After the end of the owners’ lockout on Thursday and the reopening of the offseason, the Giants wasted little time making a big splash in the second free agency period, signing Carlos Rodón to a two-year deal worth up to $44 million with an opt-out after the first season. The addition of the ex-White Sox lefty gives San Francisco the top-end talent that was missing from the rotation after the departure of Kevin Gausman earlier in the offseason. It’s a move filled with risk, but with the potential for great reward.

Rodón was a revelation in 2021. He threw a nearly perfect game on April 14, settling for a no-hitter instead; made the All-Star team for the first time; and set career highs in nearly every meaningful pitching metric, with his 2.37 ERA, 2.65 FIP and 4.9 WAR all leading Chicago’s pitching staff. And all this came after the White Sox had non-tendered him before the season, only to re-sign him on a one-year deal worth just $3 million.

As Rodón put it last March, getting cut by the team that had drafted him was a wake-up call. He committed to an improved offseason training program and diet to help him get into better shape, and the transformation of his body helped him fix his mechanics and improve his overall strength. He entered spring training throwing in the upper 90s regularly, and his fastball wound up averaging 95.4 mph last year, the hardest it had been in his career. All that additional velocity took his fastball from an average pitch to an elite weapon. His heater’s whiff rate had never topped 20% in his career but jumped to 29.7% in 2021, and opposing batters managed just a .264 wOBA off the pitch. It also paired nicely with his already excellent slider and changeup to form a trio of plus pitches to mow down opposing batters. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Cardinals breaking the post-lockout free-agent signing seal, what the pre-Opening Day market will look like, day-after reflections on the new CBA (including an alternative term for tanking), the benefits and drawbacks of MLB broadcasts on streaming services, how Canadian vaccination policies could affect the Blue Jays, the advent of WARdle, weather splits at FanGraphs, the podcast’s season preview plans, why the international draft is subject to collective bargaining, and more, followed by a conversation (50:05) with The Athletic staff writer Maria Torres about the ongoing discussions between MLB and the MLBPA about the international draft, the many problems with the international free agent market, MLB’s culpability, alternatives to a draft, and more.

Audio intro: Crosby, Stills & Nash, “After the Storm”
Audio interstitial: Steppenwolf, “Draft Resister”
Audio outro: Spector, “Local International”

Link to Eric on VerHagen
Link to study on late-offseason signings
Link to Evan Drellich on the CBA
Link to Joe Sheehan on the CBA
Link to article on broadcast deals
Link to news about Peacock deal
Link to thread about the Blue Jays
Link to WARdle
Link to FanGraphs weather splits
Link to Ben Clemens on qualifying offers
Link to Freedman thread
Link to news on draft negotiations
Link to Maria’s feature story
Link to Lindor statement
Link to story on Puerto Rico and the draft
Link to second story on P.R. and the draft
Link to third story on P.R. and the draft
Link to ESPN on the international draft
Link to Durbin tweet
Link to Sanders statement

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2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and HAPPY BASEBALL SEASON!

2:01

Jay Jaffe: Brooklyn resident here, and I’m trying to get my blood pressure under control after this: Jeff Coltin @JCColtin I’m walking into City Hall from one direction while Mayor Adams comes from the other. Before I can get a word in, he says “This is New York, we don’t wear Boston hats.” It’s a Brooklyn Dodgers hat! 11 Mar 2022

2:02	Jay Jaffe: But nonetheless, i’m delighted that the lockout is over and that we’re going to get a full baseball season in. My coverage of the new CBA deal is here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/we-have-a-cba-deal-and-a-162-game-season/

2:02	Jay Jaffe: I’ve also got a fun podcast spot with SB Nation’s Jon Bois here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-audio-jon-bois-on-dave-stieb-lou…

2:03

Jay Jaffe: My recent piece about Dave Stieb’s Hall of Fame case (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-born-in-the-fifties/) and the first installment of Jon’s four-part documentary series on the great Blue Jay () coincided so it seemed only natural for the two of us to nerd out together.

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Anyway, let’s get to it! A word of warning: between my Hall of Fame coverage and the negotiations, I haven’t thought about transactions very much since early December. Things could be a bit rusty.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Royals have a wave of strong position player prospects that look like they’re ready to make their debuts as early as 2022, led by the No. 2 player on our Top 100 list, Bobby Witt Jr., as well as MJ Melendez, Nick Pratto, and Vinnie Pasquantino. All four of those players carry a 50 FV or higher and could form a formidable young core in Kansas City for years to come.

Amidst all the hype over those four prospects, it would be understandable if you forgot about Kyle Isbel, who turned a fantastic spring training last year into a starting role in the Royals’ Opening Day lineup. While he didn’t have the prospect ceiling of Witt or the rest of that quartet, he did rank fifth on the 2021 edition of Kansas City’s prospect list with a 45 FV. But after starting off his major league career with five hits in his first two games, Isbel collected just four more across ten more appearances and was optioned down to Triple-A on April 22.

