Sports Info Solutions has been tracking every pitch thrown in Major League Baseball since 2002, and since the beginning, those pitches have been hitting the strike zone less and less frequently. You can check the tumbling year-over-year numbers over on our pitch-level data leaderboard, but if you want to spare yourself a click, I pulled them into the graph below. It paints a damning picture of the command of today’s stuff-over-stamina, throw-it-hard-before-your-elbow-explodes pitchers. Don’t go near this graph if you’re on roller skates:
If you ever feel the need to shake your fist at young pitchers and mutter about loud music and fastball command, this is the graph for you. SIS has documented the percentage of pitches that hit the strike zone dropping from the low 50s to the low 40s over the last 20 years. Combine that with the game’s ever-increasing focus on velocity and stuff, and you’ve got a nice, tidy narrative: today’s pitchers are too focused on throwing hard to know where the hell they’re throwing the ball. However, the truth is a bit more complicated. It’s important to keep in mind that the SIS numbers come from real life human beings who analyze video to track pitches, while the friendly robot that powers Statcast has its definition of the strike zone set in digital stone. Read the rest of this entry »
As the halfway point of the offseason approaches, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the relative merits of the first half of the offseason vs. the second half of the offseason, assess the weakest projected positions on contending teams and the best remaining free agents, and list MLB stories they’re looking forward to following.
I think a lot of us overestimate the significance of geography when predicting where free agents will sign. In Max Kepler’s case, however, we all might have underestimated the role geography would play in his decision. Perhaps it was inevitable that the greatest German-born player in MLB history would head to the state with the greatest German population in the country. Lo and behold, on December 19, the all-time leader in runs, home runs, RBI, and WAR among Deutschland natives agreed to a one-year, $10 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.
Yet, aside from helping the Phillies pander to their fans in Germantown, it’s a little difficult to see how Kepler fits this team. Entering the offseason, many expected Philadelphia would pursue a right-handed batter to play left field who could split playing time with Brandon Marsh. Instead, they signed Kepler, who bats lefty and hasn’t played left field since his days at Double-A in 2015. What’s more, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has made it clear the Phillies plan to use Kepler as an everyday player, despite the fact that injuries have kept him from playing more than 130 games in a full season since 2019.
Kepler’s limited experience in left field is the least concerning aspect of all this. Whether you look at OAA, FRV, DRS, or Baseball Prospectus’s DRP, Kepler has never been a below-average outfield defender in any season of his career. His strong track record as a right fielder, and his past experience in center, should help him adjust to left. Furthermore, Kepler might benefit from playing a position where throwing isn’t quite as important. Although his arm strength consistently ranks above the league average, he has been worth -3 throwing runs in his career, according to Baseball Savant.
Even if it won’t be a major adjustment, it’s not nothing for the Phillies to ask Kepler to re-learn a position after almost 10 years away. It makes me think of the movie line I quote more often than any other. In Moneyball, when Billy Beane tries to convince catcher Scott Hatteberg that he can play first base, Beane asks Ron Washington to tell Hatteberg that’s it not that hard. “It’s incredibly hard,” Washington replies. 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 Cincinnati Reds.
Batters
In return for their mini-free agent spree after nearly making the playoffs in 2023, the Cincinnati Reds dropped five wins, finishing 2024 with a 77-85 record. It wasn’t as bad as it looked — the team improved its Pythagorean record by five wins compared to the year before — but it felt lousy that only Nick Martinez really shined among their signings. Elly De La Cruz did break out in a massive way — he was a legitimate MVP contender for much of the season — but Matt McLain’s torn labrum and rib injury kept him away from the action.
A look at the depth chart graphic makes it pretty clear where the Reds are strong: Even with some regression toward the mean, De La Cruz is the team’s most important player, and if healthy, McLain will upgrade second base. Continuing the up-the-middle strength is Jose Trevino, recently acquired from the Yankees; he and Tyler Stephenson give the Reds an excellent tandem behind the plate. TJ Friedl in center gets a less exciting projection, but he’s still perfectly serviceable as a starter, and he’s the worst projected player of the up-the-middle quartet. Read the rest of this entry »
Swaddled comfortably beneath the tree of Phillies fans this year was Jesús Luzardo, whom the club acquired from the Miami Marlins on December 22 along with upper-level minor league catcher Paul McIntosh. In exchange, the Marlins received Top 100 prospect and teenage leather-wizard Starlyn Caba, plus A-ball outfield prospect Emaarion Boyd.
