happen if pitching were a carnival game. Eric and Ben also banter about backstops, wonder how catchers who are good at framing will be valued going forward, framing vs. blocking, and if pop time is more important than accuracy when throwing to second base. [37:56]

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Tuesday’s 40-man roster deadline led to the usual squall of transaction activity, with teams turning over portions of their rosters in an effort to make room for the incoming crop of young rookies. Often, teams with an overflow of viable big leaguers will try to get back what they can for some of those players via trade, but because we’re talking about guys straddling the line between major league viability and Triple-A, those trades tend not to be big enough to warrant an entire post. Over the next few days, I’ll endeavor to cover and analyze the moves made by each team, division by division. Readers can view this as the start of list season, as the players covered in this miniseries tend to be prospects who will get big league time in the next year. I’ll spend more time discussing players who I think need scouting updates or who I haven’t written about in the past. If you want additional detail on some of the more famous names you find below, pop over to The Board for a more thorough report.

The Future Value grades littered throughout these posts may be different than those on the 2022 in-season prospect lists on The Board to reflect my updated opinions, and may be subject to change during the offseason. New to my thinking on this subject and wondering what the FVs mean? Here’s a quick rundown. Note that because we’re talking about close-to-the-majors prospects across this entire exercise, the time and risk component is less present here and these FVs are what I think the players are right now. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s either a great or a terrible winter to be a shortstop. On the one hand, four shortstops – Carlos Correa, Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts, and Dansby Swanson – figure to be among the offseason’s top free agent earners, making up half of the top eight in FanGraphs’ 2023 Top 50. On the other hand, those four have each other as competition, and differentiating oneself among the All-Star shortstops of four of the last six World Series champions can’t be easy. All four showed just what they’re capable of in 2022. Turner, Bogaerts, and Swanson each finished in the top 15 in position player WAR, separated by a grand total of 0.3, and Correa – if he raised any doubts by getting off to a slow start in Minnesota – slashed .370/.419/.613 over his last 29 games to finish first among all shortstops with a 140 wRC+. These players aren’t interchangeable by any means, and Swanson doesn’t have the offensive pedigree of the other three, but the teams showing interest in one are more than likely to at least take a look at the others. A year after Corey Seager, Trevor Story, Javier Báez, and Correa were among the top free agents available, this winter’s shortstop class is even more loaded.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been expanded and updated. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Don Mattingly was the golden child of the Great Yankees Dark Age. He debuted in September 1982, the year after the team finished a stretch of four World Series appearances in six seasons, and retired in 1995 after finally reaching the postseason — a year too early for the franchise’s run of six pennants and four titles in eight years under Joe Torre.

A lefty-swinging first baseman with a sweet stroke, “Donnie Baseball” was both an outstanding hitter and a slick fielder at his peak. He made six straight All-Star teams from 1984 to ’89 and won a batting title, an MVP award, and nine Gold Gloves. Along the way, he battled with owner George Steinbrenner even while becoming the standard bearer of the pinstripes, the team captain, and something of a cultural icon. Alas, a back injury sapped his power, not only shortening his peak but also bringing his career to a premature end at age 34. At its root, the problem was that Mattingly was so driven to succeed that he overworked himself in the batting cage.

“Donnie was one of the hardest workers I had ever seen and played with. He would go in the cage before batting practice and take batting practice. And after batting practice was over, he’d take batting practice,” former teammate Ron Guidry said for a 2022 MLB Network documentary, Donnie Baseball (for which this scribe was also interviewed).

“I should have learned quicker to not to beat my body up, and if I did less, I could perform better,” said Mattingly for the same documentary.

Mattingly debuted on the 2001 Hall of Fame ballot, the last one before I began my own annual reviews, but it was quickly clear that he didn’t have the raw numbers or the support of enough voters to gain entry to Cooperstown. After receiving 28.2% his first time around, he dipped to 20.3% in 2002, spent most of the remainder of his 15-year run in the teens, and was in single digits by the end. What’s more, in two appearances on the Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot in 2018 and ’20, he failed to reach the threshold to have his actual share reported; at most, he received three of 16 votes (18.8%) in his last appearance.

At this point, Mattingly’s best hope for a Hall of Fame berth involves building on his managerial success, though even in that department he has a long way to go. After winning three division titles in five seasons with the Dodgers, he spent seven years toiling for the Marlins and is currently out of a job after stepping down from that job last month. He seems unlikely to be elected this time around, but his candidacy is nonetheless a welcome palate cleanser when compared to the likes of Rafael Palmeiro and Albert Belle. Read the rest of this entry »

When he was first featured at FanGraphs in October of last year, Edouard Julien was described as having a unique profile and a potentially bright future. A native of Quebec City whom the Minnesota Twins had taken in the 18th round of the 2019 draft out of Auburn University, the left-handed-hitting second baseman was coming off a season in which he led the minors with 110 walks while logging a .434 OBP. Augmenting his patient approach with promising power, he’d homered 18 times between the two A-ball levels.

An adjustment was nonetheless needed. Julien’s batting average had been a middling .267, and his 144 strikeouts and 28% K-rate were suggestive of a hitter who’d been guilty of taking too many hittable pitches. Eric Longenhagen addressed the issue this past March. Describing the now-23-year-old, our lead prospect analyst wrote: “Patient bordering on passive, Julien’s bat is what will carry him to the big leagues.” Read the rest of this entry »