Bubba Chandler is on track to join Paul Skenes and Jared Jones in the power department of the Pittsburgh Pirates starting rotation. Equipped with an elite upper-90s fastball and a solid array of secondary offerings, the 22-year-old right-hander has emerged as one of baseball’s highest-ceiling pitching prospects. As Eric Longenhagen notes in our forthcoming Top 100, Chandler, who was a two-sport, two-way player as an amateur and began focusing solely on pitching in 2023, is still developing, but “so far, [it’s] going as well as could have been hoped when he was drafted, and he’s tracking like a mid-rotation starter.”

His 2024 season offered ample evidence of his ability to overpower hitters. In 119 2/3 innings between Double-A Altoona and Triple-A Indianapolis, Chandler fanned 148 batters while surrendering just 81 hits. Along with a 30.9% strikeout rate and a .187 batting-average-against, he logged a 3.08 ERA and a 3.10 FIP. Moreover, he displayed improved command. The 2021 third-round draft pick out of Bogart, Georgia’s North Oconee High School lowered his walk rate from 10.5% in 2023 to a stingier 8.6% last season.

Chandler discussed his developmental strides, and the bat-missing arsenal he takes with him to the mound, earlier this month.

———

David Laurila: What have you learned about pitching since getting to pro ball?

Bubba Chandler: “The number one thing has been command. You can have great stuff, but I’ve noticed that the more I’ve gone up [minor league levels], the less guys swing at crappy pitches. In Low-A, you can throw a slider way out of the zone, and a lot of times you’re going to get a swing. If you throw a slider way out of the zone in Triple-A, especially if you didn’t set that pitch up, you’re not even going to get a lean over, or a budge, on it.

“Learning how to set pitches up has been a big thing for me. Setting them up, tunneling, and just how pitches move… but really, the command part is really what has helped make me better.” Read the rest of this entry »

In the middle of the 2024 season, MLB released bat tracking data for the current year. It was a huge revolution in publicly available data, taking something previously observable but not measurable and turning it into numbers. You can see how hard Giancarlo Stanton swings, but now you can also quantify how different that is from other large hitters. Luis Arraez’s superhuman coordination is obvious from watching him play. But in terms of getting his barrel on the ball, relative to the rest of the league, how superhuman is he? Now we know. I think that public research on this front is likely to deliver more and more insights in the coming years.

Of course, what we all wanted to know about bat speed wasn’t available right away. Namely: How does it change? Was Ronald Acuña Jr.’s disappointing start to the season related to an inability to impact the ball with force? Did Matt Olson’s decline have more to do with bat speed or plate discipline? Also, plenty of non-Braves questions, presumably. In any case, we couldn’t say much about that because all we had were the 2024 numbers.

Guess what: Now we have some 2023 data. MLB and Statcast released 2023 data starting after the All-Star break, the earliest data we’ll ever get because that’s when the bat tracking infrastructure got going. Obviously, we’re also going to get more year-over-year data when the 2025 season starts. But our first crack at multiple seasons of data is still noteworthy, so I set out to look through the numbers and came to a few conclusions. I don’t intend for these to be comprehensive, and I’m sure that a measured and careful approach is going to tease out some new insights that I don’t have. But the data came out yesterday, and here are a few highlights.
Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the dust has settled on teams’ pursuit of Roki Sasaki, and clubs have signed most of their 2025 international prospects, it is time to turn our attention to the international pros whose 2025 seasons will soon get underway and to the tippy top of the 2026 international amateur class. All of my top 2025 international prospects have now signed. Twins outfielder Carlos Taveras was the last from that group to put pen to paper, signing a couple of days ago for a shade over $1 million. The players and rankings from that class have been archived on their own page of The Board, including the couple of Japanese pros who came over from NPB this offseason. Remaining on the active International Players page (which you’re going to want to open in a new tab) are the foreign pros I think readers should know about and follow for this season and beyond, as well as a couple of amateur players from the upcoming 2026 class (more on those lads in a few paragraphs). Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, pitchers and catchers officially reported to Camelback Ranch, the spring training home that the Dodgers share with the White Sox in Glendale, Arizona. Among the Dodgers reporting was a familiar face, that of Clayton Kershaw. According to ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez, the three-time Cy Young winner — who had entered free agency for the fourth offseason in a row — has agreed to terms with the Dodgers and will return for his 18th major league season.

