Category: MLB

Good morning and welcome to one of the best days of the year. Say it with me: pitchers and catchers.

Red Sox spring training officially opens today and, with yesterday’s Caleb Durbin trade, Craig Breslow is probably done making any significant transactions.

So with the offseason essentially closed, let’s take a look at how the Red Sox organization has changed since the Cam Schlittler Game.

Notable MLB Departures

List organized by 2025 bWAR:

• Alex Bregman, 3.5
• Lucas Giolito, 2.1
• Rob Refsnyder, 1.2
• David Hamilton, 1.0
• Chris Murphy, 0.5
• Steven Matz, 0.5
• Hunter Dobbins, 0.4
• Nathaniel Lowe, 0.4
• Justin Wilson, 0.3
• Luis Guerrero, 0.1
• Brennan Bernardino, 0.0
• Vaughn Grissom (N/A)
• Cooper Criswell, -0.1
• Josh Winckowski, -0.1
• Richard Fitts, -0.3
• Liam Hendriks, -0.3
• Dustin May, -0.6
• Jordan Hicks, -1.8

Notable MLB Additions

List organized by 2025 bWAR:

• Ranger Suárez, 4.7
• Caleb Durbin, 2.8
• Willson Contreras, 2.5
• Isiah Kiner-Falefa, 1.7
• Sonny Gray, 1.4
• Johan Oviedo, 0.8
• Andruw Monasterio, 0.8
• Seth Martinez, 0.0
• Tsung-Che Cheng, 0.0
• Brendan Rogers, 0.0
• Anthony Seigler, -0.1
• Mickey Gasper, -0.3
• Vinny Capra (-0.6)
• Kyle Keller, N/A (NPB)

Notable Minor League Departures

List organized by highest SoxProspects.com ranking:

• Luis Perales (3)
• Jhostynxon Garcia (5)
• Shane Drohan (5)
• Brandon Clarke (6)
• David Sandlin (8)
• Yhoiker Fajardo (8)
• Kyle Harrison (N/A)
• Jedixson Paez (16)
• Jesus Travieso (19)
• Alex Hoppe (28)
• Justin Riemer (30)
• Blake Aita (33)

Notable Minor League Additions

List organized by current SoxProspects.com ranking:

• Jake Bennett (6)
• Ryan Watson (20)
• Tyler Samaniego (28)
• Gage Ziehl (3o)
• Adonys Guzman (31)
• Luke Heyman (32)
• Isaiah Jackson (50)
• Nate Baez (N/A)
• Matt Fraizer (N/A)
• Braiden Ward (N/A)
• 67th draft pick, 2026

So what conclusions can we draw from this. I’ll take a stab at a couple.

First, I think it’s inarguable that, barring injuries, the roster that will open the 2026 season is more talented than the roster that closed out 2025. Craig Breslow has assembled arguably the single best pitching staff in baseball — one that is not only strong at the top of the rotation, but deep, with a couple of high-end prospects who will start the season in Worcester. And while the lineup may not perform as well as it did in 2025 without Alex Bregman and a half a year of Rafael Devers, Willson Contreras is a solid addition while Caleb Durbin looks to be a good bet to be league average.

But having said that, the roster remains unbalanced and I am very worried about the lineup in general. There is a lot of pressure being put on young players to step up. Roman Anthony probably needs to perform at an All-Star level in his first full season for this Red Sox team to go anywhere (I think he can and will). While Marcelo Mayer, Ceddanne Rafaela, Carlos Narvaez, Triston Casas, and Caleb Durbin — all of whom have significant question marks — all need to contribute. It’s easy to simply say that Anthony will replace Devers production and Contreras will replace Bregman’s. And perhaps that will happen. But Contreras comes with significant risk of age-related decline (as does Trevor Story) and we cannot count on linear progression from Anthony. The lineup could potentially be anemic against left-handed pitching, while an unfortunate injury or some stalled development could make things ugly in the infield.

Speaking of age-related decline, can we count on Aroldis Chapman to once again be one of the best relievers in baseball? Craig Breslow is essentially doing just that, as he has barely touched the bullpen.

And, of course, we can’t ignore the minor leagues. Breslow has expended a lot of prospect capital over the past two years, particularly on the position player side, where you could argue that Franklin Arias is now the only notable prospect in the entire system.

All of this brings me to my conclusion: Craig Breslow improved the Red Sox in the 2025-26 offseason, but he didn’t improve the team enough. With an emerging superstar in Roman Anthony, one of the game’s very best starters in Garrett Crochet, a deep rotation, and a core of cheap, exciting young players, the Red Sox should be in a position to push for ~98 wins and a stress-free ride to the postseason. Instead, I think they’re probably only a couple wins better than last year’s team and, with a few bad breaks, could miss the postseason entirely.

For those reasons, I’ll give him a solid B. What’s your grade?

In Mariners news…

• Daniel Kramer at MLB.com projects the Mariners’ 2026 Opening Day roster ahead of Spring Training.

Around the league…

• The Pittsburgh Pirates have signed veteran slugger Marcell Ozuna to a one-year/$12 million deal.
• Veteran RHP Hunter Strickland has signed a minor league deal with the Los Angeles Angels, his seventh different MLB team since 2019.
• Arizona Diamondbacks LHP Andrew Saalfrank will miss the entire 2026 season following shoulder surgery.
• The A’s have traded infielder Max Schuemann to the New York Yankees in exchange for minor league RHP Luis Burgos.
• The Miami Marlins have signed RHP Chris Paddack to a one-year/$4 million deal with up to $500k in performance bonuses.
• The Boston Red Sox have acquired infielder and 2025 Rookie of the Year finalist Caleb Durbin from the Milwaukee Brewers as part of a 6-player trade.
• The Tampa Bay Rays have signed free agent RHP Nick Martinez to a one-year/$13 million deal.
• Veteran RHP Erick Fedde is headed back to the Chicago White Sox on a one-year deal.
• Infielder Gio Urshela is also reuniting with his old team as he headlines the Minnesota Twins’ list of Spring Training non-roster invitees.

13. Sterlin Thompson (314 points, 19 ballots)

Fair or not, Thompson’s progress will be judged in part by Rockies fans by the fact his draft pick (31st-overall in 2022) was the only compensation Colorado received for Trevor Story leaving in free agency, in lieu of a deadline trade. Thompson signed for a slot bonus of just over $2.43 million as a productive draft-eligible sophomore college hitter from the SEC. The 24-year-old 6’4” lefty hitter, righty thrower split time between second base and the outfield in college at Florida, but as a professional he’s played everywhere except shortstop and catcher. In 2025 though he was mostly a left fielder or DH with a little right field action.

Thompson mashed his way to Double-A by the end of his first full year in 2023 and had a strong stint in that year’s Arizona Fall League, hitting .338/.460/.475 with nine extra base hits in 80 PA. That led to some top 100 discussion for Thompson, but it wasn’t a smooth ride for him in 2024. Thompson went back to Hartford, where he was 0.6 years younger than average. Thompson wasn’t bad offensively — his .245/.319/.385 line in 518 plate appearances with 13 HR among his 35 XBH and 12/16 steals translates to an above average 103 wRC+. Still, it was below his 2023 level and certainly below expectations for fans and scouts alike, especially given that he slid down the defensive spectrum (from second base to left field).

In 2025, Thompson got the bump up to Triple-A Albuquerque. As the team’s primary left fielder on a team that has several highly regarded outfield prospects, Thompson’s .296/.392/.519 batting line in 513 plate appearances — including 18 homers, eight triples, and 28 doubles with 12 steals — looked pretty good. Of course, the hitter-friendly nature of the Pacific Coast League took the air a bit out of those numbers, but his production was still a very respectable 118 wRC+. The lefty hitter has some pretty big platoon splits, with a strong OPS against righties (.950) vs. his mark against southpaws (.793). In 101 games in the outfield (95 in left), Thompson committed six errors but also added nine outfield assists.

