Category: Sports News

Players who are good every year end up getting a giant bag of cash when they hit free agency. Now, that range can be pretty wide, but it’s not uncommon for these players to sign multi-year contracts worth eight figures a year. 

The supply of these players is not very high, so some of those players end up inking deals that bring their total free agent compensation into the nine-figure range. Those that don’t may not be worse so much as they are less reliable.”

When less reliable players hit the free agent market, they are usually one of two types. The first type of player had been good, but most recently was not. The second type of player is the opposite: they had some seasons in the not-so-distant past of mediocre performance, but most recently they were good.

Which one would you rather have? 

We don’t have to look very far to find a perfect example of this. New Royals outfielder Lane Thomas had a recent season in which he hit .268/.315/.468 and accrued 2.9 Wins Above Replacement per Fangraphs. Former Phillies and Twins outfielder Harrison Bader just signed a free agent contract; he had a recent season in which he hit .277/.347/.449 and accrued 3.3 WAR. 

The Royals chose Thomas. That 2.9 WAR season was in 2023; Thomas followed that up with a significantly less successful 2024 and suffered through an injury-filled 2025 season that’s better just to be forgotten. That history secured Thomas a one-year, $6 million deal.

The Giants, on the other hand, chose Bader. From 2022 through 2024, Bader was a right-handed Kyle Isbel who hit a rather abysmal .239/.284/.360. But Bader’s breakthrough season was just last year, when he was effective for Minnesota and Philadelphia alike. That history secured Bader a two-year, $20.5 million deal.

“What have you done for me lately?” is the motto for professional sports in general, and so it makes sense that Bader would be the one who ended up with that contract instead of Thomas. It also helps that Bader’s best year of the last three was better than that of Thomas; to go back to supply and demand, there just aren’t a lot of true center fielders with the offensive talent to put up a wRC+ of 122.

But while Bader is getting paid roughly twice what Thomas will this year, I’m not sure that I’d be willing to wager that Bader will certainly be twice as good. I think Bader will probably be better than Thomas. For what it’s worth, the ZiPS projection system has Bader at 2.1 WAR next year and Thomas at 0.8 WAR, and ZiPS is smarter than me. 

Still, I’m spooked by Bader’s extended run as a light-hitting center fielder. I’m also spooked by Thomas only being able to play 39 games last year, and that he turns 31 this August. I might just be spooked by a lot of things these days. Who knows.

If you’re expecting a grand argument or a definitive opinion on this particular issue, prepare to be disappointed. Most recently, Bader has been the better player, and at a two-year contract, that’s probably a gamble the Royals should have made. And yet, Bader is primed for a fall back to earth, and the Royals could have had to eat $20 million of mostly dead money, which screams “Hunter Renfroe.” Meanwhile, while Thomas has less upside, the Royals aren’t relying on a $6 million guy in the same way they’d be relying on a $10.25 million guy for twice as long.

At any rate, it’ll be interesting to see if the Royals made the right decision here. Wake me up in about five months to see how we’re doing. 

After signing Bo Bichette and trading for Luis Robert Jr., the Mets had one more big move in a week. On January 21, they traded Jett Willliams and Brandon Sproat to the Brewers in exchange for Freddy Peralta and Tobias Myers. While Peralta was the bigger name and centerpiece of the trade, Tobias Myers isn’t just some random throw-in. He’s a major piece worthy of acclaim.

Most Mets fans know Tobias Myers from his time with the Brewers, which the Mets have been on the unfortunate end of at times. But his career has been a long, winding road to his major league success in Milwaukee. Hailing from Winter Haven, Florida, he was drafted out of high school by the Baltimore Orioles in the sixth round of the draft. After a little over a year in the Orioles organization he was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for Tim Beckham.

From 2017 to 2021, Myers climbed through the Rays system, making it to Triple-A before being traded once again to the Cleveland Guardians in exchange for Junior Caminero. He struggled when on the Guardians Triple-A team in 2022, with a 6.00 ERA in 60 innings, with 40 strikeouts and 33 walks. He was designated for assignment and subsequently traded to the Giants, where he made only two appearances, with a 9.00 ERA in just three innings with the Sacramento River Cats. After being designated for assignment a second time, he spent most of the rest of the season on the Chicago White Sox Triple-A team, putting up a 15.92 ERA in 13 innings.