For as much as the move was anticipated, the sight of Kershaw in camp was a reassuring harbinger of spring. Given his accomplishments and the slew of injuries he’s endured in recent years, the continuation of the future Hall of Famer’s career isn’t something to take for granted. The details of his contract have not been announced at this writing, and the deal is still pending a physical. Once it’s finalized, we can probably expect some incentives and mechanisms that help to lower the team’s tax hit, whether in the form of deferred money or a less lucrative player option for 2026. The Dodgers’ 40-man roster is full, but with the opening of camp, the team can transfer players to the 60-day injured list and free up roster spots. On Tuesday, they did just that in order to accommodate the return of Enrique Hernández, moving pitcher Gavin Stone, who will miss the whole season due to shoulder surgery, to the 60-day IL.

[Update: The deal became official on Wednesday, with River Ryan, who is recovering from August 2024 Tommy John surgery, transferred to the 60-day IL to make room. According to FanSided’s Robert Murray, Kershaw will receive a base salary of $7.5 million, and can max out at $16 million via incentives. He’ll receive an additional million apiece for starts 13 through 16, a roster bonus of $2.5 million for being active for at least 30 days, and additional $1 million bonuses for reaching 60 and 90 days.]

Kershaw, who turns 37 on March 19, could be a candidate for a 60-day IL slot himself, as he underwent a pair of offseason surgeries following a season in which he made just seven starts totaling 30 innings, the last of them on August 30. He was a bystander during the Dodgers’ championship run, though anyone who witnessed either the clubhouse festivities at Yankee Stadium — during which Kershaw shed his shirt — or the celebration at Dodger Stadium following their victory parade through Los Angeles can attest that he was no less exuberant about the team’s World Series win. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s still more winter to go, but this week gave us a sign of spring that’s way more promising than any silly groundhog in Pennsylvania. Pitchers and catchers have reported to Florida and Arizona for spring training. As usual, this is also the best time to do the first mega-run of ZiPS projected standings, to gauge where every team stands at the prelude to the 2025 season. Naturally, these are not the final projected standings, but they’re accurate through every bit of knowledge ZiPS and Szymborski have as of the morning of Tuesday, February 11.

These standings are the result of a million simulations, not results obtained from binomial or even beta-binomial magic. The methodology isn’t identical to the one we use for our playoff odds, which we recently launched to both acclaim and dismay. So how does ZiPS calculate the season? Stored within ZiPS are the first- through 99th-percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as a jumping off point. Since these are my curated projections, I make changes based on my personal feelings about who will receive playing time as filtered through arbitrary whimsy my logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion.

After that is done, ZiPS applies another set of algorithms with a generalized distribution of injury risk that changes the baseline plate appearances or innings pitched for each player. ZiPS then automatically and proportionally “fills in” playing time from the next players on the list to get to a full slate of PAs and innings.

The result is a million different rosters for each team and an associated winning percentage for each million of them. After applying the new strength of schedule calculations based on the other 29 teams, I end up with the standings for each of the million seasons. I promise this is much less complex than it sounds.

The goal of ZiPS is to be less awful than any other way of predicting the future. The future is tantalizingly close but beyond our knowledge, and if anyone figures out how to deflect the astrophysicist Arthur Eddington’s arrow of time, it’s probably not going to be in the form of baseball projections. So we project probabilities, not certainties. If this does not satisfy you, just assume that any deviation from the actual results are due to flaws in reality.

Over the last decade, ZiPS has averaged 19.2 correct teams when looking at Vegas preseason over/under lines. I’m always tinkering with methodology, but most of the low-hanging fruit in predicting how teams will perform has already been harvested. ZiPS’ misses for teams from year to year are uncorrelated, with an r-squared of one year’s miss to the next of 0.000541. In other words, none of the year-to-year misses for individual franchises has told us anything about future misses for those franchises.

We’ll cover the American League today before getting into the National League tomorrow.

Right away, when glancing at the projections, you can see the theme of the American League: There are no dominant teams. The AL East is a good example to remember that the 50th-percentile projections don’t mean that the top team will actually win the division. Neither the Orioles or Yankees are projected with an over/under of 90 wins, but either team would need to win 96 games to have a 50% chance at taking the division.

Once again, ZiPS projects the O’s with the tiniest sliver of an edge over the Yankees. ZiPS thinks there’s a good chance that Baltimore can replace Anthony Santander’s production – or at least what he was likely to do in 2025 – and is a surprisingly big fan of Tyler O’Neill. But losing Corbin Burnes is a very big deal, and a few lower-key pitching signings can’t really replace that. It reminds me a bit of Buzzie Bavasi’s quote nearly 50 years ago that when the Angels lost Nolan Ryan, they could just replace him with “two 8-7 pitchers.” How’d that work out for them? There’s some downside in Baltimore’s rotation, but ZiPS thinks the offense is quite resilient.