Those full season numbers look pretty good, but the trajectory was even better. Thompson started the 2025 season off very poorly, hitting for a .562 OPS in April, but after that Thompson was excellent. His monthly OPS numbers after the tough start were 1.103 in May, .935 in June, .783 in July, a scalding 1.222 in August, and a 1.013 total in September. Thompson cut his strikeouts year over year by 2.7% while raising his walks 2%, which is also a positive development.

Those developments were enough to earn Thompson a 40-man roster spot this off-season. Here’s a good piece by Manny Randwana of MLB.com on Thompson’s 2025 after he earned that 40-man roster spot.

Here’s some video of Thompson from Albuquerque last year:

For a look at the swing from a side profile, here’s Thompson hitting a double in Triple-A in April.

Keith Law of the Athletic moved Thompson up to sixth in the system earlier this month (Law at one point ranked Thompson 70th overall in MLB):

Thompson has always been a bat-first prospect and he continued to hit the ball hard, peaking at 112.9 mph with a 90th percentile EV of 105.1. He didn’t hit breaking stuff that well even with the benefit of altitude, and now that he’s ensconced in the outfield, there’s more pressure on the bat. He could get to everyday status, more likely sticking around a while as a sometime regular and more frequent bench/platoon bat, starting this year.

Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs slots Thompson as a 45 FV player, fourth in the system as a left fielder with a 50 future hit tool to go along with 50 power (as of last January):

Thompson is a left-handed Miguel Vargas of sorts, a bat-only prospect without superlative physicality. Built in the Daniel Murphy and Nolan Schanuel mold, Thompson isn’t an especially mobile athlete, and he has trended down the defensive spectrum during the last few years from 2B/3B to 1B/LF, where he isn’t particularly sound. Thompson has great hands in the batter’s box, his pretty swing generates airborne contact from pole to pole, and he does not miss mistakes. He’s going to actualize the power he has, but it will only be fair pop unless something about his physicality changes drastically in his mid-20s. Now a career .270/.345/.430 hitter in the minors, Thompson has a roughly average contact and power combination undercut a bit by a lack of plate discipline. It’s enough to consider him a high-probability platoon piece, but not enough to consider him a foundational everyday player at the positions he’s capable of playing.

MLB Pipeline ranks Thompson 15th in the system as a 45 FV player (as an OF) with a 50 hit tool:

The Rockies think the adjustments Thompson made as the season went on bode well for him reaching his offensive ceiling. He still has a smooth left-handed swing and is capable of using the whole field, hitting the ball hard for extra bases. He’s had a little difficulty keeping weight on his 6-foot-3 frame, but he showed up in Arizona after his offseason more physical, which should help him get to a little more power. Because he trusts his feel to hit so much, he sometimes isn’t patient enough and increased discipline could allow him to get more pitches to drive.

The hardest thing to figure out has been where Thompson could play defensively. He’s seen time at third, second and first on the dirt, but he may have finally found a home in left field, looking more athletic than he has anywhere on the infield. Removing defensive stress could also help him unlock his offensive potential, with the knowledge it’s the bat they were buying in the first place.

John Trupin of Baseball Prospectus ranked Thompson 18th last January:

Contrary to many of his contemporaries in the system, Thompson is a bat-first prospect whose ability to cover an outfield corner is in question. Previously trusted with greater responsibility at the hot corner, Thompson played just a single game at third in 2024, covering first most after a corner outfield role. Suffice to say, the pressure on Thompson’s bat grew significantly, and it’s not clear he met the challenge. Precisely average at a 100 DRC+ in Double-A Hartford across 518 plate appearances, Thompson’s swing is still slightly longer and floatier than may be ideal. He coils his body as he loads, in a move that generates significant bat speed but can leave him closed off as he attempts to whip the bat through the zone. The swing is well planed to elevate line drives, but leaves him little recourse when fooled, and does not create as much over the fence pop as might be necessary to cover his athletic but limited efforts in the field.

Thompson’s 2025 season (especially the post-April performance) was quite encouraging for his future big league prospects given the improved production and plate discipline. He’ll enter spring training with a slim chance to crack the Opening Day roster, but if he doesn’t do so, Thompson will be one of the first options for the Rockies (along with fellow PuRP Zac Veen) for a big league call-up. The most likely outcome may be that Thompson gets a few different stints in the big leagues this year.

In Thompson, I see a hit-over-power prospect with limited usable defensive utility where the hit tool will need to carry him to the Show. To make that work, he needs his plate discipline improvements from 2025 and the improved ability to get his power into games to stick moving forward — a narrow path to be sure, but not an impossible one. The hit tool the most important one and Thompson has big league potential there, which is why (despite the limited utility he may offer elsewhere) Thompson is a 40+ FV player for me, ranking 14th on my list.

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The Mets’ bullpen in 2026 has a new look after some significant additions and subtractions. The team lost Edwin Díaz to the Dodgers, Tyler Rogers and Ryan Helsley both headed to the American League East, and Reed Garrett and Dedniel Nuñez will miss the season following Tommy John surgeries. The Mets have most notably added Devin Williams and Luke Weaver, but they also signed Luis García and received Tobias Myers in the Freddy Peralta trade. But the bullpen is likely to have turnover as the Mets decide who works and who doesn’t, and for that likelihood, they have several options in the fold heading into spring training.

One such option is Craig Kimbrel, who the team signed to a minor league deal with an invitation to major league spring training. A potential Hall of Famer in the twilight of his career, Kimbrel has hopped from team to team over the past few seasons. And now he’s with the Mets, with the potential to give them some solid innings in relief if he makes the major league roster.

Over the course his career, Kimbrel has logged a 2.58 ERA in 821.2 innings, with 1,282 strikeouts and a 1.020 WHIP. He has 440 saves, which is the fifth most all-time, and a career 159 ERA+ that’s well above average for a reliever. He’s accumulated 22.7 bWAR in his career, on par with other top closers of his era like Kenley Jansen and Aroldis Chapman.

A lot of that accumulation and excellence came earlier in his career, however, and Kimbrel has turned into a solid relief option instead of a feared closer. His first nine seasons in the major leagues produced some really tremendous work. He had a 1.80 ERA in 470.1 innings with 772 strikeouts, 291 saves, a 0.910 WHIP, and a 222 ERA+. In those nine seasons, he was worth 17.7 bWAR, won Rookie of the Year in 2011 with the Braves, made nine All-Star teams, finished top ten in Cy Young Award voting five times, and even received MVP votes from 2011 to 2013.

Since 2019, when he signed with the Cubs, he has put up a 3.83 ERA in 289 innings and earned just 107 of his career saves, less than a quarter of career total. He has just 414 strikeouts in that time with a 1.204 WHIP and a 110 ERA+, far below his usual dominance. He accumulated just 2.9 of his career WAR during that time as well. 

Last year, he was somewhat effective in a limited role. In 12.0 innings with two different teams—the lion’s share being with the Astros—he had a 2.25 ERA with 17 strikeouts and a 1.417 WHIP. He didn’t get any saves, but he had a 197 ERA+ and accumulated 0.4 bWAR in such limited time. He might not have been a star closer, but in an admittedly extremely small sample, he was a good late inning relief option for the Astros down the stretch.

With at least one or two spots in their bullpen up for grabs in spring training, the Mets are giving Kimbrel a lookto see if he can win a spot. And if he can deliver, he could become a dependable piece of the Mets’ bullpen this season.

