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Poll: Is Javier Baez Back?

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During the 2021-22 offseason, the Tigers felt they were close enough to competing that it was time to start spending. Then-GM Al Avila signed two major free agents that winter: southpaw Eduardo Rodriguez and shortstop Javier Baez. Those offseason moves did not work out, generally speaking. The Tigers lost 96 games in 2022 as Rodriguez posted below-average numbers in an injury-marred season while Baez put up the worst full season by wRC+ of his career with a figure of 89. Avila was fired that August, giving way to a new regime under president of baseball operations Scott Harris.

Baez, meanwhile, went on to have a pair of disastrous seasons marred by injury and ineffectiveness in 2023 and ’24, hitting a combined .208/.251/.315 (56 wRC+) while being limited to just 216 games by hip and back issues. Those injuries eventually required season-ending hip surgery last year, leaving Baez on the sidelines while his team went on a miracle run last September that led them to Game 5 of the ALDS. Entering 2025, there were heightened expectations for the Tigers following that September surge.

For Baez personally, however, expectations had never been lower. The 32-year-old had multiple All-Star appearances and Gold Glove awards under his belt, but he entered 2025 without a specified role in Detroit despite the three years and $73MM remaining on his contract. Injuries during Spring Training paved the way for Baez to have a clearer role in Detroit, but even on Opening Day he was limited to a utility role where he would mostly face left-handed pitching.

Things changed once the season began, however. Baez took quite well to both center field and third base despite having virtually no experience in the outfield and only sparing appearances at the hot corner. In more recent weeks, his role has moved from a part-time utility role to being the club’s go-to option in center field, where he’s started 16 of the club’s last 20 games. Baez has always been an impressive defender anywhere he plays when healthy, so perhaps the veteran taking to new defensive positions isn’t exactly surprising. More shocking than his glove work this year has been his impressive offensive production: he’s hit a whopping .319/.357/.513 with a wRC+ of 148 across 126 plate appearances.

Even when Baez was at his best, he was a somewhat fickle hitter. While some seasons saw Baez hit extremely well, such as his 2021 (117 wRC+) and 2018 (131 wRC+) campaigns, he was actually below average at the dish in three of his six seasons as an everyday player for the Cubs. Given that unevenness, Baez’s 89 wRC+, two-win performance during his first season with Detroit wasn’t incredibly shocking. And when the injuries began to pile up in 2023 and ’24 and his offensive numbers began to rapidly decline, few expected him to ever return to the above-average form he showed during his days on the north side of Chicago.

Is 126 plate appearances of strong production enough to change that narrative? The underlying numbers offer mixed reviews. Baez’s 24.6% strikeout rate and 4.0% walk rate this year are virtually identical to his 23.9% strikeout rate and 4.3% walk rate across his first three seasons in Detroit. That strikeout rate is actually five points lower than his strikeout rate with the Cubs, but the main red flag in Baez’s performance with the Tigers wasn’t his free-swinging approach. After being a consistent power threat during his days in the National League, where his ISO is an impressive .212, Baez saw his power evaporate over his first three seasons in Detroit as his ISO plummeted to just .126.

Going from 2024 Elly De La Cruz to 2024 Alex Verdugo in the power department is a drastic downturn in performance, and while Baez’s .193 ISO this year hasn’t gotten all the way back to his previous heights, it’s a big step in the right direction. That renewed power might not be entirely sustainable, however. Baez is posting his lowest hard-hit rate since 2017, his 6.8% barrel rate is actually lower than last year, and he’s hitting more grounders (51.6%) than ever before. That suggests his current power output (five homers and eight doubles) may not be entirely sustainable, and his massive .398 BABIP surely isn’t either for a player who routinely posted BABIPs in the .340 to .350 range at his peak.

Perhaps that means Baez’s return to form this year is nothing more than a mirage, but there are some positive signs in his underlying data. Baez is swinging outside the strike zone less than ever before in his career, and his in-zone contact rate is also the best of his career. That improved plate discipline may not be showing up in his walk rate at this point, but better pitch selection could be allowing him to avoid making the worst types of contact; his 3.4% infield fly ball rate is tied with 2019 for the best figure of his career, and his 12.5% soft-contact rate would be 40th best in the sport if he had enough plate appearances to qualify.

Those subtle improvements don’t support his star-level production so far, but his .291 xwOBA is a perfect match for the wOBA he posted for Detroit back in 2022. Perhaps that means offensive production on the low-end of what was expected of him at his peak, in line with the 2016, ’17, and ’22 seasons, could be sustainable for the veteran. Given that Baez was a potential DFA candidate just a few months ago, the Tigers would surely take that sort of solid, two-to-three win production from their $140MM man very happily.

How much do MLBTR readers buy into Baez’s resurgence? Will he be able to continue tapping into his power enough to float above-average offensive numbers despite shaky peripherals? Will he fall back to Earth and be a replacement level player going forward, as he was the past two years? Or will he find a middle ground as an average to slightly-below average hitter who remains valuable thanks to strong defense? Have your say in the poll below:

Poll: Will The Rockies Break The Modern Loss Record?

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To say the Rockies have had a rough start to the season would be a major understatement. The club’s 7-34 record speaks for itself, and their struggles appeared to reach a crescendo late last week, when they lost four games in three days by a combined score of 55-12. That includes a demoralizing 21-0 loss to the Padres on Saturday. Longtime manager Bud Black was fired the next day.

It’s pretty much impossible to argue that Black, a well-respected manager with 18 years of experience between the Rockies and Padres, is at particular fault for the state of the team. The Rockies have issues that run far deeper than the manager’s office. Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts suggested as much in the wake of Black’s firing on Sunday, telling reporters (as relayed by Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register) that he didn’t believe Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel “could change the outcome” of the Rockies’ season.