The 27-year-old Luzardo, who is under contract for the next two years, has amassed a 4.29 career ERA in 512 innings across parts of six big league seasons. He has been subject to quite a bit of career turbulence since he was a high school senior. He had Tommy John surgery in March 2016; a few months later, the Nationals drafted him in the third round. Then, after just three starts in the Nationals organization, he was traded to the Athletics, along with Blake Treinen, for Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle. With Oakland, Luzardo grew into one of baseball’s top handful of prospects and ranked sixth overall at the start of the 2020 season; the shortened COVID campaign became his rookie graduation year. When Luzardo got off to a rocky start in 2021, the A’s put him in the bullpen, then traded him to Miami at the deadline for Starling Marte.
For parts of the last three and a half years, Luzardo has been one of the better lefty starters in baseball when healthy, and he’s fourth among qualified southpaws in strikeout-to-walk ratio since 2022. But consistent health has evaded him. Luzardo has exceeded 20 starts in a season only once in his entire career. His injuries haven’t always been arm-related, but they still represented a concern for any team that was looking to acquire him. In 2024, he posted a career-low strikeout rate (21.2%), albeit in just 66 2/3 innings. He was shut down with elbow soreness early in the season, and then, back in June, he was shelved for the remainder of the year with a lumbar stress reaction in his back. The second injury likely impacted Luzardo’s trade market at the deadline, which is perhaps part of why Miami waited until after the season to deal him. Five days before the trade, MLB.com’s Christina De Nicola reported that Luzardo is a “full go” for spring training.
While Luzardo will immediately compete with Nick Castellanos for the mantle of “most fun Phillies player name to say with a Delaware County accent,” where he slots into Philadelphia’s rotation is another matter. The depth and quality of the Phillies’ staff means Luzardo is arguably the club’s fifth starter, even though he has front-end stuff. All of Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Ranger Suárez, and Cristopher Sánchez have accumulated more WAR than Luzardo across the last two seasons. Healthy Luzardo has a fastball that sits 94-97 mph, and both his slider and changeup have generated plus swinging-strike rates throughout his big league career, each hovering around 20% (the major league average is about 15% for both). He’s had only one spat of wildness in his entire career (that 2021 season during which the A’s put him in the bullpen) — dating all the way back to his high school underclass days. He has the talent of a no. 2 or 3 starter on a good team, but he hasn’t demonstrated the durability of one.
The Phillies’ rotation is stacked beyond those aforementioned hurlers. Taijuan Walker is still around, the newly signed Joe Ross has lots of starting experience, top prospect Andrew Painter is returning from Tommy John (his innings will be backloaded in 2025), and Moisés Chace is a Top 100 Prospect who might kick the door down. Injuries will likely erode whatever starting pitching surplus the Phillies (or any team) currently have on paper, and at least one starter will fall off the roster each year for the next several seasons. Suárez is in his contract year, Luzardo and Walker have two years left, Wheeler three. They have the young arms to make in-house replacements during that span without losing any quality. Dave Dombrowski, Preston Mattingly, and company have assembled a rotation with the high-end talent to contend now and the depth to sustain it for several years to come.
The Phillies had also fortified their upper-level catching depth with the acquisition of McIntosh. The 27-year-old has plus raw power but isn’t a very good defender. He has allowed stolen bases at an 83% success rate in his minor league career. Incumbent backup catcher and clubhouse mascot Garrett Stubbs is a career .215/.294/.311 hitter who is entering his age-32 season. Fellow mask-wearing munchkin Rafael Marchán, who is currently the third catcher on the Phillies’ 40-man roster, is a good contact hitter and fair defender, but he has dealt with several injuries during the last three years and lacks any modicum of power. The 5-foot-9 switch-hitter will turn 26 in February and is out of minor league options. McIntosh and recently signed Payton Henry, a 27-year-old bat-first minor leaguer who is now on his fourth org in four years, both bring an offensive element that the Phillies have been lacking from the backup catcher’s spot for several years. Their additions perhaps signal that the Phils are at least considering a bit of a sea change behind J.T. Realmuto and might allow these four to compete for a roster spot during camp and throughout 2025.
In exchange the Marlins received 19-year-old shortstop Starlyn Caba and 21-year-old outfielder Emaarion Boyd. Caba has a chance to be the best shortstop defender in all of baseball at maturity. He is an unbelievable athlete with ridiculous body control, range, and a big arm for a 5-foot-9 guy. He’ll make the occasional overzealous throw that misses first base entirely, but he is otherwise a complete and sensational shortstop. Despite his age, he is basically a lock to be a special defensive player at arguably the most important position on the field.
