A year ago, Juan Soto was the buzz of baseball’s Winter Meetings. It wasn’t because of anything he had agency over, though. The San Diego Padres were reportedly looking to trade him, and they eventually did. This year, Soto is the story again. But instead of waiting to see what his fate is, he’ll get to choose. Or maybe I should say that he did choose, because as Jon Heyman first reported, Soto signed a 15-year, $765 million dollar deal to join the New York Mets.
Presumably, you aren’t reading this article with no background knowledge of who Soto is. Still, I want to give you a refresher, because Soto is such a delightful player. He’s your favorite hitter’s favorite hitter. He has the best batting eye in baseball, and it’s not close. His sense of the strike zone is so good that it feels like he’s dictating the terms rather than the pitcher, one of very few hitters in baseball who gives that impression. He’s perennially one of the best in the game when it comes to avoiding swinging and missing, and he walks nearly a fifth of the time because pitchers are too afraid to challenge him.
Why are they too afraid? Because he’s also one of the best power hitters in baseball. He launched 41 homers and 31 doubles in 2024. He’s hit 201 home runs in his career, seventh-best in the majors over that span. His worst seasonal line was in 2022… when he hit .242/.401/.452 while getting traded mid-season. “Worst” is all relative, though; it was the ninth-best offensive line in the majors that year. Soto is so good offensively that despite being known for patience first and power second, he’s actually 11th in the league in batting average since debuting. He’s just good at every facet of hitting. Read the rest of this entry »
Last year’s Winter Meetings were a bit of a snooze until the end, but 2024’s kicked off in style with the biggest free agent this offseason, Juan Soto, signing a massive 15-year deal to join the New York Mets for what is likely to be the rest of his career. At $765 million, Soto’s new contract is the richest in the history of professional sports. The ifs, buts, and wherefors make the contract even richer, as Soto scores a signing bonus of $75 million immediately, has no money deferred, and even has an opt-out after the fifth season if he believes he can land something even more lucrative. The Mets do get the option to void Soto’s opt-out by adding $40 million to the value of the last decade of his contract.
The wildest thing is that it’s not really even much of an overpay. Some might compare it to contracts like the ones given to Albert Pujols or Miguel Cabrera, but those deals were given to significantly older players. Signing a player in his mid-20s rather than one in his late-20s or early-30s is a very big deal. First off, let’s run the numbers for Soto in Queens:
Colt Emerson has a bright future, and he is approaching it with a stay-true-to-yourself mindset. Exactly how much his identity will evolve is the question. Seventeen months removed from being selected 22nd overall in the 2023 draft by the Seattle Mariners out of New Concord, Ohio’s John Glenn High School, the left-handed-hitting shortstop is just 19 years old, with all of 94 professional games under his belt. He has plenty of room to grow, with his below-average raw power being part of that equation.
Emerson recognizes that what he is today isn’t necessarily what he’ll be in the future. At the same time, he doesn’t anticipate changing too much.
“I think I have a good feel for the type of player I am,” the 6-foot-1, 195-pound infielder told me during the Arizona Fall League season, where he slashed a lusty .370/.436/.547. “But I’m also not physically mature yet. I have more strength to put on, and as I keep growing into it, hitting the same way is going to be crucial for me. Getting stronger and being able to put balls over the fence more easily doesn’t mean that I need to try to hit more home runs. They’re going to come, just doing what I do.”
What Emerson currently does is hit line drives with a swing that our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen has described as “aesthetically pleasing.” Generated by “lightning quick hands,“ it produced a .263/.393/.376 with for home runs and a 119 wRC+ over 332 plate appearances between Low-A Modesto and High-A Everett. One of the youngest players at each level, he missed time in April with an oblique issue, and in mid-season he was out for a month-plus due to a fractured foot. Read the rest of this entry »
Through the first week of December, the steady trickle of free agency had almost exclusively included pitchers and catchers. Other position players, understandably, seemed to be waiting out Juan Soto’s market, as the price tag for Zoomer Ted Williams reportedly continues to climb. But as the baseball glitterati descend on Dallas for the Winter Meetings, at least one top position player will already have a new home.
Shortstop Willy Adames is now a San Francisco Giant. Adames was the no. 2 overall free agent on Ben Clemens’ Top 50 list, and the first major acquisition for new Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey. It’s quite a splashy move; Adames’ seven-year, $182 million contract is the largest, by total value, the Giants have ever given out, beating the eight-year, $167 million extension Posey himself signed in 2013.