It’s difficult to argue with that point. The Rockies, after all, lost 101 games last year. They had the National League’s worst offense (82 wRC+), struck out more than any other team, and were middle of the pack in homers despite calling Coors Field home. The pitching was even worse, as Colorado had the league’s worst ERA (5.48), FIP (4.94), and SIERA (4.62). Even when adjusted for the park factors of Coors Field, it was a league-worst showing in virtually every category. Their best pitcher to make even one start last year was Ryan Feltner, whose pedestrian 4.49 ERA was three points better than average (103 ERA+) after adjusting for park factors. The back of the bullpen was no better, as saves leader Tyler Kinley ended the season with a 6.19 ERA.

That was last year’s ball club, and things have only gotten worse. The Rockies essentially stood pat over the winter, with outfielders Mickey Moniak and Nick Martini joining infielders Kyle Farmer, Tyler Freeman, and Thairo Estrada as the club’s primary additions. Estrada has yet to appear in a regular season game for the Rockies. The other four are all below replacement level according to both bWAR and fWAR.

Disastrous as the Rockies season has been, breaking the modern loss record just one year after the 2024 White Sox set a new one with their 41-121 season may seem far-fetched. Even a 101-loss club that didn’t add much over the winter shouldn’t usually be assumed to regress by more than 20 games.

That’s where the injuries come in. Colorado was able to stay in some of its games last year thanks to standout performances from Ezequiel Tovar and Brenton Doyle, who paired league average offense with Gold Glove-caliber defense at shortstop and center field. This year, Tovar played poorly across 16 games before going on the injured list. Doyle has remained healthy, but his 60 wRC+ is deeply disappointing and defensive metrics haven’t been nearly as impressed with his work in the outfield as in previous seasons. Feltner is also currently on the injured list alongside Tovar, and $182MM man Kris Bryant remains out indefinitely amid nearly half a decade’s worth of injury woes that have knocked him so far from his MVP status that he no longer plays every day even when healthy.

Typically, even the combination of a low-quality roster and frustrating injury issues wouldn’t be enough to make a team a contender for worst of all time. But Colorado plays in the NL West, which this year has not only has the reigning World Series champion Dodgers but a trio of strong contenders. The Padres and Giants are both in playoff position. The Diamondbacks, who went to the World Series as recently as 2023, are just a few games behind San Diego and San Francisco.

The other four teams in the Rockies’ division are a combined 98-67, good for a .594 winning percentage that translates to a 96-win pace over a 162-game season. If the Rockies were to double their current win percentage over their final 121 games this year, they’d finish the season with a record of 48-114, just seven games ahead of the White Sox’s 2024 record. Perhaps the only saving grace for the Rockies in this conversation is that the middle of May leaves ample time to turn things and get ahead of the .253 winning percentage from last year’s South Siders.

Where do MLBTR readers fall on this issue? Will the Rockies continue on this pace and wipe the White Sox’s 2024 campaign from the history books just one year after the fact? Or will they be able to turn things around enough to avoid that embarrassing fate? Have your say in the poll below:

The Biggest Trade In Nationals History Looks Better Every Day

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The 2022 Nationals found themselves at a crossroads. Washington had sold at the prior year's trade deadline, shipping Max Scherzer and Trea Turner to the Dodgers, sending Kyle Schwarber to the Red Sox, dealing Daniel Hudson to the Padres and trading Jon Lester to the Cardinals. The organization's steadfast hope had been that even while rebuilding, Juan Soto would be at the heart of those efforts to build back up. Longtime general manager Mike Rizzo acknowledged as much in June, plainly stating on the record that he had no intention of trading Soto.

The Nats offered Soto an extension reportedly worth $440MM in guaranteed money. It would've been the largest deal in MLB history at the time. Only after Soto turned that offer down -- drawing plenty of criticism for doing so -- did Washington begin to seriously explore the possibility of trading him. Moving the game's best young hitter when he had two and a half seasons of club control remaining was no small undertaking. It'd require a seismic haul of young talent -- the type of prospect package that several interested parties simply didn't have the inventory to assemble. Most other clubs simply couldn't stomach the asking price.

A limited market of suitors for Soto emerged. To no one's surprise, the hyper-aggressive Padres entered the bidding and made a strong push. San Diego president of baseball operations A.J. Preller throws his hat in the ring when nearly any star-caliber player is available. From the moment Soto hit the market, the Padres -- then armed with one of baseball's best farm systems -- were among the most logical landing spots.

San Diego indeed wound up reeling in their big fish, and it took the type of trade haul we might not see again for years to come. Soto and Josh Bell went from the Nats to the Padres in exchange for shortstop CJ Abrams, left-hander MacKenzie Gore, outfielder James Wood, outfielder Robert Hassell III and right-hander Jarlin Susana. The Padres also sent first baseman Luke Voit to the Nats as something of a financial counterweight, and in a separate deal they shipped Eric Hosmer -- who'd invoked his no-trade rights to block his inclusion in the Soto trade -- to the Red Sox.

It was a jaw-dropping haul. Abrams, Gore and Hassell had all been top-10 draft picks within the past five seasons. Abrams was a consensus top-10 prospect in the sport at the time. Gore had struggled through some mechanical issues in the upper minors but was only a few years removed from being one of the consensus top pitching prospects in the game. Wood was a 19-year-old who was just a year removed from being a second-round pick, and his stock was firmly on the rise at the time of the swap as he ripped through A-ball. Hassell entered the 2022 season as a top-40 prospect in the game. Susana was only 18 at the time of the trade and was in his first season of pro ball after signing out of his native Dominican Republic; Baseball America likened his upside to that of a high schooler who might go in the first round of the MLB draft.

While not every blockbuster trade pans out -- Washington hasn't gotten a ton of value from that Scherzer/Turner stunner, for instance -- the Soto trade has produced a bumper crop that seems likely to form the nucleus of the next contending Nationals club.