A rookie with a strong spring and a flash-in-the-pan debut who struggles to follow up on his early success isn’t an uncommon storyline, and it’s not surprising given Isbel’s lack of experience. A 2018 draftee out of UNLV, he had only played in just 123 minor league games and only reached High-A before making his debut. The canceled 2020 minor league season had a huge impact on that lack of experience, though he did play at the Royals’ alternate site.

Isbel’s first taste of Triple-A didn’t exactly go well either, as he struggled to a .220/.316/.360 line and a 84 wRC+ through his first 50 games there. But he managed to acclimate and adjust: Over his next 55 games in Triple-A, he slashed .320/.399/.531 (148 wRC+), bopping nine home runs and walking in more than 10% of his plate appearances. His rediscovered production at the plate earned him a second stint in the majors; he was recalled on September 12 and he posted a 138 wRC+ across 16 games down the stretch. Read the rest of this entry »

The baseball season is back! Rejoice! No time for bad feelings – it’s a celebration, and we’re all invited. I don’t really think the rest of this article is something you have to read right now, but I’ll level with you: I had already done the research for it, and it’s worth writing about, so before we descend into a non-stop festival of free agent signings and trades, you’re getting an article about a decision that the MLBPA won’t have to reckon with for a few months yet.

Before we got a merciful end to the CBA back-and-forth, a deal was proposed by MLB that would institute an international draft in exchange for eliminating the qualifying offer system. One detail of the reporting on this issue bugged me: at least one “industry source” gave an estimate for the value of the QO system that I found hard to believe:

1. It is difficult to know what dollar values the sides attach to the international draft or eliminating qualifying offer. Industry sources estimate QO to be worth $50m-$100m annually. Just because one side links two issues does not mean they are identically valued.

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) March 9, 2022

I don’t doubt Drellich’s reporting, but that number sounded wildly high to me. A single-digit group of players receive the qualifying offer each year; they’d have to be losing $10 million per player to make the math make sense. The draft picks that teams surrender to sign those players aren’t worth that much. The highest possible estimate for the cost of those picks comes in around $8 million per player, and that’s for teams with a luxury tax bill (or CBT, if you’re into acronyms).

To settle this question, I decided to look at all of the free agents who have received qualifying offers since the first year of the current QO system, the 2017-18 offseason. I’ve previously estimated what teams pay per WARin free agency, which gave me a useful database to start the investigation. Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Walter hasn’t come out of nowhere, but he has come a long way. A 26th-round pick in 2019 out of the University of Delaware, the 25-year-old southpaw went into last season a veritable unknown, and he left it as the fastest riser in the Red Sox system. Displaying elite movement from a low arm slot, Walter fanned 132 batters and allowed just 67 hits in 89.1 innings, between Low-A Salem and High-A Greenville. He’ll enter the 2022 campaign ranked No. 10 on our newly-released Red Sox Top Prospects list.

Walter discussed his repertoire, and his unexpected emergence in a steadily-improving system, last month.

———

David Laurila: Your Baseball America writeup said, among other things, “His stuff and pitch data suggest reason to believe in a big ceiling.” What does that mean to you, particularly the reference to data?

Brandon Walter: “I’ve learned a lot over the last couple of years, especially since Chaim Bloom came into our organization. They’re big on analytics and pitch data [and] they’re preaching it to us. To me, it mostly means that my stuff is plus, so I can simplify and just throw it in the zone. I can make hitters deal with what I’m throwing instead of trying to hit corners and risk falling behind in the count. Basically, I can just try to get ahead with with my three pitches and compete that way. Getting that information and knowing that my stuff is above average allows me to just attack hitters.”

Laurila: Has the data reinforced things you kind of already knew, or has any of it actually come as a surprise? Read the rest of this entry »

Weather data is now available on the FanGraphs Splits Leaderboards.

You can filter any data since 2010 by temperature, barometric pressure, elevation, wind speed, wind direction, and air density. To make the weather data more useful, you can also filter on the specific ballpark, roof type, and the roof open/closed status.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Boston Red Sox. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 965

On this edition of FanGraphs Audio, we welcome a documentarian to talk about a Blue Jays legend before speaking to a major league right-hander who’s on a new team.

• To kick things off, Jay Jaffe welcomes Jon Bois of SB Nation and Secret Base. Jay just wrote about Dave Stieb, while Jon recently began a four-part series called “Captain Ahab: The Story of Dave Stieb,” chronicling the Toronto ace who excelled during the 1980s. Jay and Jon talk about why Stieb was underrated and didn’t get much Cy Young award love, as well as his numerous near-no-hitters before finally landing the one he was looking for. We also hear about Jon’s creative process and how he decided on this particular subject. [2:46]
• After that, David Laurila welcomes Louis Head, right-hander for the Miami Marlins. The pair spoke last fall when Head was a 31-year-old in the midst of a breakout rookie season for the Tampa Bay Rays. Now, he has joined a different bullpen on the other side of Florida. Head tells us about his winding journey to the majors, which included calling it quits and selling solar panels door-to-door for a while, and how a different approach to his slider helped reshape his career. We also hear about a challenging debut, facing his old team, and what it was like to be optioned 12 times in a season. [39:48]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 63 minute play time.)

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