Tomorrow at 2pm ET, I'm going to be doing an AMA on @baseballreddit.bsky.social (r/baseball) about this year's Top 50 free agents. But also - ask me anything! That's the whole point.

Shoutout to @benclemens.bsky.social for another year of the Top 50 MLB Free Agents! Read them here - www.reddit.com/r/baseball/c... and join us for an AMA with Ben on Nov 11th! www.reddit.com/r/baseball/c...

Our (my?) top 50 free agent list is out!

Don't be results oriented about this stuff. But if you are, perhaps consider that Ohtani has batted three times today and not hit a single world-shattering home run

Just so we're clear, John Smoltz's big suggested improvement is for Shohei to throw worse pitches, more often. I'm not convinced he is a brilliant baseball mind.

Oof, too many IBBs

Never letting the Blue Jays get into your bullpen isn't that hard. Tell 'em, Wash

Secret World Series desert retreat:

This year's Fielding Bible awards have been handed out. If you're interested in reading how I voted for them (I voted for 10 out of the 12 winners, so presumably my thinking mirrored that of the rest of the voters), I wrote about my ballot here: blogs.fangraphs.com/how-i-voted-...

At the risk of being too hot take-y, that Josh Naylor play was bad. And dangerous, too: helmets fall off all the time, his included. MLB should make it as clear as possible that there will be no chance of that play ever working, and probably fine people for trying it.

Now, the chart I actually meant to make:

Today in 'it's easier to tell your computer how to make plots than to realize that you didn't need to make this particular plot':

Next up in managerial decision-making reviews, the two managers who lost in the NLDS. I thought Counsell did a good job, and I did not care for Thomson's decision making

Giving the people what they demand - an in-depth examination of every move that playoff managers made this year. First up, the teams who lost in the ALDS.

"Let's load the bases for Mookie Betts" just keeps happening. How? What? Did Pat Murphy not watch the last Dodgers game?

All these years later, Javy still has great tags

I've been trying to write the exact words that explain why these ads annoy me so much, and hey, Patrick found them first!

I absolutely love that Jeff Francoeur calls every Phillie other than Kyle Schwarber by their first name. You just KNOW that's because everyone just calls him Schwarbs

getting my door broken down because i was loudly anti-Pfaadt before my fantasy draft this year

Pretty messed up that they make John Smoltz learn all the Blue Jays players the day of the game with only eight seconds to memorize all their names. Or at least, I assume that's what happened given how unfamiliar he is with them.

Nick Castellanos as a baserunner is somehow the Nick-Castellanos-as-a-batter of baserunners

Blake Treinen is very confused that yelling "Stop the count!" isn't working here

New baseball podcast episode @marksimon.bsky.social & @benclemens.bsky.social go through the biggest surprises of the 2025 MLB season Each picks a hitter, pitcher, fielder, team and thing. Who would you have picked? podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

For the record, my home run model has Cal Raleigh at an 18% chance of hitting 62 or more homers, and a 7% chance of 63 or more.

I'm about a third of the way through "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies," and I highly recommend it. Plenty of my friends and coworkers are AI doomers for what I'd consider the wrong reasons, but this is a pretty compelling way of laying out some pretty compelling reasons to freak out about AI.

60? 62? 63???

Every so often we check in on the models

Hey @alexfast.bsky.social, I loved the Statcast broadcast today. You guys packed a ton of fun stuff in so smoothly that I kept forgetting it was Statcast-themed during the flow of play (complimentary). Amazing game, too.

It's so much, you guys

Oh, you're fading Caleb Williams in fantasy football? Neat, cool, yeah, I managed to fade him in BASEBALL

In case you missed it, FanGraphs is hiring a full-time prospect writer. blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-is... I've now been there for more than seven years and have yet to have even an unpleasant work-related moment. Love working there.

My friend got me some packs of baseball cards for my birthday. This one had two real legends of the game in it:

It has begun! Cubs starting off strong, now it's time for Caleb to do his part

Claude, bake me a cake (Claude Bakery in NYC made this great surprise birthday cake for me. You'll just have to trust me that it was prettier before I demolished it)

I'm not sure if this ended up being a labor of love or a boondoggle, to be honest. I spent a long time trying to learn about hot streaks but mostly ended up learning about statistical dead ends, pitfalls, and the importance of asking questions precisely: blogs.fangraphs.com/the-enigma-m...

Following my long proud tradition of posting part of my research halfway through when I'm not even sure I'll finish it, here's an interesting one I'm working on right now, modeling hot streaks in hitters over 20-game spans: P(Hot)=.181 P(Cold)=.173 P(Hot|Hot)=.089 P(Cold|Cold)=.096 P(Hot|Cold)=.259

When the bagel shop tells me they're out of everything bagels, but would I like a plain:

Find someone who loves you as much as Ben loves weird stats that shouldn't make sense but are actually quite revealing.

This is my favorite article I've written for FanGraphs in a while. I don't know how the heck Nick Pivetta is doing it, but his star turn is downright hilarious to analyze.

We had to update this because he went 4-4 last night - and then I look up today and his first at-bat was a homer. Can't keep up!

Hey everyone, I'll be chatting an hour early today for @fangraphs.com thanks to a pesky vet appointment I can't move. Should still overlap with my normal window, though.

PSA: Game Time tickets lost my tickets to Dead and Company (transferred them to the wrong account) and won't refund me. Be very careful about using them for any event tickets. Don't buy anything you'd be devastated not to get (I just paid up and bought more tickets, but that sucks)

What a flex by the Twins to acquire a guy off the major league roster of literally the Dodgers, then option him to Triple-A while trading away ten dudes. Good enough to play for LA? Psh, can't even play for our B team

It's the trade deadline, which means writing about the small trades...

Oh boy, just when I thought I'd finally cured my urge to write about Ke'Bryan Hayes, they pulled me back in

Loaded show today with @benclemens.bsky.social, Morosi, Leroux, and Jamie Campbell, plus a doubleheader to get you ready for

Miz vs. PCA is when an unstoppable force meets a movable object. The strike zone maps lol:

This Shohei guy might be pretty good

Just submitted the last of my Trade Value writeups. That's a 25,000-word week. I think I am gonna have two desserts tonight.