Wednesday is the first day of the new international signing period, so it’s time for me to share expanded and updated evaluations of the players from the class. An overview of the rules that govern signing international amateurs can be found in MLB’s glossary here, while more thorough and detailed documentation can be found starting on page 316 of the CBA and page 38 of the Official Professional Baseball Rules Book. Players have until December 15 to sign before this signing period closes.

Scouting reports, tool grades, and projected signing teams for about 50 players from the 2025 class can now be viewed over on The Board. Because the International Players tab has an apples and oranges mix of older pros from Asian leagues and soon-to-be first-year players, there is no explicit ranking for this amateur class on The Board. That said, I’ve stacked the class with a ranking in the table below, and as usual, that ranking will live on the International Players dropdown of The Board after most of these guys have finished signing in the coming weeks.

Below I’ll run down how I compiled this list, talk about the class as a whole, and then discuss how Roki Sasaki’s presence is impacting the proceedings. Read the rest of this entry »

Not every out is created equal. Take this fly out from Corbin Carroll, for example:

A lot of things can happen when you make an out with the bases loaded. You could strike out, leaving every runner in place. You could hit into a double play, an inning-ending one in this case. You could ground out some other way, or hit an infield fly. But Carroll’s here was the most valuable imaginable; with one out, he advanced every single runner, including the runner who scored from third.

Mathematically speaking, you can think of it this way. The average out that took place with the bases loaded and one out lowered the team’s run expectancy by a massive 0.61 runs in 2024. That’s because tons of these outs were either strikeouts (bad, runner on third doesn’t score) or double plays (bad, inning ends). But Carroll’s fly out was far better than that. It actually increased the run expectancy by a hair; driving the lead runner home and moving the trail runners up a base is exquisitely valuable.

That’s not the only way this could have gone. Consider a similar situation, a groundout from Aaron Judge:

Like Carroll, Judge batted with a runner on third and fewer than two outs. In this situation, the average out is bad, lowering run expectancy by 0.514 runs. But Judge’s was obviously worse. It cost the Yankees all the expected runs they had left in the inning, naturally, which added up to just a bit more than 1.15. Read the rest of this entry »

12:00

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and happy new year! Welcome to my first chat of 2025

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Again it’s been awhile, as I’ve been snowed in by my Hall of Fame series, including a larger-than-usual crop of interesting one-and-done guys. Yesterday I covered Ben Zobrist (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and-the-2025-hall-of-fame-ballot-ben-…), tomorrow it’s Curtis Granderson, with Fernando Rodney and Adam Jones still to squeeze in before Tuesday’s election results.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: I’ve been doing a few Hall-related media spots lately, including a Hall of Very Good podcast and some discussions of the ballot with writers. If this kind of stuff floats your boat, check in with me at @jayjaffe.bsky.social to follow along. By the way, my Twitter account is now locked; I basically stopped posting there just before running my annual Hall of Fame ballot piece (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jay-jaffes-2025-hall-of-fame-ballot), and I don’t plan to do more than occasionally lurk there going forward.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: We’re a week away from the Hall results being announced, so I expect several questions on that subject. With that, on with the show!

12:08

Jay Jaffe: Actually, year-over-year changes is actually one of the most interesting aspects of covering the Hall beat. Voting doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Each candidate is competing with the other candidates for one of those 10 spots on a voter’s ballot, and while not everybody goes to 10, enough people do that even some deserving candidates get left off. The voting body changes from year to year, with old voters replaced by new ones, and returning candidates that do well get more scrutiny from voters that bypassed them the last time. It’s a very interesting set of dynamics in play, one we’ve started to get a better handle on thanks to Ryan Thibodaux and his ballot tracker group

Read the rest of this entry »

Attention FanGraphs readers and Members: Do you have a piece of original baseball writing or research that you’d like to have published but don’t know where to go? If so, we’re happy to report that we’re relaunching our Community Blog and looking for submissions.

Many of you have probably seen or read the Community Blog, where anyone with a FanGraphs account can submit a piece for review and publication. Some of you may have even written for it previously. But for those of you who aren’t familiar with the process or would like a refresher on how it works, let’s run through how to get your writing onto our site. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 21st 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 and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Minnesota Twins.

