Almost exactly four years after trading him to the Padres, the Twins agreed to a one year contract with left-handed reliever Taylor Rogers according to Aaron Gleeman of The Athletic. The pact will pay Rogers $2M in 2026.
Rogers has been bouncing around National League contenders since leaving the Twin Cities. He split 2022 between the Padres and Brewers when he was dealt to Milwaukee as part of the infamous Josh Hader trade. Rogers then signed a three year, $30M deal with the Giants prior to the 2023 season and split the final year of that contract between the Reds and Cubs where he had a 3.38 ERA/4.38 FIP in 50.2 innings. Unfortunately for those teams, after putting up at least 1.5 fWAR every season from 2018-2022 (COVID-shortened 2020 season excluded), Rogers maxed out at 0.3 fWAR in 2023.
It’s fair to question what Rogers can provide at this state of his career, but the same could have been said of the Danny Coulombe signing last year and the Twins were able to squeeze a bit more usefulness out of him in 2025. Rogers’ signature sweeper is still a well above-average pitch and a Griffin Jax-esque approach could benefit him greatly. In 2025, opposing hitters hit .168 with a .337 SLG against his sweeper while his sinker allowed a .326 BA and .537 SLG. As a two pitch pitcher, seems like an obvious solution when one of your pitches turns opposing hitters in to Aaron Judge and the other turns them into James Outman.
At this stage in his career, I would expect Rogers to be deployed as more of a lefty specialist than a true late game option. The Twins could still bring in another closing option like Seranthony Dominguez, but even as it stands he slots in firmly behind Justin Topa, Cole Sands, and Kody Funderburk (who quietly had an excellent second half). And that’s before getting into the Twins’ plethora of SP options, some of which will have to transition to the bullpen due to the sheer depth in the system.
With nearly all of the big relief names off the free agency board, the Twins will likely employ a Rays-style mix and match system at the end of games. Pete Maki’s bullpen wizardry will be put to the test early in 2026.
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Yo yo yo…spring training isn’t far away. Pitchers and catchers will be reporting soon. Hope springs eternal.
Opening Day is still a little over two months away, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t start prognosticating about what 2026 might bring for Your Texas Rangers.
So we want to know…where do you think the Rangers will finish in the A.L. West this year?
Earlier this week, baseball writers voted Carlos Beltrán into the Baseball Hall of Fame. On his fourth year of the ballot, Beltrán garnered 84.2% of the votes cast, well more than the 75% required to gain induction. He finished his career in 2017 as a member of the World Series champion Houston Astros.
Of course, he began it in Kansas City as a young star with the Royals. Quickly, he morphed into a superstar.
In 1999, his first full season in the Majors, Beltrán posted the first of several career 20-20 seasons. At the young age of 22, he corked 22 home runs while swiping 27 stolen bases. For the year, he slashed .293/.337/.454. He led the Royals in runs scored while placing or tying for second in other major offensive categories such as bWAR (4.7), hits (194), home runs, RBIs (108), and stolen bases. He took home the American League Rookie of the Year Award in a landslide, collecting 26 of the 28 first-place votes, finishing 88 points ahead of the runner-up, pitcher Freddy Garcia.
The Royals finished 64-97.
That was pretty much the story for Beltrán’s tenure in Kansas City: great individual numbers while the team struggled. In his third season, he had, by bWAR, his best year with the Royals, finishing 6.5 wins-above-replacement while posting a slash line of .306/.362/.514 for an OPS 23% above league-average. For the first of just two times in his career—both with the Royals—he finished with at least 10 triples. As evidenced by the slugging percentage, the power jumped, as he added another 76 extra-base hits to go with his triples.
He was 24.
The Royals finished 65-97.
The following season, when the Royals finished 62-100, Beltrán came up a home run shy of a 30-30 season, finishing with 29 homers and 35 stolen bases. For the only time in his career, he played in all 162 games.
In 2003, the Royals actually competed but fell short of the playoffs with a record of 83-79. Beltrán finally received some MVP consideration, finishing 9th in a year in which he finished with 5.8 bWAR, 10 triples, 26 home runs, 41 stolen bases, 102 runs scored, 100 RBIs, and an OPS of .911. He turned 26 in the season’s first month and looked to be the centerpiece of a Royals team that would finally start consistently competing.
None of that happened.
As Max wrote about in 2017, in 2003, Beltrán and the front office appeared to have a deal that would’ve kept Beltrán in Kansas City through 2005. Beltrán, his agent Scott Boras, and the Royals brass had hashed out a three-year deal worth $25 million. That’s $25 million total, mind you, which comes out to just over $8 million per season.
But Dan Glass, son of the late and former Royals owner David Glass, pushed back on the deal, wanting it cut by $1 million. Again, that’s total, not per season. The new offer peeved Beltrán and Boras, who broke off negotiations.
In June of 2004, after another stellar 69 games that would earn Beltrán his first All-Star nod, as part of a three-team deal, the Royals traded him to the Houston Astros in a three-team trade for Mark Teahen, John Buck, Mike Wood, and cash.
Almost immediately, Beltrán experienced something with Houston that he never did with the Royals—the playoffs. Before that, though, Beltrán played 90 regular-season games with the Astros, and elevated his slugging to another level, going off for 17 doubles, seven triples, and 23 home runs. He remained a menace on the bases, too, going a perfect 28-for-28 in stolen base attempts.
When Houston reached the postseason, somehow, Beltran further upped his game. Check out these ridiculous stats from his 2004 postseason, which ended with a Game 7 NLCS loss to the Cardinals – .435/.536/1.022/1.557, 21 runs, three doubles, eight home runs, 14 RBIs, eight-for-eight in stolen bases, nine walks plus one intentional walk to eight strikeouts.
Absolutely insane.
Once free agency hit, Beltrán left the Astros for the New York Mets in a massive deal for the time: seven years, $119 million. Once his career ended, Beltrán would’ve played more games for the Mets than for any of his seven teams, including the Royals. In Queens, Beltrán would make seven All-Star games, finish as high as fourth in MVP voting (in 2006), earn three Gold Gloves and two Silver Sluggers.
Mirroring his time in Kansas City, though, he made the playoffs only once, and it ended in an iconically disastrous way.
Also similar to his days with the Royals, Beltrán’s career with the Mets ended in a trade during the last year of his contract, this time heading to San Francisco for a short spell with the Giants.
He spent his next two seasons back in Missouri, but with the Cardinals, reaching the World Series for the first time in his career in 2013, but falling to the Red Sox.
Once more hitting the open market, he returned to New York as a Yankee. Years removed from his graceful defending of centerfield, Beltrán primarily patrolled right field while occasionally DH’ing. He posted decent numbers for the Yankees before once again getting traded in 2016 to the Rangers.
His last season came in 2017 as he returned to the Astros, and, well, you may have heard about the 2017 Houston Astros before today. On the field, Beltrán posted by far the worst numbers of his career. He also became embroiled in a cheating scandal that would later cost him a managerial gig and forced him to wait until his fourth year on the ballot to get into the Hall of Fame.
Yet, he is now a Hall of Famer as it appears a majority of voters appear to have forgiven—or least moved past—those trashcan days.
Now the question becomes, what cap will he don in Cooperstown?