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Poll: In-Season Managerial Changes

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The Pirates fired manager Derek Shelton yesterday, bringing his five-plus year tenure as the organization’s manager to an end. That tenure didn’t exactly have many highlights, as the Pirates never won more than 76 games in a season under his guidance and he leaves the manager’s chair with a 306-440 record overall. For a job as nebulous and difficult to evaluate from the outside as that of a big league manager, there are few options other than viewing a club’s record as a reflection of the manager’s job performance.

All of that is to say that replacing Shelton with Don Kelly in the dugout is not necessarily a shocking or controversial decision for the Pirates. After years of failure including a disappointing 2024 season where they finished with an identical record to 2023 despite adding Paul Skenes and Jared Jones to the rotation, Pittsburgh was surely hoping for a big year in 2025. It’s a long season, but things haven’t worked out that way so far: the club has gone 12-26 so far and is currently riding a seven-game losing streak with just three series wins total this year.

With that being said, it’s difficult to argue that even a Hall of Fame-caliber manager would be able to turn this club around. The Pirates had an extremely quiet offseason that saw them enter the season having spread just $22MM in spending across seven free agents this winter. Perhaps if Skenes was being complemented with above average regulars like Teoscar Hernandez and Gleyber Torres instead of role players Tommy Pham and Adam Frazier, the team would be in a better position and Shelton would still be employed.

Zooming out from Shelton’s specific situation, in-season firings for managers have become increasingly rare over the years. Rather famously, the 2022 season saw four managers get fired with more than a month of baseball left to play. The Rangers fired Chris Woodward in mid-August. The Blue Jays fired Charlie Montoyo in mid-July. The Phillies and Angels both fired their managers (Joe Girardi and Joe Maddon, respectively) by the end of the first week of June. Two of those four teams went on to make the postseason, although it should be noted that Toronto had a winning record and was in playoff position when Montoyo was dismissed.

For every firing like that of Girardi, which occurred when the Phils were just 10-18 before they eventually turned things around and made it to the World Series under Rob Thomson, there’s several that do not change the outcome of the season. Prior to the successes of Thomson and John Schneider in 2022, the last team to make the playoffs after firing their manager was the 2009 Rockies. On the other hand, the Orioles and Royals in 2010 both improved significantly after hiring Ned Yost and Buck Showalter midseason. Though neither of those teams made the playoffs, Showalter led Baltimore to the postseason in his second year as manager while Yost eventually led the Royals to back-to-back World Series appearances in 2014 and ’15. The Mariners’ season turned around last year following Scott Servais’ dismissal in favor of Dan Wilson, and Seattle currently holds the second-best record in the American League.

Perhaps, then, the argument for making an in-season managerial change is that it offers your new manager an opportunity to get comfortable in the role in a season that’s already had its expectations diminished by a poor start under the previous manager. There could certainly be value in that, as well as the opportunity to give an internal candidate a sort of trial run in the dugout before weighing external candidates during the offseason.

On the other hand, one could argue that if a club lacks the confidence in their manager to stick with them for more than a month of poor performance from the team, then that club should have simply made a managerial change the prior offseason so that the team would be led by the organization’s ideal person for the job from the very start of the season.

Where do MLBTR readers fall when it comes to this debate? Are in-season managerial changes a good practice that brings about positive change within the organization and can spur teams to success, or are they largely meaningless moves meant to demonstrate urgency that would have been better demonstrated during the previous offseason? Have your say in the poll below:

Poll: Jacob Wilson’s Hot Start

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When the Athletics began to properly invest in the franchise for the first time in years this offseason, putting together their largest Opening Day payroll since 2021 and highest payroll for luxury tax purposes in franchise history, it came with an understanding that the additions of players like Luis Severino and Jeffrey Springs would not be enough to propel the club to contention in a crowded AL West division without substantial steps forward from young talent already within the organization.

Fortunately for the A’s, that’s exactly what has happened. The club’s first season in West Sacramento is going quite well, with a 20-18 record that places them second in the AL West even after they dropped their latest series to the division-leading Mariners. With the division’s recent top dogs in Houston and Arlington now both struggling to stay above .500, the A’s have been able to fight their way into contention thanks in large part to excellent performances from recent first-round picks Jacob Wilson and Tyler Soderstrom. Wilson, in particular, is an interesting player to consider after he rattled off a 15-game hit streak to open the season. During that time, he hit .368/.368/.544 across 57 plate appearances.

It’s an impressive slash line, to be sure, but his .358 BABIP during that time did not exactly appear sustainable, especially when he had not drawn a single walk during that stretch. Of course, looking at sample sizes of less than 60 plate appearances comes with far too much noise to be all that valuable when discussing balls in play. Wilson took the 150th plate appearance of the season yesterday, providing a slightly larger body of work to examine. Overall, he’s hitting .357/.383/.476 with a wRC+ of 148. He’s walking just 4.0% of the time, and hardly striking out more than that (4.7%). His .361 BABIP is well outside of the typically expected range, and his 2.2% barrel rate shows that he won’t be hitting for much power any time soon; if anything, he’s hitting for more power now (.119 ISO) than expected based on his batted ball results.

All of that suggests that Wilson is extremely unlikely to keep up his current level of production, but that shouldn’t be taken as a suggestion that he’s guaranteed to revert to the 86 wRC+ he posted in 28 games last year. There are two notable hitters who have found great success in the majors in recent years with a similar approach to Wilson at the plate: Luis Arraez and Steven Kwan. Of course, there’s also plenty of players like Nick Madrigal and Billy Hamilton who fail to find success in the majors due to their lack of power. The question remains: has Wilson shown enough similarities to players like Kwan and Arraez that he can be counted on for sustained success as an above-average MLB hitter?