After their surprise run to the playoffs this year, the Mets have a lot of work to do this offseason to follow up on their unexpected success. From their rotation alone, they lost Sean Manaea, Luis Severino, and Jose Quintana to free agency — that trio combined to make 94 starts in 2024 — leaving Kodai Senga and David Peterson as the lone holdovers. Earlier this week, New York signed Frankie Montas to a two-year deal to begin restocking its pitching staff. On Friday, the next domino fell: Clay Holmes, erstwhile Yankees closer, agreed to a three-year contract worth $38 million with an opt out after the second year.
With an extensive résumé covering high-leverage innings a borough over, you might expect the Mets to plug Holmes into the bullpen behind Edwin Díaz and call it good. Instead, they’re planning on transitioning him to the starting rotation. Holmes has all of four major league starts under his belt and all of them came during his rookie campaign back in 2018. He worked extensively as a starter in the minor leagues but the year he made his major league debut was the last time he threw more than 100 innings in a season.
In their never-ending search for effective starting pitching, teams have turned their gaze to the bullpen over the past few years. Just this season, Garrett Crochet, Reynaldo López, and Jordan Hicks made the jump from the bullpen to the rotation. Last year, Seth Lugo, Michael King, and Zack Littell made a similar shift. It doesn’t always work; for every success story like Lugo’s or López’s, there’s a cautionary tale like that of Hicks or A.J. Puk. Even Crochet, for all his early success, seemed to wear down towards the end of the season, despite some extremely careful handling by the White Sox given the left-hander’s injury history. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a Tigers tweet about future first-pitch timing and other non-topical PSAs, provide a Secret Santa sign-up reminder, consider baseball authority figures who answer fan mail, discuss the impact that the changing economic landscape of college sports could have on MLB drafting and development, react to Danny Jansen’s deal with the Rays, and answer a question about defining “division rivals,” then (57:10) bring on Michael Mountain to Stat Blast about his new Wins Above Average-based Hall of Fame metric, BOOG, plus updates.
For the last six offseasons, I’ve spent (too) much of my time compiling my Offseason Matrices Google doc, a project that Davy Andrews so kindly described as “a work of absolute madness.”
The document has evolved hugely since its first iteration in the 2018-19 offseason, with more tabs, better formatting and color-coding, linking to sources, and many more improvements to make it more user friendly and comprehensive. Now, in this weekly article, I’ll be running down the latest updates, talking through how the latest signings and trades have had downstream effects on the team that actually acquired the player, as well as others who didn’t. The goal here isn’t to rehash every move that happens; that’s what the initial FanGraphs coverage was for! Rather, my aim is to add some additional context and comments and summarize how the landscape of the offseason has changed with the moves. After all, that’s what all the color-coding on the Matrix is for.
Biggest Rumors of the Week
• Juan Soto appears to be getting closer to a decision, with at most five teams still in the (known) running: the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Red Sox, and Blue Jays. Mystery teams are always possible, I suppose, but now that the bidding has reportedly hit $600 million, I highly doubt it. Soto has begun to eliminate teams, though we’re not sure which teams are out and how many remain. Per Jeff Passan of ESPN, we’re expected to know Soto’s destination by the beginning of the Winter Meetings on Monday at the latest.
• The Yankees appear to be preparing for life after Soto, though they certainly hope it won’t come to that. They reportedly have met with free agent starting pitchers Corbin Burnes and Max Fried, and could push hard to sign infielder Willy Adames if Soto leaves. On the trade side of things, they’ve showed interest in Cubs outfielder/first baseman Cody Bellinger to replace Soto as a lefty bat in the middle of the lineup. Bellinger could also fill their opening at first base and might be an option even if Soto returns. Speaking of first base options, earlier in the offseason, the Yankees checked in on Pete Alonso and were one of the teams to express interest in Christian Walker.
• Trader Jerry is at it again, with Adam Jude of the Seattle Timesreporting that the Mariners have had preliminary discussions with the Phillies about Alec Bohm and the Cubs about Nico Hoerner. Teams will have conversations with dozens of free agents and about dozens of trade targets, so don’t draw any conclusions about these specific players just yet. However, these two nuggets signal that Jerry Dipoto is looking to upgrade at third base and second base, perhaps aggressively. Also, big ups to Dave Dombrowski for reportedly asking for Logan Gilbert or George Kirby in exchange for Bohm.
