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

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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.

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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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. 

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 2, 2025 -- "Post-Post-Post-Stathead Era"

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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What matters now isn’t your baseball-card stats, your Baseball Abstract stats, or your Baseball Prospectus stats. We have come full circle to a place where your stats don’t really matter at all. Your skills do. Though instead of having those skills observed and evaluated by humans, with all their flaws and biases, the work is done by the cameras, who see everything on every pitch and spit out exactly what the player did, independent of what the batter, umpire, or fielder did next.

It makes sense, of course. A pitcher doesn’t really go 11-7 or post a 3.78 ERA or 2.99 FIP. A pitcher throws pitches. We can now evaluate how well he throws those pitches and project how well he’s likely to continue doing that. That’s why Dylan Cease and Devin Williams got paid.

 

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, December 1, 2025 -- "One Last Real Hot Stove"

 

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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I don’t want to see a cap system in baseball because I believe open competition for talent produces the best competition for championships. I also don’t want to see a cap system in baseball because it would make analyzing the off-field game a miserable slog. 

So I am approaching these next nine weeks with anticipation, in the hopes that most teams will go into the freest talent market in domestic sports and try to get their share of players from it. I am hoping for more deals like the Mets and Rangers just pulled off, matching needs in the hopes that both teams can get better. Give me creative contracts, give me aggressive one-year pillow offers, give me some of the league’s bottom feeders surprising us by doing more than checking for their next revenue-sharing EFT to hit. Give me trades that make me write my hands off.

 

Newsletter Excerpt, November 26, 2025 -- ''Two Trades"

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.

Holiday discount! You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $59.95 (25% off!) using your PayPal account or major credit card. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)

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Cardinals trade RHSP Sonny Gray and a reported $20 million to Red Sox for RHSP Richard Fitts and LHSP Brandon Clarke

The catch here is that there’s a 25% chance the Cardinals aren’t any worse off today than they were Sunday. Gray, 36 with a cooling heater, comes with considerable decline risk. Richard Fitts is a 26-year-old right-hander with a 3.97 ERA in 65 2/3 career innings the last two years. Fitts, like Gray, uses five pitches, but at the center is a 96-mph fastball, albeit a hittable one (.241 xBA, .473 xSLG in 2025). A sweeper he throws exclusively to righties has been his most effective weapon, and he’s still working on how to get lefties out, allowing a 21/16 K/BB to them so far. 

The takeaway isn’t “Fitts will be better than Gray in 2026” so much as it’s “their range of outcomes overlaps a bit, enough that Fitts could be better than Gray in 2026.” The Red Sox are buying the greater certainty of good performance because they need that, the Cardinals want the possibility of years of a #4 starter in Fitts, and the financial savings. The chance that they’ll even be better off in ’26 is gravy.