Following a disappointing 2025 season where the Nationals went 66-96, Fangraphs doesn’t expect the results to be much improved entering the 2026 season, with their ZiPS projection system placing them at an estimated 63-99 record this season. While this number won’t bring much joy to Nats fans about how this season is going to look, it’s important to look at this number in context and understand how accurate these projections really are.

First off, it’s important to understand what ZiPS is and why it’s worth looking at when evaluating a roster as a whole. ZiPS uses player aging curves, along with all sorts of Statcast data and injury history, to project how every player on a team will perform in an upcoming season.

Once that has been compiled, they project the playing time of all these players on a club, and then run roughly 10,000 simulations of the season to find the most likely scenario for a ballclub. While it shouldn’t be taken as gospel, as there are so many external factors that go into a team’s season, it can offer a useful guide for how clubs should be viewed entering a season.

I’ve compared ZiPS projected record for the Nats from 2025 to 2015 (excluding 2020) to their actual records in those years, and a few things stand out. For starters, the only years I’d say the projection system was way, way off were in 2021 and 2022, years where the Nationals roster was changing vastly from beginning to end of the year.

ZiPS still had faith in the Nationals’ big three of Scherzer, Strasburg, and Corbin to hold down the rotation in 2021, and thought the big bats of Juan Soto and Trea Turner, with the addition of Josh Bell and Kyle Schwarber to the lineup, would be enough to keep the Nationals at least relevant that season. The 2021 Nats had a wide range of outcomes, and, unfortunately, they ultimately ended on the bad side of that outcome range, finishing 18 wins under their projection with 65.

In 2022, it’s hard to say quite why ZiPS thought the Nats would be at least a watchable group, but it also couldn’t have projected for the midseason loss of Juan Soto or the atrocious performance of Nelson Cruz after nothing but years of raking. ZiPS also anticipated a rebound in success from Patrick Corbin and Stephen Strasburg to pitch at least a portion of that year, 2 things that we now know did not happen at all. 2022 was ZiPS’ biggest miss in modern times when it comes to projecting the Nationals’ record, with the actual 2022 Nats finishing a whopping 21 wins under their projection.

Outside of those 2 years, ZiPS has been rather on the money with its Nationals record predictions, finishing within 10 games 7 of 8 years, and within 5 games in 4 of those 8. It’s done particularly on the money on the Nats club of the past 3 seasons, undershooting slightly on the 2023 and 2024 Nats win totals, before overshooting a little bit on the 2025 Nats.

So what does all of this mean for the 2026 Nationals? It means it could be another long season full of growing pains, but it’s also worth considering the external variable that could affect this projection. For starters, there is an entirely new front office and coaching staff in place from years past, meaning new voices for the players to hear from and potentially help find another gear of success in them.

There are also plenty of youngsters on the ballclub, such as Brady House and Harry Ford, who could break out at anytime, something the model struggles to account for as compared to veterans that it has lots of success to back up its projections.

Overall, while these models and projection systems can be fun to look at and attempt to decipher during the offseason, all bets are off once it’s time to playball, as the 2026 Nationals could come out swinging and make these numbers all look silly. Still, based on the historical trend of these projections, it would be unwise to dismiss them completely.

Allie Reynolds’ parents decided that he wouldn’t play organized baseball until after he left high school. Despite the late start to the game he wound up loving, he was good enough to make it to the big leagues with the Cleveland, and to pique the Yankees’ interest, as they sent Joe Gordon out to Ohio to acquire him in late 1946.

Cleveland needed an infielder, and the Yankees could definitely use a talented pitcher. Those circumstances resulted in an eight-year stint in the Bronx for Reynolds, who was equally good starting a game or entering as a reliever.

Allie Pierce Reynolds
Born: February 10, 1917 (Bethany, OK)
Died: December 26, 1994 (Oklahoma City, OK)
Yankees Tenure: 1947-54

Reynolds was born in Bethany, Oklahoma, on February 10, 1917. He was 3/16-ths Creek Indian and, according to the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR), his parents lived by the Nazarene doctrine, staying away from movies and dances. Young Allie wasn’t allowed to play sports on Sundays.

His athletic ability eventually stood out, though, and he was very good at multiple disciplines, most notably baseball, softball, track, and football. He might have had a future in the latter, but coaches believed his build was too light.

Reynolds married his high school sweetheart, Dale Earlene Jones, in 1935, long before becoming a major leaguer. Oklahoma A&M gave Reynolds a track scholarship, and he shone there in the 100-yard dash, the 220-yard dash, and javelin throw while also playing football.

In 1937, he was spotted by Oklahoma A&M’s athletic director and baseball coach Henry Iba. Initially, he was asked to throw batting practice to the team, and after impressing everybody there, he joined the squad. In 1939, Cleveland signed Reynolds and gave him a $1,000 bonus. He encountered some control issues in Class-C, but it was all a learning experience for the young righty, who was 22 at the time.

He stayed in the minors until 1942 and made his debut in September as a reliever.

Despite some strong seasons in Cleveland — even making the All-Star team in 1945 — he couldn’t make the World Series there. His career took a turn for the better when he joined the Bombers, though, finishing 15th in the MVP race in 1947 with a 19-8 record and a 3.20 ERA.

That year, Reynolds won his first of six World Series titles, in addition to the ones he got in 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, and 1953. He was stellar in the Fall Classic, compiling a 7-2 record and a 2.79 ERA in 15 appearances and 77.1 innings.

The 1951 campaign would be one of the best in Reynolds’ career. He won the 1951 Hickok Belt award as the top professional athlete in America, was third in the AL MVP race, won 17 games, threw two-hitters, and put up a 3.05 ERA. As hard to believe as it might sound, 1952 was even better. Reynolds won 20 games, had a 2.06 ERA (best in the AL), and also led the junior circuit with 160 punchouts. He was second in the race for the MVP Award.

Reynolds retired in 1954, the first year in which he didn’t win the Fall Classic since 1948. He went out in style, posting a 3.32 ERA in 157.1 frames, starting 18 games and entering as a reliever in another 18.

Reynolds was a member of some really strong Yankees rotations in the late ’40s and early ’50s, joined by the likes of Vic Raschi and Eddie Lopat. He managed to stand out, mainly because of his heart, ability and willingness to pitch hurt, and clutch pitching performances when it mattered most.

When all was said and done, he retired with six All-Star Games, six World Series rings, an ERA title, two strikeout crowns, two no-hitters (in the same season, tying a record), and a plaque at Monument Park. After his retirement, he was the president of the minor league American Association and a key cog in the organization of the Red Earth Native American cultural festival. He has a stadium named in his honor at Oklahoma State University.

Among the finest pitchers not to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Reynolds is a true Yankees icon and one of their most important pitchers in a very productive stint in team history. Reynolds actually came very close to immortality when he fell just one vote short in the 2009 HoF cycle, when the man who was traded for him (Gordon) got in instead. Reynolds received eight votes in the Classic Baseball ERA balloting and needed nine or more. He got another shot on the 2022 ballot, falling six votes short in that crowded mix as well.

Some believe the right-hander was a borderline Hall of Famer, but even if Reynolds’ 182 career wins and 3.30 ERA are impressive, he fell a bit short of most standards considering the workloads of other arms in his era. Still, his place in Yankees’ history is undeniable.

See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.

The Detroit Tigers infield isn’t exactly a juggernaut, but while the shortstop position looks like an ongoing weakness that won’t be resolved unless Kevin McGonigle proves he can play serviceable defense there, the Tigers have a credible enough duo in Javier Báez and Zach McKinstry to hold down the fort until the promised one arrives. They face a similar situation in the outfield, where they’re pretty well set with Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter handling the corners most days, but center field remains a question mark.