It’s hard to come up with a more straightforward comp for Wilson than Arraez. After all, one need look no further than Arraez’s 2023 season with the Marlins to find a nearly mirror image of what Wilson has done so far in 2025. In 147 games with the Marlins that year, Arraez hit an excellent .354/.393/.469 with a wRC+ of 130. He struck out in 5.5% of his at-bats while walking 5.7% of the time, and his ISO sat at just .115 while he floated a .362 BABIP. Arraez accomplished this feat thanks primarily to his line drive rate, which sat at an MLB-best 28.5%. Hitting the ball on a line that often is a nearly surefire way to rack up a lot of hits. Another key factor is Arraez’s relatively small amount of fly balls; just 28.7% of his batted balls were hit in the air that year, a bottom-ten figure in the sport. That puts obvious limitations on a player’s home run power, but it’s great news for a player’s batting average.

Of course, it should be remembered that Arraez is something of a unicorn. Attempting to replicate his approach leaves a player very prone to year-to-year swings in productivity, as seen by the fact that Arraez himself has stuck with that approach in 2024 and ’25 but seen his wRC+ drop to just 109 in that time due to a 48-point drop in BABIP. Some of that can be explained by a small dip in line drive rate (26.3%), but much of it comes down to the randomness involved with batted balls that aren’t hit especially hard. Perhaps Kwan’s approach, which involves more patience (39.4% career swing rate) than either Arraez (46.0%) or Wilson (51.8%), could be an option for Wilson if replicating Arraez doesn’t work out. But for now, Wilson’s Arraez-esque approach does seem to be working for him. His 23.7% line-drive rate is hardly the best in the league right now, but it’s still a well above-average figure. And his ability to limit soft contact is very similar to Arraez; 16.8% of Wilson’s batted balls have been hit softly this year, as compared to 15.2% of Arraez’s last season.

How do MLBTR readers view Wilson’s future? Will he be able to emerge as a rare unicorn able to get by on pure contact like Arraez, or will he need to make adjustments to be more patient at the plate like Kwan in order to be an above-average hitter? Have your say in the poll below:

The Royals’ Rotation Looks Stronger Than Ever

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The Royals had one of baseball’s best rotations in 2024. Kansas City starters posted a 3.55 earned run average that trailed only the 3.38 mark of Seattle’s star-studded staff. They logged 911 innings, again second-best in MLB behind the Mariners. Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans placed among the top four in AL Cy Young balloting. Michael Wacha and Brady Singer weren’t at that level, but they each topped 160 innings with a mid-3.00s ERA.

Kansas City’s offense wasn’t nearly as productive. Bobby Witt Jr. and Salvador Perez (to a much lesser extent) carried an otherwise well below-average position player group. The Royals tried to balance things with one of the bigger trades of last offseason — swapping Singer to Cincinnati for Jonathan India and former well-regarded outfield prospect Joey Wiemer.

There’s risk any time a team trades a productive starting pitcher. The “no such thing as too much pitching” cliche exists for a reason. Still, the Royals felt comfortable moving on from Singer in large part because of Kris Bubic. He had undergone Tommy John surgery in April 2023. He returned in a relief role for the second half of last season. They decided early in the offseason that Bubic would return to his old rotation job.

Bubic is running with the opportunity. He has worked to a 1.98 ERA over his first seven starts. The 27-year-old southpaw is working nearly six innings per start and has only once surrendered more than three runs. He has rattled off quality starts in four of those appearances, ranking second on the team behind Lugo. Bubic is one of seven pitchers who has topped 30 innings with a sub-2.00 ERA through the season’s first six weeks. He has punched out an above-average 23.7% of opponents against a solid 7.7% walk rate.

While the strikeout rate is more good than exceptional, there’s probably some untapped upside in that regard. Bubic fanned 32.2% of opposing hitters en route to a 2.67 ERA in 30 1/3 innings last year. It wouldn’t be fair to expect him to fully repeat that as a starter — it’s easier to miss bats when you only face a hitter one time and can throw harder in short stints — but his per-pitch metrics are more impressive than this year’s strikeout rate would suggest. His 13.2% swinging strike rate ranks 20th in MLB (among 124 pitchers with 30+ innings). He’s 16th in whiff rate on pitches within the strike zone. While he’s never going to rival Ragans in terms of overpowering hitters, Bubic’s stuff plays.

Scouting reports have raved about his command dating back to his college days at Stanford. He has always had a fantastic changeup that makes him particularly tough on right-handed hitters. His breaking ball works more for weak contact than whiffs, but he’s able to miss bats with his fastball despite pedestrian 92-93 MPH velocity. The pitch plays above its speed at the top of the zone, where it gets good life that makes it difficult to differentiate from the changeup.

Bubic isn’t likely to maintain a sub-2.00 ERA all season, of course. He’s gotten some fortunate results on balls in play that should even out. Even if he ends up with an ERA in the low-3.00s rather than keeping up at a Cy Young pace, he should compensate for whatever production they lost by dealing Singer. Ragans, Lugo and Wacha remain an excellent top three. Michael Lorenzen is a fine if unexciting fifth starter, while Kyle Wright provides an interesting wild card as he finally nears his return from the shoulder surgery that wiped out his ’24 season.

The Royals may find themselves with an even better rotation than the one they rolled out a year ago. They’re leading MLB with 217 1/3 innings. Only the Mets (2.71) have a superior ERA than Kansas City’s 3.02 mark. The Royals are also eighth in strikeout/walk rate differential. Every pitching staff is dependent on health, but Kansas City may end up with baseball’s best rotation if their top four arms continue taking the ball.

They’ll need continued excellence from their starters to compete in a deceptively strong AL Central. The Royals have won five straight to push their record to 22-16. It’s the fourth-best mark in the American League but has them in third place in the division behind Detroit and Cleveland. The Central surprisingly produced three playoff teams a year ago. There’s a real chance it’ll do the same in 2025.