• Korean second baseman Hye-seong Kim has officially been posted for MLB clubs, and he now has until 5 p.m. EST on January 3 to reach a deal. He’s was already linked to the Mariners pre-posting, and other teams should surely follow now that he’s officially available. Eric Longenhagen has him graded as a 40 FV player who may not have a ton of upside but should represent a relatively low-cost option. Ha-Seong Kim (no relation, though they did play together in Korea) signed for four years and $28 million when he came stateside before the 2021 season, and Hye-seong should end up around there.
Well folks, we’ve got our first true “he signed WHERE???” of the offseason. The A’s are showing they’re at least somewhat-committed to fielding a more competitive team in 2025. Plus, $67 million for Severino is also a strong indication that it might take something of a premium to lure players to a minor-league ballpark for any length of time, especially a player like Severino. This’ll almost certainly be the largest deal the A’s sign this offseason, but for the first time in a few years, you don’t have to squint too hard to see the makings of a decent team.
Effect on Other Teams
I’m not sure how many other suitors Severino had, nor do I know how many of them had the A’s on their radar as potentially vying for him alongside them. Whatever the case may be, such teams are going to turn their attention to similar pitchers, perhaps others with qualifying offers attached, such as Nick Pivetta and Sean Manaea, or an unencumbered pitcher like Nathan Eovaldi.
Effect on Similar Players
Those similar guys I just mentioned are probably doing cartwheels after learning Severino signed for $23 million a year. Kiley McDaniel of ESPN had the highest contract prediction (on the Total Spending Projection tab) for Severino of the ones I was able to aggregate, and he was low by $8.5 million. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Pivetta, Manaea, and Eovaldi will sign for many millions more than expected, but one fewer pitcher on the board — signed by an unexpected team, no less — should increase demand for those three.
This doesn’t close off the Mets from adding to their rotation; they’ve still got at least two rotation spots to fill, with Kodai Senga joining Montas and likely David Peterson as locks for the starting five. This move should also solidify José Buttó as a reliever, even if he’s stretched out during spring training.
Effect on Other Teams
Might this get rivals calling about Paul Blackburn? We know the Mets need as many starters as they can get, but Blackburn has fallen further down the depth chart with the Montas addition, and his going on the IL for leaking spinal fluid meant the Mets couldn’t evaluate him much after acquiring him from the A’s at the trade deadline.
Effect on Similar Players
Montas’ snagging $34 million over two years (with an opt out!) seemed to help out Matthew Boyd (more on him later), and that $17 million average annual value ought to be good news for similarly ranked players like Max Scherzer, Andrew Heaney, Jose Quintana, Charlie Morton, Justin Verlander, and Michael Lorenzen. I think Montas will outdo all of those guys in AAV, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see most of them beat their median contract prediction, which you can find on the Total Spending Projection tab.
Cubs Sign Matthew Boyd for Two Years, $14.5 Million
Likelier than not, the Boyd addition will end the Cubs’ pursuit of starting pitching, at least when it comes to adding other mid-tier arms. Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, and Boyd should all be guaranteed starting jobs, and I think the Cubs would only bump Javier Assad if they were able to land a true impact starter like Garrett Crochet, Max Fried, or Jack Flaherty.
Effect on Other Teams
Like Blackburn with the Mets, Assad could end up as a trade target for teams in need of starting pitching depth, though I’m not sure how willing the Cubs would be to part with him. As I said, I think Assad has a leg up on the competition for the fifth starter spot. However, perhaps the Cubs would be more likely to trade him if he were part of a deal to land a better starter, such as the aforementioned Crochet. Jordan Wicks, Ben Brown, and Hayden Wesneski are now on the outside looking in for rotation spots. Despite Chicago’s strong depth, as a rule, I generally don’t mark teams’ columns on the FA Matrix with maroon cells (denoting filled positions) for pitchers, since you can never have too many.
The Red Sox entered the offseason with quite a lot of work to do in their bullpen. That said, Boston has to be pretty comfortable with its lefties now that Chapman and Justin Wilson are in the fold. Brennan Bernardino and Cam Booser are also on the 40-man.
