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Max Scherzer is heading north of the border. On the heels of an injury-marred season, the three-time Cy Young winner agreed to a one-year, $15.5 million contract with the Blue Jays on Thursday. The deal is still pending a physical, no trivial matter for a 40-year-old pitcher who was limited to nine starts in 2024.

Scherzer spent the last season and change with the Rangers after being acquired from the Mets ahead of the 2023 trade deadline, and the past three seasons on a three-year, $130 million contract that set a record for the highest average annual value for a pitcher. This time around it’s former Tigers and Mets teammate Justin Verlander, whose subsequent two-year, $86.67 million deal with New York matched Scherzer’s AAV, more or less setting the market for over-40 future Hall of Famers coming off injury plagued seasons for AL West teams. He signed a one-year, $15 million deal with the Giants earlier this month.

The Rangers didn’t get much out of Scherzer, whose time in Texas added up to just 17 regular season and three postseason starts interrupted by five separate trips to the injured list. That count doesn’t even include his being replaced on the World Series roster after leaving Game 3 with back spasms. Fortunately for the Rangers, they wrapped up their win over the Diamondbacks in five games, nipping in the bud any what-might-have-beens regarding Scherzer missing a potential Game 7 start. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a big fan of Tommy Kahnle for reasons that don’t have that much to do with why the Tigers just signed him to a $7.75 million contract this week. Kahnle flatters the stereotype that most of a baseball team’s personality resides in its bullpen. I can offer two succinct anecdotes in support of the idea that Kahnle is someone your grandmother might euphemistically have referred to as “a character.”

The first: His torrid but fickle relationship with the Philadelphia Eagles. (Go Birds.) Kahnle has been on and off the Eagles bandwagon and back on again over the course of his career. Kahnle put the Birds in timeout in 2020 over their firing of Doug Pederson, which — far from being a sign of disloyalty — is actually precisely the kind of ferocious idiosyncrasy that makes Eagles fans the kind of people you don’t let yourself get trapped in a 1-on-1 conversation with. (Take it from me, I’ll talk your ear off about how I thought Macho Harris was the next Brian Dawkins.)

The other endearingly weird thing about Kahnle is how much he loves to throw his changeup. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Zach Dezenzo could play an important role for the Astros this year. The 24-year-old projects to be a “viable third baseman,” as Eric Longenhagen and Travis Ice wrote in Dezenzo’s prospect report in June, but depending on how Houston’s roster comes together — an Alex Bregman return remains a possibility — Dezenzo could also be used in left field. Indeed, at Astros FanFest on Saturday, manager Joe Espada said Dezenzo will get a lot of reps in left field during spring training.

Regardless of where he is stationed defensively, extra-base oomph will be the righty-hitting Dezenzo’s calling card. A 12th-round pick in 2022 out of Ohio State University, Dezenzo has 70-grade raw power that he is still learning to tap into in games (55 FV game power), according to our prospect team. Last season, he posted a 131 wRC+ between Double-A Corpus Christi and Triple-A Sugar Land. He made his big league debut in early August and was optioned a month later before getting called up again just before the end of the regular season. During his 19 major league games, he went deep twice while slashing .242/.277/.371 (84 wRC+) over 65 plate appearances.

Dezenzo discussed his development as a hitter when the Astros visited Fenway Park in August.

———

David Laurila: You didn’t get drafted your junior year, despite solid numbers [including a .933 OPS]. Why was that?

Zach Dezenzo: “Good question. I put together a pretty strong freshman season at Ohio State [in 2019] — freshman All-American honors — then the COVID season obviously got cut short. My junior year, I hit .302 with nine home runs, although we only played 42 games. I knew I was good, but I’m not sure that I did enough to raise many scouts’ attention. That’s probably kind of where I was at, needing one more year to show what I was truly capable of. But that’s OK. It all worked out perfectly fine.”

Laurila: You must have drawn some attention as a junior…

Dezenzo: “I did have some. The Astros were actually interested — they were probably the number one team in contact with me — so yes, there was definitely interest. It just didn’t pan out the way I wanted it to.”

Laurila: Jumping to your hitting profile, how does it now compare to when you signed? Are you mostly the same guy in the box? Read the rest of this entry »

Ketel Marte was one of the best 10 hitters in baseball in 2024. That’s just an objective fact – or at least as objective as facts can get in baseball. Our calculation of WAR? He was 10th among hitters. Baseball Reference has him 10th as well. Baseball Prospectus put him in seventh place. That’s not surprising; he set career highs in home runs, league-adjusted OBP and slugging, and wRC+. He played solid defense and even added a little value on the basepaths.