As was the case last season, Kansas City will approach the deadline in need of an offensive boost. They enter play Thursday ranked ahead of only the White Sox, Blue Jays, Rangers, Pirates and Rockies in scoring. India hasn’t provided the jolt they were anticipating at the top of the lineup. He’s hitting .228/.331/.299 with one homer through 148 plate appearances. Perez isn’t producing the same way he did last season, and the outfield has again been terrible. Maikel Garcia is out to a strong start, but he and Witt have been the only real sources of offense.

The Royals need to win low-scoring games all year, but they’re well positioned to do so as long as their pitching staff avoids major injuries. Lucas Erceg, Carlos Estévez and Hunter Harvey provide a better bullpen nucleus than they had at this point last season (though Harvey has been sidelined for a month due to a teres major strain). They’ll again be built primarily behind their rotation, which looks as strong as ever despite the offseason trade.

Image courtesy of Gregory Fisher, Imagn Images.

Poll: When Should The White Sox Trade Luis Robert Jr.?

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The White Sox entered the 2025 season having already moved one of their two most notable trade chips when Garrett Crochet was shipped to Boston in exchange for a four-prospect package led by catcher Kyle Teel. Center fielder Luis Robert Jr. is their other asset of note, and he remains in the organization despite talking to multiple clubs about a trade. The Dodgers, Reds, and Giants are all known to have engaged with Chicago about Robert’s services, with L.A. outfielder James Outman and Cincinnati infield prospect Edwin Arroyo among the names known to have been discussed as part of a return package.

Evidently, the White Sox didn’t receive an offer they found compelling enough to move Robert for, seeing as he still remains with the South Siders. Chicago bet on Robert to have a strong enough first half to increase his value ahead of the trade deadline, but the first few weeks of the season made that decision look like a potential mistake. On April 16, Robert was slashing a brutal .143/.234/.214, striking out at a 27.3% clip and hitting for virtually no power. That slow start prompted MLBTR’s Anthony Franco to take a look at Robert in a piece for front office subscribers, in which he noted that Robert was actually walking more often than ever before in his career but that his swing-and-miss profile still needed to be carried by significantly more power than he had shown to that point in the season.

Robert has answered that call. He clobbered a home run in Boston just three days later, and since then he’s hit an impressive .241/.371/.483 with four homers, two doubles, and an even better 17.1% walk rate. The 27-year-old’s overall slash line remains below average (86 wRC+) on the year, but a season-long 13.2% barrel rate, 14.3% walk rate, and .331 xwOBA all demonstrate that things are clearly moving in the right direction for the White Sox and their mercurial star. That’s not to say everything is going well, however; Robert’s strikeout rate has crept back up above 30% (31.4%), his in-zone contact rate is down relative to the last two years, and he’s making the most soft contact (27.0%) of his career.

The question for the White Sox now becomes how quickly they should look to get a deal done. If Robert’s recent stretch of success proves to be sustainable, it would make plenty of sense for the club to wait until closer to the trade deadline to move him. At that point, his overall season numbers would likely be back above average and teams may be willing to give up more for him. On the other hand, if the organization does not view Robert’s recent power surge and improved patience at the plate as particularly sustainable or they’re concerned about his recent uptick in strikeouts, perhaps there’s an argument to deal him now while he’s performing at an impactful level. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported over the weekend that if Robert’s recent hot streak continues, the club hopes to move him by Memorial Day.

Moving a piece with as much star power as Robert before the calendar even flips to June would be a bold move, but certainly not an unheard of one. After all, it was just last year that the Marlins moved Luis Arraez to the Padres in early May. Few executives in the game are as aggressive as San Diego’s A.J. Preller, but that doesn’t mean a deal is impossible. Perhaps the Giants are intrigued enough by their hot start to be more willing to pay for Robert than they were in the offseason, or recent injuries suffered by Tommy Edman and Teoscar Hernandez convince the Dodgers to swing a deal. The Reds have fallen below .500 after briefly fighting their way into a playoff spot last week in large part because of lackluster production from their outfield, which has an 88 wRC+ tied with Cleveland for the seventh-worst figure in the majors.

All three of those teams with past known interest in Robert have reasons to be more aggressive on him now than they were previously, and that ignores other teams that could have interest. The Rangers recently lost center fielder Leody Taveras on waivers and are looking for ways to snap the team out of an offensive funk, though they’d probably balk at taking on the remaining portion of his $15MM salary. The Mets have found plenty of early season success but can surely do better than Tyrone Taylor as an everyday center fielder. Atlanta and Kansas City are both trying to compete this year but have endured the two least-productive outfield mixes in the sport to this point in the year. If even one of those teams is willing to meet Chicago’s asking price, it’s fair to argue that risking injury or another cold streak isn’t worth the potential reward of a July bidding war. After all, the White Sox saw up close what can happen if you wait too long to trade a player last year, when they got only a token return for Eloy Jimenez, who eventually had his club option declined by the Orioles last winter and ended up in the Rays organization on a minor league deal.

How do MLBTR readers think the White Sox should proceed with Robert? Should they try and make a deal as soon as possible, or wait in hopes that an extended hot streak raises his value? Have your say in the poll below:

Poll: Should The Cubs Call Up Cade Horton?

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When Justin Steele went under the knife for UCL revision surgery last month, ending his 2025 season early, the pressure of carrying the load at the front of the Cubs’ rotation went from being shared between two All-Star southpaws to falling entirely on the shoulders of Shota Imanaga. Imanaga’s first eight starts of the year have generally gone quite well, as he’s pitched to a 2.82 ERA despite his peripherals regressing significantly (4.52 FIP, 4.69 SIERA) relative to last year’s dominant rookie campaign.

