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American League

Angels

• In an article about shortstop replacements for Zach Neto, there was no mention of Luis Rengifo.

Neto remains ahead of schedule after undergoing shoulder surgery in early November but hasn’t been cleared to throw across the diamond or hit live pitching just yet. With Neto out, the Angels will have to turn to an internal option at shortstop to begin the season. Washington said he didn’t know whether Neto would miss a week or a month, but he didn’t expect him to be out too long.

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Heading into the 2025 season, second base will once again be one of the weakest positions in all of fantasy baseball. Truthfully, once we get past even the Top 5, things start to go downhill very quickly. The elite names are all very sure things in terms of returning draft day value, but even players that will be drafted as starters could potentially struggle and fall short of expectations. Eligibility on your site of choice will also play a major factor here. In fact, my #1 option at second base wont even be eligible there on a majority of sites (Bless your heart, Yahoo), making things even more challenging for a majority of players as we will go from five elite options down to four on CBS, Fantrax, NFBC, etc.

It appears that the wisest thing that you can do when planning out your draft is to take one of the elite options and then not have to worry so much about the vast wasteland that is the keystone position. This has been the case for the last several seasons, and it will likely benefit your squad if you take one of the elite talents at the position, as opposed to waiting for the later rounds to secure your target(s).It simply cannot be overstated how barren the position will be in 2025 draft rooms, so go get yourself a Betts, Altuve, Marte, Albies, or Semien.

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Here is today’s chat transcript:
 

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Note: Sorry for the lack of content. I’m just returning from the dead (flu). Here is a Mining the News and I will need to rework my rankings. 

• Two items I’m going to focus less on are StatCast generated fastball velocities and injuries. I’ll report on the fastball velos that come from game observations like with Ian Anderson (ATL) below. If anyone wants to know the StatCast velo readings, I recommend TJ Stats.

• Keith Law posted an article on the top rookie contributors for 2025. Here is a list of his honorable mentions.

No Pirates pitchers here, even though they have several candidates (Bubba Chandler, Thomas Harrington, Michael Burrows), because there’s no room at the inn at the moment after they signed Andrew Heaney. … Jordan Lawlar needs to get healthy himself, and then needs either an injury to another infielder or for Eugenio Suárez to get old in a hurry for him to have a shot at playing time. But if he plays, Lawlar will be productive. … Logan Henderson deserves a shot at the Brewers’ rotation this year, and I think he’ll be more than just a fifth starter, but I don’t see the opportunity coming soon enough for the list. … Ronny Mauricio should get some time in the minors after a full year lost to an ACL injury, and there’s some risk his defense suffers if he’s lost any range or mobility. … Caden Dana and Sam Aldegheri debuted for the Angels last year, but they’re not on this list because they’re too far down the depth chart and neither was remotely ready for the big leagues.

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Fastball! Fastball! Inside-fastball!….changeup. It’s almost soothing, isn’t it? The hitter gets some relief from the loud, scary, onslaught of heat to a nice, easy, soft-dropping cambio. But don’t be fooled, that soft-cuddly change of pace can be absolutely devastating. It can send you right back to the dugout looking, and that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, you just whiffed so hard a little snot came out of your nose, you made a loud grunting noise and possibly pulled a muscle in your lower back. Some pitchers utilize the changeup by only throwing it to opposite-handed hitters when they need it. Some throw it with regularity, lulling hitters to sleep. There’s no perfect way to use it, but a decent changeup in a pitcher’s arsenal can be a difference-maker. Let’s continue the “Know Your Averages” series with a pitch that’s thrown in the zone less often, rarely called for a strike, and chased like a rat terrier going after a….well…let’s just get to it.

Fastballs: Four-seamers | Sinkers | Cutters

Breaking and Offspeed Pitches: Sliders | Changeups | Curveballs | Splitters | Sweepers
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Here is today’s chat transcript
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• The MLB.com writers put together an article on the prospects who might contribute the most in the majors. For example, here is the write-up on Bubba Chandler.

Pirates: Bubba Chandler, RHP (MLB No. 15)
Chandler served notice at the end of last year at Triple-A with a 1.83 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, .183 BAA and 12.4 K/9 rate over seven starts for Indianapolis, and it wouldn’t have been surprising to have seen him up last year to help out had the Pirates hung around the playoff race. It remains to be seen if the club will be willing to bring him north on Opening Day, but the fact that they didn’t get the extra PPI Draft pick from Paul Skenes winning Rookie of the Year because they didn’t bring him up right away and he ended up being awarded a full season of service time anyway will be enough of a lesson learned.

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Toward the end of the 2024 season, I aggregated fastball performance metrics with “Know Your Averages 2024” and wrote about the pitchers near the minimum, the maximum, and the average. For example, Aroldis Chapman’s sinker still rules the SwStr% category (maximum, 17.8%), while Jake Woodford couldn’t buy a swinging strike (minimum, 0.9%) and George Kirby was perfectly average (6.0%). Below, you can find links to those posts. You may find them useful when contextualizing the statistical vomit coming from any baseball podcaster’s repertoire. I needed to do it for myself:

Fastballs: Four-seamers | Sinkers | Cutters

But now we move beyond the fastballs and attempt to digest all those other pitches. There are tremendous differences in the fastball swinging strike rates around and below 10% and the 15%’ers of sliders and splitters. We’ll begin with sliders.

Breaking and Offspeed Pitches: Sliders | Changeups | Curveballs | Splitters | Sweepers
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Here is today’s chat transcript:
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