Around Baseball 2025

[max silver]

1 hour ago, John_Havok said:

That is one factor yes. The Jays get paid very little (comparitively to other big markets) from Rogers for their TV rights. 

Yeah I recall thinking that Rogers was dramatically underpaying the team for the TV rights but supposedly MLB determined it was fair market value. As long as ownership gives the team the necessary funding to run a top tier organization in all facets this doesn't boil down to anything more than a Rogers accounting procedure.

[John_Havok]

52 minutes ago, max silver said:

Yeah I recall thinking that Rogers was dramatically underpaying the team for the TV rights but supposedly MLB determined it was fair market value. As long as ownership gives the team the necessary funding to run a top tier organization in all facets this doesn't boil down to anything more than a Rogers accounting procedure.

For sure. The revenues that Rogers other business divisions make off the Jays wouldnt even be something that goes into Jays revenue. I can't even begin to wonder what the real value of the Jays is to them 

[mphenhef]

8 hours ago, Olerud363.354 said:

There must be something else weird about that chart.  I know it was 2024 but how are Toronto's revenues about the same as Baltimore?    Is it because they don't get "TV Renenue" since Rogers owns the team?  So that (and maybe other) of their profits are in Rogers books but not the Jays? 

Teams that have the option to will most definitely move revenue away from the major league team.  The Jays likely give Rogers a sweet tv deal (but Canadian viewers aren’t worth as much advertising revenue as American apparently) but also deal in Canadian dollars for much of their revenue.

[Olerud363.354]

7 hours ago, mphenhef said:

Teams that have the option to will most definitely move revenue away from the major league team.  The Jays likely give Rogers a sweet tv deal (but Canadian viewers aren’t worth as much advertising revenue as American apparently) but also deal in Canadian dollars for much of their revenue.

Seems though they adjust everything to compensate for that.   I live in the U.S. and my stubhub auto-converts to American.  The prices for Toronto games are just as expensive.  Everything you buy at the stadium is pretty much adjusted for the dollar.  

Also suspicious of NY Mets numbers.  No way they are that far behind Philadelphia.  Biggest problem with Toronto isn't the dollar but the fall-off in interest in bad years.   I have a lot of friends who are Mets fans so they are like my second team.  Mets attendance and interest is much more resilient to strings of 70 win seasons (like 2009 to 2014) than Jays. 

If winning years Jays have to be top 3 in revenue with Yankees and Dodgers.   Maybe 2024 numbers were crunched by losing, but it's ussually the 2nd and especially third losing season where Jays lose half their attendance.  

[Spanky__99]

Winter meeting start on the 7th next Monday, I imagine teams and players will be down there early on the weekend, we'll see some action soon. 👀⚾💥

[Spanky__99]

Good move by the O's with Helsley. He has some warts though lately.

[Spanky__99]

I've spent the better part of this afternoon reading the butthurt in the MLBTR comments on Cease, pretty comical.

[Jonn]

I don't think anyone is shaking in their boots with Ryan Helsley coming out in the 9th. Probably the same for Jeff Hoffman but I digress.

[Brownie19]

34 minutes ago, Jonn said:

I don't think anyone is shaking in their boots with Ryan Helsley coming out in the 9th. Probably the same for Jeff Hoffman but I digress.

To be fair, outside of last year, he's been nails.  Averaged almost 2 WAR a season from 22-24

[max silver]

1 hour ago, Jonn said:

I don't think anyone is shaking in their boots with Ryan Helsley coming out in the 9th. Probably the same for Jeff Hoffman but I digress.

I don't think you properly appreciate how dominant Helsley has been historically. He was MLB's 2nd most valuable reliever by FWAR from the 2022-2024 seasons, and even with the poor showing last year is still tied for 5th place among relievers from 2022-2025. The stuff is fully intact and it's pretty well known that he was tipping his pitches last season so he's a prime candidate for positive regressions. 

[John_Havok]

Long article on Imai from MLB.com, pretty interesting. 

 

What to expect from Tatsuya Imai? Here are 5 MLB comparisons

Whichever team signs the 27-year-old right-hander will certainly hope Imai follows the Yamamoto career trajectory. But when it comes to his actual pitching, Imai doesn't do the same things Yamamoto does. And he doesn't need to.

Imai -- who had a 1.92 ERA and 178 strikeouts in 163 2/3 innings for the Lions in 2025 and now wants to take down Yamamoto and the World Series champs in MLB -- can be a different kind of nasty pitcher from his countryman when he arrives in the big leagues next season.