My bet is the Mets. He played more there than any other stop and also reached heights he’d yet to achieve while in Kansas City and wouldn’t again reach after leaving for the Bay.
That shouldn’t stop Royals fans from celebrating his career.
It was one of the finest, and it all started here.
In the winter/offseason of 2006-07, the prized pitcher on the market was Daisuke Matsuzaka. The 26-year-old was posted by the NPB’s Seibu Lions after a decorated career with them that included a 2004 Japan Series championship and a star turn in the inaugural 2006 World Baseball Classic, where he was MVP. Many teams were interested in Matsuzaka, including the Yankees. When the pitcher instead went to the rival Boston Red Sox, that felt a gut punch in the moment, although Matsuzaka didn’t necessarily live up to all the hype after a championship in his debut season.
The Yankees decided to pivot and pursue another NPB starter. While he wasn’t as high-profile an arm as Matsuzaka, the Yankee career of Kei Igawa goes down as one of the most mentioned failures of the franchise in recent memory.
Kei Igawa Signing Date: December 27, 2006 Contract: Five years, $20 million (plus a $26 million posting fee)
Having posted an 18-strikeout game in high school, Igawa was selected by the Hanshin Tigers in the second round of the NPB draft in 1997. While he showed potential, his early years were marred by wildness, including setting a record for wild pitches in the NPB’s minor league. However, his parent club weren’t going anywhere good in the standings, and gave Igawa a chance with the NPB’s Tigers in 1999, when he was just 19 years old.
Their seasons in the doldrums allowed the Tigers to let Igawa work through his issues, and eventually led to a breakout season in 2001, another good one the following year, and a dominant one in 2003. In the 2003 season, Igawa won both the NPB equivalent of the Cy Young and also the Central League MVP, having posted a 20-5 record with a 2.80 ERA and 179 strikeouts.
Igawa helped the Tigers to the Japan Series, although they fell to the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in seven games, failing to break the “Curse of the Colonel.”
ERA-wise, Igawa took a step back the next two years, although he continued to strike out an impressive amount of batters. In addition to that, he helped the Tigers return to the Japan Series in 2005, where they fell short again. He bounced back in 2006, putting up a 2.97 ERA in 209 innings, while he put up his best season to that point in regards to limiting hits.
After the 2006 campaign, the Tigers agreed to post Igawa to let him pursue a career over in MLB. While he wasn’t the attention-grabbing name that Matsuzaka was, the Yankees and other teams saw him as a potential MLB-level pitcher. In the end, the Yankees won the right to negotiate with him, successfully bidding $26,000,194 as a posting fee. The “194” was to represent his NPB-leading strikeout total in 2006. After that, they came to terms with the player himself on a five-year, $20 million deal.
The Yankees didn’t have outsized expectations for their new pitcher. General manager Brian Cashman said they expected him to be a solid, back of the rotation arm. Unfortunately, Igawa wasn’t even that.
Igawa made his MLB debut on April 7, 2007, getting the ball for the Yankees’ fourth game of the season. He gave up a home run to the Orioles’ Nick Markakis in the first inning, and things didn’t get better from there. In five innings, he allowed seven runs on eight hits and three walks (they needed an amazing A-Rod-powered comeback in the ninth to win it). He was better in his next game, and then got his first career MLB win on April 18th. On April 28th, Igawa had to come in during the first inning in relief of an injured Jeff Karstens and threw six scoreless innings in a win over the Red Sox.
That ended up pretty much being the high point for Igawa’s debut season, though. In May, the Yankees sent him down to the minor leagues, hoping he could work through some mechanical flaws there. The Steinbrenners even overruled Cashman to hold onto him, nixing a potential midsummer waiver claim trade with the Padres. He would return to the big leagues in June and then again in September, but his overall season numbers were unsightly. In 67.2 innings across 14 games, Igawac coughed up 15 homers with a 6.25 ERA (73 ERA+) and a 6.37 FIP.
In 2008, Igawa failed to make the Yankees’ roster out of spring training. While injuries eventually led to his return to the majors, his 2008 ended up ever worse than his 2007, statistically. He only appeared in four innings for the Yankees in 2008, but his ERA ended up over 10, as he managed to allowed 13 hits over those 10 innings before finally being removed from the 40-man roster in July. Unfortunately for Igawa, he was also just OK at Triple-A that year, and he never got a chance to try and lower those numbers.
In fact, Igawa never got a chance to lower any of his career numbers—like his foreboding 6.66 career ERA—ever again. While he remained under contract with the Yankees for another three seasons (even continuing to live in Manhattan), the Yankees would never call him back up to the big leagues. In fairness, they made quite a number of improvements ahead of 2009, regardless of whether Igawa could pitch at the big league level or not. However, with an ERA over four at Triple-A in two of his remaining three years in the Yankees’ system shows that Igawa probably couldn’t have pitched in The Show.
In a 2011 interview with the New York Times, Cashman did not mince words in an assessment of the Igawa contract:
“It was a disaster. We failed.”
While Igawa stated a preference to remain in the U.S. after his Yankees’ deal expired—not a surprise, as he had turned down buyout opportunities in ’08 and ’09 that would have allowed him to return to Japan earlier—that chance never came. He eventually gave up the ghost, signed with the Orix Buffaloes, and played three more seasons in NPB.
Not that I find it likely that Igawa could’ve success anywhere, but Igawa’s signing really did feel like a kneejerk response to Matsuzaka going to Boston. After his contract expired, Igawa gave an interview where at an early meeting after his signing, Cashman and Joe Torre asked Igawa what his best pitch was. That feels like something that you should know before signing a guy. It’s not as if the contract was a massive one that hamstrung the Yankees, but it certainly was an annoying one.
See more of the “50 Most Notable Yankees Free Agent Signings in 50 Years” series here.
Freddy Peralta, one of the Mets’ latest additions in a very busy week, began his professional career in baseball as an international signing with the Mariners out of the Dominican Republic in 2013. Following a solid season in the Dominican Summer League that year, Peralta was promoted to Seattle’s rookie ball affiliate in Arizona for his age-18 season in 2014 and repeated the level in 2015, putting up slightly better results in his second go-around after struggling a bit in his first.
Following the 2015 season, the Mariners traded him and a pair of fellow pitchers to the Brewers in exchange for Adam Lind, who was coming off one of the best years of his career and went on to put up a .717 OPS and -0.3 bWAR in his lone season in Seattle before putting up a solid-if-unspectacular stat line with the Nationals in the final season of his major league career in 2017.
The Brewers had Peralta spend his 2016 season in Single-A and High-A and used him out of the bullpen fourteen times while having him make just ten starts. In total, he 82.0 innings in the minors that year and finished with a 3.62 ERA in his age-20 season.
Peralta opened the 2017 season in High-A, fared much better there than he had in his stint at the level in the previous year, and earned himself a promotion to Double-A. He thrived there, as he had a 2.26 ERA in 63.2 innings, and across both levels, he made the vast majority of his appearances as a starter.
After making seven starts in Triple-A at the beginning of the 2018 season, Peralta was called up for his major league debut in mid-May and had a rather electric outing against the Rockies at Coors Field as he went five-and-two-thirds innings and racked up thirteen strikeouts, gave up just one hit, and didn’t allow any runs. Following his second start against the Twins in the next turn through Milwaukee’s rotation, Peralta went on to bounce between Triple-A and the big leagues for the rest of the season, but he threw 78.1 innings with a 4.25 ERA and a 3.72 FIP in his time with the Brewers.