He was released by the White Sox at the end of September 2022, and in November 2022 was signed to a minor league contract by the Brewers. After putting up alright stats across both Double-A and Triple-A in 2023, he had a great stint in Triple-A in 204, putting up a 1.45 ERA in 18.2 innings across five games (three of them starts). He bounced back and forth between the majors and Triple-A at the start of 2024, before being called up to the majors for good on June 5, 2024.

In 27 games with the Brewers in 2024, Myers had a 3.00 ERA across 138 innings. He had 127 strikeouts to 36 walks, with a 8.3 K/9, 138 ERA+, and he accumulated 2.7 bWAR. Of his 27 games with Milwaukee in 2024, 25 of them were starts. He also made a postseason start, starting the third game of the Wild Card series against the Mets. He went five innings with just two hits and five strikeouts, and when he was on the mound it wasn’t looking good for the Mets chances of advancing (and it didn’t look good until fellow future Met Devin Williams took the mound).

2025 was a bit more of a struggle for Myers. He suffered a left oblique strain that caused him to miss most of the first month of the season. After that, he bounced back and forth several times between Triple-A and the major league team. In 22 games with the Brewers, he had a 3.55 ERA across 50.2 innings, with 38 strikeouts to 15 walks, a 6.8 K/9, 117 ERA+, and accumulated only 0.7 bWAR. Of his 22 games, only six were starts, and he finished eight games, though he didn’t get any saves. His Triple-A stats were similar, with a 3.77 ERA in twelve games (all starts), 55 strikeouts and 17 walks in 59.2 innings, with a K/9 of 8.3, matching his 2024 major league average.

Now that he’s with the Mets, there’s some versatility in his role. They lost some bullpen options to injury, including Reed Garrett and Dedniel Núñez. They traded Brandon Sproat in the very trade that got them Tobias Myers, and Tylor Megill is also out for the season, so there’s also some more opportunity for rotation depth. And Myers could find use in the in between, a long reliever in the bullpen with rotational flexibility. And there’s time for him to grow into a more defined role in New York, since he’s under team control until 2031.

Freddy Peralta may have headlined the trade with the Brewers, but in acquiring Tobias Myers they got a very good pitcher with tons of flexibility and control. Even with a few more struggles last season, he’s a good starter and relief option, and should he be more like the pitcher he was in 2024 he could very easily find himself in the Mets rotation at some point in the next five years.

Sixth in the series. Today we look at the Cubs’ veteran shortstop.

Dansby Swanson will turn 32 on February 11. His skills have yet to diminish appreciably but it’s a matter of time until they do. This will be his 11th year in the major leagues, after being drafted first overall by the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2015. The Vanderbilt grad has had a decent career, amassing a lifetime total of 28.4 bWAR (also 28.4 fWAR). His power numbers have trended up since 2021, from roughly 10 homers per season to about 20 — 2021 was his peak at 27. His batting average seems to have suffered from his attempts to put more lift on the ball, as his Cubs numbers cluster around .244, where he had previously averaged around 10 points higher. This could also be due to the fabled ‘Wrigley Field Effect,’ which tends to flatten those numbers, instead of enhancing them, as before climate change’s negative effects.

Swanson is still a superb fielder, and he has four years left on his seven-year deal, which runs through 2029. The Cubs will have to figure out what to do when his decline comes, but he is hopefully good to go this year.

He’s a postseason veteran, though his lifetime .233 average is unimpressive over the ten playoff series he’s been involved in.

Still, he’s seen as a team leader by Cubs players, despite fans’ misgivings, and his contract virtually guarantees that he’ll be in the lineup for a couple of years still. The Cubs could do worse — Swanson’s 2026 slash of .244/.300./.417, with 24 home runs, 2o stolen bases, and 77 RBI isn’t all that bad, and neither is his 4.5 bWAR. It’s just that his paycheck outweighs those numbers.

This series will resume on Monday.

After nearly a decade running the Twins’ baseball operations and a year of managing the business side, the Twins and Derek Falvey announced they agreed to a “mutual parting of ways.” The Twins, Falvey, and owner Tom Pohlad all released statements which can be read below.

It’s hard to overstate how major of a change this is just weeks before Spring Training begins. There was a legitimate argument to move on from Falvey back in November when former manager Rocco Baldelli was fired, a leadership change was underway, and the roster was in a transition period after selling off the entire bullpen at the trade deadline. This agreement also seems like something that has come together very recently, given that Falvey was the lead speaker at Twins Fest less than a week ago.