He was one of the best 10 hitters in baseball in 2019, too. In fact, he’s the only player to crack the top 10 in both 2019 and 2024. That’s wild. Aaron Judge, Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Corey Seager, Juan Soto, Bryce Harper, José Ramírez – they all played in both years. None of them – none! – managed the double that Marte did. This isn’t some weird defensive value issue, either: He’s the only hitter with a top-10 wRC+ in both years.

Those in between years? Don’t look too closely. Marte totaled 9.1 WAR across the 2020-2023 campaigns. He posted 6.3 WAR in each of 2019 and 2024. In that 2020-2023 span, he was 64th among hitters in total WAR. He had two seasons of roughly average offensive production in that span, and produced at a 3 WAR/600 pace instead of the 6.3 WAR/600 pace from 2019 and 2024. So it’s safe to say he’s streaky – one hitter some years, and a different guy other years. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the New York Yankees. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth 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. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

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

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) 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 »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the overwhelming listener response to their previous conversation about cover models for baseball video games, and Ben issues some “Bo Nos” in support of his previous Royals reporting. Then (18:19) they talk about the Rays signing Ha-Seong Kim, Roki Sasaki “prospect” rankings, a recent leaguewide run on relievers, trade-based brother breakups, Hal Steinbrenner’s unconvincing attempt at anti-Dodgers-spending solidarity, and minor league name matches for major leaguers, plus (51:42) an in-depth discussion about the teams that have had the most demoralizing (and/or inactive) offseasons (so far).

Audio intro: Philip Tapley and Michael Stokes, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Benny and a Million Shetland Ponies, “Effectively Wild Theme (Horny)”

Link to Episode 2276
Link to Bo Game Boy game
Link to Bo NES game
Link to Bo handheld game
Link to Soto cover
Link to Prime Time Football
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Link to over/under draft
Link to Rogers screenshot
Link to Rural Juror
Link to Pressly/Sewald post
Link to Kahnle/Stanek post
Link to Estévez post
Link to Steinbrenner comments
Link to other-Castillo signing
Link to other J-Rod
Link to Ben C. on the Pirates
Link to Paine on payroll/playoffs
Link to offseason spending list
Link to teams without ML signings
Link to MLBTR on Scherzer
Link to MLBTR on Polanco
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It’s been a quiet winter in the AL Central. After Michael Wacha signed an extension at the beginning of the offseason, the division’s five teams combined to add only one deal worth more than $20 million in guaranteed money; that was Shane Bieber’s surgery-affected pillow contract with the Guardians. Now, finally, we can add another to the ledger, courtesy of the Royals. On Wednesday, they signed Carlos Estévez to a two-year, $22.2 million deal with a club option tacked on the end, as ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported.

The Royals came into the winter looking for relief help. It’s not the only place their roster needed a glow-up – even after trading for Jonathan India, they could still use another bat or two, especially in the corner outfield – but the bullpen was also a particular area of need. Last year’s Royals made the playoffs on the back of pitching, but their starters were the ones doing the heavy lifting, not their relievers. Deadline acquisition Lucas Erceg was the best of the group by a large margin, and John Schreiber was the only other reliever with impressive full-season numbers.

It’s not so much that a team can’t make the playoffs with such a thin bullpen – obviously, the Royals did. But they did it by the skin of their teeth at 86-76, and that despite spectacular seasons from Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, and Wacha. Counting on those three to combine for 94 starts, 12.9 WAR, and ERAs in the low 3.00s across the board again would be wishful thinking. Additionally, they no longer have last year’s fourth starter Brady Singer, who was Cincinnati’s return in the India trade.

The 2024 bullpen finished last in baseball in shutdowns – appearances that increased win probability by six percentage points or more – and fifth worst in win probability added. Those are outcome statistics, not process ones, but the process statistics weren’t exactly pretty either. Kansas City was middle of the pack in WAR (3.6), 20th in ERA (4.13), 26th in K-BB% (12.0%). It’s not just that this team didn’t have a “true closer” – its bullpen was light on contributors from top to bottom. Read the rest of this entry »

Break up the twins! The Giants did just that on Wednesday, sending lefty Taylor Rogers and cash to the Reds in exchange for minor league righty Braxton Roxby. The move ends the two-year run that paired Rogers with his twin brother Tyler in San Francisco, and fortifies the back end of Cincinnati’s bullpen.