Parker Meadows’ strange, injury plagued 2025 was really not what the doctor ordered at a key position of need. While the Tigers, and much of the league, is less concerned with infield defense these days, preventing extra base hits and covering the still spacious grounds of Comerica Park’s outfield remains a priority. Meadows can certainly handle that part of the job, but only if he hits enough not to be a liability. That’s a pretty wide open question after streaky, but overall mediocre performance over his first 177 games in the major leagues. Now 26 years old, and with only one option remaining, there is some pressure on Meadows to be a much more consistent presence in the lineup this season.

Beyond the likely starting three, assuming Meadows is at least functional at the plate this spring, their other main options in the outfield are Matt Vierling and Wenceel Pérez.

Vierling is returning after missing nearly all of the 2025 season due to a rotator cuff strain that continued to flare up even after a lengthy rehabilitation process. His status is a complete toss-up at this point. In 2024, Vierling showed he could handle center field acceptably, but he’s clearly not an ideal regular out there. He was a pretty steady presence in the lineup as well, but only a little above average despite sitting against tougher matchups for him.

Stll, despite his speed and raw power, the 29-year-old hasn’t established himself as anything more than a useful bench piece, and he’s just average in center field. If Meadows struggles again, the Tigers are going to be a bit hard-pressed with Vierling playing a lot of center field, and of course this assumes that Vierling can get back on track at the plate as well, and that the shoulder trouble is finally behind him. For a possible answer to the Meadows question, Vierling comes with his own set of question marks.

Pérez continues to provide some runs of pretty good production at the plate, with the added advantage of switch-hitting. We have two seasons now to illustrate that he’s basically a league average hitter who takes his walks, doesn’t strike out more than a league average amount, and can provide some power and speed on the bases. He cracked 13 homers in 2025 across just 383 plate appearances. His problem is that he continues to chase quite a bit, particularly as a left-handed hitter, giving pitchers some room to get him out without risking any damage.

More relevant to the discussion is the fact that while Pérez’s speed and solid arm make him a pretty good fit in right field, he continues to struggle a bit as a center fielder. He can play out there, but the need to be able to break both ways and make accurate reads on the more unpredictable trajectories coming his way in center field continue to limit his utility out there to more of a fill-in role. Pérez has two options remaining to Meadows and Vierling’s one, so unless he’s really swinging a hot bat or looks better in center field, he may well spend the season moving up and down between Triple-A and the big leagues.

The final significant option on the likely active roster is Javier Báez. Somewhat shockingly, the mercurial infielder recovered well from his 2024 hip labrum repair, regaining at least average speed. Still, no one expected him to thrive quite as well as he did when A.J. Hinch asked him to take over in center field. He doesn’t have the speed of a true center fielder, but it turned out that his outstanding baseball instincts translated very well to center field, and he was able to make up for the modest speed with excellent reads, routes, and closing ability.

As a hitter, Báez is pretty well reduced to a lefty masher who inexplicably rakes with runners on base and is downright terrible with the bases empty. He may spell Meadows out there a little more once McGonigle arrives, but I suspect we’ll mostly see a Báez/McKinstry platoon at shortstop until that point, meaning that Báez will be occupied playing shortstop against left-handed starters. He may still move to center field as a replacement after pinch-hitting for Meadows against left-handers, but that’s more Vierling’s role if he can reclaim it.

Altogether, these options aren’t terribly inspiring, but at least they do have four players capable of handling the position without being a big problem. Meadows hitting would really erase any concerns, but it’s going to take quite a bit to trust in that at this point. The Tigers should be okay in center field, but to do any better than that, they really need Meadows to thrive.

However, while he won’t start the year with the big league club, there is hope on the horizon in the form of Max Clark. A true center fielder whose instincts and reads continue to improve with pro reps, Clark is the long-term answer at the position. He’s got the hitting ability and plate discipline to handle the majors eventually, and his 2025 season showed him tapping into his average power potential more consistently. Clark has much less chance of breaking camp with the team than McGonigle does, and really could use a good amount of Triple-A at-bats to set him up for success, but we’re almost certainly going to see Clark in center field for the Tigers at some point. Whether that looks like him coming up to take the job from a struggling Meadows, or whether it’s a late season call-up, depends on both players’ performance in the first half.

Finally, while they had to scramble last year to find credible options for short-term help, turning briefly to minor league veterans like Ryan Kreidler and Brewer Hicklen for depth, the Tigers are in a better position this year with both Trei Cruz and Ben Malgeri likely to be on the Toledo Mud Hens roster to start the year.

The 27-year-old Cruz is a switch-hitter who can handle both center field and shortstop, though he’s not quite MLB average in either spot. His lineage shows up in his professional approach to every part of the game. While certainly not as gifted as his All-Star grandfather Jose Cruz, he walks a lot, doesn’t chase much, can steal you a base, and generally gets a lot out of his well-rounded skillset. After missing the 2022 season to Tommy John surgery just as he reached Double-A, Cruz stalled for two seasons trying to get his bearings against upper level pitching. A modest breakthrough in 2025 now has him looking like perhaps the next edition of a Zach McKinstry type player who functions as his manager’s Swiss Army knife. Major league pitching is going to give him trouble, but his ability to grind out long at-bats and do a lot of little things right may earn him enough playing time at some point to get more comfortable in the role.

Malgeri is the final option on the menu, but he too is an interesting veteran minor leaguer with a lot of tools in the, close to MLB caliber, but not quite, range. Drafted in the 18th round back in 2021, Malgeri reached Double-A in 2023 but struggled facing better stuff and struck out too much to have any real prospect status. He returned for another go last year, his age 25 season, and made some minor swing changes to simplify things and handle better velocity more consistently. After striking out 30 percent of the time in his first two looks at the level, he cut that down to just 18.2 percent, while walking 8.5 percent of the time.

Malgeri has some pop, but his line drive approach doesn’t produce much over the fence power. Still, he sprays a lot of extra base hits and puts together consistently professional at-bats. He’s below average in center field but has enough speed and chops to handle the position acceptably well, though he profiles better in right field and moved there once Max Clark graduated to Erie and took over the everyday center fielder role. As with Cruz, things are not going to plan if Malgeri ends up playing much outfield for the Tigers this year, but they won’t be scrambling for veteran minor league options in a pinch this season either.

The looming presence of Max Clark really puts the Tigers in a far better position than they were in last year. They don’t want to rush him, and he’s not quite the wildly precocious hitter that Kevin McGonigle is, but at some point the club is going to have its answer in center field should Parker Meadows struggle again. They should also have more in-house options available in a pinch. Ideally, Meadows manages to stay healthy and relatively productive, the outfield is in good shape, and the Tigers will be able to bring Clark along on the ideal development timetable for him rather than having to rush it. The group covering center field will be a key one to watch this spring.

Players are beginning to report to Spring Training, and while there is still time for big moves – as I write this, the Red Sox just traded away a top pitching prospect for a shiny new starting third-bagger – the look of teams is really beginning to shake out in a way that lets us begin to do silly things like rank who is the best at each position around the sport.

For this exercise, I counted all of the guys I felt were clearly ahead of a given Royal and then ranked the Royal in that spot. This means that, in most cases, there are multiple guys you could make a case to bump ahead of the Royal, but it would be a discussion. For example, Salvador Perez and Adley Rutschman feel pretty similar – in terms of ranking, not skillset – heading into 2026, so you could reasonably bump Rutschman ahead of Salvy, and I wouldn’t quibble too much. But you have to set the bar somewhere, and this is a blog about the Royals, and I wanted to be generous because Spring is the time for hope and excitement. Still, if you want to be pessimistic, you can bump any of these guys (minus one) down as many as five spots and you’d probably still be in the right range.