The Yankees lost an even more important piece than the O’s did this offseason, when Juan Soto signed the largest contract in sports history to play for the Mets. That said, the Yankees made a number of solid upgrades at other positions after losing the second coming of Ted Williams. I prefer Devin Williams and Cody Bellinger to Clay Holmes and Alex Verdugo, and Max Fried is a very good addition. Paul Goldschmidt is well on the back end of his career these days, but he still represents an upgrade over Anthony Rizzo. Still, they lost Gleyber Torres to the Tigers, and with Jazz Chisholm Jr. set to slide from third base to second, the task of replacing Torres’ production falls to a platoon of Oswaldo Cabrera and the shell of DJ LeMahieu at third base. The Yankees didn’t quite hold serve in the exchange, but the O’s had losses of their own, so the status quo largely prevails.

ZiPS has projected the Red Sox to finish last in the AL East over the last few seasons, but they’ve always been within shouting distance of .500. The last bit stays true in 2025, but on the sunny side this time. Even though you’d be crazy to pencil him in for 180 innings, Garrett Crochet is a big addition to Boston’s rotation, and the bullpen has become sneaky good. The computer really believes in Kristian Campbell, though the question remains how quickly the team will integrate him into the lineup. The Red Sox, of course, would look even better with Mookie Betts, but that’s old news at this point.

ZiPS thinks Tampa Bay’s lineup is rather lackluster, and it doesn’t see a huge offensive upside here, but it does think the Rays have pretty solid depth. The big upside comes from the rotation because of the health questions surrounding Shane McClanahan, Shane Baz, and Drew Rasmussen. If any or all of these three pitchers are healthier than the projections currently expect, even small positive shifts in their workload assumptions would have pretty large effects on the whole AL East race.

Anthony Santander was a necessary addition for the Blue Jays, but was his signing enough? ZiPS is unsure, and while it’s projecting bounce-back seasons from guys like Bo Bichette and Kevin Gausman, there’s no certainty there, and this a tough, tough division. This is one of the best last place teams I’ve ever projected, so take from that what you will!

ZiPS projects the Guardians to win the AL Central over the Twins, but like in the AL East, the lead comes from the tiniest of mathematical margins. Their bullpen is terrific, but their offense has a bit too much merely OK floating around, and their rotation is adequate at best. Despite being projected as the AL Central leader, ZiPS only projects Cleveland as a coin flip to make the playoffs.

The Twins project to have an elite bullpen and a very good – and probably underrated – rotation. But it’s less than enthralled by the lineup once you get past Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton during their healthy moments, and it gets really hard, as with the Guardians, to see a scenario in which Minnesota gets far above 90 wins.

I don’t want to harp too much on Kansas City’s offense, since I did that at length last week, but the fact is it’s a very Bobby Witt Jr.-reliant lineup with a ton of holes. This might be the best projected Royals pitching staff in ZiPS history, and that may be enough for Kansas City either to keep pace with the Guardians and Twins or outright topple them. There are benefits to playing in a division with no truly ambitious teams.

Bringing back Jack Flaherty was a necessity for the Tigers, and they got him at a cheaper price than necessities tend to cost. They still project just behind the top three teams, but this division remains quite unclear. I would not want to be paying Alex Bregman in 2029 or 2030, but I’d seriously consider it if I were a team like the Tigers, with so much to gain by having him around the next few years.

The White Sox are projected to have one of the largest improvements in baseball, but a lot of that is simply because winning only 41 games in a season requires many things to not go your way. They are good bet to veer toward “ordinary awful” territory, even if they may not have hit rock bottom yet. Whatever happens, don’t mistake any win-loss improvement as organizational competence. Chicago’s most interesting pitchers will likely start the season in the minors, and the big question for the offense is how many of the aging role players the team signed will somehow be stuffed into the lineup for no particular reason.

The Astros are a lot less likely to be a juggernaut than they were a few years ago, but they’ve handled the myriad star departures well. ZiPS thinks Isaac Paredes and his pull-happy power will feel quite at home in Minute Maid Daikin Park, and Christian Walker is a far better idea to fill their gaping hole at first base than José Abreu was a few years ago. Yordan Alvarez is an absolute beast offensively, and ZiPS projects Jose Altuve to continue to age gracefully. The Astros aren’t really lousy anywhere, and that’s basically what quality team building in a 12-team playoff league looks like.

The common perception of the Mariners is they have a bad offense, but that’s been demonstrably untrue, and playing in a poor offensive park is the big culprit here. What is true, though, is that after Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez, they’re just not amazing anywhere in the lineup, and they’ve been particularly unambitious there. The rotation, however, is dynamite, and though ZiPS is unimpressed with Seattle’s depth, if this team generally remains healthy, it can challenge Houston.

ZiPS likes the Rangers’ offense a lot. The rotation? Not so much. Jacob deGrom naturally projects very well, but given his extensive injury history, both ZiPS and I are coming way under the 132 innings that Depth Charts currently projects for him. He’s not the only Texas pitcher with injury concerns, and as a result, ZiPS sees this rotation as having one of the deepest downsides in baseball, which holds the Rangers’ projections down quite a bit.