Batters

The Twins entered last September as a second-place team with a 92% chance to make the playoffs, according to ZiPS. But then, after going 9-18 that month, they finished fourth in the AL Central and fell short of the postseason. When you look at it that way, their 2024 campaign was certainly a disappointment. However, for as bad things ended, the Twins still posted a winning record (82-80) for the second consecutive year, and none of their problems down the stretch last year suggest there’s anything fundamentally broken with the organization. I mean, sure, Twins fans surely would want them to spend more aggressively, but that’s a gripe they share with the fans of the other AL Central teams.

As it turned out, Carlos Correa shockingly didn’t suddenly forget how to play baseball in 2023; he had terrific 2024 season that hopefully wiped some memories clean. One potential concern is his plantar fascitis – which he’s had in both heels at times over the last 18 months – but with a normal offseason of rest, he should begin this season on fairly strong footing, and ZiPS projects him to have a fairly typical Correa campaign.

Byron Buxton had a similarly solid comeback season. He posted a 142 wRC+, and after the Twins used him exclusively at DH in 2023 in an unsuccessful attempt to keep him healthy, he returned to center field and played above-average defense. I’d be shocked if Buxton made the 567 plate appearances that Depth Charts is projecting for him right now – he’s never done that in the majors – but when he’s playing, he remains a tantalizing talent. Given his history, I would assume the Twins are expecting to have him for about 90-100 games.

The rest of the offense is a great deal less exciting. Royce Lewis still has some upside, but he has a long injury history of his own, and his offense was fairly ordinary last year after his stunning 2023 output. Although he’s probably nearing his ceiling, right fielder Matt Wallner projects to be solidly above average over the next few years, and the catching tandem of Ryan Jeffers and Christian Vázquez is a good one. Elsewhere, though, this lineup feels more patchwork; it’s not really a giant mess, but you kind of wish it had a bit more thump.

There are some lesser projections of interest here. ZiPS isn’t high on Brooks Lee, but it does think that Edouard Julien deserves a chance to avenge his weak 2024, and there’s a real case for promoting Luke Keaschall quickly if he continues to hit in the high minors. It would be nice to see the team get one more bat in free agency, either as an upgrade over Trevor Larnach or to beef up its projected production at DH.

ZiPS expects that it’ll take a few years for Walker Jenkins to really develop his power, but it likes the aforementioned Keaschall and center field prospect Emmanuel Rodriguez.

Pitchers

Pitching-wise, the Twins had an odd season. They had a massive difference between their ERA (4.26) and FIP (3.84), finishing 21st in the former but a much more respectable seventh in the latter stat. And they did that with a rather average defense, so you can’t blame the glove work for that. The good thing is that by and large, the current pitchers on the roster don’t have a lengthy history of falling short of their FIP, which suggests that some of the weaker-than-expected performances were more blips than true concerns.

One thing that hurt the rotation wasn’t so much the primary members but some really terrible performances from the Plan B gang. Chris Paddack and David Festa drastically underperformed their peripheral numbers, and fill-ins like Louie Varland and Zebby Matthews were downright dreadful. ZiPS expects a lot more from all four pitchers, especially Matthews, and overall, it projects the rotation to be somewhere between sixth and 10th in baseball in WAR. The 2.63 HR/9 that Matthews allowed last year may look especially bad, but as I warn people, don’t go nuts over crazy short-term home run stats. A shocking number of people yelled at me in 2019 about a positive Corbin Burnes projection because of the 17 homers he allowed over 49 innings in 2019. ZiPS has little to complain about at the top of the rotation, with Pablo López, Joe Ryan, and Bailey Ober, though López is the only one of the trio that ZiPS projects to have a high long-term ceiling. If ZiPS is right, the Twins are about set here, with a strong starting five and good depth behind them.

The Twins had the second-best bullpen in the American League last year by WAR (5.9), and the good news for Minnesota fans is that the bullpen should remain terrific in 2025. In fact, though it’s certainly not an official projection yet, ZiPS believes at this moment that the Twins have the best bullpen in baseball. Jhoan Duran ought to have a better season in 2025, and now that the Twins have announced that Griffin Jax won’t be moved back to the rotation in 2025, the two of them will form a deadly one-two late-inning punch. Brock Stewart is also projected to have a better season – though his sore shoulder will need to cooperate – and aside from Jorge Alcala and Michael Tonkin, ZiPS projects every significant Minnesota reliever to have an ERA under 4.00. The Twins don’t really need to make any additions here, either. If they are going to make more moves, they should target offensive upgrades.

This is a solidly built team that is deep enough to have a pretty high floor. That said, the Twins have enough weaknesses that ZiPS puts them in the 85-88 win range right now. The AL Central projects to be one of the closer divisions in baseball, and the Twins likely will still be playing meaningful games in September.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2025 due to injury, and players who were released in 2024. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Ukulele Dixieland Jazz band that only covers songs by The Smiths, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.11.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky.