Catcher – 12

For the purpose of this exercise, I’m going to rank Salvador Perez as a catcher and Carter Jensen as a designated hitter. If I were ranking Carter here, he’d be a lot higher. But I didn’t, so he isn’t. Salvy has been a mainstay for the Royals for more than a decade, so it might seem insulting to rank him so low. But the fact that, entering his age-36 season, he still looks like a top-half-of-the-league guy is impressive as all get-out. Cal Raleigh leads the pack here, naturally. However, I also estimate Will Smith, Alejandro Kirk, Hunter Goodman, Drake Baldwin, Shea Langeliers, Kyle Teel, William Contreras, Dillon Dingler, Gabriel Moreno, and Francisco Alvarez above him.

First base – 8

You can put me down for thinking Vinnie Pasquantino has another gear available to him in 2026. The Pasquatch had a 30-homer, 100-RBI season in 2025, and I think with a longer lineup, he will rediscover the plate discipline that defined him as a prospect in 2022. His ability to tailor his approach to the situation has been a boon to the Royals at times the past two seasons, but has hurt his overall production as he’s tried to carry more than his fair share of the RBI load. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. comes up tops for me. The additional players I have ahead of Vinnie are Bryce Harper, Pete Alonso, Freddie Freeman, Nick Kurtz, Michael Busch, and Jonathan Aranda. There are a lot of guys around him that could push him lower if you wanted: Matt Olson, Josh Naylor, Ryan O’Hearn, Willson Contreras, Ben Rice, and Spencer Torkelson. But I’d take him over any of them.

Second base – 29

If I rank primary second basemen with at least 200 PAs by fWAR in 2025, India comes in at 49. Behind Adam Frazier, ahead of Michael Massey. The unsigned Luis Rengifo – someone the Royals should seriously consider for a utility role, if they aren’t – is ahead of him. But the Rangers don’t appear to have a real primary second baseman after trading away Marcus Semien. FanGraphs has the Angels positionally behind the Royals here, too, but I believe in Christian Moore more than they do, I guess.

To be clear, there’s a lot of room for advancement here. If India can bounce back at all, or if Michael Massey can supplant him and come back, the Royals could jump up this list in a hurry. I’m just not sure I see it.

Third base – 5

Now that’s more like it. I almost took Maikel Garcia all the way up to fourth, but I think Matt Chapman has one more really good year in him. Jose Ramírez is a future Hall of Famer and leads the way here. Junior Caminero and Bo Bichette are also ahead of Maikel, but I think if he can find another step, he could pass Bichette as well as Chapman pretty easily. The easiest path for finding that step is probably to run the bases as well as he did in 2024 while hitting like he did in 2025. That would get him up next to Caminero; I just don’t see any way he can reach J-Ram’s heights in 2026, though, unless the Guardian starts falling like a meteor.

Shortstop – 1

It’s Bobby Witt Jr. He has a bad season, and that lands him fourth in MVP voting. What are we even doing here? There are lots of good shortstops in baseball. Francisco Lindor, Gunnar Henderson, Geraldo Perdomo, Trea Turner, and Corey Seager all immediately spring to mind. But as far ahead as Ramírez is over Maikel, Bobby is that far ahead of everyone else at his position. ZiPS projects him for the fourth-most WAR in baseball. It would be silly to pretend he’s anything but one of the top 10 best players in the sport at any position.

Left field – 13

I think people might be sleeping a little on Isaac Collins. I get that he’s not a big-name guy, but he finished fourth in NL Rookie of the Year voting last year. I’m not sure who the clear-cut best left fielder in 2026 is. Steven Kwan gets the best projection on FanGraphs, but I have him down in the mud with Collins thanks to a lackluster 2025. If you threatened my life, I’d probably offer up Roman Anthony. Riley Greene and Wyatt Langford both feel like pretty good picks, too, though. The others I have definitively ahead of Collins are Ian Happ, Cody Bellinger, Jackson Chourio, Tyler Soderstrom, Kyle Stowers, Randy Arozerena, and Heliot Ramos. Ramón Laureano, Taylor Ward, Lars Nootbar, and Mike Yastrzemski round out the group of guys similar to Collins in my mind.

Center field – 12

Twelfth seems way too high for Kyle Isbel, but well, let’s go through them all, I guess. First, the 11 clearly ahead of him: Julio Rodríguez is the best, followed by Pete Crow-Armstrong, Jackson Merril, Byron Buxton, Trent Grisham, Michael Harris II, Cedanne Rafaela, Evan Carter, Daulton Varsho, Parker Meadows, and Jo Adell. Here are the rest of the projected starting centerfielders: Andy Pages, Oneil Cruz, Colton Cowser, Jake Meyers, Harrison Bader, Jakob Marsee, Luis Robert Jr., Garrett Mitchell, Justin Crawford, Denzel Clarke, Brenton Doyle, Chase DeLauter*, Jacob Young, TJ Friedl, Victor Scott II, Cedric Mullins, Luisangel Acuña, Alek Thomas.

*DeLauter is a top prospect, and maybe he should be a for-sure ahead of Isbel but….

And yeah, sure, when I look at that group, I’d assume that some number of them will be more valuable than Isbel. Let’s say at least six of those guys are going to be better than Isbel. But if I compare them individually, I have a hard time saying, “Yes, this guy specifically will be more valuable than Isbel.”

If I had to guess which ones would climb out of the much, I guess I’d pick Pages, DeLauter, Bader, Robert, Cruz, and Cowser. But I’m betting any money on any of them to do it, that’s for sure. Still, if you wanted to say Isbel was more like eighteenth, I’d probably agree. I’m just not super sure about exactly who pushes him that low.

Right field – 12

Jac Caglianone is getting a huge lift here from both his prospect status and his projections; it’s certainly not from what he did in 2025. Though I’ll continue to insist that if he’d played a full season and hit 21 homers (which is what he would have had if you multiply his playing time and homers by three to get to full-season stats), even with those terrible rate stats, we’d be a lot less scared about his potential. Aaron Judge is naturally the top dog here. Also clearly ahead of Jac are Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr., Ronald Acuña Jr., Kyle Tucker, Corbin Carroll, Wilyer Abreu, Seiya Suzuki, Matt Wallner, and Addison Barger.

If Jac actually lives up to his projections, he’s going to pass several of those guys. Maybe even more than half of them.

Designated Hitter – 8

This time last year, I was advocating for Carter Jensen to get traded because I really didn’t believe in his future potential. I was wrong. Now I’m ready to project him as the eighth-best designated hitter in baseball. Though I hope he’s catching more and designated hitting less. I hope I’m right this time.

Shohei Ohtani is, as usual, in a league of his own. Behind him, but ahead of Carter Jensen, I have Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Schwarber, Brent Rooker, Ivan Herrera, Jarren Duran, and Yandy Díaz.

Just because I’m unhappy with how all this worked out, if I flipped Salvy and Jensen, I think Salvy would still rank between 8 and 10 in DH. George Springer and Christian Yelich might pass him. Carter would be ahead of Teel, Baldwin, Dingler, Alvarez, and Contreras at least. That would put him at seventh.

Taking into account the caveats I laid out at the start, this all still makes me feel better about the Royals’ lineup than when I started. Some of them will not end the season as high as they ranked here, but compare it to last year. Catcher might have gone up a few slots, second would have gone up a bunch (and been wrong, but that’s how it goes.) Shortstop, center, and first would have remained roughly the same. But third would have been much lower. Designated hitter and both corner outfield spots would have been near the bottom.

We’ve spent all offseason lamenting that the Royals didn’t make a big move to improve the outfield or second base, but even the middling moves they’ve made should lead to drastic improvements from awful to mediocre. The rotation is very similar to last season but with more depth, and the bullpen should also be improved. Until July 31, there’s always more opportunity to improve the roster. But even until that happens, the Royals should be pretty fun to watch this year.