Congratulations, A’s, you’ve moved up to a fourth-place projection! Their lineup is actually pretty decent, though not at first base, where ZiPS is bearish on Tyler Soderstrom. OK, the computer’s not quite as high on Jacob Wilson or JJ Bleday as is Depth Charts, but it wouldn’t be shocking to see a team with a lineup like this be a Wild Card contender. Where ZiPS has its doubts is the rotation, and though Luis Severino and Jeffrey Springs give this starting five some real upside, the other three guys are far less exciting.

I suspect the Angels think they’re better than this, but ZiPS really isn’t seeing it. The team’s been active this offseason and added a ton of familiar names, but largely ones that are familiar because of things they accomplished a long time ago. Getting a healthy Mike Trout would be fun for the Angels, and certainly for fans, but it probably wouldn’t be enough.

As usual, I’m including the ZiPS playoff chart, which shows what the chances are that a number of wins is achieved by the division and Wild Card winners. For example, ZiPS projects the team that wins the AL West to have, on average, 94.4 wins, but 20% of the projected AL West winners finish with only an 89-73 record.

Kenley Jansen his headed back to Los Angeles, if only in name, on a one-year, $10 million contract with the Angels.

The 37-year-old four-time All-Star currently sits fourth all-time on the career saves list and leads all active pitchers in the category. Jansen famously did most of that damage in Dodger blue, and now at the twilight of his career, he returns to his old stomping grounds… ish. Like 45 minutes down the freeway from his old stomping grounds. Close enough. Read the rest of this entry »

Pulled fly balls, to me, are hitter highlights. Just as strikeouts showcase the nastiness of pitchers, and groundballs allow infielders to demonstrate what they can do, balls in the air promote the powerful sluggers who hit them.

I’m including “pulled” in the description because plenty of research over the past decade has established that pulled fly balls are more productive than their straightaway and opposite-field counterparts. We here at FanGraphs have certainly jumped on that trend. Even if you ignore all my articles about Isaac Paredes, our writing about hitters who either pull the ball a lot or should pull the ball a lot is voluminous.

With that introduction in mind: This article is about pitchers. Bear with me for just a minute, and I’ll explain to you how I got here. It took me a while to wrap my head around why pulled fly balls perform so well. It’s not like the wall is much closer to that side, at least not consistently, and given that both lefties and righties display this trend, that clearly can’t be the thing. But thinking about how it actually feels to swing helped clue me in.

To broadly generalize, hitters make contact with the ball out in front of the plate when they pull it. The angle of the bat starts pointing toward the pull side as soon as it crosses the plane running parallel with the front of home plate. For the most part, because bat speed and “attack angle” — the vertical angle of the bat path — increase throughout a swing, batters tend to hit the ball harder when they catch the ball out in front and put in in the air. As a result, pretty much every hitter produces better on pulled air balls. Read the rest of this entry »

The Seattle Mariners currently have one of baseball’s best farm systems, and its strength differs markedly from that of the big league roster. Pitching-rich at the major league level, it’s Mariners position player prospects who populate the top tier of our rankings. That’s welcome news — at least on paper — for a Seattle team that has recently excelled at keeping runs off the board, but has too often struggled to score.

Justin Toole is front and center in the organization’s quest to graduate productive bats into the parent club’s lineup. Brought on as director of player development following the 2022 season, the 38-year-old Council Bluffs, Iowa native has both the background and the acumen to help make that happen. Prior to coming to Seattle, Toole played seven professional seasons, then served four years as a minor league hitting coach, followed by three as a major league hitting analyst. All of his pre-Mariners experience came with Cleveland.

Toole discussed several of the system’s most promising prospects prior to heading to Arizona for the start of spring training.

———

David Laurila: What is the current strength of the system?

Justin Toole: “From a player development standpoint, I think the strength is the individuality with how we handle our players. When we get people into our system, we figure out their strengths, we figure out their weaknesses, we help them understand their identity. We work with our players to get a feel for where they think they are, and where they want to go.

“Our group has done an unbelievable job of creating good player plans that are clear, that are are easy to follow. They’re simple. I think that’s kind of been the strength of our player development group. Of course, any good player development group is going to be good because of the scouting group. They bring in good players, players that fit what we want to do, and who we want to be.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Rob Manfred’s Super Bowl cameo, the return of not-terrible uniforms, a new finding in the “familiarity vs. fatigue” debate about the times through the order effect, two more Dodgers signings, and an intriguingly timed alteration to the criteria for two-way-player classification. Then they preview the 2025 Minnesota Twins (46:06) with The Athletic’s Aaron Gleeman, and the 2025 Detroit Tigers (1:29:21) with The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen.