Effect on Other Teams
We don’t know of any other teams who were interested in Chapman, but with clearly the second-best lefty reliever off the board, there’s now a big chasm between big fish Tanner Scott and the rest of the lefties for teams looking to add a southpaw. Besides Scott, there’s also Scott Alexander, Ryan Yarbrough, Danny Coulombe, Drew Smyly, Andrew Chafin, Jalen Beeks, and Hoby Milner, among others. Plenty of interesting names there, but only Chapman has the high-octane gas that Scott also possesses.
The Heim-Higashioka timeshare takes the Rangers out of the catcher market for the rest of the offseason. (Their column now has maroon cells for all catchers who should get MLB deals.) It also gives them an obvious trade chip in Sam Huff, who’s hit well in limited MLB opportunities for the past four years, but has never been highly regarded behind the dish.
Effect on Other Teams
Huff’s entry onto the trade block somewhat offsets the inability for other teams to sign Higashioka, though again, Huff probably isn’t a catcher and certainly doesn’t have the reputation Higgy has back there. The catcher market is the one position player group that’s moved quickly in free agency; Higashioka, Jacob Stallings, Austin Hedges, Danny Jansen, and Travis d’Arnaud are now all off the board. Carson Kelly, Yasmani Grandal, Gary Sánchez, Elias Díaz, and James McCann are the best options left.
Effect on Similar Players
Of those best options I just mentioned, Kelly is the only option left who strikes me as likely to sign a multi-year deal. Higashioka essentially matched his median contract prediction of two years and $14 million, signing for just $500,000 less. That’s a helpful data point for Kelly, whose median prediction is two years at $14 million.
Along with the Rangers, the Rays now have their catcher timeshare settled for 2025, with the lefty-hitting Ben Rortvedt and lefty-mashing Jansen forming a natural platoon. For $8.5 million, Jansen could get plenty of run against righties, too, but Rortvedt should play more than a typical backup even if he’s relegated to that role. The Rays already lost René Pinto off waivers to the Orioles, so Logan Driscoll will be down in Triple-A as the top depth option.
Effect on Other Teams
If you want a catcher, options are dwindling quickly. If none of the backstops I mentioned in the Higashioka section sound particularly enticing, maybe call the Pirates and ask about Jason Delay or Henry Davis, or talk to the Phillies about Rafael Marchán or Garrett Stubbs.
Effect on Similar Players
Jansen’s contract ended up being worse than expected; his median contract prediction was two years and $18 million, so he didn’t even match the AAV. This might read as bad news for Kelly, but I think Kelly is closer to Higashioka than he is to Jansen. Kelly has a strong defensive reputation and is also coming off a better season, whereas Jansen has a concerning injury history and had a rough 2023 campaign.
I’ve been a fan of Brent Rooker since he was crushing baseballs at Mississippi State, so it was exciting to see him elevate his offense in 2023 after three years of struggling in the majors. His improvements stemmed from changes he made to his load. He added larger, slower movements as he prepared to swing, which helped him to generate more power while keeping his body under control. To do this, he switched from a simple toe tap to a more dramatic foot hover, allowing him to do a complete hand row while loading and giving him more time to sync the rhythm of his upper and lower body before exploding toward the ball.
The result was a breakout season in which he batted .246 with 30 home runs and a 126 wRC+. Despite his improvements, though, Rooker was not a finished product. Strikeouts have always been part of his game, so his 32.7% strikeout rate wasn’t all that surprising even after his adjustments. Teams accept whiffs as a necessary tradeoff for more power, but all these strikeouts were indicative of a hole in Rooker’s swing that limited his value.
From 2020-2023, Rooker had one of the steepest swings in baseball, making it easier for him to launch the ball in the air. But unlike other steep hitters, such as Mike Trout and Freddie Freeman, Rooker didn’t have the variability to alter his swing to get to pitches outside of his wheelhouse. This left him exposed to high fastballs. Even as he slightly dropped his VBA in 2023, he still ran a 40% whiff rate and .285 xwOBA on pitches at the top of the zone. That was the 16th-worst whiff rate out of 217 hitters who saw at least 1,500 pitches that season.
This all relates to the balance that hitters with steeper swings have to strike. Yes, it’s easier to create launch with a steeper angle (duh!), but you don’t want to be one dimensional to the point where you’re taking the same swing every time. It’s a problem that a lot of younger hitters are forced to reckon with when they reach the big leagues because pitchers simply have nastier stuff and are better at executing. Although Rooker developed a better idea of how he could be successful in the big leagues, he still had a major hole to address. Boy did he do that this past season!