Pitchers and catchers report to Peoria, Ariz. today to open Spring Training for the San Diego Padres. There are still questions about both groups and there are several ways to get answers according to Lincoln Zdunich of Gaslamp Ball. Will the fourth and fifth starters be players already on the Padres roster or will someone be added via free agency or trade? Does Luis Campusano finally fulfill the expectations that have allowed him to be one of very few minor leaguers under San Diego general manager A.J. Preller to remain in the system and not be traded elsewhere? These questions and others will be addressed in the coming weeks and with camp opening for the Padres we can officially say baseball is back.

Padres News:

• Miguel Andujar might not have been what the Friar Faithful wanted, but he is what we got – for now. Thomas Conroy of Gaslamp Ball says fans should be excited about the signing and adds the Padres are in a better place with Andujar in the lineup than they were last year with the likes of Jason Heyward and Connor Joe.
• AJ Cassavell of Padres.com took a look at the players on the 40-man roster and took a shot at building the roster that Padres fans might see when the team opens the regular season. Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribuneperformed the same exercise as both writers attempted to forecast their best guesses for manager Craig Stammen’s 2026 team.
• Speaking of Stammen, he opens his first season with the Padres as the manager after he got the position following a lengthy search, which included candidates like Ruben Niebla and Albert Pujols. Stammen pitched out of the bullpen for San Diego and has never coached at the big-league level and will now lead his former team from the top step of the dugout. He is already getting support from players like Joe Musgrove, Gavin Sheets, Michael King and Jake Cronenworth, but as Stammen recently stated, he hasn’t had to make a decision yet.

Baseball News:

• The Boston Red Sox and the Milwaukee Brewers reached an agreement on a six-player trade that sent Caleb Durbin, who was the runner-up in 2025 National League Rookie of the Year voting, to Boston. The Red Sox also received two other players and a Competitive Balance Round B pick. The Brewers got left-hander Kyle Harrison and two additional players in return.
• The Philadelphia Phillies are looking to trade outfielder Nick Castellanos and they would reportedly like to do so before the first full-squad workout for the Phillies. Philadelphia also does not expect ace Zack Wheeler to be ready for Opening Day.
• One of the biggest free agent signings of the offseason for the Chicago White Sox was Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami. The organization made a great impression Monday when the nameplate above his locker in their Spring Training facility read, “Munetaki Murakami.”
• The New York Yankees and Athletics agreed to a trade Monday that sent Max Schuemann to New York in exchange for a minor league pitcher.
• The Pittsburgh Pirates made another free agent addition to their roster when they agreed to a one-year contract with Marcell Ozuna.
• Free agent right-hander Nick Martinez agreed to a one-year, $13 million contract with the Tampa Bay Rays.
• Free agent right-hander Chris Paddack and the Miami Marlins agreed to a deal that will allow Paddack to return to the organization that drafted him.
• Free agent right-hander Eric Fedde and the White Sox agreed to a one-year deal.

It’s time for our annual prospect write-ups looking over the Mariners system, voted on by our prospect team here at Lookout Landing (Max Ellingsen, John Trupin, and myself). Last week, we introduced our honorable mentions groups of both pitchers and position players who just fell outside of our top 20. Now we’ll be working through individual profiles of those 20, publishing two a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so check back then for the countdown.

Starting us out, Luis Suisbel lands on our list at #20, primarily through a strong push by me, hence why I am doing this writeup. Suisbel is a polarizing prospect, for those who even consider him a prospect. Part of this is tied to his boom-or-bust offensive profile, and part to his defensive value and whether or not an evaluator believes he can stick at third base. He’s also been a slow advancer through the Mariners system, needing to repeat levels before moving on. Understanding Suisbel’s developmental path, I think, helps explain why his progress up the ladder has been somewhat hesitant, and offers optimism on what he might be able to do in 2026.

Signed out of Venezuela in July 2019, Suisbel is part of the generation of young ballplayers who had their developmental paths interrupted by COVID. Having not been brought to minor-league camp yet in March of 2020, Suisbel remained in Venezuela, lacking access to formal training facilities. “It was a really hard situation for everybody, for the world in general,” he told me this August in an interview conducted at Everett, partially translated by AquaSox bench coach Hecmart Nieves.

“During the COVID season I was just trying to get better so I’d be ready for the next season. I was trying to practice however I could. We had a few balls, some bats, and my father was helping me.“

Suisbel spent his age-18 and age-19 seasons in the DSL complex, having already lost a year-plus of development to the pandemic. While he doesn’t want to blame some of his early struggles on the COVID year, he’s realistic about the challenges posed by the loss of developmental time. “Baseball is hard. We have good and bad moments. With the COVID year, it was a slow process for us.”

As a Venezuelan prospect, Suisbel also faced different challenges than some of his fellow international signees. While not uniform across the island, the Dominican Republic generally offers more robust training academies and infrastructure for the business of baseball. Venezuela has been a trickier climate, both economically and politically. When COVID hit in March of 2020, some of the higher-level Venezuelan prospects—like former Mariners prospect and now Texas Ranger Luis Curvelo—opted to stay at the facility even with no formal training, working out alone in Peoria just to have access to the Mariners resources. That wasn’t an option for Suisbel, who hadn’t even played stateside yet at the time.

“Being in Venezuela with COVID wasn’t ideal because I didn’t have the facilities to improve my skills,” he said. “It took until I traveled to the United States where I felt like I had everything that I needed and I could kind of take off.”

Finally after playing a pair of seasons in the DSL, Suisbel was intent to get stateside and prove himself as a ballplayer.

“I know early in my career, my first years, I didn’t have great numbers, but I know who I am and what my abilities are. When I saw my numbers in 2022 I thought about it and tried to make an adjustment that off-season, and then 2023 was a different story.”

In 2023, Suisbel started swinging for more damage, something that was easier to do thanks to a pro training regimen that helped him build more lean muscle and strength. He still struck out, a lot, but in his first season playing in the ACL and Low-A he hit twice as many home runs in about as many plate appearances as he did during his first two years in the DSL. Suisbel credits that to a change in his mentality after making the move from the DSL to stateside ball.

“Before I was in the Dominican, living in the complex, everyone there is on the same level. But when I flew to America, and I was in the Arizona complex, it was different there. I had different teammates at different levels. I watched my friends, my countrymen like Curvelo who were in Low-A, High-A, move up, and that was my inspiration. I wanted to be right there with them, moving up.”

If seeing his fellow Venezuelan prospects move up lit a fire under Suisbel, it was nothing like the heady excitement of sharing a complex – and sometimes even a locker room – with the big league players. The proximity to big-leaguers and ability to wander over and watch a spring training game made everything feel much closer than they had back in the Mariners Boca Chica complex.

But despite this new vision, it continued to be a slow climb for Suisbel. He spent all of 2024 at Low-A with the Modesto Nuts, where his strikeout issues persisted, if somewhat less egregiously, and spent all of 2025 with Everett, destroying a career-high 23 homers but not showing much in the way of average. Suisbel has shown power, adopting a more uppercut stroke, but that’s caused him to become even more vulnerable to strikeouts, historically an issue in his game.

Still, three true outcomes are easier to tolerate when paired with some solid defense at the hot corner, and while he remains a ways from that, Suisbel has been steadily increasing his share of time at third base after playing most of his time at first earlier in the Mariners system. Part of what’s helped him step into the role is his experience playing winter ball for the Magallanes in the Venezuelan Winter League, where he’s been steadily handed the reins at third. It was enough of a turnaround that Mariners infield coach Perry Hill praised Suisbel among a group of infielders last spring training. Despite having a bigger frame, the 6’1” Suisbel shows good body control, able to center himself even on off-balance throws and remain mechanically clean, something for which Hill, the Mariners’ infield guru, praised Suisbel.