Unfortunately, his own season was at least temporarily derailed yesterday when Chicago placed him on the injured list due to a strained left hamstring. Fortunately, the Cubs and Imanaga appear to view the strain as a fairly mild one. Manager Craig Counsell suggested during his postgame interview yesterday (h/t Marquee Sports Network) that the outcome was “pretty good news” and that it was at least possible that Imanaga wouldn’t take much longer than a minimum stay on the shelf to recover. Even so, another starter will be needed to join Jameson Taillon, Matthew Boyd, Ben Brown, and Colin Rea in the rotation.

Perhaps the Cubs need look no further than the hurler at Triple-A who was already on the same schedule as Imanaga prior to the injury. Top pitching prospect Cade Horton, selected in the first round of the 2022 draft, has been nothing short of dominant so far this year. A consensus top-50 prospect in the sport, Horton has made six starts for the club’s Iowa affiliate this year and has posted a sparkling 1.24 ERA in that time with a strikeout rate of 30.6%. It’s the sort of dominance that will naturally lead to fans calling for a big league debut, and those calls have only grown louder in the aftermath of Imanaga’s injury. It’s hard to argue any pitcher currently on the big league roster has a higher ceiling than Horton, who sports a mid-90s fastball that touches 98 and a plus slider as part of a strong four-pitch mix.

For his part, Counsell told reporters (including Maddie Lee of the Chicago Sun Times) that Horton is “an option” to replace Imanaga in the rotation. With that being said, Counsell also noted that veteran right-hander Chris Flexen remains stretched out after recently having his contract selected from Triple-A ahead of a uniform opt-out opportunity in his contract on May 1. Flexen threw 54 pitches in three scoreless relief innings last week and sported a 1.16 ERA with a 22.3% strikeout rate in 23 1/3 innings of work at Triple-A before his contract was selected. A veteran of eight MLB seasons who also briefly pitched for the KBO League’s Doosan Bears, Flexen has generally been a roughly average swingman since he returned from South Korea with a 4.56 ERA (90 ERA+) in 582 2/3 innings of work.

His numbers fell off substantially over the past two years, but it’s hard to deny that he’s looked impressive since joining Chicago on a minor league deal. Still, there’s no question that Horton is the more talented pitcher with much higher upside. Horton seems likely to have a very successful career with the Cubs in the coming years, but there are other considerations that could tip the scale towards Flexen. The Cubs’ bullpen, which ranks bottom ten in the majors with a 4.37 ERA, has already been stretched somewhat by short starts from Rea and Brown this year. Horton would add another hurler who can’t be expected to pitch deep into games to the rotation mix, seeing as he’s maxed out at just 78 pitches this year. Flexen, meanwhile, has maxed out at 95 pitches and pitched into the sixth inning in three of his four full-length starts with Iowa.

Horton’s injury woes over the years, from Tommy John surgery in college to a subscapularis strain that cost him most of his 2024 season, have left the Cubs in a position where they’ll need to carefully manage the talented right-hander’s innings this year. For a team with postseason aspirations, it’s fair to wonder if calling him up in early May is the right call when his electric arm may be needed come October. On the other hand, however, it’s worth noting that Horton did not throw a single pitch after May 29 last year. Health for a pitcher is never guaranteed, so it’s possible the Cubs would be best off simply calling up Horton now while he’s pitching well and figuring out how to manage his innings later by either shutting him down at some point this year or moving him to the bullpen.

How do MLBTR readers think the Cubs should handle the vacancy in their rotation while Imanaga is out of commission? Should they turn to the high-upside prospect knocking on the door of the big leagues while he’s healthy and pitching well, or instead opt to use Flexen in order to manage Horton’s innings and preserve the bullpen? Have your say in the poll below:

Looking Ahead To Club Options: AL East

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MLBTR wraps our division by division look at next year’s team/mutual option class with the AL East. Virtually all of the mutual options will be bought out by one side. Generally, if the team is willing to retain the player at the option price, the player will decline his end in search of a better free agent deal.

Previous installments: player options/opt-outs, NL West, AL West, NL Central, AL Central, NL East

Baltimore Orioles

Baltimore signed Kittredge to a one-year, $10MM free agent deal over the winter. He’s making $9MM this season and has a matching club option or a $1MM buyout for 2026. Kittredge was supposed to be a key setup man in front of Félix Bautista, but he suffered a left knee injury early in camp and required a debridement surgery. He began a rehab stint at High-A Aberdeen on Sunday. While there’s plenty of time for Kittredge to turn things around, it hasn’t been the start to his O’s tenure that he envisioned.

Laureano, who was non-tendered by the Braves, signed a $4MM contract with Baltimore in February. That came with a $6.5MM team option without a buyout, giving the Orioles an extra season of club control. Injuries to Tyler O’Neill and Colton Cowser have pressed him into everyday work, mostly in left field. He hasn’t provided much through his first 24 games. Laureano is hitting .185 with a .237 on-base percentage through 59 plate appearances. He has hit a trio of home runs but struck out 18 times while drawing only four walks. Laureano has generally been a below-average hitter since being suspended following a positive PED test in 2021. He’ll need much better production over the next few months for the Orioles to exercise the option.

Boston Red Sox

Buehler signed a one-year, $21.05MM free agent deal to match the price of the qualifying offer — which the Dodgers had declined to issue when he hit the market. It’s a relatively expensive pillow contract. Buehler was coming off a dismal regular season, in which he’d posted a 5.38 ERA with a career-worst 18.6% strikeout rate over 16 starts. He finished his Dodger tenure on a high note, though, closing out the World Series while pitching to a 3.60 earned run average in 15 playoff innings.

An ace-caliber pitcher early in his career, Buehler hasn’t looked the same since undergoing the second Tommy John surgery of his career in August 2022. His stint in Boston has gotten out to a shaky start. While his 4.28 ERA through 33 2/3 innings is serviceable, he’s striking out just 20.7% of opponents while averaging a personal-low 93.5 MPH on his fastball. Shoulder inflammation sent him to the injured list last week. The mutual option was always an accounting measure designed to push the $3MM buyout to the end of the year rather than disbursing it throughout the season as salary. The team seems likelier to decline its end than the pitcher does.