Audio intro: Josh Busman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 1: Dave Armstrong and Mike Murray, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 2: Alex Ferrin, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Philip Bergman, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Manfred clip
Link to Fielder meme
Link to uniforms article
Link to BP TTOP study
Link to previous TTOP research
Link to MLBTR on Kershaw
Link to FG on Hernández
Link to 2024 major league rules
Link to 2021 major league rules
Link to 2019 rule announcement
Link to 2020 press release
Link to 2021 press release
Link to current glossary entry
Link to archived entry
Link to Twins depth chart
Link to Twins offseason tracker
Link to offseason FA spending
Link to FG payrolls page
Link to A-Rod arb news
Link to RP projections
Link to 2024 RP WAR
Link to SP projections
Link to Aaron on France
Link to Aaron’s author archive
Link to Aaron’s podcast
Link to Tigers depth chart
Link to Tigers offseason tracker
Link to farm system ranking
Link to Cody’s author archive
Link to Cody’s podcast
Link to EW gift subscriptions

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Spotify Feed
 Facebook Group
 Bluesky Account
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Players have begun to report to Arizona and Florida, and the sights and sounds of spring baseball are beginning to emerge from the cold winter. The last time we ran these power rankings, the offseason had just begun and teams were still making plans for how they were going to improve their rosters during the winter. This run of the rankings provides a good barometer for which teams took big steps forward with their splashy signings and big trades, and which ones have been left in the dust.

Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. For these pre-spring training rankings, I’ve pulled the Depth Charts projections — now powered by both the 2025 Steamer and 2025 ZiPS projections — and calculated an implied Elo ranking for each team. The delta column in the full rankings below shows the change in ranking from the last offseason run of the power rankings in November.

…

Not content with simply winning two World Series over the last five years, the Dodgers made it clear they intend to solidify their dynasty by becoming the first team to repeat as champions since the 1999-2000 Yankees. Not only did they land Roki Sasaki, but they also re-signed Teoscar Hernández, signed arguably the best starting pitcher and the best relief pitcher on the market in Blake Snell and Tanner Scott, respectively, and filled in their roster depth with a host of smaller moves. Los Angeles has become the premiere franchise in baseball since its current ownership group took over a little more than a decade ago, and implementing a salary cap to curtail that spending wouldn’t do much, if anything, to change that perception. Players want to win, and the Dodgers currently provide the best opportunity for them to do that. Why wouldn’t they want to join that kind of party?

The Braves suffered through what could easily be described as a nightmare season last year and still managed to win 89 games and narrowly slip into the playoffs. They haven’t needed to be very active this offseason because their foundation is so strong. The one move they did make, adding Jurickson Profar to bolster their outfield, addressed the one glaring hole on their roster. There might be a bit more variance to Atlanta’s win projection than you’d expect from a team with playoff odds over 90%; strong post-injury performances from Ronald Acuña Jr. and Spencer Strider and bounce backs from Austin Riley, Matt Olson, and Sean Murphy drive that high ceiling, but those are lots of conditions the Braves need to meet to reach their lofty projections. The good news is that, like last year, they don’t need to be hit their ceiling to be one of the most competitive teams in the NL.

As you’ll see below, there are a ton of competitive AL teams projected for around 83-85 wins, and a handful more a hair below that group. The Yankees stand above that fray, though not by much. After losing Juan Soto to their crosstown rival, their offseason could have spiraled. Instead, they signed Max Fried and Paul Goldschmidt and traded for Cody Bellinger and Devin Williams. As far as consolation prizes go, those four newcomers should prove to be difference makers, and the projections agree; the Yankees are favored to come out on top of the most difficult division in baseball.

With so much of their core carrying over into 2025, the Phillies didn’t have much work to do this offseason. Instead of resting on their laurels, though, they went out and bolstered an already stacked starting rotation by trading for Jesús Luzardo right before Christmas. They also filled out their bullpen depth by signing Jordan Romano and Joe Ross, though that group still looks a little thin, and added Max Kepler to their outfield mix. Even with those moves, the projections think Philadelphia is a fairly significant step behind Atlanta and pretty even with the Mets.

On the heels of their surprise playoff appearance last year, the Mets made the biggest splash of the offseason by signing Juan Soto to the largest contract in sports history. They also restocked their roster by bringing back Pete Alonso, Sean Manaea, and Jesse Winker, and their free agent signings of Frankie Montas and Clay Holmes provide their rotation with a bit of depth. That said, the Mets lack the high-end ace or two you’d expect from a playoff contender, and the bottom half of their lineup looks pretty punchless right now. The addition of Soto does a lot to cover for those last remaining holes, and the organization seemingly has all the resources at its disposal to continue to improve once the season gets underway.