¡Gran out! 🥵

Luis Suisbel atacó la pelota y retiró en primera base a Alí Sánchez para poner el primer out de la parte baja de la sexta entrada. 👏

Cortesia: IVC.

Gracias a @Protex, Protex para la buena salud de tu piel: https://t.co/lhOzBpPuLh

Suscríbete a BeisbolPlay y… pic.twitter.com/BLOlbE8tRE

— BeisbolPlay (@beisbolplaycom) November 27, 2025

His throws aren’t always perfectly on-target but they have plenty of arm, and he has quick feet.

¡Luis Suisbel! Joyita a la defensiva.

Bienvenido de vuelta Wilking Rodríguez 😎#VamosMagallanes#Magallanes#YoSoyMagallanero#LVBP#todosabordopic.twitter.com/cRKTlhjUfb

— Fans del Magallanes (@fansmagallanes) November 29, 2025

Suisbel says he’s built a lot of confidence at third base, calling it his “favorite” position to play now. He credits his newfound confidence with the time he’s spent in extra camps with Perry Hill (apparently referred to as “Bone Camp”) but his own experience having more opportunities to play at the hot corner, especially in the pressure cooker of the winter leagues.

However, that’s to say Suisbel can’t also be a plus first baseman, if necessary:

¿Vieron esta jugada de Luis Suisbel cubriendo 1B en el 9no inning? Te la traemos con la voz de Carlitos Feo @carlitosfeo19#VamosMagallanes#Magallanes#YoSoyMagallanero#LVBP#todosabordopic.twitter.com/JblXyhK65T

— Fans del Magallanes (@fansmagallanes) December 14, 2025

Closer than he’s ever been to the big leagues, even on a delayed-release schedule, Suisbel says he knows what he has to do to take the next step.

“The goals are clear, and now it’s just working towards that every day. Keep attacking my goals every day and making them into a reality.

I can’t control anything, I don’t know when I’ll get to Double-A, or even the big leagues. But my goal for every day is to try to be better every day, try to give 100%, and probably I will play right there where I want to be.”

Major League Baseball and ESPN may have ended their Sunday night marriage, but they remain a couple with the announcement Tuesday that ESPN will be the streaming home for MLB.TV.

“We’re really excited about this partnership," Rosalyn Durant, ESPN executive vice president of programming & acquisitions, tells USA TODAY Sports. “I can tell you that it’s been a journey with them, but we’ve never been closer than we are now, and nor have we ever been more deeply connected than we are now.’’

Current ESPN Unlimited plan subscribers can purchase MLB.TV for $135 for the season, or those without an ESPN unlimited plan can purchase it for $150. They also are providing monthly plan options for $30, which would include a free month of ESPN for new subscribers. For new MLB.TV subscribers, signing up on the ESPN app provides the option of watching MLB.TV on ESPN or MLB platforms.

“It’s all about providing more value to MLB fans, more value to MLB.TV subscribers," Durant said, “providing them with more content and more options."

Said ESPN senior vice president John Lasker: “It basically allows us to bring that wonderful MLB.TV product and marry it with ESPN’s digital products and platforms to create this ultimate win for baseball fans. We’re really excited about what this agreement is allowing baseball and ESPN to do for baseball fans."

While NBC and Peacock will now broadcast the exclusive Sunday night games – as well as the wild-card postseason round – ESPN will still broadcast 30 weeknight games each season. ESPN also will televise the Little League Classic in August and will have rights to games on Memorial Day, and the standalone game two days after the All-Star game, which this year features the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies.

Netflix will also take over the Home Run Derby, and will have exclusive coverage of the New York Yankees-San Francisco Giants season opener on March 25.

(This story was updated to add a video.)

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MLB TV to ESPN, 2026 prices and what to know for subscriptions

We are launching a new daily article here at South Side Sox, more prominently than our items that pop up on The Feed. It falls under the category of White Sox Discussions, which you’ll see in a few weeks will also be our new branding for Game Threads.

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Today, we’re tackling another deeply personal Sox fan dilemma: the player you refuse to even hear in trade talks. Baseball is a business, or so we’re told. Prospects are currency. Windows open and close. But every now and then, logic runs straight into a brick wall labeled hands off. This is the guy you don’t include in mock trades, the name you scroll past in rumors with a scoff, the player you’d rather rebuild around than flip for “value.” You know the arguments — sell high, roster flexibility, timeline alignment — and you adamantly reject all of them.

Some players mean more than surplus WAR or controllable years. They represent belief, direction, or the faint outline of what you hope the next good White Sox team looks like. Trading them might make sense on paper, but emotionally, it feels like waving a white flag. So we’re asking you to tell us which White Sox player should be absolutely off limits, no matter the return? Who’s untouchable, and why is that the line you refuse to cross?

Good morning. Texas Rangers pitchers and catchers are reporting to Surprise, Arizona today. Welcome back, baseball.

With the Rangers officially beginning their quest for glory in 2026, Kennedi Landry takes an early stab at a potential Opening Day roster.

Evan Grant lists a handful of Rangers hurlers who have the ability to gain the most from their time in Surprise this spring.

Jeff Wilson writes that one of the main battles this spring will be a duel between Kumar Rocker and Jacob Latz for the fifth spot in the rotation.

MLB dot com’s David Adler names new Texas addition MacKenzie Gore near the top of the list for arms to watch this spring.

And, Matt Snyder writes that, when it comes to the Rangers, it is the rotation that is the reason to be most excited for the upcoming season. Strange days, no?

Have a nice day!

Prior entries:

• Matt Olson
• Michael Harris II
• Ozzie Albies
• Bryce Elder
• Austin Riley
• Drake Baldwin
• Ronald Acuña Jr.
• Chris Sale
• Spencer Strider
• Jurickson Profar

Back when I was working on IWAG a lot, I noticed a dichotomy of sorts. For position players, IWAG did basically about as well as Steamer and ZiPS, which wasn’t really surprising, given that it was made to try and replicate them. No matter what year I looked at, no system really beat the others, and IWAG was right there with them, generally with the same misses and successes. In unison or individually, the systems basically gave you “the right” idea about what the position players you looked at would do, even when restricting yourself to a small group of names.

For pitchers, though, it was all over the place. Sometimes one system clearly did better than the others, but more to the point, pitchers had breakouts and lost seasons that deviated from their central estimate (or even their distribution, insofar as I could generate or infer it) more often.

Why this dichotomy? My guess — an educated guess based on me tinkering with IWAG to little avail — is that hitters playing through or affected by injury tend to just kind of look like less effective versions of themselves, but pitcher injuries completely upend both availability and effectiveness. On the flip side, I can’t really confirm that a pitcher feeling “really” healthy can set a new performance baseline, so maybe that’s just attributable to pitch design and mechanics cleanup things. Either way, though, pitchers were less predictable.

Which brings me to Grant Holmes, the subject of today’s post. There’s a lot of uncertainty with Holmes! He went down with elbow troubles last year, but didn’t have Tommy John Surgery. Is he going to be healthy enough to contribute? Well there be a rotation spot for him? He’s out of options, so short of additional minor league rehab, there’s not really anywhere to “put him.” He’s already served as a reliever, but that shoved him into the rotation, and maybe he’ll be forcibly shoved out of it by others, who knows. (And then, will other injuries pull him back in.) What’s going on with his HR/FB, which was to his benefit in 2024 but very much to his detriment in 2025? How many innings will he get, and how effective will be, depending on role and considering all of the above? Oy.

I’m not saying every pitcher is Grant Holmes, but when you consider this laundry list of “issues” with thinking about Holmes’ future versus that of your run-of-the-mill potential-starter-quality position player, you get where I was going with the intro paragraphs, hopefully.