Milwaukee decided to use Peralta mostly as a reliever in 2019, and that season didn’t go particularly well for him. In 85.0 innings, he finished with a 5.29 ERA and had a pretty significant home run problem, as he gave up 1.6 per nine innings, largely erasing the good work he did in striking out 115 batters that year. The Brewers stuck with using him out of the bullpen in the shortened 2020 season, a small sample that saw him put up a much better 3.99 ERA.
In 2021, however, the Brewers moved Peralta back into the rotation on a full-time basis, a move that worked so well that he’s remained a starting pitcher ever since—aside from a lone appearance out of the bullpen in each of the 2021 and 2022 seasons. In 144.1 innings in the former, he had a 2.81 ERA and a 3.12 FIP and was worth 3.7 bWAR.
The 2022 season didn’t go quite as swimmingly for Peralta, who dealt with lat and elbow issues and made just 18 appearances, putting up a 3.58 ERA in just 78.0 innings. But from 2023 through 2025, Peralta turned into one of the more durable pitchers in the game. He logged 516.0 innings over that span, the 15th-highest total in baseball, and finished those three seasons with ERAs of 3.86, 3.68, and 2.70, respectively.
Peralta’s percentile rankings on Statcast looked very good in the 2023 and 2025 seasons, and last year, he used a four-pitch arsenal that included a four-seam fastball that he threw a majority of the time, a changeup, a curveball and a slider.
That pitch mix hasn’t changed all that much since the Brewers moved him into rotation, though it might be worth noting that he went from his slider being his most-used secondary pitch in every season from 2021 through 2024 to his least-used one in 2025. He’s thrown his changeup more in each season since 2022, and the 2025 season was the first time that he threw it more than either his slider or his curve.
Finally, Peralta is in the last year of his contract, an incredibly team-friendly deal that he signed with the Brewers ahead of the 2020 season for seven years and $30 million. He’ll turn 30 years old in June, making this his age-30 season, but he’d be a pretty good candidate for an extension should the Mets be interested in keeping him around for more than the 2026 season.
Baseball America announced their preseason Top 100 prospects for 2026 and two Cubs prospects were named to the list. Catcher Moisés Ballesteros was named the 36th-ranked prospect and right-handed pitcher Jaxon Wiggins was named the 78th-best prospect.
Recently-traded outfielder Owen Caissie, now of the Marlins, was named the 43rd-best prospect in the game.
Additionally. two Cubs outfield prospects, Ethan Conrad and Kane Kepley, were listed among the “20 MLB prospects who just missed.” Conrad and Kepley were the Cubs’ first- and second-round picks in the 2025 draft.
In their comments on Ballesteros, they reiterated that he’s a special hitter with defensive questions. On Wiggins, they said that he is one of the hardest-throwing starters in the minors but with durability issues.
Clearly the Cubs system is down a bit from the same time last year. Cade Horton and Matt Shaw graduated. Owen Caissie was traded to Miami. Kevin Alcántara, who was in the preseason Top 100 last year, had a rough season and dropped out.
However, Ballesteros jumped from 62 to 36 and Wiggins went from unranked last year to 78th this year. Conrad hasn’t made his professional debut yet because of injury, but Baseball America is very excited to see him play this year. Kepley made a big splash in Low-A Myrtle Beach which was enough for a second-round pick to get some consideration for the top 100. So the cupboard isn’t completely empty.
In John Green’s 2005 novel Looking for Alaska, the main character Miles is obsessed with famous people’s last words, and especially those of the 16th century French writer François Rabelais: “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” Over the course of the novel, the Great Perhaps becomes shorthand for the kind of life Miles wants to have; he’s tired of his provincial, “minor” life. He wants something more—he’s just not exactly sure what that might be yet.
For baseball players, the Great Perhaps is pretty clear-cut: ascend the minor-league ladder, make the big leagues and stay there, hopefully for a long time. But while aspiring big-leaguers might have the advantage of a clear path to what they want—they know what’s around the riverbend, over the rainbow, that the somewhere that’s green is a major league field—that doesn’t make the path easy, and there’s no guarantee that once you get there you can stay. This is where Troy Taylor finds himself: caught between the Great Perhaps and the Quad-A Perhaps, looking for a breakthrough.
Taylor crossed into the MLB record books as the 23,305th player in the majors on August 11, 2024, 29 days before his 23rd birthday. The Mariners were trouncing the Mets, 12-1, on the strength of a two-homer day from Cal Raleigh and a nine-strikeout day from Luis Castillo, giving the rookie the softest of landings to make his debut. Not that he needed it: Taylor issued a walk to former Mariner Ben Gamel but also collected his first two big-league strikeouts to finish out the game and secure the series sweep, both on a nasty buckling slider. It was a particularly electric debut, especially combined with Taylor’s top-shelf fastball velocity.
Taylor built on his strong debut with a solid performance down the stretch, striking out over a third of batters faced and working his way up the depth chart with 25 strikeouts in 19.1 innings, and looking like he would be in the mix for a major bullpen role in 2026. But an off-season lat injury held Taylor out of spring training, costing him development time. He scuffled through five rehab appearances with Tacoma, only recording 3.2 innings over the five appearances and allowing six runs on nine hits. But he also struck out four, and the bullpen-needy Mariners recalled him in mid-April at the start of a three-city, 10-day roadtrip with an eye to bolstering the bullpen.
Once again, Dan Wilson tried to provide Taylor a soft landing, putting him in against the bottom half of the lineup in the seventh inning of a 5-0 lead at Cincinnati. By the time Taylor walked off the mound, the score was 5-2 and he hadn’t recorded an out. Taylor’s fastball had good velocity, ticking 96-97, but he struggled to throw strikes with it, keeping him from getting to his best putaway pitch, the slider; and when he did throw the slider, hitters were ready for it, as Christian Encarnacion-Strand pummeled one below the zone for a two-run double.
The Mariners optioned Taylor back to Triple-A after that rough season debut, but were forced to recall him a week later when Logan Gilbert went down with forearm tightness. The team tried to protect Taylor, lacking now both spring training and minor-league rehab innings, using him only in the lowest-leverage situations—blowouts against teams like the Angels and Marlins, as well as a laugher in Texas—as he worked to get back in stride. But he continued to struggle with command, falling behind in counts, and when he did work his fastball in the zone, hitters were able to make solid contact on it. The sweeper, formerly his best whiff-getter, also failed to tempt hitters into swings. Back to Tacoma he went, only to again be recalled just six days later when another injury hit the pitching staff in the form of Trent Thornton’s appendicitis.
Ironically, where things improved for Taylor is where he looks least impressive on paper, in outings against the Blue Jays and Yankees on a particularly dreadful May homestand. Coming into the seventh inning in a game where the Mariners trailed Toronto 5-3, he wound up giving up a run due in part to an extremely weird leadoff hit (nine-hole hitter Tyler Heineman broke his bat on a pop up but somehow made it to first base, charge that run to the Leody Taveras Experiment.). But in the most high-leverage work he’d gotten so far that season, Taylor looked…better. He still walked a batter, falling well behind Bo Bichette when the lineup turned over, but his misses weren’t as wild, he hit more of his spots, and overall seemed to have more confidence on the mound and a better handle on his stuff, an impression backed up two days later by a 1-2-3 inning against those same Jays (this time in a blowout against the Mariners where Leo Rivas would be the final Mariners pitcher).