The Diamondbacks missed out on the playoffs by a single game a year after their shocking run to the World Series in 2023. To ensure that doesn’t happen again, they went out and signed Corbin Burnes to anchor their rotation and traded for Josh Naylor to replace Christian Walker at first base. They didn’t need to make a ton of additions to push their ceiling any higher; the continued development of Corbin Carroll will carry their lineup a long way, and their core remains largely intact.

With the Cardinals retooling and the Brewers and Pirates resistant to invest in their rosters, the Cubs saw an opportunity to separate themselves from their division rivals this offseason. Bringing in Kyle Tucker was the first salvo, and they followed that move by going back to the Astros to pilfer Ryan Pressly. They didn’t do enough to be considered one of the best teams in the NL, but they’re clearly a step ahead in their division, and that’s good enough to be lumped in with the other contenders in this tier.

Here’s that huge group of AL contenders that I mentioned above. There are three teams from the AL West, and two each from the Central and East divisions. If you believe the projections, two of the teams in this tier won’t make the playoffs, but it’s anyone’s guess as to which two will fall short.

In a bit of a surprise, the Rangers enter spring training with the best odds to take home the AL West division crown. Granted, that division race is essentially a toss up between the two Texas teams and Seattle, but the Rangers shouldn’t be overlooked even after their disappointing follow-up season to their 2023 championship. Who knows how many innings Jacob deGrom has left in him, but he’s healthy right now. And the biggest task facing the team this offseason has mostly been accomplished; six new relievers populate the Texas bullpen now, and while none of them is a lights out closer, the ‘pen is in a much better state than it was in November.

Instead of acting aggressively to give their good, but not great roster the edge it needed to be considered one of the best teams in the AL, the Mariners opted to have one of their quietest offseasons since Jerry Dipoto started running the show. They re-signed Jorge Polanco and are moving him to a new position, and they signed Donovan Solano to play the short side of a platoon at first base. Technically, those moves addressed the major holes on their roster, but their passivity and lack of ambition are maddening to a success-starved fan base. Still, Julio Rodríguez, Cal Raleigh, and that vaunted starting rotation form such a strong core that the Mariners are projected to have the third-best record in the AL.

The Astros are in the middle of an awkward transition. They’ve been the best team in the AL for nearly a decade and have managed to thrive despite navigating the departures of Gerrit Cole, Carlos Correa, and George Springer. And now they’re trying to figure out another one of those inflection points. Opting to trade away Tucker was a shock, but Houston did well to acquire Isaac Paredes, a player who is well suited for the ballpark formerly known as Minute Maid Park, and signing Christian Walker should give this lineup a boost after José Abreu flopped. Seeing the Astros with the third-best playoff odds in their own division doesn’t seem right, but their roster just isn’t in as good a place as it was when those other stars departed. They still could re-sign free agent third baseman Alex Bregman, whose return likely would be enough for them to leap to the top of the AL West projections, but it would also require some roster maneuvering and positional shuffling.

The unresolved question of the Twins’ potential sale and what that transition could mean for their organization has put a freeze on any activity in Minnesota this winter. They’ve made just a couple of minor moves, but the good news is that they didn’t really need to overhaul their roster anyway. They have a strong lineup anchored by Carlos Correa and a deep pitching staff backed by a dynamite bullpen. Of course, the uncertainty surrounding the health of their biggest stars is enough to put a damper on their projections, though it seems like they’re a step ahead of their division rivals right now.

The Red Sox entered the offseason with a talented but flawed roster. The additions of Garrett Crochet and Walker Buehler bolster an already strong starting rotation, and even though the two of them come with lingering injury and workload concerns, they were enough to edge Boston ahead of Baltimore in our projections — though the Orioles still rate higher when looking at our raw WAR projections. The Sox also have two top prospects waiting in the wings, Kristian Campbell and Roman Anthony, both of whom should make their big league debuts early in the season. If enough things break their way, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them emerge on top of the AL East this year.

The same thing could probably be said about the Orioles, what with their seemingly limitless supply of talented young position players. But for whatever reason, Baltimore has been hesitant to invest heavily to push its roster over the hump. The departures of Burnes and Anthony Santander were met with the additions of Tyler O’Neill and Charlie Morton — a downgrade on both accounts, if only because O’Neill’s lengthy injury history limits his projected workload — and except for a few other moves for depth pieces, the O’s have been oddly passive this offseason. Their situation is a bit like that of the Mariners, where they have a strong young core as an enviable foundation but have thus far refused to actually do the hard work of building around that cohort to launch themselves into the stratosphere.