Career-to-date, status

A first-round pick all the way back in 2014, Holmes spent seemingly forever in the minors until the Braves gave him a chance in the bigs last year. He pitched incredibly well for about five weeks as a reliever, then got a shot to start and kept up the good work. He transitioned back to a shorter-stint relief role and faltered, but finished the year fairly strong in his final four (and especially his final three) outings, most of which were starts. (He even did something pretty crazy, getting five outs in relief on September 29, before pitching four innings as a starter in a must-win-to-make-playoffs game for the Braves on September 30 — though the Mets were likely taking it very easy by that point.)

All in all, Holmes had an 86/81/87 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) as a swingman in 68 1/3 innings in 2024, which is an insanely good outcome considering he was a minor league journeyman who hadn’t gotten a shot to that point. He still has under two years of service time, so the Braves have him for quite a while… provided they don’t lose him to a roster crunch given his out-of-options status.

Recent performance

Holmes made (and kept his spot in) the obliterated Braves’ 2025 rotation — at least until he was the last guy to go down when his own elbow started barking. He struggled out of the gate with some pretty clunky pitching in his first five starts of the year, but then got it together and had an awesome nine-start stretch that was marred only by the fact that he ran a HR/FB over 20 percent in that span. That good run culminated in a 15-strikeout performance in just 6 1/3 innings against the Rockies, but then he faded again, and he was really struggling by the time his season ended in late July. Specifically, by ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-:

• First five starts: 110/141/123
• Middle nine starts: 87/98/71
• Last seven starts: 95/102/120

Put those things together with a single dominant relief appearance he had early in the year before making a start, and Holmes finished with a 94/108/98 line in 115 innings, good for 0.9 fWAR. If not for the HR/FB, that would’ve been solid #2ish/#3ish starter production. (Alas, the homers were a problem, for him and many of his teammates.)

Forecasting

Forecasting for Holmes (and any other pitcher with an uncertain role) is tough. I theoretically should build in some module in IWAG about how to handle this separately, since it’s not exactly a pure starter or pure reliever profile, but instead, I’m going to shortcut it by assuming that Holmes completes roughly 80 percent of his 2026 innings as a starter. That can artificially inflate his WAR, since it’s technically harder to be a starter than a reliever as far as replacement level goes, so just keep that in mind…

Basically, IWAG’s point estimate is that Holmes is a guy capable of preventing runs at a roughly league-average rate when used as a swingman. If a lot of that usage is as a starter, that’s about 1 WAR for 100 innings, which is not all that exciting but also far better than letting someone bleed value.

As you can see from the projections above, this is not an off-kilter take on Holmes. Steamer has him at 0.8 WAR in 87 innings, mostly relieving. ZiPS is a little lower, but still in the same-range-ish, again, mostly seeing Holmes as a reliever. IWAG’s higher WAR total is, in part, due to the assumption above about how much Holmes will start.

I would describe this curve as “cute.” An actual curve! Neat. Basically, the main question for Holmes is availability and usage. Which, yeah, we kind of figured.

Your turn

Alright, I’ve given you the info. Well, some info. You may have your own info. With that, I ask you:

• Rounded to the nearest fWAR, how much will Grant Holmes produce in 2026?
• How confident are you in your choice? Go with a scale from 1-5, where 3 is “I dunno, reasonably confident,” 5 is certain, and 1 is “I am participating but have no confidence in my choice and don’t want the fact that it will likely be incorrect to affect my place in any theoretical standings all that much.”

As a whole, the 2026 offseason stands in stark contrast to the disappointing winter that preceded a disappointing 2025 season. The Orioles made a major signing in slugger Peter Alonso, made major trades for Taylor Ward and Shane Baz and acquired Andrew Kittredge and Ryan Helsley to bolster the bullpen. However, one feeling remains the same from last offseason: the starting rotation still seems unfinished.

Despite the addition of Baz, the Orioles’ front office has failed to add a pitcher who can push Kyle Bradish and Trevor Rogers for the top spot in the Baltimore rotation. There have been some swings and misses, too. The O’s were reportedly interested in Ranger Suárez before the lefty landed in Boston on a five-year, $130M deal. The Orioles were also seen as potential front-runners in the race for former Astros southpaw Framber Valdez, before he signed with Detroit for $115M over three years.

With other starters like Dylan Cease, Michael King and Tatsuya Imai long off the board, there is one pitcher left who has the potential to truly upgrade the Orioles rotation. Enter former Diamondbacks’ All-Star Zac Gallen. While the right-hander is far from a sure thing, he offers an upside unmatched by the remaining free agents—a potential I believe the Orioles can unlock.

All-Star upside with room for improvement

Unlike Suárez and Valdez, Gallen is not coming off a good 2025 season. Arguably, the whole reason the Diamondbacks let Gallen reach free agency was the disappointment of this past season, when the former Cy Young finalist posted a 4.83 ERA, saw his K/9 drop to a career-low 8.2 and had his H/9 and HR/9 balloon to career-worsts.

Trying to explain Gallen’s sudden dip in form is tricky. His batting average against was largely unchanged from the previous seasons, while his BABIP actually went down. His average exit velocity and hard-hit rate also remained largely unchanged when compared to his previous, more successful seasons. His pitch velocities also remained largely unchanged.

What stands out as a potential cause of his regression was a trend that saw him leave the ball up and over the middle of the plate more. When Gallen was consistently a Top 5 pitcher in the NL in 2022 and 2023, he attacked the zone with his fastball and cutter while using his knuckle curve and changeup to attack below the zone and generate strikeouts. Last year, Gallen saw his fastball catch too much of the plate while also leaving his curveball up more than he’d ever done. These struggles to command the right parts of the zones led to a career-high 30.3% fly ball rate, which in turn saw his home run rate and slugging percentage against rise to career-worsts.

Gallen also seems to be in the midst of a minor identity crisis when it comes to how he uses his five-pitch mix. Declining confidence in his fastball and cutter saw him lean more than ever on his changeup last year, with the off-speed offering ranking as his best pitch for the first time in his career. Whether that increased change up usage can be refined to return to All-Star form is yet to be determined.

However, we’ve seen the Orioles help pitchers like Bradish, Rogers and Zach Eflin tinker with their pitch mix to great effect. If the pitching coaches and analytics can get their hands on Gallen, there’s reason to believe they can unlock the version of him that put up a 3.20 ERA while averaging 9.4 K/9 across 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Best fit for the Orioles’ timeline

As he heads into his age-30 season, Gallen is two years younger than Valdez and at least seven years younger than other rumored Orioles targets Chris Bassitt and Justin Verlander. While the Orioles may be one move in the rotation from truly being able to compete for an AL East title, AL pennant and World Series title in 2026, they’re also not only trying to compete in this upcoming season.

Of the Orioles’ current projected starters, only Zach Eflin is over 30 and only Rogers is scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent after the 2026 season. A consistent frustration throughout Birdland is the front office treating the rotation as a patchwork quilt that needs to be cut up and reimagined every offseason. Signing Gallen to a multi-year deal would give the rotation the foundation it needs to open a window for prolonged contention—something that’s eluded the Orioles since the 70s.

Gallen also carries less injury risk than a lot of the remaining free agent starters. Other reported Orioles target Lucas Giolito missed the first month of last season with a hamstring injury and has two Tommy John surgeries in his medical history. On top of being 43, Verlander has missed time in each of the last three seasons with a variety of leg, shoulder and neck injuries.

Comparatively, Gallen has been the picture of health. The 6’2” right-hander has only had two significant injuries in his career, a hamstring strain that cost him most of June in 2024 and an elbow sprain that shelved him for five weeks in 2021. Given the lengthy medical files of several other Orioles starters, adding a proven workhorse would be a big boon for the Baltimore rotation.