But because the Mariners pitching at the time was so thin, Taylor had to be called on for back-to-back duty against a hot Yankees team the very next night. Once again, Taylor suffered some bad luck on batted balls, giving up a two-run homer on a well-placed fastball, and then had to face the top of the Yankees lineup, somehow escaping with just one additional run on an Aaron Judge sac fly. However, it was enough to put the game out of reach for the Mariners, and included a gut-wrenching moment where Oswaldo Cabrera, running home on the sac fly, broke his ankle while crossing home plate, suspending play for about ten minutes.
Being a sinker-slider reliever doesn’t work if you don’t have your slider, and it was becoming apparent that Taylor just wasn’t able to rely on that pitch consistently. His relatively good turns against the powerhouses of the AL East was followed by a poor performance against the lowly White Sox, where a 5-0 Mariners lead turned into an already overworked Andrés Muñoz having to come in to finish the game after Taylor issued back-to-back walks to open the frame. After that outing, the Mariners sent Taylor back to Tacoma. He would not return.
Even in Tacoma, away from the pressures of the big leagues, Taylor posted a career-high walk rate, almost 14%. While he’s never been a poster boy for sterling command because of the way his stuff moves, that’s a significant jump from his career average. His ERA/FIP in Tacoma is also a significant outlier—double, or even triple at times, his career average. That’s largely driven by an inverted bell curve of performances: Taylor either gave up no runs or 3-4 runs at a time, with little in-between. To me, all this suggests a performance and execution issue rather than a degradation of stuff or batters figuring him out. That’s encouraging, because it seems like a solvable issue. That’s terrifying, because anyone who has fought for a bigger dream—a Great Perhaps—knows what a cunning adversary one’s own mind can be.
Along with the Great Perhaps, the other controlling quotation in Green’s book comes from the (supposed) last words of Simón Bolívar: Damn it! How will I ever get out of this labyrinth? The characters in the book choose different routes, some more destructive than others, in exploring the question. At the end, Miles comes upon a scribbled notation from his friend Alaska in the margin next to the question of how to escape the labyrinth of suffering: “straight and fast!” While Troy Taylor shouldn’t take this advice exactly—fast okay, straight not so much—the spirit of it is correct: launch yourself into the Great Perhaps, fast and fearless, to achieve escape velocity from a minor (league) life.
Well, the first round of voting was a bit of a non-shocker. Shortstop Leo De Vries absolutely ran away with the top spot on this year’s Community Power Rankings, winning over 95% of the vote en route to being named the top prospect in the Athletics’ system by the fans. It comes as no surprise. Literally, no surprise. After De Vries was one of the top overall prospect in the entire sport last year he didn’t do anything to dispel expectations, especially after coming over mid-season in the Mason Miller trade. It won’t be long before we see him on the biggest stage in the Green & Gold and that could come as soon as this coming season. Another building block on the horizon for the A’s!
The new prospect joining the remaining nominees for the second spot in the CPL is actually one of the newest members to the organization. Shortstop Johenssy Colome, who only just signed with the Athletics last week, was considered one of the top overall prospects out of Latin America this year and the A’s made sure to ink him to a big deal he couldn’t refuse. The 17-year-old, who has baseball in his blood with multiple family members making it to the big leagues, is a far ways away from the major leagues but he’s already displayed huge power for a player his age. Add in the fact that many scouts believe Colome could legitimately stick at shortstop, and the Athletics could reap major rewards for their long-term investment in the Dominican native. How high will Athletics Nation rank him in the list when all is said and done?
The process for this public vote is explained below. Please take a moment to read this before participating:
Please only vote for one. The player with the most votes at the end of voting will win the ranked spot. The remaining four players move on to the next ballot where they are joined by a new nominee.
In the comments, below the official voting, the community will nominate players to be put onto the ballot for the next round. The format for your comment should be “Nomination: Player Name”.
If a prospect is traded, his name will be crossed out, and all other players will be moved up a space. If a prospect is acquired, a special vote will be put up to determine where that player should rank.
The voting continues! Who will take the second spot? Here’s a quick rundown on each nominee— the scouting grades (on a 20-to-80 scale) and scouting reports come from MLB Pipeline.
Jump’s fastball is difficult for opposing hitters to pick up with an arm angle that creates some deception. The heater sits about 92-94 mph and can reach up to 97 with good carry up in the zone. His upper-70s curveball has significant downer break, and his low-80s slider has cutting action. His fading low-80s changeup is used far less than his other three offerings.
Listed at 6-foot, Jump lacks the size of a typical starter, though his growth since the surgery and ability to generate his stuff with arm speed helps his potential outlook as a long-term starter. The ceiling of a mid-rotation starter is there, though some scouts believe he might be better suited in a bullpen role. To start out, the A’s will develop him as a starter and look to see him maintain good health and strike-throwing ability.
A left-hander with a rangy body and a loose, whippy arm, Arnold has seen his stuff tick up since leaving Jesuit High School for Tallahassee. Coming from a lower arm slot and flat approach angle, his fastball, which was 88-92 mph in high school, now sits in the 94-95 mph range and touches 97, with a ton of life to miss bats. While his slider can be a little wide at times, the 82-85 mph sweeping breaking ball is a second plus offering that elicited a 43 percent miss rate in 2024 and ‘25 combined. His changeup is his third pitch, and he doesn’t need it much, but there’s some feel for it.
Arnold has shown the ability to fill up the strike zone and limit damage while maintaining his stuff deep into outings. With the funky arm slot, his stuff has drawn some comparisons to Chris Sale, a reason why people think it shouldn’t take him too long to join a big league rotation.
Bolte is a tooled-up athlete who continues to fill out his big 6-foot-3 frame. His impressive raw power continues to show up in the Minors, though there is still a real concern over his swing-and-miss and high strikeout rate as he continues to struggle with offspeed stuff out of the zone. The A’s have worked with him to revamp his swing in order to improve his bat path and cover more of the zone, which has produced slight improvements in those areas, though there is still plenty of work to be done.
Another shining tool for Bolte is his near-elite speed, which was on display last season as he swiped 46 bags. That speed also comes in handy on defense, combining that with a strong arm that makes him a solid outfielder at all three spots. Further refining is required, but he remains an exciting talent with a very high ceiling who continues to steadily advance through the system.
While working around the injuries, Nett has continued to show stellar velocity, touching as high as 99 mph in the Minor Leagues last season. He typically sits 95-97 mph and gets swing-and-miss up in the zone thanks to ample carry. He also throws a tight 81-84 mph slider that ran a 38 percent whiff rate in ’24 and a sharper 90-92 mph cutter that can catch hitters off guard. He’ll mix in an upper-70s curveball with more vertical drop and he’s scrapped a low-80s splitter in favor of a much more effective 88 mph kick-change that really neutralizes lefties.
Nett has some effort in his delivery, and the 2025 season (pre-trade) was the first time he’d posted a walk rate below 13 percent at any Minor League stop. Combine that with the early injury concerns, and it’s easy to think he could be a reliever eventually. But his arsenal is deep enough, and his stuff is promising enough — when combined with strides taken this season — to keep landing him in a starting role in the upper Minors.