Caba has also shown great plate discipline and above-average contact ability in the lower minors. He’s a career .252/.398/.304 hitter across two minor league seasons and spent the last six weeks of 2024 at Low-A Clearwater while he was still just 18 years old. Caba has accumulated many more walks than strikeouts during that span and his granular contact data (5% swinging strike rate, 93% in-zone contact, 87% overall) is exceptional, especially for such a young switch-hitter. He does not, however, have a huge offensive ceiling. Caba is four inches shorter than Zach Neto and his bat speed is only fair. There isn’t going to be big power here; in fact, it’s likely Caba’s lack of power will somewhat dilute the performance of his OBP and contact skills — he tends to keep infielders busy. A career similar to that of Jose Iglesias is fair to hope for Caba, while Andrelton Simmons (who had a more meaningful power peak) feels like the absolute ceiling. That’s a good prospect. Caba has existed toward the back of the Top 100 list for the last year and will continue to rank there this offseason.
Boyd is less a surefire prospect and more of a flier. He signed out of a Mississippi high school for just shy of $650,000 back in 2022 and had an average 2023 before stumbling in 2024 as High-A pitchers took advantage of his tendency to chase. Boyd is fast, lanky, and projectable, and he’s a fantastic rotational athlete with above-average bat speed. He had exciting early-career contact performance, but that has dipped closer to average as he’s climbed into the mid-minors. A plus runner, Boyd lacks the feel and technical skill to play a competent center field right now. He has mostly played left field despite wheels that allowed him to steal an inefficient 56 bases in 2023 — he was caught 18 times. He’s raw on both sides of the ball but toolsy enough to be considered a potential late-blooming prospect.
Much of Miami’s value in this return is tied up in Caba, which runs counter to its otherwise volume-driven trade tendency so far under GM Peter Bendix. In most of the several seller-style trades the Fish have made since he was hired, they’ve gotten back several pieces. However, Boyd is a such low-probability proposition that one might consider this effectively a one-for-one swap: two years of Luzardo for a potential everyday shortstop who is likely still roughly a half decade away from establishing himself in the big leagues. While I like Caba as a prospect, this is perhaps an underwhelming return for someone of Luzardo’s talent, but a reasonable one for someone of Luzardo’s actual production.
Every story written about the Mets this offseason starts with Juan Soto, but pretty much all of them immediately introduce a caveat: “They’ll also need to sign more pitching.” And it’s true! The Mets, as constituted after signing Soto, had a fearsome top of the lineup and a mystery box of a pitching staff. But they also had money, which can be exchanged for goods and services, and now they’ve given that money to Sean Manaea, who signed a three-year, $75 million deal to return to Queens last week.
Manaea was comfortably the team’s best starter in 2024. He signed a one-year prove-it deal that valued him somewhere between a swingman and a fourth starter, and he delivered the goods, to the tune of a 3.47 ERA over 181 innings of work. He got even better in the second half, adopting a new cross-fire delivery and changing the shape of his fastball for the better. A down postseason hardly put a damper on his year; the 2024 version of Manaea fulfilled the promise he’d shown since breaking into the majors in 2016.
The question, then, is whether he can do it again. There’s plenty of reason to believe he can. Manaea’s fastball plays much better from a low slot, and he misses enough bats to run an above-average strikeout rate even without a true wipeout pitch. He also got his walk rate under control in the second half of the year, which has long been a sticking point in his game. It’s not so much that Manaea’s wild, but at his best, he was running walk rates around 5%, and that number had ballooned into the 8-9% region in recent years. After changing his delivery in late July, he walked only 6.2% of opposing batters. He’s never going to strike out a gaudy number of guys, but if he isn’t issuing free passes, his stuff keeps hitters off balance and results in a lot of easy innings even without strikeouts. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest on Roki Sasaki’s posting process, the NL-AL imbalance, and why the active homer leader doesn’t have more homers, then (50:44) review the team goals from the 2024 season preview series.
Jonathan Dyer, Troy Taormina, Robert Edwards-Imagn Image
It’s been dark here at FanGraphs for a few days, so admit it — you’re desperate to read anything right now. How about a roundup of analysis on three pitchers that went off the market right before our holiday hiatus?
Griffin Canning, Michael Soroka, and Patrick Sandoval all fit somewhere between the back of their new team’s rotation or the front of its starter depth; each received deals commensurate with those expectations. If the going rate for a fourth starter these days is something like $15 million AAV (Alex Cobb got one year and $15 million, Matthew Boyd got two years and $29 million), this trio is probably one tier below that.
