Eric A Longenhagen: Hey there, folks. Good morning from the kitchen island in Tempe, I’m stoked to see some guys throw bullpens and take BP today. First day of school feeling and all that.
12:03
Eric A Longenhagen: I’ve got a hard out at 11 (I have a radio hit to do and then wanna hustle to Diablo for the Dream Series workouts) so let’s get rolling.
12:03
Jim: Where does Colome rank among A’s prospects?
12:04
Eric A Longenhagen: Probably 4th or 5th
12:06
Eric A Longenhagen: I’ll take Jump and Morales over him for sure, maybe Barnett belongs with those guys. Arnold v Colome or maybe something like Montero v Colome are good questions tbd
12:06
go cards: what do you make of joshua baez’s contact improvements in 2025? outside chance at him being stuffed for 2026?
I don’t know why, but I’ve spent more time thinking about the Miami Marlins than any other team this winter. It started when the Marlins came to the end of the season with a not-terrible 79-83 record — three games better than the Braves! — with some interesting pieces looking forward.
For the 22nd 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, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the preantepenultimate team is the Baltimore Orioles.
Batters
Baltimore’s pitching looked to be a problem entering the 2025 season, but the lackluster offense turned what was a good team with a run prevention problem into a losing club. After ranking second in the American League in runs scored in 2024, the O’s dropped to 11th in 2025, and suffice it to say, the pitching didn’t bail them out. A 75-87 record looks bad in a comparatively mild way given some of the clunkers the team has crafted since 1997, but it was one of the biggest O’s letdowns in at least my memory (I’m from Baltimore). But like the Blue Jays going into 2025 or the Yankees going into 2024, people tend to underrate good teams coming off of crappy seasons, sometimes horribly. There’s this belief that the lousy year is some baseline expectation and you have to start counting wins added from that point, which is a very poor way to make projections.
Have the O’s done enough with the offense? If the projections here are accurate, probably. With so many underperformances, some righting of the ship was always going to happen anyway, but the O’s didn’t just wait for the magic of regression to do the job for them. I don’t think the end of the Pete Alonso contract will be pretty, but he’s a legitimate big bat in a way the franchise tried to pretend Ryan Mountcastle was for a long time. Taylor Ward isn’t great, but you know who Taylor Ward is. The O’s are now in a position where they don’t needCoby Mayo or Heston Kjerstad to get back on track, though it would of course be nice. Read the rest of this entry »
The Dodgers have struck again. For the second winter out of the past three, they’ve snuck in and landed the top free agent on the market, just when he was expected to sign elsewhere. But unlike Shohei Ohtani, who in December 2023 nearly signed with the Blue Jays before agreeing to a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers, one in which all but $2 million per season was deferred, Kyle Tucker has gone for a short-term deal of four years and $240 million.
According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the deal includes a $64 million signing bonus; $30 million of the total salary is deferred, reducing the net present value to $57.1 million a year. That still means that Tucker, who will turn 29 on Saturday, has set a record for the highest average annual value of any contract, exceeding that of last year’s record-setter, Juan Soto, by about 12%, albeit on a much shorter deal:
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley analyze the latest additions to the AL East: Ryan Weathers to the Yankees and Ranger Suárez to the Red Sox. Then (26:52) they bring on top-tier Patreon supporter Jon Norton to answer listener emails about players who’ve repeatedly signed one-year contracts, whether they would want to play in an MLB game, how impressive switch-hitting should be, WAR without players who took PEDs, and the all-time greatness of Star Trek legend Buck Bokai.
It’s been quite a while since we produced new FanGraphs apparel, and this time, we decided to try something completely different.
We partnered with clothing brand Ellsworth & Ivy to make The Retro FanGraphs Sweatshirt and The Women’s FanGraphs Quarterzip Sweater. The first (and possibly last) run of these is quite limited, with about 50 sweatshirts and 30 sweaters available. We had no budget for models, either, so you’re stuck with the Appelmans to get a sense of what these look like.
The Retro FanGraphs Sweatshirt has fully stitched chenille lettering and a stitched logo near the bottom hem:
The Women’s FanGraphs Quarterzip Sweater also has fully stitched chenille lettering and a stitched logo on the sleeve:
We think they look pretty sharp, and provide a slightly more dressed up look than our standard hoodie.
The Retro Sweatshirt is $90 and the Women’s Quarterzip Sweater is $120. They’re both available for sale now and ready to ship!
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2026 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.
2026 BBWAA Candidate: Howie Kendrick
Player
Pos
Career WAR
Peak WAR
JAWS
H
HR
SB
AVG/OBP/SLG
OPS+
Howie Kendrick
2B
35.0
25.6
30.3
1,747
127
126
.294/.337/.430
109
Source: Baseball-Reference
In their backyard baseball fantasies and daydreams, what kid hasn’t imagined hitting a late-inning home run to win a playoff game, or even Game 7 of the World Series? Howie Kendrick lived that dream not once but twice during the 2019 postseason, capped by a homer that sent the Washington Nationals on their way to their first championship in franchise history. What’s more, his October run (which also included NLCS MVP honors) topped off a storybook rise from humble beginnings that included a complicated family situation growing up and an amateur career that took place in almost complete obscurity.
“The more I learned about him, he starts telling me about how no schools wanted him, how it was really hard to stay confident,” former Angels teammate Torii Hunter, who mentored Kendrick upon joining the Angels in 2008, recalled in ’19. “I just kept thinking: This guy could have really fallen through the cracks.”
What put Kendrick on the map was his legendary bat-to-ball ability. Though he never won the major league batting title that was expected of him while hitting for a .358 average during his time in the minors, he carved out an impressive 14-year career, earning All-Star honors and helping his teams make the playoffs eight times.
…
Howard Joseph Kendrick III was born on July 12, 1983 in Jacksonville, Florida. He never knew his father, and because his mother, Belinda Kendrick, was a staff sergeant serving overseas in the United States Army, he and his two sisters grew up in the care of his maternal grandmother, Ruth Woods, in Callahan, Florida, a two-stoplight town of less than 1,000 people near the Georgia border. All 12 of Woods’ children, and their children, lived in the area as well. Read the rest of this entry »
Now, having seen what’s happened to Devers’ in-zone contact rate over the past two seasons, I think in the long run Red Sox fans will be happy they don’t have to watch the last eight and a half years of his contract up close. But for now, everyone’s nerves are a still a little raw. It’s always tough parting with a homegrown superstar, but the player Boston seemingly chose over Devers is quite good himself… oh wait, Bregman opted out of the last two years of his contract and signed with the Cubs. Read the rest of this entry »
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Dan Szymborski