It’s not often that teenage prospects launch home runs. But Colome has a tendency to get to that jumpy pop with frequency, consistently leveraging his swing well – so well in fact, that one evaluator mentioned the most recent occasion on which he saw an international prospect continually get to their launch point in such a manner was Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Colome is a right-handed hitter with explosive hands and a solid contact rate, although he has been known to be a tad aggressive in the box as a means of getting to said power.
Something of an athletic marvel at 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds at age 16, Colome is an agile athlete who shows a lot of lateral quickness. The fluidity of his movements and strong arm led to a Manny Machado comparison being hung on him defensively. Much like the seven-time All-Star, Colome may move off short as his frame fills out, but he’s a tremendously dedicated worker and has the feet, soft hands and instincts to stick at the premium position.
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Programming Note: Each CPL vote will run for around 48 hours, so don’t delay making your selections!
The people have spoken and sweet-swinging catcher Cooper Ingle is our No. 7 Cleveland Guardians prospect. Ingle won in a landslide, earning 46.4% of the vote, beating out Juan Brito (19.6%) and Jaison Chourio (11.9%). He is the No. 7 CTC prospect for the second consecutive year.
Ingle was the Guardians’ fourth-round draft pick in 2023, selected No. 125 overall out of Clemson. He wasted little time, playing 17 games at High-A Lake County the season he was drafted, impressing with a dominant slash of .288/.464/.385, good enough for a 153 wRC+ in a small sample size.
The backstop began the 2024 season by repeating at Lake County, where he blossomed. Ingle showcased improved power, blasting nine home runs over 68 games, nearly doubling his 2023 ISO from .096 to .187. His contact skills improved as well, slashing .313/.433/.500 with a ridiculous 170 wRC+. He was so impressive that he was named the Midwest League’s MVP while playing just 68 games before being promoted to Double-A Akron.
Ingle began the 2025 season repeating at Double-A, where he continued to excel, slashing .272/.391/.441 over 92 games and earning a promotion to Triple-A Columbus. He struggled with making loud contact at Triple-A, but he surprisingly decreased his strikeout rate while increasing his walk rate following the promotion, posting a 105 wRC+ over 28 games played.
Look for Ingle to begin 2026 repeating at Triple-A and for him to likely make his MLB debut at some point this season, although how much playing time he gets will depend on injuries and the continued offensive development of Bo Naylor.
Now, it’s time to determine who is number five in the Guardians’ loaded farm system! Your options are below:
Was lined up to make his MLB debut in 2025, but multiple injuries prevented the switch-hitter from getting his opportunity and it’s possible he could be passed up completely.
Impressed at the complex league, then hit the ground running in a late season promotion to Single-A before running out of steam late in his age-17 season. Loaded with potential.
Chourio was lining up to be Cleveland’s top prospect after a sensational 2024, but he was slowed in 2025 by a nagging shoulder injury and had a very average season. He’s looking to bounce back in 2026.
Acquired from Pittsburghin the Spencer Horwitz trade, Hartle was one of Cleveland’s most successful starting pitchers in its minor league system in 2025. Stands 6-foot-6, but doesn’t have a ton of velocity.
Cleveland’s first round pick in the 2025 MLB Draft, the 6-foot-6 LaViolette instantly becomes one of the top power hitting prospects in the system. Strikeouts and contact have been an issue, however.
One of Cleveland’s most impressive hitters in its minor league system during his stint at High-A Lake County as a 20-year-old. Rosario has a unique combination of speed and power, but will need to overcome his strikeouts.
Acquired from Toronto in the Shane Bieber trade, Stephen rocketed through the minor league system in 2025 before hitting a wall in Double-A.He instantly became one of Cleveland’s top pitching prospects.
Robert Eckl Sr. and Robert Eckl Jr., Jack Wenninger’s grandfather and uncle, respectively, both played baseball at the University of Wisconsin, but Jack decided to not follow in their footsteps, instead committing to Murray State University after graduating from Cary-Grove Community High School in 2020. Wenninger’s numbers in his freshman season were only pedestrian, posting a 5.26 ERA 51.1 innings over 16 games with 46 hits allowed, 27 walks, and 42 strikeouts. He entered the transfer portal after the season and transferred to the University of Illinois, where head coach Dan Hartleb saw promise in his size, increasing fastball velocity, and improving secondary pitches.
Overview
Name: Jack Wenninger Position: RHP Born: 03/14/2002 (Age 24 season in 2026) Height: 6’4” Weight: 210 lbs. Bats/Throws: L/R Acquired: 2023 MLB Draft, 6th Round (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) 2025 Stats: 26 G (26 GS), 135.2 IP, 114 H, 53 R, 44 ER (2.92 ERA), 42 BB, 147 K, .288 BABIP (Double-A)
The right-hander appeared in 15 games in his first season with the Fightin Ilini in 2022 and posted a 5.71 ERA in 34.2 innings over 15 appearances, allowing 30 hits, walking 21, and striking out 30. That summer, he pitched for the Wausau Woodchucks of the Northwoods League and posted a 2.54 ERA in 46.0 innings over 10 games- all starts- allowing 37 hits, walking 21, and striking out 42. He returned to Illinois for the 2023 season and became a mainstay the team’s weekend rotation. The right-hander appeared in 15 games, starting 14 of them, and posted a 4.59 ERA in 80.1 innings, allowing 69 hits, walking 28, and striking out 76.
Following the conclusion of the season, he pitched some supplementary innings with the Williamsport Crosscutters of the MLB Draft League. The right-hander made three starts there and allowed 6 earned runs over 11.0 innings while allowing 9 hits, walking 7, and striking out 19. In early July, the Mets drafted Wenninger in the 6th round of the 2023 MLB Draft, the 186th player selected overall, and signed him to a $225,000 signing bonus, below the MLB-assigned slot value of $299,800. Wenninger appeared in two combined games with the FCL Mets and the St. Lucie Mets to finish out his year and allowed 2 earned runs in 2.1 innings, giving up 1 hit, walking 2, and striking out 4.
Wenninger was assigned to the Single-A St. Lucie Mets to begin the 2024 season and struggled early on. The 22-year-old hurler appeared in 15 games for them, making 10 starts, and posted a 5.02 ERA in 71.2 innings, allowing 67 hits, walking 23, and striking out 89. He was promoted to the High-A Brooklyn Cyclones in mid-July and finished out the season in Coney Island, having a much better go at it, assisted by the pitching friendly confines of Maimonides Park. Appearing in 10 games and making 9 starts, he posted a 3.12 ERA in 43.1 innings, allowing 40 hits, walking 17, and striking out 51. Altogether, he posted a combined 4.30 ERA in 115.0 innings in his first professional season, allowing 107 total hits, walking 40, and striking out 140; his 140 strikeouts were second-most in the entire Mets minor league system, trailing Jonah Tong and his 160 punchouts.
Promoted to Double-A Binghamton for the 2025 season, Wenninger was even better. Pitching in the shadows of more noteworthy prospects such as Nolan McLean, Joan Tong, and Brandon Sproat, Jack Wenninger was just as good, appearing in 26 games for the Rumble Ponies and posting a 2.92 ERA in 135.2 innings, allowing 114 hits, walking 42, and striking out 147. For a second consecutive year, his strikeout total was the second most in the system (tied with R.J. Gordon), behind Jonah Tong once again. The right-hander ended his season on as high a note as possible, shoving in the Eastern League Championship winner, throwing five innings and allowing two runs on three hits and two walks while striking out a whopping eleven.