Giolito signed a two-year, $38.5MM deal during the 2023-24 offseason. He negotiated an opt-out clause after the first season and hoped to retest the market after one strong year. Instead, Giolito’s elbow gave out during Spring Training and he required UCL surgery that cost him the entire season. The veteran righty made the easy decision to stick around for year two.

By exercising his player option, Giolito unlocked a 2026 option for the team. It’s valued at $14MM and comes with a $1.5MM buyout. If Giolito pitches 140 innings this year, it’d convert to a $19MM mutual option (still with the $1.5MM buyout). That’d give him a chance to test free agency if he wants. Giolito has an uphill battle to 140 frames. A hamstring strain cost him the first month of the season. He finally made his team debut last week, working six innings of three-run ball with seven strikeouts in a no-decision against Toronto. The Rangers tagged him for six runs on 10 hits in just 3 2/3 frames tonight.

The Red Sox added Hendriks on a two-year, $10MM deal over the 2023-24 offseason. They knew they wouldn’t get much in year one, as Hendriks had undergone Tommy John surgery the prior August. He attempted to make a late-season return last year but was shut down after a minor flare-up of elbow discomfort. Elbow inflammation shelved him for a couple weeks to begin this season, though he made his team debut in mid-April.

Hendriks allowed two runs on three hits in one inning during his first appearance. He has rattled off five straight scoreless outings since then, albeit with four walks in five frames. His 95 MPH average fastball is solid but below the 97-98 range at which he sat during his elite seasons with the White Sox.

Note: Jarren Duran’s arbitration deal contains a ’26 club option with an $8MM base salary. He’d remain eligible for arbitration if the Sox decline the option.

New York Yankees

  • Tim Hill, LHP ($3MM club option, $350K buyout)

Hill finished last season with the Yankees after being released by the White Sox in June. He’d allowed nearly six earned runs per nine with Chicago but managed a tidy 2.05 ERA over 44 frames for New York. He’s out to a similarly productive start to the ’25 season. Hill has surrendered five runs through 17 1/3 innings (2.60 ERA).

While the soft-tossing lefty has managed just 11 strikeouts, his game has always been built around ground-balls. He’s getting grounders at a massive 81.6% clip thus far. Only nine of the 40 batted balls he’s allowed have been hit into the air. It’s easily the highest grounder rate in the majors. The Yankees value this skillset as much as any team, and the $2.65MM option decision is a drop in the bucket for them.

Loáisiga is still working back from last April’s elbow surgery. The righty has generally been a productive reliever when healthy, but he’s only once managed even 50 MLB innings in a season. He’s on a rehab stint with Low-A Tampa and will need another few weeks before he’s built into MLB game shape. Loáisiga is making $5MM this season. The option has a matching base value and could climb by another $500K if the Yankees exercise it. He’d earn $100K each at reaching 50, 55, 60, 65 and 70 innings in 2026.

Tampa Bay Rays

Fairbanks is in the final guaranteed season of the three-year, $12MM extension that he signed before the 2023 campaign. That includes a $1MM buyout on a club option that comes with a $7MM base value. That’s a bargain for a quality high-leverage reliever, but the deal includes various escalators that could push the option price above $12MM.

The option value would climb by $500K if he gets to 125 combined appearances between 2023-25 and another $1MM apiece at 135, 150 and 165 combined outings. Fairbanks made it into 95 games over the first two seasons. He’d trigger the first $500K escalator at just 30 appearances this year and would max it out if he makes it into 70 games. He can boost the option price by another $2MM based on this year’s games finished total: $500K apiece at 25, 30, 35 and 40.

Fairbanks has never reached 50 appearances in a season because of various injuries, but he’s already at 14 games through this season’s first six weeks. Fairbanks has finished 11 of those contests while working as Kevin Cash’s primary closer. He has recorded 13 strikeouts against six walks while allowing three runs over 13 1/3 innings. The option price should remain solid value, though the escalators might eventually push it to an area where Tampa Bay would rather explore deadline or offseason trades rather than having a reliever projecting as one of the highest-paid players on the roster.

Jansen seemed to be pulling away from the rest of a weak free agent catching class early last season. His production tanked from June onwards, leaving him to sign an $8.5MM pillow contract with Tampa Bay. He’s making an $8MM salary and will collect a $500K buyout on a $12MM mutual option at year’s end. Last summer’s offensive drought has carried into 2025. Jansen has only one home run with a .147/.301/.221 batting line through 83 plate appearances. He remains a very patient hitter, but the Rays would have an easy decision to decline their end of the option if he doesn’t find the double-digit home run power he showed during his best seasons in Toronto.

Lowe has had a rare extended run with a Tampa Bay team that is almost always willing to trade any player. He’s in his eighth big league season and in year seven of the extension he signed in Spring Training 2019. Lowe collected $24MM for what would have been his standard six seasons of team control. The Rays exercised a $10.5MM option for this year and can retain him once more at an $11.5MM price. It’s an $11MM decision after accounting for the $500K buyout.

While injuries have been a recurring issue, Lowe has been one of the better offensive middle infielders in the sport when healthy. His 39-homer season in 2021 is an outlier, but he has tallied 21 longballs in each of the past two seasons. He’s out to a much slower start this year, batting .203/.258/.305 with four homers across 128 plate appearances. The batted ball metrics are still solid, but his career-worst 20.1% swinging strike rate is the fifth-highest among hitters with at least 50 PAs.

This one can still go a few different ways. If Lowe hits like this all season, he’d be bought out. If he finds something like his 2023-24 form (.238/.319/.458), then $11MM is reasonable. It’d keep him as one of Tampa Bay’s highest-paid players, though, so there’s a decent chance he’ll be traded at some point this year. The 16-18 Rays look like fringe Wild Card contenders for a second consecutive year. They could again try to walk the line between buying and selling come deadline season.

