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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.

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.

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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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.

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.

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

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:

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.

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.”