The 6’4”, 215-pound Wenninger has a high-waisted frame, throwing from a high-three-quarters arm slot with a simple delivery that utilizes a leg kick and a long arm action through the back. He gets good extension off the mound and keeps his upper and lower halves in sync. His arm is clean, loose, and repeatable, allowing him to consistently throw strikes and keep unintentional walks to a minimum.
The right-hander throws both a four-seam and two-seam fastball, the latter used moreso against right-handed hitters to keep them honest with an offering that breaks towards them. Both fastballs sit in the low-to-mid-90s, with his four-seam fastball velocity up in 2025, topping out at 98 MPH on occasion but comfortably averaging 94 MPH. Thanks to his tall frame, extension, and high arm slot and release point, the pitch gets above-average ride up in the zone.
Wenninger’s main secondary offering is an extremely effective split change. The pitch is a plus offering, sitting in the low-to-mid-80s with a low spin rate that causes it to absolutely drop off the table. He can throw it in all four quadrants of the zone, throwing it up and letting it drop in for strikes and throwing it low and letting it drop out of the zone for chases and whiffs. He is comfortable throwing the pitch against left-handed and right-handed batters, the pitch’s horizontal movement breaking in on right-handed hitters in addition to its downward dive.
Coming into the 2025 season, Wenninger supplemented his fastball-changeup combo with a cutter, curveball, and slider that were all get-me-over offerings that flashed average, but he has refined his arsenal since. His cutter and slider, already brothers on the pitch spectrum, have melded into a single pitch, a tight mid-80s gyro slider. Using a different grip, his curveball now has more bite to it. Both breaking pitches are now average offerings, their effectiveness amplified by his ability to command them and throw them for strikes.
The improvements made to his arsenal have helped minimalize the reverse platoon splits that he was beginning to show. In 2024, right-handed hitters averaged a .262/.336/.409 batting line against him in 254 plate appearances, while left-handed hitters averaged .213/.275/.324 against him in 248 plate appearances, a difference of roughly .150 OPS points. In 2025, right-handed hitters averaged a .237/.280/.381 batting line against him in 321 plate appearances while left-handed hitters averaged .208/.294/.338 against him, a difference of roughly .030 OPS points. His batted ball data also has marginally improved, with his groundball and flyball rates both improving slightly.
2026 Mets Top 25 Prospect List
11) Mitch Voit 12) Jonathan Santucci 13) Elian Peña 14) Zach Thornton 15) Nick Morabito 16) R.J. Gordon 17) Chris Suero 18) Dylan Ross 19) Ryan Lambert 20) Antonio Jimenez 21) Edward Lantigua 22) Eli Serrano III 23) Randy Guzman 24) Daiverson Gutierrez 25) Boston Baro
With the 2025 Texas Rangers season having come to an end, we shall be, over the course of the offseason, taking a look at every player who appeared in a major league game for the Texas Rangers in 2025.
Today we are looking at outfielder Michael Helman.
Michael Helman was one of the good, fun stories of the maddening 2025 Texas Rangers season. If the Rangers had been able to pull off that improbable September comeback and make the playoffs, he would have entered the pantheon of unexpected sports heroes.
Shades of Francisco Cabrera, whose two out pinch hit single in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS off of Pirates closer Stan Belinda, with the Braves down one, sending the Braves to the World Series, after having just 11 major league plate appearances in the 1992 regular season.
Or Tom Lawless, who hit a three run homer off of Twins starter Frank Viola in Game 4 of the 1987 World Series, giving the Cardinals a lead in the game they wouldn’t relinquish. Lawless was on the Cardinals’ roster all season, rarely played (this was back in the days of 10 man pitching staffs, when National League teams had seven bench guys), and had two hits all season — the first not coming until August 12, in Game 113, and the second not coming until the final regular season game of the year.
Can you imagine what it would be like, in 2026, if a position player was on a team’s roster all year and didn’t have a hit until mid-August? Social media would be all over it. He would become a meme. Late in blowouts, fans would be chanting for him to be put into the game, like college basketball fans calling for Olivier Roux late in a Florida Gator blowout, or Mavs fans in the late 80s chanting for Dennis Nutt.
Drafted in the 11th round in 2018 out of Texas A&M by the Twins, Helman finally made it to the bigs in 2024 with Minnesota, getting 10 plate appearances in 9 games and somehow managing to play four different positions in that small stretch. He was acquired by the Cardinals right before spring training started last year for the always popular cash considerations, was claimed on waivers by the Pirates in May, followed by the Rangers claiming him on waivers less than a week later.
Helman was AAA depth for the Rangers, and as such, got summoned a couple of times to the bigs during the summer for short stints, and was fine, didn’t embarrass himself, did what you hoped a depth guy called up to patch a hole for a short time would do.
When half the team was struck down by the injury gods in August, Helman was brought back up once again, and asked to play a more regular role. It doing so, it is fair to say, he exceeded expectations.
For about a month, Helman was spectacular. He hit. He played great defense. He was dynamic. In a particularly memorable pair of games, he drove in all five Rangers runs in a 5-0 win against the Milwaukee Brewers, blowing the game open in the fifth with a grand slam off of Jose Quintana, then hit a game tying homer the next day to help the Rangers to what would be a 5-4 win against the Brew Crew.
From the time he was called up on August 23 through September 13, when the Rangers won their second straight game against the Mets, putting them just two games back in the A.L. West and for Wild Card spots 2 and 3, Helman slashed .294/.345/.627 in 56 plate appearances, while making some dazzling catches in center field. The Rangers’ unexpected surge while missing so many key players was driven by unexpected guys, including Helman.
Alas, we know how things turned out. After that September 13 win in New York, the Rangers wouldn’t win again for 11 days, losing eight straight and crashing out of the playoff race. And after September 13, Cinderella Helman turned into a pumpkin, slashing .162/.205/.216.
For the season, Helman put up a .232/.290/.455 slash line in 110 plate appearances, giving him an impressive 1.0 bWAR. Very good results from him, and part of why the Rangers were playing meaningful games in the final month of the year. It led to some talk that he should be penciled into the Rangers 2026 plans, part of the Opening Day roster, getting a platoon role in the outfield, with possibly the opportunity to do even more.
Looking under the hood, though, the underlying metrics for Helman were not as good as the raw numbers would suggest. They were, in fact, kind of awful.
Helman didn’t walk much, and struck out at an average rate. Combined with his middling batting average, it means that he had a sub-.300 OBP. His offensive value was primarily derived by his hitting for a surprising amount of power — five home runs in 110 plate appearances, a rate higher than he had shown even in the minors.
The batted ball data isn’t encouraging about how sustainable that would appear to be. Helman’s average exit velocity was near the bottom of the league, as was his hard hit rate. His stint with the Rangers resulted in a .250 xwOBA and a .323 xSLG.
Michael Helman provides value to this team on the 40 man roster as depth, a guy you can stash in AAA and bring up if someone is hurt and you need a fill in on the active roster for a week or two. He’s fast and can play good defense in center, which has value.