Let's find some comparisons for what Imai might look like in the Majors.

1) He has a pitch profile like Luis Castillo

This is what Imai's pitch arsenal looked like last season in Nippon Professional Baseball (the data comes from this handy NPB pitcher profile app):

 

Imai has three main weapons: his fastball, slider and changeup. He throws those pitches from a low, sidearm release point, which gives his fastball and changeup a lot of horizontal movement -- both averaged about 15 inches of arm-side run in 2025 -- while his slider has more tight vertical break. (You can see a thorough breakdown of Imai's pitch shapes from pitching analyst Lance Brozdowski here.)

That stuff makes Castillo, the Mariners' three-time All-Star starter, a natural comparison for Imai: a low arm slot right-hander with mid-to-upper 90s fastball velocity, a fading mid-80s changeup and a sharp mid-80s slider.

The current version of Castillo has a lot of parallels to what you might see from Imai in the Major Leagues in terms of arm angle, velocity and movement.

 

Yuri Karasawa over at JapanBall, who offers a treasure trove of insight on NPB players, recently noted in a video breakdown of Imai that Imai and Castillo have a very similar pitch profile. And given Castillo's success as a workhorse with Seattle, that's a good thing for Imai.

If you're looking for a higher-end all-around comp for Imai at the Major League level, Castillo is the type of pitcher that best fits the bill.

Sep 24, 2025

 · 

2:11

Luis Castillo strikes out 10 over 7 1/3 innings

 

2) He has a style like Max Scherzer

When it comes to how Imai deploys his pitches -- on top of just what his stuff looks like -- there are some other interesting MLB pitchers who take a similar approach. One of them is Scherzer.

Imai is fastball-slider dominant, especially against right-handed hitters. Over 90% of Imai's pitches vs. righties last season were four-seamers and sliders. Then he adds his offspeed pitches vs. lefties, going mainly fastball-slider-changeup (with some splitters mixed in, too). Those three pitches made up over 90% of Imai's offerings vs. lefties, and if you include the splitter, that's nearly everything he threw to opposite-handed hitters.

Scherzer is a good example of a big league right-hander who has that type of approach with a similar arsenal and an arm slot on the low side (though Imai's will likely be lower still). We're talking about the present-day version of Scherzer here, but even that version of Scherzer just had a postseason resurgence for the Blue Jays.

Scherzer is also four-seam and slider heavy vs. righties, with those two offerings accounting for over 70% of his pitches in 2025, and he's fastball-slider-changeup heavy vs. lefties, with those three pitches making up over 80% of his usage.

Oct 16, 2025

 · 

1:57

Max Scherzer strikes out five, earns win in Game 4

 

Imai wants to attack hitters in the same locations as Scherzer with those pitch types, too, most notably with the high fastballs that Scherzer is famous for. Imai said recently: "I focus on throwing a rising, high fastball from that low release -- almost like I’m driving it upward from below."

Pitchers like Castillo, or even Jacob deGrom, also have approaches like Imai generally, but Scherzer is all four-seamers, while Castillo throws a lot of sinkers. Scherzer's stuff at this stage of his career is more like Imai's, while deGrom is more sheerly overpowering. But we're just going for the same type of platoon pitch mix here, and this is what you'll likely see from Imai.

 

3) He has a fastball like Joe Ryan

Let's get into some comparisons for Imai's individual pitches, not just his arsenal as a whole. We'll start with the fastball.

Eno Sarris for The Athletic has taken a look at this already, using Imai's velocity and movement data and assuming he'll have an arm angle around 20 degrees, which would be among the most sidearm out of MLB right-handed starters.

Castillo's name once again comes up, but the strongest comparison is to Ryan, whose four-seamer is a big-time strikeout pitch for the Twins right-hander. Ryan got 109 K's on four-seamers alone in 2025, making him one of just four pitchers with 100-plus strikeouts on those heaters.

Ryan, like Imai, throws his fastball from a low slot (he had a 26-degree arm angle in 2025) with very similar induced rise (14 inches, the same as Imai) and run (13 inches to Imai's 15).

Imai's fastball has the potential to be like Ryan's, which would make it a very effective MLB-caliber heater. But there's also an X-factor for Imai in MLB: his velocity. Imai sat at 95 mph in NPB in 2025, but he showed the ability to dial up his four-seamer much higher than that.