The Rays signed Waguespack to a restructured deal early last offseason. He’s making $1.3MM this season and has a $1.5MM club option for next year. That’d escalate to $2MM if he reaches 20 “points” this season. Waguespack would receive one point for each MLB relief appearance and two points per big league start. He has spent the ’25 season to date on optional assignment to Triple-A Durham.

Working as a pure reliever for the Bulls, Waguespack has reeled off 14 innings of two-run ball. He has fanned 15 hitters against three walks while getting ground-balls at a lofty 60% clip. It hasn’t earned him a major league call yet, but he should be up before too much longer if he keeps performing at that level. Waguespack spent the 2022-23 seasons with the Orix Buffaloes in Japan. He made four MLB appearances with Tampa Bay last year but lost a good portion of the season to a rotator cuff injury.

Note: Taylor Walls’ arbitration deal contains a ’26 club option with a $2.45MM base salary. He’d remain eligible for arbitration if the Rays decline the option.

Toronto Blue Jays

  • None

Poll: What Should The Red Sox Do About First Base?

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The Red Sox entered the 2025 season with big expectations after adding Garrett Crochet and Alex Bregman to a team that already had Kristian Campbell, Roman Anthony, and Marcelo Mayer all knocking on the door. So far, things have not gone quite as smoothly as fans in Boston were surely hoping. While the club is just two games back in the AL East, that’s with a lackluster 18-18 record thanks in part to spotty health in the rotation behind Crochet. The injury bug has now moved onto the lineup as Triston Casas has undergone season-ending surgery on his knee.

The 25-year-old was expected to be a major piece of the club’s lineup this year, but his campaign is now over before it ever really got going. Casas’s 112 plate appearances this year were subpar, as he hit just .182/.277/.303 across 29 games before going down with injury. Those struggles were mostly fueled by a low .217 BABIP that was sure to rebound given time, however, and there was little reason to think Casas wouldn’t eventually experience enough positive regression and finish the year in that range of a 125 wRC+, which was his career mark entering 2025. Now, of course, he won’t get that opportunity.

Without Casas locking down first base, the Red Sox don’t have many obvious solutions they can rely on to take up the lion’s share of playing time at the position. Romy Gonzalez was off to a hot start (133 wRC+) to open the year in a part-time role, but his .421 BABIP is completely unsustainable and he’s never hit at an even league average level before in his career. Gonzalez is currently slated to share time with Abraham Toro at first base in the short-term, but the switch-hitter has a similarly lackluster career 81 wRC+ while playing mostly in part-time capacities around the AL West over the years. Depth options at the minor league level are similarly uninspiring. Vaughn Grissom was a top prospect in the not-too-distant past but has yet to establish himself at the big league level. Blake Sabol has at least a little experience at first base, but didn’t hit at all in a brief call-up earlier this year.

None of those options appear likely to provide even average production at first base this year for the Red Sox. That could lead the club to look for external additions, but those options may not be substantially better than their current internal group. After all, teams are typically reluctant to swing significant trades this far from the trade deadline, so external additions would likely be limited to non-roster players in other organizations like Mike Ford, Dominic Smith, or Jon Singleton unless they can convince a player like Anthony Rizzo to resume his playing career at this late point in the calendar. Any of those options could make sense as a lefty complement to Gonzalez, and Smith in particular was used as a stopgap by the Red Sox just last year with some success.

Perhaps they could even pry an ancillary 40-man player away without a clear path to playing time away from another organization. Jake Bauers (Brewers) and former Red Sox Justin Turner (Cubs) are both playing in bench roles in the NL Central. Boston’s former chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom now works for the Cardinals, who have Luken Baker on the roster but without much playing time to offer. Juan Yepez is on the Nationals’ 40-man roster but currently playing the minors. Any of those external options could likely be more productive than the club’s internal group of first basemen, but going outside of the organization would require working out a trade with another club who may not be inclined to sacrifice their own depth, particularly in the case of players already on the 40-man roster, and they’re hardly impact options themselves for a team that sorely needs a boost.

One way to replace Casas with a player who can offer a more impactful ceiling would be to move some of the club’s existing talent to first base. Rafael Devers got bumped off third base by the Bregman signing and is currently the everyday DH in Boston. Perhaps he could be shifted to first base, opening up DH for either Anthony or Mayer to make the jump to the big leagues. Another option would be to get Anthony or Mayer regular reps at first in the coming days ahead of a promotion in the near future. Perhaps even Masataka Yoshida, who has been sidelined this year after shoulder surgery hampered his ability to make throws in the outfield, could handle first base and make a quicker return from the injured list.

Any of those players would be a fairly definitive offensive upgrade over either the club’s internal options already familiar with the position or any realistic external additions at this point in the calendar. The problem with that plan, however, is that none of those players have ever played first base as a professional. While the position is fairly low on the defensive spectrum, asking a defensively-limited player like Devers to pick up an entirely new position on the fly seems risky, as would be the case for asking either Mayer or Anthony to balance learning a new position with the adjustments and struggles that can often come with a young player’s first call-up to the majors.

That’s why, as noted by MassLive’s Chris Cotillo over the weekend, Red Sox brass have indicated that they don’t intend to move anyone to first base on the fly. That, of course, could change. The general expectation when the Red Sox signed Bregman was that he would play second base and Devers would remain at third, and that changed fairly quickly after Spring Training began. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the club finds itself unsatisfied with the options at its disposal and eventually begins having one of the club’s other players taking grounders at first.

How do MLBTR readers expect Boston to address the vacancy at first base? Will they stick with their current group of options, find someone from outside the organization, or move one of their own players to first? Have your say in the poll below:

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