But he does not appear to be someone who is going to hit enough to have a meaningful role on a major league team. He turns 30 in May, and his OPS for Round Rock last year was 744, the same as it was in the big leagues, weirdly enough. He has a career .255/.327/.446 slash line in 266 games in AAA. He’s the 39th or 40th guy on a 40 man roster, someone you like to have available, but also someone who is going to be a waiver wire candidate when you need a 40 man spot at some point.
Ah prospects. Sometimes they really hurt you. After watching the Detroit Tigers pass on Zach Neto and instead select Jace Jung in the first round of the 2022 amateur draft, there was some hope of redemption in the second round. The Tigers picked up an athletic shortstop with power out of the University of Oklahoma named Peyton Graham, and for a while I expected he’d add muscle to his reedy 6’2” frame and take advantage of his power and plate discipline to reach the majors as at least a platoon player who could handle the shortstop position effectively.
Things have not worked out that way. Graham spent much of the 2023 and 2024 seasons battling injuries. He missed half a season in 2023 after getting hit in the face by a pitch. In 2024 he was hit by another that broke two fingers. Beyond those injuries he’s had various minor sprains and strains that he’s had to work through. And after three full seasons of A-ball, he still hasn’t made the strength gains required to reduce the need for his long, high effort swing and all out approach to playing the infield.
Graham was never going to be a quick mover to the big leagues, but the progress required to keep his higher end projections hasn’t materialized. It was easy to be patient after all the injuries coming into 2025, but he needed a a strong move to the Double-A level in 2025 to keep a platoon player future on the board. Instead, he had a good year with the West Michigan Whitecaps without any real breakthroughs and didn’t make the leap to the upper levels.
Graham hit seven homers, 23 doubles, and three triples in 100 games in 2026. He also stole 20 bases for the Whitecaps, slashing .283/.366/.423. He did manage to trim his strikeouts down to a reasonable 20.8 percent, walking in 9.8 percent of his at-bats. Zone discipline has never been the issue for him, but ultimately those numbers don’t matter much without more progress in his overall quality of contact.
Despite his slender frame, Graham will still show you above average juice on occasion, but he just hasn’t developed the physicality to simplify his swing and still relies on a lot of moving parts to generate his quality batspeed. He starts early and is often caught a little off balance or just plain late, leading to a lot of pop-ups on pitches up in the zone. There’s plenty of hard line drive contact and stretches where he’s catching the ball out front and driving more pitches, but it just hasn’t sustained it well enough. In 2025, he finally caught fire for a while from mid-May to mid-July hitting all seven of his home runs on the year in that stretch. For a while things were looking pretty interesting. But then he cooled down after the All-Star break before finishing strong in the Whitecaps postseason run to the Midwest League championship.
As a shortstop, Graham’s main flaw was just generally being too busy. He has good reactions and a solid glove, but his all out style led to too many errant throws. He has the arm strength to play third base, and enough speed to play the outfield corners well, and the Tigers started getting him more work in all those positions in 2025 while Kevin McGonigle took the reps at shortstop. Graham did improve as a defender this season and played much more within himself, looking like an above average second baseman who is solid at third as well. He can handle shortstop too, but he’s fringy there and fits a lot better at second base in particular. He didn’t get that much work in the outfield, but should be able to handle the corners reasonably well with more reps.
There would be a little more optimism if Graham hit left-handed, but the path for a right-handed hitting utilityman is exceedingly narrow. His development was short-circuited early on by the injuries, and I’ve always thought he would be a late bloomer, but it’s getting pretty late indeed. His raw power is still a lot better than most utility types, and his improved defense helps his case to a degree, but raw power doesn’t help unless you’re getting to plenty of it. It was at least a positive sign that he was finally looking more like the player the Tigers were hoping for in the middle of the season. Graham will be in Erie this season, and we’ll see if he can build on the modest progress he made in 2025.
Writing a primer on a player who it feels like Mets fans simultaneously don’t know very well but also know intimately well in Luis Robert Jr. is an interesting position to be in. The 28-year-old Cuban-born center fielder defected in 2016 and signed with the White Sox the following year, spending his entire career until this point with an American League club the Mets rarely face off against. But the Mets have also been connected to Robert in trade for nearly two full calendar years at this point and his name has been brought up at least a handful of times every trade deadline and offseason since 2024 as the Mets searched for answers to their center field problem.
If there is an overarching pair of themes that tell the story of Robert’s career, it’s injuries and sky-high potential. Robert made his spring training debut for the White Sox in 2018 and hit a go-ahead grand slam in the eighth inning, but then landed on the injured list for two months because he sprained a ligament in his thumb while sliding into second base in the game. That spring debut ended up being a microcosm for Robert’s White Sox career.
Robert’s major league debut came in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, before which he signed a six-year, $50 million contract with the White Sox before appearing in a single big league game. That contract included team options for 2026 and 2027; the White Sox picked up Robert’s 2026 option in November prior to the trade and the Mets will now be responsible for Robert’s entire $20 million salary this season. The 2027 option is also for $20 million with a $2 million buyout. Robert won a Gold Glove in his first major league season and came in second in the American League Rookie of the Year balloting. Robert also helped carry the White Sox to their first postseason berth in over a decade—shortened season wackiness notwithstanding—and hit the longest postseason home run in White Sox history in the Wild Card round against the A’s. Things were off to a promising start for the young outfielder.
He carried that momentum right into the 2021 season, in which he hit over .300 in his first 25 games before suffering a complete tear of his right hip flexor on May 2—the first of a string of devastating injuries Robert would have to deal with in his young career. That hip flexor tear cost him three months, but in only 68 games and just shy of 300 plate appearances in 2021, Robert still amassed 3.4 fWAR. Robert’s production fell the following season, as he put up a 111 wRC+ in 2022. Though he played more games (98) than in 2021, he still suffered multiple more minor injuries that year, including a sprained wrist in September that prematurely ended his season.
Robert’s best year of his career by far was his age 25 season in 2023 when he played nearly a full season (145 games), over which he put up 5 WAR, hit 38 home runs, drove in 80 runs, and stole 20 bases—all while playing elite center field defense (12 OAA). He earned All-Star honors that year, won the Silver Slugger, and came in 12th in the AL MVP voting. Though Robert still has potentially a lot of years left to play at age 28, that 2023 season unfortunately represents the zenith of his professional career so far. Perhaps most notably, Robert has not sniffed 38 home runs before 2023 or since.
In all, according to data from FOX Sports, Robert has had over thirty—that’s right 30, as in, three-zero—IL stints in six big league seasons. That’s, well, a lot of injuries. And they are not all bumps and bruises either. Some of these are significant soft tissue injuries that led to lengthy absences. Robert played in just 53% of possible games from 2021 to 2023 and has failed to reach the 145-game high-water mark from 2023 in either of his past two seasons, which have been injury-riddled and mediocre. His 2024 and 2025 seasons were basically carbon copies of each other with an 86 and 85 OPS+ respectively, worth 1.4 bWAR each, and 210 games played across both seasons.
