Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the sixth 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 »

If the Tigers make the postseason for a third consecutive year in 2026, they’ll have a closer with plenty of experience. Kenley Jansen is bound for Detroit on a one-year, $11 million contract with a club option for 2027.

Jansen, 38, is just about the most experienced relief pitcher on the market. He leads all active relief pitchers in regular-season appearances, innings, strikeouts, and saves; in the postseason, he’s second all-time, behind Mariano Rivera, in all of those categories as well. At his peak, Jansen was the Dodgers’ late-inning enforcer, posting sub-2.00 ERAs and pairing strikeout rates in the 40s with walk rates under 5%. And just like Rivera, he did it all using a cutter and little else. Read the rest of this entry »

The Baltimore Orioles will be different in 2026, and not just because of roster additions that already include Pete Alonso and Taylor Ward, with more almost certain to follow. They’ve hired a new manager (Craig Albernaz), replaced a few coaches, and done some reshuffling at the executive level. In a sport where remaining stagnant can be deleterious, the O’s are moving forward on the heels of a disappointing 2025 season.

A precipitous dip in the win column — 91 in 2024, just 75 last year — accentuated the need for changes, but that isn’t the only reason. According to Mike Elias, progress is an ongoing endeavor.

“We’re constantly evolving, having to respond to other teams’ getting better in areas,” Baltimore’s president of baseball operations told me during last month’s GM Meetings. “We make changes every year. We’re actually undergoing quite an overhaul at the major league level right now with our staff. We’ve done some reformatting in the front office, although certainly not to the degree we did when we came in.”

Things changed markedly after Elias arrived in November 2018 and began rebuilding the organization. Analytics — an area in which the Orioles had been well behind the times —- was of course a major focus. But while giant strides have been made, there is no finish line to reach. Moreover, an old Satchel Paige adage applies: “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” Read the rest of this entry »

Compared to last year, when we saw multiple players sign record-setting contracts, this week’s Winter Meetings were rather tame. That’s not to say it was dull or that nothing happened. Edwin Díaz rejected an offer to re-sign with the Mets for more money because he wanted to pitch for the Dodgers. Kyle Schwarber returned to the Phillies on a five-year, $150 million contract, a massive deal considering he’s a DH who turns 33 in March. Pete Alonso drove from his home in Tampa up to Orlando to meet with several suitors, then signed a five-year, $155 million deal with the Orioles; the Mets, the team for whom he spent his first seven seasons and set the franchise home run record, did not extend him a contract offer. Several smaller moves happened, too. Michael Soroka joined the Diamondbacks on a one-year deal, and Steven Matz signed with the Rays for two years. The Tigers brought back Kyle Finnegan on a two-year, $19 million contract, and the Pirates became the latest team to believe they can fix Gregory Soto, signing him for one year and $7.75 million. The Braves added outfielder Mike Yastrzemski on Wednesday night.

The fun didn’t stop when the Winter Meetings did, though. On Thursday, while most of us at FanGraphs were flying home, the Braves signed reliever Robert Suarez for three years and $45 million. And then on Friday, the Blue Jays and Tyler Rogers agreed to a three-year, $37 million deal, with a vesting option for a fourth year.

We won’t cover those moves, or any of the others that went down this week, in this column. You can find them in Jon Becker’s latest Matrix Reloaded. Instead, today we’ll be answering your questions about players with more All-Star appearances than career WAR, the ABS challenge system, Shohei Ohtani’s World Series Game 3 performance, and more. Before we do, though, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Garrett Stubbs and the latest example of eyebrow-raising off-the-field Phillies behavior (content warning: adult breast milk consumption), then (14:58) discuss the Pete Alonso signing from the Orioles’ and Mets’ perspectives, Stat Blast (47:09) about teams losing long-tenured/productive players and rapid roster turnover among title winners, and recap (1:05:25) a smattering of transactions to put a bow on the week of Winter Meetings.

Audio intro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Philip Bergman, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to cursed Stubbs TikTok
Link to info on breast milk drinking
Link to bodybuilders and breast milk
Link to Stubbs on EW
Link to Phillies himbo article 1
Link to Phillies himbo article 2
Link to FG post on Alonso
Link to Alonso’s career splits
Link to O’s vs. LHP
Link to Sheehan on the O’s
Link to O’s offense sim
Link to team SP projections
Link to Post cover 1
Link to Post cover 2
Link to “Headless Body in Topless Bar”
Link to Stat Blast spreadsheet
Link to FG post on Suarez
Link to FG post on Yastrzemski
Link to FG post on Finnegan
Link to FG post on Thomas
Link to over/under draft results
Link to MLBTR on Garcia
Link to MLBTR on Rogers
Link to Hughes/Fitzy story

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Happy Friday (and Sad End of Winter Meetings Week), everyone. For those keeping score, my final coffee-consumed-to-transactions-completed ratio in Orlando (including airport coffee and transactions) was 132 ounces to eight transactions. In between kibitzing with my FanGraphs colleagues and the folks in the media who I only get to see once a year or had never met, the Matrix was humming along as always.

As ever, I’ll get into the big happenings of the last seven days, starting with bigger signings and funneling down to the smallest ones, and then going over trades. Read the rest of this entry »

How many outfielders does one team need? It really, really depends on who you ask. On Thursday, the Royals and Brewers decided that they needed to add at least one more each to their very differently sized stores. Kansas City signed Lane Thomas to a one-year deal for $5.2 million, with up to another million in incentives, according to Will Sammon of The Athletic and Mark Feinsand of MLB.com, while Milwaukee agreed to a major league deal with Akil Baddoo, the terms of which are not yet known, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. It’s safe to assume it’s a split contract, as Baddoo still has one minor league option left.

Thomas is by far the bigger addition, but we’re going to start in Milwaukee in order to highlight two very different approaches to building an outfield. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Winter Meetings historically mark the beginning of the signing period for marquee free agents, and this week has seen several stars agreeing to big contracts. But there were also plenty of little deals among the titans, and one of them in particular fascinates me. That deal: The Braves signed Mike Yastrzemski to a two-year, $23 million contract, with a club option for a third year, as Jon Heyman first reported.

There’s a lot to unpack with this one, but we might as well start with Yastrzemski. The 35-year-old outfielder is nothing if not consistent. In a 2025 split between the Giants and the Royals after a deadline deal, he logged his seventh straight season with a WAR total between 1.5 and 2.5. It was his fifth straight year with a wRC+ between 99 and 111, and the third of those five years where it was exactly 106. He played his usual solid outfield defense, and the Royals even felt confident enough in him to occasionally use him in center field. If he’s your best outfielder, your outfield probably isn’t all that good. If he’s your third-best guy, it’s probably great.

But while Yastrzemski’s season looked like the others in terms of his overall line, it was a tale of two halves. In San Francisco, he started slowly and never really got going. He posted the worst contact quality marks of his career while struggling to a below-average line. Then he went to Kansas City and went on a huge heater, for lack of a better way to describe it. Everything got better all at once. Yastrzemski’s barrel rate increased from 7.1% to 10.9% at the same time that his swinging strike rate declined from 8.0% to 5.4%. That’s a neat trick if you can pull it off, and as a result, he hit more homers in KC than in SF in half the plate appearances, all while cutting his strikeout rate to an otherworldly 11.8% and also walking 13.4% of the time. Read the rest of this entry »