Do these three signings, grouped together, mean anything in particular? Probably not. Each year, the starter/reliever binary grows blurrier, and perhaps someday, every pitcher will throw exactly three innings and the distinction will disappear completely. Perhaps each of these signings brings us closer to that day; Soroka, in particular, seems best served to go through a lineup once and then head out on his way. For various reasons, the expectation for all of these pitchers should be somewhere in the 80- to 120-inning range for the 2025 season. But for now, no further trends will be drawn. Without further ado, here is the lowdown on the three hurlers.
Griffin Canning
Canning drew some attention on the pitching nerd internet earlier this year due to the remarkably unremarkable shape of his fastball. The image below is courtesy of Max Bay’s dynamic dead zone app:
Because Canning throws his fastball from a roughly league-average arm angle (45°), a league-average release height (5.8 feet), and with league-average ride (16.2 inches of induced vertical break), the pitch — in theory! — moves on a trajectory that hitters expect. (I say “in theory” because, as Remi Bunikiewicz pointed out, Canning does a great job hiding his fastball during the windup, complicating any perceptive analysis.)
This fastball was the bane of Canning’s existence in 2024. He did qualify for the ERA title, something only 57 other pitchers could claim they did, but his 5.26 FIP was worst among those qualified starters, and his strikeout rate was third worst. That strikeout rate dropped nearly eight percentage points from 2023 to 2024, and the performance against his fastball explained essentially all of that drop. The whiff rate on Canning’s three other primary pitches stayed virtually the same; on the fastball, the percentage of swings that resulted in misses went from 28% in 2023 to just 14% in 2024.
A drop in velocity appears to be the main culprit for the decline in performance. The four-seamer averaged 94.7 mph in 2023; that dipped to 93.4 mph in 2024. Could a 1.5-mph difference in velocity be the entire explanation? I’m inclined to think that the answer is mostly yes. But it’s also possible that the decline in slider quality impacted batter performance against his fastball. Canning’s death ball slider dropped three fewer inches relative to 2023, reducing the separation between his fastball and his primary out pitch against right-handed hitters.
Could a reduced role help Canning return to his prior form? These considerations could be part of the plan. The Mets employ something like eight starters; Canning sits outside the favored five. Assuming perfect health, it’s likely that they will deploy him in two- or three-inning bursts, perhaps allowing him to get back to that mid-90s velocity on the heater. Even in a swingman role, the $4.25 million contract makes good sense — with fewer workload responsibilities, it doesn’t feel unreasonable to expect Canning to deliver something like a 4.00 ERA over 100ish innings. And if injuries do strike the rotation, he can stretch out to a starter’s workload. Either way, there’s a role to play in this era where quality innings can be difficult to come by, especially in the late summer months.
Michael Soroka
Soroka exploded after a midseason move to the White Sox bullpen. As a reliever, Soroka struck out 39% of the hitters he faced, which would’ve ranked second in all of baseball.
Curiously, this wasn’t a case of Soroka ramping up the stuff over 15-pitch spurts. Unlike those pitchers topping the strikeout leaderboards — Mason Miller, Edwin Díaz, Josh Hader — Soroka did it mostly in chunky multi-inning appearances. Soroka pitched 36 innings out of the bullpen; all but 5 2/3 of them came in appearances that spanned two innings or more. In those slightly shorter appearances — he averaged nearly five innings per appearance as a starter and 2 1/3 as a reliever — the strikeout rate somehow tripled.
After moving full-time to relief work, Soroka added 1.5 mph to his four-seam fastball. But the four-seamer isn’t anything special; instead, at 94 mph with dead zone-ish movement, it’s mostly there to set up the slider, which generated nearly a 42% whiff rate.
What’s so special about the slider? It isn’t the velocity — it averages just 82.2 mph, well below the average for major league sliders. But its shape is distinct. There are slower curveballs that resemble the movement profile, but outside of Bryan Abreu, nobody really throws a slider with the combination of depth and sweep that Soroka manages to get. Starting May 18, when Soroka shifted to a bullpen role, the slider averaged -4.5 inches of induced vertical break with 5.2 inches of sweep, moving sharply on two planes.
But averages obscure the full truth. Soroka can also manipulate the pitch to move in a variety of break patterns. Look at the range of movement profiles on his slider, seen in yellow on his pitch plot below:
Soroka can firm it up, throwing it more like a gyro slider at 84 mph with zero inches of induced vertical break:
But he can also bend it like a curveball, dropping over 10 inches more than his firmest sliders:
(Look at poor Spencer Torkelson there — I think he was expecting the gyro.)
Between the identical frequency of the fastball and slider, the distinct two-plane movement profile, and the diversity of potential shapes, Soroka had batters swinging and missing more than almost any pitcher in baseball.