In the meantime, General Manager Jeremy Zoll will take over the baseball operations side of the Twins while Tom Pohlad himself will run the business side while they search for a new leader for that portion of the organization. It’s unclear if Zoll will run baseball ops permanently or if they will look for a new, outside voice to take over.

I am not a reporter and I have no inside information, but reading between the lines, I think this was truly a mutual arrangement though probably not as nice as the statements would like you to believe. In the last 6 months, Falvey was forced to dump Carlos Correa’s contract for nothing, not given the freedom to reinvest those savings back into the roster, then had a new boss forced on him who appears to be taking a much more active role in the organization Joe Pohlad did. From the ownership end, the Twins have repeatedly underperformed expectations and have seen numerous top prospects fizzle out after holding on to them for too long and ruining their trade value (see the Edouard Julien trade from Wednesday as an example).

Now, two weeks before Spring Training, the Twins are somehow even more directionless than they were before. The move itself isn’t that shocking, but the sequence of events leading here was arguably the oddest possible timing imaginable. Winning fixes everything and the Twins still have a very talented roster (for now). Let’s see what Zoll can do with six weeks to shore up a few major holes.

*In an effort to make the nomination voting easier for everyone, I will comment, “NOMINATIONS”, and you may reply to that with your picks and upvote the player you’d like to see on the next nominee list.

We’ve now officially completes the first five rounds of this year’s Community Prospect List. Rounding out the top-five is right-handed pitcher Braden Nett, who just barely beat out Henry Bolte this round. Nett, who didn’t pitch in college and had just .2 innings under his belt when he signed with the San Diego Padres, was one of the key return pieces the A’s got back in exchange for Mason Miller and JP Sears. Now 23, the right-hander spent all of last year in Double-A and pitched to a solid 3.75 ERA in a career-high 105 innings between the Padres and A’s systems. Injuries have shelved him at times but Nett possesses a blazing fastball and a quality slider, which should at least offer him a floor of a high-leverage relief pitcher. For now the A’s are continuing to develop him as a starter and he could be an option for the A’s as soon as this summer, though he won’t be in big league camp when pitchers and catchers report soon.

The new nominee on the CPL will be two-way player Shotaro Morii. After surprising everyone and joining the Athletics during the international signing period last year Morii said he chose the A’s because they would let him continue developing on both sides of the ball. While he didn’t get to pitch in his first professional season the Athletics are preparing to unleash him against batters this coming year. On the mound the right-hander is just beginning his development but already has a strong fastball that he pairs with above-average breaking pitches. In the batter’s box he’s a left-handed hitter with good plate discipline, and scouts believe he’ll develop more power as a hitter the more he grows and gets older. Do the A’s have the next two-way superstar rising through their system right now?

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.

Click on the link here to vote!

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A’s fans top prospects, ranked:

1. Leo De Vries
2. Jamie Arnold
3. Gage Jump
4. Wei-En Lin
5. Braden Nett

The voting continues! Which Athletics prospect do the fans believe is the sixth-best prospect in our system? Here’s a quick rundown on each nominee— the scouting grades (on a 20-to-80 scale) and scouting reports come from MLB Pipeline.

Nominees on the current ballot:

Henry Bolte, OF

Expected level: Triple-A | Age: 22

2025 stats (AA/AAA): 488 PA, .284/.385/.427, 20 doubles, 6 triples, 9 HR, 56 RBI, 57 BB, 141 K, 44 SB

MLB Pipeline grades and scouting report:

Scouting grades: Hit: 45 | Power: 55 | Run: 65 | Arm: 50 | Field: 50 | Overall: 45

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.

Shotaro Morii, SS/RHP

Expected level: Low-A | Age: 19

2025 stats (Rookie Affiliate): 188 PA, .258/.399/.384, 8 doubles, 1 triple, 3 HR, 27 RBI, 36 BB, 47 K, 4 SB

MLB Pipeline grades and scouting report:

Scouting grades (hitter): Hit: 50 | Power: 50 | Run: 55 | Arm: 60 | Field: 50 | Overall: 40

Scouting grades (pitcher): Fastball: 55 | Slider: 40 | Curveball: 45 | Splitter: 50 | Control: 45 | Overall: 40

At the plate, Morii features a smooth left-handed swing with tremendous balance. His power stands out, as he clubbed 45 home runs as a high schooler. He is considered an advanced hitter with good barrel control. On the mound, his fastball has been clocked as high as 95 mph and sits around 92-93. He also brings a splitter with nasty movement, a true 12-to-6 curveball and a tighter slider with solid bite and depth, though that offering will probably require some fine-tuning. Having only been pitching with regularity for less than two years, Morii’s arm is relatively fresh as he enters the organization.