If you don’t have your scorecard handy, this Rogers brother is the lefty who throws from a three-quarters arm slot, with an average release angle of 29 degrees according to Statcast. The one still on the Giants is the righty submariner with an average arm angle of -64 degrees. Trevor Rogers is no relation, and the timing of this morning’s piece by Michael Baumann is just an eerie coincidence.

Taylor Rogers, who turned 34 on December 17 — Tyler did too, to be clear — is coming off a season in which he posted a career-low 2.40 ERA in 60 innings spread across 64 appearances. It was his third year in a row and the sixth time in his nine-year career that he’s reached the 60-game plateau. For as impressive as his ERA was, it was somewhat out of step with his 3.75 FIP and 3.29 xERA. While he lowered his walk rate from an unsightly 11.6% in 2023 to 8.8%, his strikeout rate fell from 29.6% to 25.7%, making his 16.9% K-BB% his worst mark since 2017. This was the third year in a row that Rogers’ strikeout rate has declined, from a high of 35.5% while he was with the Twins (but not with his twin) in 2021. The velocity of his sinker has been on the wane as well, dropping annually from a high of 95.7 mph in 2021 to 93.0 last year.

Rogers’ declining strikeout rate was offset by his dramatic improvement in suppressing hard contact. Where he was significantly below average in both 2022 and ’23, he was among the best in ’24:

So what changed? The big thing is that Rogers threw his sinker more often than his sweeper for the first time since 2020; his share of sinkers rose from 41.3% to 52.8%, and his share of those in the strike zone rose from 40.7% to 54.2%. That increase in sinker usage was sort of a hopping-on-the-bandwagon thing for Rogers, as the Giants threw more sinkers than any other club for the second straight year; their 26.4% rate led the majors, though it was actually down from their 28.1% rate in 2023, the highest of any team since the pandemic-shortened season. Rogers’ sinker was much more effective against righties than it had been in recent years, and while it would be a misnomer to suggest they tattooed his sweeper, both righties and lefties got much better results against it on contact than expected:

Overall, righties hit just .202/.268/.380 (.282 wOBA) against Rogers, while lefties slashed .284/.364/.421 (.343 wOBA). This was the first time Rogers showed a reverse platoon split since 2019, a handy outcome considering 57% of the batters he faced were righties, but it’s not necessarily a split that we should expect to continue. Over the past three years, Rogers has held lefties to a .253 wOBA, compared to .339 for righties.

Rogers joins lefties Sam Moll and Brent Suter in the Cincinnati bullpen. While Rogers has experience closing — he saved 79 games from 2019–22 with the Twins, Padres, and Brewers — he figures to share setup duties with righty Emilio Pagán in front of closer Alexis Díaz. Though he did trim his walk rate late in the season, Díaz was rather erratic last year, pitching to a 3.99 ERA and 4.57 FIP even while converting 28 of 32 save chances, so it’s definitely not a bad thing that Rogers gives new manager Terry Francona a ninth-inning alternative in case Díaz struggles.

The Giants will pay $6 million of the $12 million Rogers will make in the third year of his three-year, $33 million deal, so this is something of a bargain for the Reds. That $6 million bought the Giants the righty Roxby, who turns 26 in March. After going undrafted out of the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Roxby connected with the Reds during a Zoom meeting with the Kyle Boddy, then the team’s director of pitching, and assistant pitching coach Eric Jagers. “[T]hey had video breaking down my mechanics, as well as the analytics of my pitches and how I can use them better,” Roxby told David Laurila in 2021. “That made it hard not to choose them.”

The 6-foot-3, 215-pound Roxby posted a 5.21 ERA but a 28.8% strikeout rate in 48 1/3 innings at Double-A Chattanooga in 2024, his first full season in the upper minors. Eric Longenhagen graded his slider as a plus with his fastball and cutter both above average, though his command is just 30-grade. From Roxby’s prospect report:

Roxby’s fastball was up two ticks in 2024 and now lives in the mid-90s with uphill angle and tail. Roxby’s funky lower slot creates these characteristics. He tends to pitch backwards off of his sweeping mid-80s slider, which he commands better than his fastball. He has the stuff of a pretty standard middle reliever, though Roxby’s command puts him in more of an up/down bucket.

On the subject of the trade, Tyler Rogers shared this very sweet note:

In all, it’s hard to characterize this trade as an impact move for either team, but it is one of several additions the Reds have made this month — most notably the additions of Gavin Lux and Austin Hays — while trying to upgrade from last year’s 77-85 record. Who knows, maybe they’ll trade for Tyler (or Trevor) next?