Following their surprise playoff run last year, the Tigers spent this offseason opportunistically supplementing their core with a few key additions in Gleyber Torres, Alex Cobb, and the return of Jack Flaherty. That trio doesn’t fix all the flaws of this roster, but these moves do tangibly raise the floor. Could Detroit have risen above the fray in the AL Central with a bit more ambition? Of course, but like so many other teams in the AL, the Tigers are banking on some internal development and a lot of luck as their path to success in 2025. After all, that same strategy worked for them last year.

It’s a testament to the Rays’ excellent development pipeline that they took a pretty significant step back last season and still project to be in the AL playoff mix in 2025. The return of Shane McClanahan from his Tommy John surgery and healthier seasons from Shane Baz and Drew Rasmussen will be key, and the Rays will need Junior Caminero to emerge as an anchor of their lineup. Last month, they made a splash in free agency and signed Ha-Seong Kim to the second-largest deal, by AAV, in franchise history. He’ll miss the start of the season recovering from the shoulder injury that cut his 2024 campaign short, but he should be back sometime in May. Overall, though, Tampa Bay lacks both the depth and upside to project as anything more than a middle-of-the-pack team entering spring training.

Fresh off their first postseason appearance since winning the 2015 World Series, the Royals had an underwhelming offseason. They brought back right-handed starters Michael Wacha and Michael Lorenzen to restock their rotation, traded for Jonathan India to play… somewhere, and signed Carlos Estévez to lock down the ninth inning. These are all smart moves, but at this point, Kansas City has not addressed its most two glaring roster holes from last season — its corner outfield spots — and the club still lacks the necessary depth to weather the attrition of a long season. Bobby Witt Jr.’s ascent to stardom was a huge boon to the future of the franchise, but the Royals have done a woefully inadequate job of building a lineup around him. Their path to success in 2025 looks a lot like it did last year: An MVP caliber season from Witt, a deadly trio fronting their rotation, and just enough luck to squeeze into the Wild Card picture. Put another way, they need a lot to go in their favor.

It’s hard not to feel a little bad for the Blue Jays after they missed out on signing Shohei Ohtani a year ago and then fall short in their pursuits of Juan Soto and Roki Sasaki this offseason. While those “we tried” banners don’t count for anything, the Jays did accomplish something this offseason, signing Anthony Santander, Max Scherzer, and Jeff Hoffman, and trading for Andrés Giménez. Toronto’s roster is in a better spot than it was in November, even if it doesn’t include a marquee free agent. Unfortunately, the Blue Jays probably still aren’t good enough to make much noise in the competitive AL East. They’ve got a puncher’s chance at securing a Wild Card berth, but barring some big collapses from the teams ahead of them or another significant acquisition on their part, they’re stuck in the murky middle of the AL.

The Padres’ ugly ownership battle has cast a long shadow over their offseason, and even though they were a finalist for Sasaki, they’ve largely stayed on the sidelines this winter. Signing Jason Heyward and Connor Joe last week sort of settles their left field situation, but there’s still so little depth here that if just one of their stars misses any significant amount of time, it could have a disastrous effect on their entire season. They’ve been rumored to be shopping Dylan Cease to help them shore up other areas of their roster, but removing him from their rotation would just open up another hole that can’t be filled so easily.

The Brewers have always been asked to do a lot with few resources available to them. It’s not surprising, then, to see them stay pretty inactive this offseason even when faced with the departure of Willy Adames and a host of depth pieces from their major league roster. They leveraged Devin Williams’s final year of control into Nestor Cortes and an intriguing MLB-ready prospect in Caleb Durbin, but that’s pretty much the extent of their activity. Meanwhile, the Cubs surged ahead of Milwaukee in the projections following their flurry of moves this winter. Yet, despite all of this, the Brewers still have a decent shot at making the playoffs. That’s the benefit of playing in the NL Central.

Buster Posey’s reign as Giants president of baseball operations began with a splash, signing Willy Adames to the largest contract in franchise history. Then Posey convinced Justin Verlander to spend what could be his final season in San Francisco. Those two additions pushed their projections to the cusp of .500 and to the fringes of the NL Wild Card picture. Of course, that’s not a new position for the Giants, who’ve finished with no fewer than 79 wins and no more than 81 in each of the past three seasons.

For all the talk about taking a step back in 2025 to reset for the future, the Cardinals haven’t done much of anything this offseason. They haven’t found a trading partner suitable enough for Nolan Arenado to waive his no-trade clause, and they haven’t exchanged any other established talent for prospects. Considering this, it seems that getting out from Arenado’s contract is their sole focus until Chaim Bloom takes over for lame duck president of baseball operations John Mozeliak after the season. There is some solid young talent currently on the roster, but it looks like St. Louis is content to spend 2025 spinning its tires with the same mediocre group that’s fallen short of the playoffs each of the past two years.

