Newsletter Excerpt, December 17, 2025 -- "Twin Cities Turnover"

 

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After we all stopped paying attention to the Twins, their starters were sixth in innings, 14th in FIP, and 11th in fWAR in September. For all the players they did trade in July, they kept this group intact, and despite near-daily trade rumors, it’s still intact. The Twins have a high floor and have to be considered a contender in the AL Central because of this group.

Pablo Lopez returned from a shoulder strain in June to make three starts in September, then was shut down again with a forearm strain that isn’t expected to affect his 2026. Zebby Matthews had some blow-up outings that wrecked his ERA, but finished the year with an 88/24 K/BB and a 3.79 FIP. He should be the #3 this year. Simeon Woods-Richardson started using a splitter more after a month lost to, if you can believe it, a parasite in his digestive tract. The pitch helped him strike out 36 of the last 104 batters he faced.

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 15, 2025 -- "Isaac Collins and the Royals"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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First, Collins pairs a strong walk rate with weakly-hit batted balls, and that’s a fragile skill set. Collins ranked in the bottom 20% of MLB hitters in barrel rate and expected slugging, and in the bottom half in exit velocity and hard-hit rate. He hit .263 and slugged .411 on batted balls expected to produce .247/.349. Parallel to that, he walked 13% of the time. Of the 34 MLB hitters who walked at least 12% of the time (min. 300 PA), Collins was 25th in SLG and 29th in isolated power. Collins’s swing decisions, as measured by SEAGER, were among the worst in the game -- 255th among 268 hitters with 300 PA, and only a handful of players took more hittable pitches. I, tongue in cheek, comped him to Lance Blankenship, but the more I look into his profile, the more it seems all walks and little else.

My other concern is that Collins was 27 as a rookie, and an old 27. He’ll turn 29 on July 22, 2026. There’s just not much runway for him to get better, and he’s going to an organization with no track record of making hitters better.

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 12, 2025 -- "Flushing Blues"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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It’s not that any of these data points has to be the winning domino, slammed down on the table. Alonso was a lifetime Met and the team’s most popular player. Alonso is a player of limited skills who is unlikely to hold his value over the life of a five-year deal. Stearns’s job is to balance those factors and make a decision. I think it’s fair for Mets fans to be disappointed in the decision without reducing, as I saw in many places, Stearns to a caricature, a robot who doesn’t understand Mets’ fans relationship with Alonso. Even at that, what would have been a reasonable counter to the Orioles’ offer? $32 million a year? $35 million a year? $40 million a year?

How about $65 million?

From where I sit, the single biggest factor in the decision to let Alonso walk isn’t the aging curve or his bad defense or even David Stearns hating Mets fans. It’s the product-investment tax. It’s the rules put in place to, more or less, stop the Mets from signing Pete Alonso.

Newsletter Excerpt, December 11, 2025 -- "Birds and Polar Bears"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)

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In the short term, Alonso will make the Orioles better. They needed the upgrade at first base from what, mostly, Coby Mayo and Ryan Mountcastle provided last year -- .243/.310/.369, with a 92 wRC+ that was 22nd among 30 teams. As Keith Law pointed out, the Orioles really needed help from the right side after hitting .231/.297/.364 against southpaws last year. Alonso is 0.8 DH at this point, awkward around the bag and reminiscent of Frank Thomas as a thrower, but he has been durable. Steamer sees a 130 wRC+ and about three wins, I might take the under on that, but not by much. Alonso bounced back last year by absolutely wrecking the balls he made contact on -- seventh in MLB in expected slugging, 11th in hard-hit rate, the highest barrel rate of his career.

Alonso wasn’t the best hitter on the market, but he was the best right-handed hitter available who didn’t play a position Baltimore has locked down already. The last couple of years of this deal, Alonso’s age-34 and age-35 campaigns, may be rough. Whether the contract pays off for the Orioles will depend on whether Alonso can retain the hard-hit skills he showed last year through 2027 and 2028.

 

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 9, 2025 -- "Even the Losers"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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So it got me to thinking about this dilemma -- how often do good players sign with bad teams? Forget the reasons why, as we know bad teams often keep themselves out of the market for good players. I just want to get a sense of whether superstar free agents are giving the dregs of the league any chance at all.

 

While there are nearly 30 recent examples of players who signed significant deals with teams coming off multiple losing seasons, most of them involve high-revenue teams. The Rangers and Phillies are on the list four times, the Angels three, the Cubs and Mets twice. Last year’s best example was Alex Bregman signing with the Red Sox, hardly a “dreg” of the league. Buying talent in free agency is one way teams that make a lot of money keep themselves from falling to that level. 

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 4, 2025 -- "The Waiting is...Not So Bad, Actually"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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If we reasonably take out the Covid and lockout offseasons, the tally looks like this:

November: 3 (Boras 1)

December: 19 (Boras 8)

January: 1

February: 2 (Boras 1)

March: 1 (Boras 1)

The top free agents pretty much come off the market by New Year’s Day, 22 of 26 over the last five unencumbered player markets. Boras clients follow the general trend -- nine of 11, with Bregman last year and Bryce Harper in 2018 the exceptions.