FanGraphs Baseball

Welcome to day three of our pitching superlatives series. In part one we talked about velocity, and in part 2 we talked about movement. Today we’re talking about location, and I have to tell you, location is a weird topic in today’s game. First, the strike zone shrank. The strike zone has actually been shrinking for a while now, but due to the implementation of the ABS challenge system, it also shrank more quickly just this year.

Second, over the past several years, pitchers have gotten so good that teams spend a lot of time trying to convince them to just trust their stuff and rip it right down the middle. You might recall that the Angels went so far as to have their pitchers stand in as batters against the Traject Ark’s version of their own stuff, just to remind them of how nasty they were. In some ways, you could argue that command has never mattered less than it does right now. That doesn’t mean that location doesn’t matter at all. I’m sure you’ve seen it before, but here’s the diagram that shows Statcast’s Attack Zones.

In 2026, if you threw a pitch right down the middle (in Zone 5, you were 69% more likely to give up a home run than if you threw it elsewhere in the strike zone. That’s why 23% of home runs were hit on middle-middle pitches even though just 7% of pitches were middle-middle. Location may matter less, but people will still tell you that home runs are thrown, not hit, and they’re right. Read the rest of this entry »

First and foremost, I’ll remember the 2026 postseason as a triumph for the Milwaukee Brewers. They romped through October with both the best offense and the best pitching staff in the field, outscoring their opponents by a whopping two runs per game. The best team in baseball did best-team-in-baseball things, in other words. But I’ll also remember the 2026 postseason for its stifling lack of offense, and for the pitchers who caused that brownout. The playoffs are always a low-scoring environment, with every baserunner and out contested. But this year, hitters were particularly helpless. Teams scored just 3.56 runs per game in postseason play, a strikingly tiny number.

And this wasn’t the result of one or two teams running out of gas in October. If you use the regular season’s .314 overall wOBA as a barometer, only the Brewers managed average or better offense in the playoffs:

I threw a smorgasbord of offensive statistics in that table so that you could see all the different ways that teams struggled. The obvious takeaway? The postseason hardly looked like the regular season:

It wasn’t due to a surge in strikeouts, or a decline in walks. Rather, it was that when offenses put the ball in play, they got very little for it. Balls rarely landed for hits, and hitters’ power vanished. The combination of great pitching and great defense was just too much for the put-it-in-play ethos of many of this fall’s teams. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to part two of our pitching superlatives series. I’ll be here all week covering the pitches that stick out the most. Yesterday, I discussed the pitches that stood out the most due to their velocity. Today, we’re talking about movement, but before we get into it, I need to issue a correction.

Yesterday, I credited James McCann with throwing the slowest individual pitch of 2026, but it has been pointed out to me that McCann only threw the slowest tracked pitch of 2026. Twenty-one times, a position player threw a pitch so funky that Statcast threw up its electronic shoulders and assigned it a velocity of “–”. Often, it did so because the pitch was so slow that the cameras didn’t know what to make of it, or perhaps (just a theory) because the slowness of the pitch forced the pitcher to throw such a high-arcing rainbow that it was out of the path where Statcast expects to find pitches. I mean, what are you supposed to do with this pitch?

Either way, it’s possible that McCann’s pitch was, at worst, the 22nd-slowest pitch of the season. However, McCann still threw a plurality of those 21 untracked position player pitches, which means that he’s still most likely the person who threw the slowest pitch of the entire season. It just might not be the one we highlighted yesterday. Could it be this preposterous offering? We’ll never know. Read the rest of this entry »

Induction Day in Cooperstown next summer could be a Giant affair, or at least have a very Bay Area-oriented theme. On Monday, the Hall of Fame announced its slate of eight candidates for the 2027 Contemporary Baseball Managers/Umpires/Executives ballot, dedicated to non-player candidates who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present. The group is headlined by a pair of first-time eligible managers with ties to San Francisco, namely Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy, plus the general manager who oversaw their most successful seasons in the Giants dugout, Brian Sabean. Also on the ballot is another Bay Area general manager, Sandy Alderson, who built an A’s team that won three straight pennants and a World Series. On December 6 we’ll find out if any of them will be inducted next July 25, very possibly alongside former Giants superstar (and current president of baseball operations) Buster Posey, the top newcomer on the BBWAA ballot, which will be released on November 16.