If you’re a Milwaukee Brewers fan, you probably know the volume and quality of Colin Rea’s work the past two seasons. Last season, only 58 pitchers qualified for the ERA title, and Rea was among them. Over the past two seasons, Rea is second among Brewers pitchers in starts, innings, wins, and strikeouts, trailing only Freddy Peralta in those categories.

If you’re not a Brewers fan, you might have seen the news that Rea signed with the Cubs and thought, “Oh, is this guy the Padres tried to trade with a torn UCL? Is he back from Japan?”

In an offseason defined by the scarcity of starting pitching, it’s a bit jarring to see a starter sign for one year and $5 million. Especially one who just threw 167 2/3 innings in 2024. There aren’t enough of those guys in the entire league for every team to have two. Roughly 15 times as many people summited Mt. Everest in 2024 as qualified for the major league ERA title. And Rea got just $5 million? What gives? Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The Blue Jays came into this offseason with one glaring need: relievers. Now, that’s not to say that they don’t need help elsewhere. The bottom of their lineup is thin. They’re probably a starter short of an optimal rotation, particularly given how uncertain Alek Manoah’s future looks. But they’re a playoff hopeful, and they had the worst bullpen in baseball in 2024 – 3.1 wins worse than the White Sox, if you can believe it. So the bullpen had to be priority number one, and voila:

OFFICIAL: We’ve signed All-Star RHP Jeff Hoffman to a 3-year deal ??

Welcome Back, @Hoff_23! pic.twitter.com/A1tN8zOGjV

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) January 11, 2025

Jeff Hoffman might not be a household name, but he’s been one of the best relievers in baseball since joining the Phillies in 2023. He’s racked up 3.6 WAR in that time, but reliever WAR can get weird with the leverage adjustments, so let’s put it this way instead: He’s sixth in ERA and third in FIP over the last two years. His strikeout rate hovers around 33.3%, and he walks a thoroughly normal number of hitters. In other words, this doesn’t look like a fluke, and he’s not getting paid like a fluke, either. His deal is worth $33 million over those three years, with $6 million in available incentives. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 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.

Calling Ben Zobrist a utility player — or even a superutility player, given that he could play the outfield as well as the infield — is like calling Citizen Kane a movie about a sled. Unrecruited out of high school, and later unheralded as a prospect due to his age, he seemingly came out of nowhere to emerge as a star for the upstart Tampa Bay Rays, and in doing so removed the stigma of moving between positions on a regular basis. On the offensive side, “Zorilla” was a switch-hitter with elite plate discipline, mid-range power, and a minimal platoon split. As a defender, he provided average-or-better defense at second base and the outfield corners, and could play passably at a few other positions as well. Thanks to that combination, he helped change the way teams thought about roster construction, giving the more creative ones the flexibility to cobble together multiposition platoons.

Zobrist made only three All-Star teams in his 14-year career, but he helped his clubs reach the postseason eight times in an 11-year span (2008–18). From 2009–14, he ranked among the game’s most valuable players by WAR, and in the years adjacent to that stretch, he helped the Rays (2008), Royals (2015), and Cubs (2016) reach the World Series. He was the World Series MVP in the last of those seasons, when the Cubs won their first title in 108 years, and even got a breakfast cereal named after him, Zorilla Crunch! If not for his late start — he didn’t get more than 250 plate appearances in a season until age 28 — he might have had a real shot at making noise on this Hall of Fame ballot instead of going one-and-done. Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, I’ve been very interested in analyzing hitters who make a living off crushing everything in the upper third of the strike zone. As the rise of four-seamers up in the zone has turned that area into a hole for more hitters (especially in terms of whiffs), having someone in the lineup who excels in that area is very valuable. As I perused the leaderboards looking for the best hitters in the upper third, I had an expectation that most, if not all, of them would either have a very flat swing or be on the shorter side with shorter arms. It’s a simple story. If your swing is flat, you’re on plane with the pitch. And if you’re a shorter player or have shorter levers, you should be able to get on plane with pitches in the upper third very quickly.

That story is mostly true, but it wouldn’t be baseball if there weren’t an exception or two. Here is the list of the top 10 hitters against pitches in the upper third by xwOBA in 2024. I used a 15-hit minimum to ensure my focus was on the players who have had success with batted balls in this area:

Read the rest of this entry »