That all seems pretty grim, but there is plenty of reason for optimism here. Even with his history of lower body injuries, Robert maintains excellent—and flashes of brilliant—center field defense with 7 OAA in 2025, landing him in the 93rd percentile. This is certainly in keeping with David Stearns’ vision for improving the team defensively. Robert also maintains elite sprint speed and stole 33 bases last season—a career high. On the offensive side of things, his bat is as speedy as his legs; the inimitable Sarah Langs pointed out that only Robert, Julio Rodríguez, and Oneil Cruz had both sprint and bat speeds in the 90th percentile or better in 2025. That is encouraging company to keep. If you take a gander at xwOBA, Luis Robert’s was the same in 2025 as one Cody Bellinger—he who put up a well above average offensive season last year, was one of the most anticipated and coveted free agent bats this offseason, and was connected to the Mets for many weeks before signing with the Yankees yesterday.
To phrase it charitably, the White Sox are not known as one of the more forward-thinking or advanced organizations in the sport. Of course, when it comes to injuries and realizing the potential evident in the underlying hitting metrics, there is some luck involved. But there is also good injury prevention strategy and hitting instruction involved too and the Mets are likely better positioned than the White Sox in these arenas to help tip the odds of 2023 Robert reappearing in their favor. And while I do think people often wave “change of scenery” around like a wand, hoping that a new team will magically fix all of a player’s woes, lifting the fog of the heinous vibes that come with three consecutive 100+ loss seasons from Robert’s view probably can’t hurt.
It’s easy to see the appeal of this trade on both sides. The Mets have traded a blocked infield prospect with no options remaining and a starting pitching prospect from a farm full of excellent young arms for a player still in his twenties who they have been targeting for years, fits the roster perfectly, and whose potential they think they can maximize. Luisangel Acuña will now have the privilege of everyday playing time to hopefully be the best version of himself. For the White Sox, Robert is the talented, but oft-injured last bastion of a core that fell spectacularly short of expectations and was slowly jettisoned, piece by piece. And Robert also committed the greatest sin of all: making money without providing the bang for that buck consistently enough. For Mets fans still aching over the scattering of our own core of the first half of the 2020s, take comfort in the fact that unlike the team from whence Robert came, this is not a teardown. Unlike Robert was in Chicago by the end of his tenure, Pete Alonso was not the only bright spot in the abyss. At best, Mets fans can dream on Robert putting up a dynamic and fun to watch 5 WAR season, solving (at least in the short-term) the team’s longstanding center field quandary, and being a part of the beginning of the Mets’ next era of success. At worst, if Robert is injured and/or underperforms, as has been the case of late, the Mets have overpaid—something they can afford to do—for one mediocre season that still has a decent chance of exceeding the production the Mets got from center field in 2025.
The quest of the Cincinnati Reds to never again be last while feigning interest in actually being first continued over the last week whether they liked it, or not.
Off the board came Kyle Tucker, first, whose signature with the Los Angeles Dodgers further solidified their modern Evil Empire status. The New York Mets, meanwhile, had been heavy on Tucker all winter, and losing out on him caused a domino effect where they pivoted to Bo Bichette on a big AAV deal to further crowd their infield mix. That threw the Philadelphia Phillies into flux, as they’d been big on Bichette all winter, and they subsequently pivoted back to their old friend JT Realmuto, inking the backstop to another deal to once again solidify that part of their roster.
Bichette, an infielder, caused a bit of a logjam on the Mets roster, and they responded by unloading former top prospect Luisangel Acuña to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for mercurial outfielder Luis Robert, Jr., in whom the very Reds once reportedly had kicked tires.
During this flurry, the New York Yankees finally struck terms with Cody Bellinger for a long-term return, while the Los Angeles Angels chimed in with their own rendition of ‘reunion’ by signing Yoan Moncada to a 1-year, $4 million contract that, in theory, would’ve suited the Reds perfectly had they not chosen to take on the some $30 million due to Ke’Bryan Hayes at the hot corner. Then, last night, the Mets struck again by landing Freddy Peralta from the Milwaukee Brewers, who themselves seem committed to attempts at winning in 2026 with one hand tied behind their back.
(They’ll probably still find a way.)
The flurry of moves gives two clear indications. First, obviously, is that pitchers and catchers begin to report to spring camps in only three-ish weeks and rosters need to be finalized. Second, though, is that the Cincinnati Reds are once again going to play the patience card and wait around to see which remaining free agents are left in the bargain bin.
They still need middle infield help. They could still really use an established outfielder given that TJ Friedl – who missed a ton of time in 2024 – is the only guy they’ve got on-roster who’s recently filed away a full year of good production out there. They likely could use someone who can play all over the place and hit left-handed after the trade of Gavin Lux, who was going to make $5 million, hit left-handed, and not really be able to play anywhere.
The Reds were never going to be in on any of these players because each of these players actually requires being paid market rate for their services. But, now that they’re flying off the board quickly, the rosters of the competition of the Reds are beginning to be solidified, reducing the number of places the remaining names on the market might otherwise have sought out – and that gives us a bit clearer picture of who is realistically on their radar.
Old friend Eugenio Suarez is out there and would be incredibly fun to have back…if the Reds were willing to use Spencer Steer a lot in LF and if Geno’s real with the idea of not ever really playing 3B again. Austin Hays and Harrison Bader are still out there looking for work, too, though it doesn’t appear the Reds have a ton of interest in retaining either of their services for a second time. The same seemingly goes for Miguel Andujar, though the Reds have at least had their name pop up a time or three in connection with him during his otherwise slow winter.
There’s also the curious case of Luis Arraez, who can hit whenever and play nowhere despite his batted-ball profile being more or less exactly what this current iteration of Reds front office slash managerial staff wants out of each of their players. I’m not saying I love the fit, I’m just saying he’s exactly what the Reds seem to want from a bat and at this juncture his dried-up market might well push him into we’ll spend it territory for an otherwise frugal Reds ownership group.
It’s been a pretty rapidly developing free agent tumble the last week even if the Reds themselves haven’t yet dived in.
Bo Bichette is projected to slash .294/.339/.445 (121 OPS+), while Jorge Polanco is projected to hit .253/.327/.446 (118 OPS+).
As far as Marcus Semien, who is coming off two down seasons, he is projected to bounce back a bit and be literally a league average hitter (100 OPS+).
The projections are bullish on Juan Soto, with him slashing .271/.408/.524 (163 OPS+) with 37 home runs, 103 RBI, and 109 runs scored.
Francisco Lindor (123 OPS+) and Francisco Alvarez (112 OPS+) are also projected to have strong offensive campaigns.
STARTING ROTATION
Traditionally, the ZiPS projections for innings totals and ERA for starting pitchers can skew conservative, and that's reflected a bit in the Mets' numbers.
Freddy Peralta (3.87 ERA/9.7 K/9), Clay Holmes (3.90 ERA), and Nolan McLean (3.94 ERA) are all projected to have sub-4 ERAs.
A bounce back is projected for Kodai Senga (3.82 ERA) but not Sean Manaea (4.51 ERA).
Top prospect Jonah Tong is projected to have a 4.07 ERA while striking out 10.1 per nine.
BULLPEN
A big season is projected for closer Devin Williams, with a 3.14 ERA and 79 strikeouts in 57.1 innings (a rate of 12.4 per nine).
Luke Weaver is projected to have a 4.30 ERA, with solid seasons in the cards for A.J. Minter (3.53 ERA) and Brooks Raley (3.79 ERA).