There’s plenty more to digest regarding this ballot, which also includes two other World Series-winning managers in Joe Maddon and Lou Piniella, maverick owner Ted Turner, and pioneering executive Bill White. Piniella and White are the top two returnees from the 2024 slate that elected Jim Leyland. Piniella has missed by one vote in each of his past two appearances counting the 2019 Today’s Game Era Committee ballot from the previous four-committee format. White (who also played for the Giants, though it’s each candidate’s post-playing career that’s the focus here) missed by two votes on the 2024 ballot but was the recipient of this year’s Buck O’Neil Award, given once every three years to “an individual whose extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball’s positive impact on society, broadened the game’s appeal, and whose character, integrity and dignity are comparable to the qualities exhibited by O’Neil.” Of the eight candidates, Turner is the only one who is deceased; he died on May 6 at age 87.

I’ll have more to say about each of those candidates below and in the coming weeks, but first, some nuts and bolts. The eight candidates will be voted on by a 16-member committee of Hall of Famers, executives, and writer/historians that was appointed by the Hall’s board of directors. They will meet and discuss the candidates in person in San Diego on December 6, where the Winter Meetings would be held if not for the impending lockout by the owners. Each voter can include up to three candidates on his or her ballot (down from four in the previous 10-candidate format, which ran through the aforementioned 2022 ballots). Election to the Hall requires 75%, meaning votes from 12 of the 16 panelists. The results of the voting will be announced live on MLB Network’s MLB Tonight at 8:00 p.m. ET, and any candidate elected will be inducted into the Hall next July 25 in Cooperstown along with anyone elected from the upcoming BBWAA ballot. Read the rest of this entry »

Tai Peete has changed for the better since being acquired by the Cardinals from the Mariners as part of a three-team trade back in February. At least from a statistical standpoint. In 2025, the now 21-year-old outfielder left the yard 19 times for Seattle’s High-A affiliate, but he also fanned at a 30.6% clip while batting a lackluster .217 with a 79 wRC+. Those results were reflected in our prospect rankings. Peete fell out of our Top 100 entering the 2026 season, with his FV dropping two grades from a 50 to a far-less-bullish 40+.

This season was a different story. Acclimating well to his new environs, Peete put up a 126 wRC+ and a .296/.359/.549 slash line across 300 plate appearances between High-A Peoria and Double-A Springfield. (He also had 10 hitless at-bats rehabbing in the Florida Complex League.) Moreover, he lowered his strikeout rate to 26.9%. While not exactly Luis Arraez territory, the improved contact rate was a meaningful step in the right direction. As Eric Longenhagen wrote in last week’s Arizona Fall League Midseason Check-In, Peete’s “strikeouts have stabilized after they looked like they might be his undoing early in his career.”

The lefty swinger has continued doing damage since arriving in the desert. Over 72 plate appearances with the Peoria Javelinas, Peete has posted a .355/.431/.661 slash line, with 11 of his 22 hits going for extra bases. Taking ample advantage of his 60-grade speed, Peete has legged out four three-baggers and swiped 14 bags.

An unpublished observation from Eric merits mention. When I asked our lead prospect evaluator for an update a few days ago, he told me that Peete is “kind of in the Garrett Mitchell mold physically and swing-wise. He has posted some plus-plus run times this fall. Really seems fun to be around, too. Probably in that 45+ FV area for us now.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Astros’ new GM hire and Bryce Harper’s comments about the likelihood of a lost season and his preference for the offseason over the season (22:22). Then FanGraphs’ Ben Clemens joins to break down the MLB free agent class: the weak crop of domestic players, the top NPB imports, the outlook for Tarik Skubal, the players who could have been available if they hadn’t signed extensions, the lockout looming over the market, and much more.

