Last Thursday, Jonathan Schoop signed a one-year deal with the Twins, bringing him back to the American League after a short stint with the Brewers in the National League. After posting the highest wOBA of his career in 2017, his offense sunk this season, as his wOBA dipped below .300, thanks primarily to a dramatic decline in BABIP. Will the move to Minnesota help him rebound? Let’s see what the park factors have to say. Since h played nearly his entire career in Baltimore, amassing just 134 plate appearances in Milwaukee, we’ll keep the comparison between Baltimore and Minnesota.

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Another day, another blockbuster. I literally went “ohhh my God” when I read the news on Rotoworld. Obviously, you know by now that Paul Goldschmidt was traded to the Cardinals. Was he on the block? I had no idea, though admittedly I pay little attention to speculation and rumors. Let’s try to figure out how the switch in home parks might affect his performance.

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It’s been a week of big trades for the Mariners as they gut their club. On Monday, the team traded away starting shortstop Jean Segura after two solid fantasy seasons in Seattle. He joins the Phillies, where he’ll have ample opportunity to try the many famed cheesesteaks the city is known for. Hopefully, all that cheesesteak eatin’ won’t hamper his speed. Let’s dive into the park factors to see how the switch might affect his offense.

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It took a couple of extra days, but the Mets finally pulled off a blockbuster, bringing elite closer Edwin Diaz to New York and welcoming Robinson Cano back, albeit to a different borough. Despite missing 80 games thanks to a PED suspension, he still performed like typical Cano, posting a wOBA nearly identical to his career average. What might the move to Citi Field have in store? Let’s find out what the park factors have to say about it.

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It was easy to mock the Padres signing of Eric Hosmer to an 8-year $144 million deal. It’s a real possibility that literally everyone outside the key decision makers in the Padres front office believed that it was a bad deal. After his first season, the doubters are up 1-0. He posted the second lowest wOBA of his career and lowest since 2012. This after coming off his best career mark, meaning that his wOBA plummeted an exorbitant 0.67 points. Since you’re generally paying a first baseman for his offense, a .309 wOBA simply doesn’t cut it. So what went wrong?

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Oops. I was very wrong about Javier Baez, but man what a year he enjoyed. With a .290/.326/.554 triple slash en route to a .366 wOBA, this was a full breakout for the former top prospect. For his reward, he finished in second place in this year’s National League MVP voting. So let’s discuss what drove the breakout.

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The Braves made an early off-season splash by signing veteran third baseman Josh Donaldson to a one-year contract. He’ll take over at the hot corner and will likely hit cleanup behind a trio of established and rising stars. Now on his third team in one year, let’s dive into the park factors to figure out how the move might affect his hitting performance.

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Alas, we have reached my final recap of the season. Finishing things off, it’s time to review my Pod’s Picks again, but on the starting pitcher side. I limited the list to pitchers that landed in my preseason top 60 and excluded pitchers like Rick Porcello and Julio Teheran that earned their projected value through volume, rather than good ratios. Let’s see how these pitchers performed.

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Every pre-season, I compare my rankings to the RotoGraphs consensus (which excludes my ranking of course) to discover which players I’m apparently more bullish or bearish on than the others. I was strapped for time this year and so only published a bullish piece for hitters, dubbed Pod’s Picks. Let’s see how these hitters ended up performing and ultimately ranking. Remember that the rankings are positional and not overall, which makes this exercise a bit more difficult. I’ll be using the FanGraphs auction calculator to compare values.

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Yesterday, I reviewed my preseason list of starting pitchers composed of guys my Pod Projected ERA was significantly better than Steamer’s forecast. They were my upside guys. Today, I’ll recap how the guys my projections considered as having ERA downside ended up performing. You might notice that this is half the size of the upside list, which likely owes to my projections being more optimistic on ERA on the whole.

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