Evidently, the Nationals, who gave Soroka $9 million on a one-year deal, plan to use him as a “starter.” Given his usage patterns as a reliever, I’m not exactly sure what that means. I would expect that the Nationals will tell Soroka to let it loose for 60 or so pitches, just as he did in Chicago, and he’ll take on 12 or 13 hitters in a game. Like Canning, I think Soroka will end up closer to 90 innings than 180, letting his best stuff cook in outings that sit somewhere between a one-inning shutdown reliever and a starter trying to turn the lineup over three times.
Patrick Sandoval
Sandoval, who signed a two-year, $18.25 million deal with the Red Sox, is a perfect fit for their “no fastballs” organizational philosophy. This guy hates four-seamers now — they made up just 16% of his pitches in his injury-shortened 2024 campaign, by far a career low. Regardless of batter handedness, Sandoval mixes in all six of his pitches, but he works them in differently depending on whether he’s facing a righty or lefty. A plurality of his pitches to righties were changeups; to lefties, Sandoval spammed his slider and sweeper over half the time.
As one would expect with a pitcher who throws all that junk, Sandoval struggles to get the ball in the strike zone. He ran a 10% walk rate last year; even in his excellent 2022 campaign, in which he racked up 3.7 WAR, his walk rate was above 9%. The walks are just part of the package with Sandoval, but the hope is that at his best, he can pitch around them, striking out enough hitters and staying off enough barrels with his diverse pitch mix and refusal to throw anything straight.
Sandoval is likely to pitch the fewest innings of this trio in 2025. He tore his UCL and was shut down in mid-June before undergoing Tommy John surgery, so he’ll miss a big chunk of the upcoming season. When he returns, it figures that he will assume a traditional starter’s workload, though following the Walker Buehler signing, Boston’s rotation looks pretty packed. Ultimately, this deal is mostly a 2026 play, with some nice depth for the end of next year as a bonus.
Conclusion
None of these guys is too exciting. All of them have stanky fastballs. But each has a reason to believe that he might contribute surplus value on a modest deal. In the end, that’s what a minor pitcher signing is all about.
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, 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.
“What do I do about Félix Hernández?” Even before my 2025 Hall of Fame ballot arrived in the mail in late November, that question loomed over my plans to fill it out. Anticipating a crunch for space but knowing that the former Cy Young winner — who’s on the ballot for the first time this year — is significantly short of the S-JAWS standard, the easy answer of leaving him off was always right there. Yet given years of discussion regarding the changing landscape for starting pitchers (and by extension, starting pitcher candidates), I decided to sit with the possibility of voting for him right up to the point where I reached for my pen.
I’ll take you through my process regarding the Félix question soon enough. This is my fifth year with an actual ballot, but filling one out and having it count still feels like a novelty in the context of 24 years of analyzing Hall of Fame elections, and 22 of doing so while armed with the system that became JAWS (the official 20th anniversary of the metric’s introduction was in January). With so many mentors, peers, and colleagues having come and gone in this racket, I’m grateful to have stuck around long enough to have earned the right to vote, and it’s a privilege I look forward to, even with the accompanying scrutiny and criticism. Read the rest of this entry »
Gleyber Torres is changing his stripes, so to speak. After seven seasons as a regular on the Yankees’ middle infield, the 28-year-old has agreed to a one-year, $15 million deal with the Tigers. The move fortifies the middle infield of a team fresh off its first postseason appearance in a decade while also creating an opportunity for an enigmatic player to secure a much larger deal while still in his 20s.
Acquired from the Cubs ahead of the 2016 trade deadline as part of a four-prospect package in exchange for Aroldis Chapman, Torres has spent the past seven seasons as a mainstay of the Yankees’ middle infield, playing the last three as their regular second baseman after bouncing back and forth between shortstop and second in his first four seasons. He made the American League All-Star team in both 2018 and ’19, finishing third in the AL Rookie of the Year balloting in the former year and getting a bit of down-ballot MVP support in the latter, during which he clubbed 38 homers and hit for a 125 wRC+, neither of which he’s been able to replicate.
In 2023, Torres set a career high in WAR (3.6) while posting his highest wRC+ (120) and home run total (25) since ’19, but his ’24 season was an uneven one. His final numbers were unremarkable (.257/.330/.378, 104 wRC+), and he was briefly benched twice for a lack of hustle, but he dug himself out of a deep, early slump to nose his way across the league average line. He was at his best late in the year, a top-of-the-lineup catalyst who helped the Yankees reach their first World Series since 2009. Read the rest of this entry »
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