Across 614 plate appearances this year, Rooker was one of the best hitters in baseball, batting .292 with 39 homers, a 164 wRC+, and a .510 xwOBACON (99th percentile), while his strikeout rate dropped to 28.8%. Those are big improvements across the board. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his success this season came with a flatter swing, which had a positive impact on his performance at the top of the zone:
Rooker Upper Third Improvements
Season
VBA
xwOBA
Whiff%
2023
36.7
.285
39.8
2024
35.5
.325
31.1
SOURCE: Baseball Savant, SwingGraphs
It’s a simple story to track. On average, Rooker’s swings were flatter at contact, giving him a better chance to be effective at the top of the zone where pitchers were likely to target him this season. He took the biggest hole in his game and made it a smaller one; as a result, his strengths played up more. Of course, that’s easier said than done, so it’s worth examining how he did it. Now comes the fun part of the analysis.
Thinking in terms of reciprocal movements, in order to get to a different angle at contact, it seems likely that Rooker changed his initial position. And what do you know? That’s exactly what happened! Once again, he altered his setup. The following swings are all against fastballs in the upper third of the zone, three from 2023 and three from this past season:
2023
2024
Here, you’ll notice two changes that had a direct impact on the path of his barrel: His hands are higher and his stride leg is slightly open. He most likely opened up his front leg to improve his balance and/or change his rotational direction. Right now, though, I’m more interested in his adjusting his hand position.
Typically, batters raise their hands to make it easier to maintain a flatter barrel, make contact deeper in the zone, and shorten their swing length. That all sounds wonderful, but some sluggers refrain from this adjustment because it becomes more difficult for them to create launch. Turns out, that wasn’t the case for Rooker; his flatter swing was still steep enough to crush balls in the air.
The other benefit here is just as important. Having higher hands allowed him to make contact deeper in the zone. Look at the final clip above from 2024. Even though he was late on this fastball, he could still rip a single to right center. We don’t have swing length data from 2023, so we can’t say for sure that Rooker’s swing was shorter in 2024, but batters with higher hands tend to have shorter, flatter swings. Pitches at the top of the zone get on batters more quickly than pitches in the middle or lower thirds. To hit those high pitches, batters need to get their barrels into the zone sooner, and shorter, flatter swings cut down the space that batters need to cover to get to the point of contact. This adjustment would explain Rooker’s improvement on pitches up in the zone.
Rooker’s path to stardom has been a fantastic player development story. He was not complacent after his initial breakout in 2023. Instead, he made additional adjustments to his profile. Many players want to fix their weaknesses, but it’s incredibly hard to do so. That Rooker identified and addressed the hole in his game so quickly is a testament to his talent and makes me more confident that he’ll continue to be one of the game’s top hitters for a while.
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2020 election, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. 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 and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Bobby Abreu could do just about everything. A five-tool player with dazzling speed, a sweet left-handed stroke, and enough power to win a Home Run Derby, he was also one of the game’s most patient, disciplined hitters, able to wear down a pitcher and unafraid to hit with two strikes. While routinely reaching the traditional seasonal plateaus that tend to get noticed — a .300 batting average (six times), 20 homers (nine times), 30 steals (six times), 100 runs scored and batted in (eight times apiece) — he was nonetheless a stathead favorite for his ability to take a walk (100 or more eight years in a row) and his high on-base percentages (.400 or better eight times). And he was durable, playing 151 games or more in 13 straight seasons. “To me, Bobby’s Tony Gwynn with power,” said Phillies hitting coach Hal McRae in 1999.
“Bobby was way ahead of his time [with] regards to working pitchers,” said his former manager Larry Bowa when presenting him for induction into the Phillies Wall of Fame in 2019. “In an era when guys were swinging for the fences, Bobby never strayed from his game. Because of his speed, a walk would turn into a double. He was cool under pressure, and always in control of his at-bats. He was the best combination of power, speed, and patience at the plate.” Read the rest of this entry »
Sponsor Us on Patreon
EW Subreddit
Effectively Wild Wiki
iTunes Feed
Spotify Feed
Facebook Group
Bluesky Account
Twitter Account
Get Our Merch!