Remember all those AL teams we discussed above who refuse to build around their young core and are instead fine with coin-flip odds of making the playoffs? Meet the NL version of that, except this team’s odds are significantly worse than a coin flip. The Pirates have an excellent young rotation fronted by Paul Skenes, one of the best pitchers in baseball, but they’ve done shockingly little to build a competent roster around him. Picking up Spencer Horwitz to help their lineup was a nice start to the offseason, but they followed that up by adding Adam Frazier and Tommy Pham, two pretty lackluster free agents. Skenes’ talent is such that he’s dragging Pittsburgh to the edge of the playoff picture, but he can only carry the team so far on his own.

The Guardians own perhaps the most surprising preseason projection, especially after winning 92 games and making the postseason last year for the second time in three seasons. They traded away the elder Naylor brother and Giménez and signed the ageless Carlos Santana to replace the former, but that’s not enough to truly bolster an offensive unit that was already one of the weakest in baseball. Cleveland really leaned on the pitching staff last season, the bullpen in particular, and it looks like that’s going to be the case again this year. The Guards are good enough to sit on the extreme fringe of the AL playoff picture, but their three AL Central rivals — the Twins, Tigers, and Royals — all look a bit stronger on paper.

The Reds brought in a host of depth pieces this offseason, trading for Brady Singer, Gavin Lux, Jose Trevino, and Taylor Rogers, and signing Austin Hays. That should help them raise the floor of their roster quite a bit, but the success of this team hinges on the development of Elly De La Cruz and the health of Hunter Greene and Matt McLain. There are good supplemental pieces up and down Cincinnati’s roster, but the projections see the sum of that talent as less than its parts.

Ahead of their inaugural season in Sacramento, the A’s have been busy spending to improve their roster. Granted, they needed to increase their payroll to avoid a grievance from the player’s union and maintain their status as revenue sharing recipients, but that’s neither here nor there. What matters is they signed Luis Severino to the largest contract in franchise history, extended Brent Rooker on a five-year deal, and traded for Jeffrey Springs. All that in an effort to impress in their new minor league digs, right?

The Angels were one of the most active teams to start this offseason, bringing in Jorge Soler, Yusei Kikuchi, Kyle Hendricks, and Travis d’Arnaud before Thanksgiving. And then they kind of fell silent until waking up in time to sign Yoán Moncada last week to take over as their starting third baseman, with Anthony Rendon relegated to the bench. For a team as far out of the playoff picture as Los Angeles is, these moves are a bit head scratching. Taken together, the additions give the Halos a few more projected wins, but winning 75 games instead of 71 isn’t really much of an accomplishment. It’s worth mentioning that these power rankings were put together before Tuesday morning, when news broke that the Angels had signed Kenley Jansen to a one-year, $10 million deal. Like their other moves, Jansen also represents an improvement, but he isn’t enough to turn the Halos into a winning team.

The debuts of James Wood and Dylan Crews last year marked a turning point for the Nationals. They’re now on the clock to build a contender around those young stars in the making. They took baby steps in that direction this offseason, trading for Nathaniel Lowe and signing Josh Bell to anchor their lineup, and bringing in a ton of new relievers to restock their bullpen. Washington is probably a couple of years away from truly contending, but at least there’s a bit of forward momentum toward that goal.

The Marlins’ surprise playoff appearance in 2023 seems like a lifetime ago. The hesitant optimism that surrounded Miami after that season has all but disappeared after the front office quickly tore down that roster and entered what looks like another long, drawn out rebuilding cycle. This offseason, the Marlins traded away Luzardo and Jake Burger, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see Sandy Alcantara on his way out the door by August if he pitches well in his return from Tommy John surgery.

If you really squint, you can sort of make out the shape of a semi-competitive Rockies team led by Ezequiel Tovar and Brenton Doyle, but that future is at least a few years away. That Colorado has two core pieces to build around at all is a step in the right direction. The Rockies picked up two veteran infielders in Thairo Estrada and Kyle Farmer this offseason, and both should be serviceable depth pieces to offer in midseason trades. Let’s see if the Rockies remember how to use the deadline to their advantage this year.

A quick reminder that the projected win-loss records seen in the tables above are the median projections for each team, so it’s pretty outrageous for any team — even the White Sox — to have its median projection sit at 100 losses. Technically, that would be a 21-game improvement over their historically bad 2024 campaign. This offseason, they’ve done what all good rebuilding clubs do: They added low-cost veterans to soak up playing time early in the season and then get traded for prospects ahead of the deadline. Still, as Michael Baumann wrote in his piece from this morning, “It’s a long climb out of the pit, and we’re not even sure where the floor is yet.”