Audio intro: The Spaghettis, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial: Alex Glossman and Ali Breneman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: The Shirey Brothers, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Clase-Ortiz trial story
Link to MLBTR on Flores
Link to Ben on ex-player GMs
Link to MLBTR on Brown
Link to Ng story
Link to “euphemism treadmill”
Link to Harper comments
Link to EW guests spreadsheet
Link to top 50 FA ranking
Link to Ben L. on free agency
Link to MLBTR on Reyes
Link to NPB offensive leaderboard
Link to posting details story
Link to MrSugarPenis story
Link to Oda story
Link to Nogami story
Link to MLBTR on qualifying offers

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Awhile back I was staring at the pitch movement chart of one player or another, and I got to thinking about cutters and gyro sliders. Often, cutters and gyro sliders end up right in the middle of the those charts. The cutter is designed to split the difference between a breaking ball and a four-seam fastball, and as its name indicates, the gyro slider leaves the hand with gyroscopic spin, which stabilizes the flight of the ball. I started wondering who throws the truest pitch in baseball, the pitch that moves the absolute least. I’m going to write about that later this week. It’s not today’s topic, though, because once I started down that path, I found that it kept branching.

I started wondering about who throws the sweepiest sweepers and the fastest fastballs and the sinkiest sinkers. Which pitch hits the edges of the zone most often? Which pitch fools hitters into chasing and which pitch fools them into taking called strikes? Which pitch tricks batters into challenging those called strikes? Which pitches miss bats the most and by the furthest? Which pitches get pulled, or skied, or beaten into the ground the most? We’re looking for the most extreme pitches in baseball, so now that the 2026 season is over, we’re not leaving any of the path with leaves no step had trodden black. We’re going to spend the week handing out some superlatives. This is part one, and it’s going to be focused mainly on velocity. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Despair! Another baseball season is in the books, which means many months of inactivity before the games matter again. But rejoice! Because as we do every year, FanGraphs is releasing our ranking of the top 50 free agents available this winter. In the past, Dave Cameron, Kiley McDaniel, and Craig Edwards helmed this exercise; this is my sixth year in the driver’s seat. As usual, my real superpower here was collaboration; the entire FanGraphs staff contributed at every step in the process.

Below, I’ve provided contract estimates and rankings of the offseason’s top free agents, along with market-focused commentary for the top 25 players. A collection of FanGraphs writers – Davy Andrews (DA), Michael Baumann (MB), Brendan Gawlowski (BG), Jay Jaffe (JJ), David Laurila (DL), Eric Longenhagen (EL), Matt Martell (MM), Kiri Oler (KO), Matthew Roberson (MR), and Dan Szymborski (DS) – have supplied player-focused breakdowns for the entire top 50, designed to provide some context for each player at this point in their career. The two blurbs might overlap in places – player-focused breakdowns inevitably involve the market, and market-focused breakdowns inevitably involve the player – but combined, they’re designed give a fuller picture of how each player’s free agency might go and how the seasons to come might unfold. Huge thanks go to Meg Rowley for acting as a sounding board throughout the process, Eric and Brendan for their extensive contributions to my evaluation of the international players, Jason Martinez and Jon Becker for their market expertise, Dan for his early help providing projections, and Sean Dolinar for his technical assistance.

The players are ranked in the order in which I prefer them. That’s often the same as ranking them in the order of the value of the contracts I’m projecting, but not always. In some cases, I prefer a player I expect will get less money over one who stands to make more. I’ll generally make note of that in the accompanying commentary, but just to reiterate, this list isn’t exclusively sorted by descending guaranteed dollars. Read the rest of this entry »