Morii’s high-octane throwing arm plays well at shortstop, but some evaluators see a possibility of moving to third base as his 6-foot-1 frame fills out. While scouts see Morii’s long-term future in the batter’s box, the A’s plan on giving him every opportunity to succeed as a two-way player, with excitement already building over his impressive physical traits and desire to become one of the next great players out of Japan.

Johenssy Colome, SS

Expected level: Dominican Summer League | Age: 17

2025 stats: None

MLB Pipeline grades and scouting report:

Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 65 | Run: 50 | Arm: 60 | Field: 55 | Overall: 60

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.

Steven Echavarria, RHP

Expected level: Double-A | Age: 20

2025 stats (A+): 4.59 ERA, 25 starts (26 appearances), 104 IP, 88 K, 42 BB, 8 HR, 4.10 FIP

MLB Pipeline grades and scouting report:

Scouting grades: Fastball: 55 | Slider: 55 | Changeup: 50 | Control: 50 | Overall: 45

The A’s believe Echavarria’s stuff played better than the overall numbers might suggest. His fastball reached 98 mph and sat 95-96 with good ride up in the zone. The issue was struggling to command his arsenal when he would fall behind in counts. His mid-80s slider flashes plus, and his upper-80s changeup continues to improve. He also throws a two-seamer in the 92-93 mph range. He clearly dealt with some control issues, but the A’s are not at all sounding the alarm, instead patiently working with the teenager on adjustments.

Echavarria profiles as a starter for the long-term with his 6-foot-1 frame and sound delivery. Previously having shown an ability to consistently throw all of his offerings for strikes prior to the Draft, he will continue to work to rediscover that control in his second season of pro ball.

Edgar Montero, SS

Expected level: Low-A | Age: 19

2025 stats (DSL): 244 PA, .313/.484/.580, 14 doubles, 3 triples, 9 HR, 50 RBI, 60 BB, 54 K, 11 SB

MLB Pipeline grades and scouting report:

Scouting grades: Hit: 50 | Power: 50 | Run: 50 | Arm: 50 | Field: 50 | Overall: 45

A switch-hitting shortstop, Montero has shown the ability to impact the ball from both sides of the plate, with his natural right-handed swing more direct to the ball, though his left-handed swing is more picturesque and he obviously gets more plate appearances from that side. He has the chance to hit for average and power, with a solid approach that has allowed him to walk more than he strikes out for much of the summer.

Last year, Montero was slower and less athletic, but attention to conditioning and nutrition has helped him get leaner and stronger. An average runner, Montero has the instincts and actions to stick at shortstop for a long time, with a solid and accurate arm. If his body gets bigger as he matures — he played all of 2025 at age 18 — he could move to the hot corner, but the A’s don’t see that in his future. What they are hoping for is that he comes to instructs this year and stays in the United States as one of the better prospects to come out of their Dominican academy in some time.

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Programming Note: Each CPL vote will run for around 48 hours, so don’t delay making your selections!

The Minnesota Twins and Derek Falvey, the president of baseball operations and business operations for the team, have “mutually agreed to part ways,” the team has announced this morning. General manager Jeremy Zoll will take over the baseball operations role for now, with the team saying they will immediately begin searching for a replacement for Falvey. Tom Pohlad will “temporarily” handle the business operations, presumably until a permanent

This is something of a bombshell, given the circumstances and the timing. Falvey, 42, was hired as the chief baseball office for the Twins in October of 2016, having spent the previous eight years in Cleveland’s front office. He hired then-Rangers assistant general manager Thad Levine to be the team’s general manager, a position Levine held until the end of the 2024 season.

Falvey’s first year with the club, the Twins went from winning 59 games in 2016 to 85 games in 2017, earning a Wild Card berth. After a losing 2018 season, the Twins won 101 games in 2019 and went 36-24 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, although they were swept in the first round both years. The Twins won the A.L. Central with 87 wins in 2023, and sweeping the Jays in the Wild Card round before losing to the Astros in the ALDS, thus missing out on the opportunity to get knocked out by the Rangers in the ALCS.

After going 82-80 in 2024, the Twins got off to a poor start in 2025, and ultimately traded off almost half of their team at the deadline, with the team going into full rebuild mode, ultimately finishing at 70-92. They also fired manager Rocco Baldelli, who had been the team’s manager since 2019, at season’s end.

The Twins have been fairly successful during Falvey’s run atop the organization, especially given the fact that the Twins have pretty consistently maintained one of the lower payrolls in MLB. That said, it wouldn’t have been shocking if he and the team had parted ways at the end of the 2025 season.

The fact that this is happening just a couple of weeks before pitchers and catchers report to spring training, however, is extremely unusual. The top baseball guy doesn’t generally leave at this point in the offseason, unless it is in the aftermath of a suspension for running a crooked operation.

The quotes from Pohlad and Falvey in the announcement linked above suggest that there wasn’t necessarily an alignment between what the Twins were going to want to do going forward and how Falvey wanted to run things.

On January 21, 2026, Jett Williams was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers. This list, and Williams’ place on it, was compiled back in late-November. For continuity’s sake, I decided upon including Williams’ profile, but for all intents and purposes, every player on our list below Williams can be considered to have moved up a spot on it.

Jett Williams has always been one of the smaller people on the field, leading to many doubting him, but from a young age, he turned the questions and skepticism into fuel and a chip on his shoulder. In high school, he made the Rockwall-Heath High School varsity baseball team as a freshman and helped lead them to state playoffs in virtually every season that he played for the Hawks. In his junior and senior years, arguably the most important for a high school player, he hit .347 with 5 home runs and 15 stolen bases and .411 with 7 home runs and 24 stolen bases, respectively.

The hard work that he put in paid off, and as the 2022 MLB Draft approached, evaluators considered Williams one of the best talents available in the draft class. With their second first-round pick, the 14th overall, the Mets selected Williams. He signed roughly a week later, forgoing his commitment to Mississippi State University in exchange for a $3,900,000 bonus, a few hundred thousand dollars less than the MLB-assigned slot value of $4,241,600 for the 14th overall pick. The 18-year-old was assigned to the FCL Mets to begin his professional career and appeared in 10 games for them in the month of August, hitting .250/.366/.438 with 1 home run, 6 stolen bases in as many attempts, and drawing 4 walks to 6 strikeouts. That winter, Amazin’ Avenue ranked Jett Williams the Mets’ 5th best prospect.

Williams began the 2023 season with the Single-A St. Lucie Mets and played there until the end of July, when he was promoted to the Brooklyn Cyclones. In the 79 games he played with them, he hit a respectable .249/.422/.410 with 12 doubles, 6 triples, 6 home runs, 32 stolen bases in 38 attempts, and drew 69 walks to 76 strikeouts. While many hitters struggle when sent to Brooklyn, it was quite the opposite for Williams. In the 36 games he played for the Cyclones, he hit .299/.451/.567 with 9 doubles, 2 triples, 7 home runs, 12 stolen bases in 13 attempts, and drew 33 walks to 32 strikeouts. In mid-September, the 19-year-old was promoted to the Double-A Binghamton Rumble Ponies to finish the year and went 5-22 with them, hitting 1 double, stealing 1 base, and walking twice to 10 strikeouts. All in all, Jett Williams appeared in 121 games between Single-A, High-A, and Double-A in his first full season as a professional and hit a combined .263/.425/.451 with 22 doubles, 8 triples, 13 home runs, 45 stolen bases in 52 attempts, and 104 walks to 118 strikeouts. His 104 walks led the system and in doing so, the 19-year-old became the first teenager to lead the Mets minor league system in walks since David Wright did so in 2002.

On the heels of his excellent performance, Williams was considered the Mets’ top prospect by Amazin’ Avenue and one of the best prospects in all of baseball by national evaluators. Expectations were high for him coming into the 2024 season, but Williams did not live up to them unfortunately. Remaining in Binghamton to begin the year, he got off to sluggish start in April due to wrist discomfort and eventually underwent a right wrist triangular fibrocartilage complex debridement procedure. He missed four months of the season, hitting the injured list in late April and finally returning in late August. Williams struggled in his return, but there was light at the end of the tunnel, as a late-season promotion to Triple-A Syracuse saw him go 8-30 with 4 doubles and 8 walks to 7 strikeouts. In total, Williams only appeared in 28 games on the season, 22 in Binghamton and 6 in Syracuse.

After the season concluded, the Mets sent Williams to the Arizona Fall League. Appearing in 22 games for the Scottsdale Scorpions, he hit .225/.376/.388 in 80 at-bats, with 2 doubles, 3 triples, 3 homers, 7 stolen bases in 8 attempts, and 17 walks to 30 strikeouts. Ending his 2024 season on as ignominious a note as possible, Williams injured his right ankle in the first inning of the Scottsdale-Salt River Play-In Semifinal, crashing against the left-center field wall attempting to corral a Tyler Callihan fly ball that would ricochet for a double. Fortunately, the injury was just a sprain, and after a few weeks, Williams was healthy and ready to continue his off-season training.

Ranked the Mets’ second-best prospect, most expected a bounce back season for Williams, who reported to spring training fully healthy. Assigned to Binghamton to begin the year, the young infielder hit .290/.355/.507 in his first month of play, highlighting that his return to form was indeed happening. In total, he hit .281/.390/.477 in 96 games with the Rumble Ponies, hitting 29 doubles, 5 triples, and 10 home runs, stealing 32 bases in 39 attempts, and drawing 62 walks to 96 strikeouts.  He was promoted to Syracuse in mid-August and closed out the season with them in the International League. In 34 games, the 21-year-old Williams hit .209/.285/.433 with 5 doubles, 2 triples, 7 home runs, 2 stolen bases in 2 attempts, and drew 14 walks to 35 strikeouts. In total, he hit .261/.363/.465 in 130 combined games with both teams, recording 34 doubles, 7 triples, 17 home runs, stealing 34 bases in 43 attempts, and drawing 76 walks to 131 strikeouts.

The 5’7” infielder stands square at the plate, holding his hands high and his angling his bat at 1:30. He swings with a big leg kick and a short-levered swing that is quick to the ball. While he may be on the shorter side, on the cusp for what is considered viable in professional baseball, Williams is athletic and has strong arms and a thick lower body.

Thanks to his natural strength and plus bat speed stemming from his all-or-nothing swing, Williams makes a lot of hard contact. In limited at-bats in Syracuse, where statcast data is publicly available, Williams had a 104.5 MPH 90th percentile exit velocity and a high-water mark of 108.4 MPH. While such exit velocities are not poor by any means, they are not necessarily indicative of 20+ home run potential, like Williams has. As has been the case for his entire baseball career, the infielder makes the most of what he has, and in this case, he makes the most of balls that he puts into play. The swing has drawbacks, however. With its steep plane, Williams has shown difficulty adjusting his bat path and catching up to high heat, which may result in low batting averages and on-base percentages in the future.

In 2025, he pulled the ball at a 45% rate, went back up the middle at a 23.2% rate, and went to the opposite field at a 31.8% rate while posting a 25.6% line drive rate, 31.8% ground ball rate, and 42.5% fly ball rate, with a 14.9% pulled fly ball rate. While this has resulted in a 33.8% infield fly ball rate and perhaps less contact that he could be making, it also resulted in a slightly above-average 11.3% HR/FB rate. Coming into the season, Williams had a bit of a reputation of being a little passive at the plate, but he increased his Swing% to 41.9% as compared to his 2023 and 2024 rates, while still remaining a bit lower than the 2025 MLB average. His Contact% and SwingStr% remained static and within MLB norms, meaning that while the infielder was swinging a bit more in 2025, but he was still being selective and not hacking wildly at everything he saw.

On top of his impact hit and power-tools, Williams possesses plus speed. He stole 34 bases in 43 total attempts in 2025, a 77% success rate, and has an 83% success rate over the course of his professional career. He pushes the envelope on the basepaths, legging out doubles, taking extra bases, and challenging outfielders, and is pesky and distracting towards pitchers.

Drafted as a shortstop, Williams has spent the majority of his professional playing time there, but he has also seen considerable time at second base as well as in centerfield. At shortstop, his defense is a bit fringy. He is quick-twitch athletic and has quick reactions, a dynamic first step, fluid actions, soft hands and a smooth glove, and above-average range, but an arm that is, at best, average in strength and accuracy brings down his overall defensive profile at the position. His arm strength and accuracy issues get negated with a shift to second base, but Williams has less experience playing there, a less-valuable defensive position with different footwork.

In the outfield, his plus speed and athleticism are boons, giving him the ability to cover a lot of ground with afterburners to close in on balls. His reads of the ball off the bat and the routes that he takes to the ball have improved since he was drafted and began playing in the outfield and should continue improving as he spends more time at the position.