In the Majors, pitchers tend to throw at their max velocity more often -- "emptying the gas tank," so to speak -- so there's a chance Imai's velo could even tick up, which could make his four-seamer an even bigger swing-and-miss weapon.

4) He has offspeed variety like Paul Skenes

Imai's slider is his best secondary pitch, generating a 46% swing-and-miss rate in 2025. But his offspeed is more interesting in what it shows about how Imai has tried to evolve as a pitcher over time.

First of all, it's noteworthy that Imai features a changeup first when he goes offspeed, not just a splitter, which is the signature of many Japanese aces, including Yamamoto.

Imai does throw a splitter, though, and has increased its usage in recent seasons as his strikeouts have also jumped up. And he now throws a new "Vulcan" changeup with a different wide grip, which he added during the 2025 season after learning it from one of his teammates. (The Vulcan changeup is sometimes classified as a sinker.)

Here's what those three offspeed pitches look like coming out of Imai's hand, as captured by Karasawa in his breakdown for JapanBall:

 

The fact that Imai throws three different offspeed pitches -- which all yielded whiff rates over 40% last season -- reflects a quality that is increasingly prevalent in MLB today: the ability to throw multiple pitch types within the same pitch group, whether it's multiple fastballs, multiple breaking pitches or multiple offspeed.

In 2025, the "Year of the Pitch Mix" in Major League Baseball, pitchers did that more than ever before, as they try to create an edge by expanding their pitch arsenals. Still, there are not a ton of Major League starters who throw both a changeup and splitter, let alone three offspeed variations like Imai.

Paul Skenes is the biggest and best example of someone who does, featuring both his splitter (aka, the "splinker") and a separate changeup. There are also a handful of others like Seth Lugo, or Yu Darvish, although they tend to use at least one of their offspeed pitches much more sparingly amid their sea of different pitch types. Shota Imanaga also threw both a splitter and changeup more regularly like Imai as a rookie in 2024, but he phased out the changeup in 2025.

Facing left-handed hitters in NPB last season, Imai threw 16% changeups, 7% splitters and 4% Vulcan changes. It will be interesting to see how he mixes and matches those varieties of offspeed pitches to attack Major League lefties.

5) He has a backwards slider like Trey Yesavage

There's one last unusual quality Imai has: That slider, his No. 1 secondary, often has "backwards" movement.

In other words, Imai's slider tends to move toward his arm side -- left to right -- rather than breaking to the glove side like nearly every other slider in professional baseball. And his slider can be very nasty.

One of the only MLB sliders that moves like Imai's is Trey Yesavage's. And we just watched that one dominate in the 2025 playoffs.

The Blue Jays rookie phenom delivers the ball nothing like Imai. Yesavage has one of the highest over-the-top release points in the Majors, while Imai will likely have one of the lowest. But their sliders share that one rare quality.

If Imai's slider keeps that same movement profile in MLB, it could add some deception against Major League hitters who aren't used to seeing sliders break that way. But it also could make the pitch something of a wild card. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

[max silver]

1 hour ago, John_Havok said:

Long article on Imai from MLB.com, pretty interesting. 

 

What to expect from Tatsuya Imai? Here are 5 MLB comparisons

Whichever team signs the 27-year-old right-hander will certainly hope Imai follows the Yamamoto career trajectory. But when it comes to his actual pitching, Imai doesn't do the same things Yamamoto does. And he doesn't need to.

Imai -- who had a 1.92 ERA and 178 strikeouts in 163 2/3 innings for the Lions in 2025 and now wants to take down Yamamoto and the World Series champs in MLB -- can be a different kind of nasty pitcher from his countryman when he arrives in the big leagues next season.

Let's find some comparisons for what Imai might look like in the Majors.

1) He has a pitch profile like Luis Castillo

This is what Imai's pitch arsenal looked like last season in Nippon Professional Baseball (the data comes from this handy NPB pitcher profile app):

Imai has three main weapons: his fastball, slider and changeup. He throws those pitches from a low, sidearm release point, which gives his fastball and changeup a lot of horizontal movement -- both averaged about 15 inches of arm-side run in 2025 -- while his slider has more tight vertical break. (You can see a thorough breakdown of Imai's pitch shapes from pitching analyst Lance Brozdowski here.)

That stuff makes Castillo, the Mariners' three-time All-Star starter, a natural comparison for Imai: a low arm slot right-hander with mid-to-upper 90s fastball velocity, a fading mid-80s changeup and a sharp mid-80s slider.

The current version of Castillo has a lot of parallels to what you might see from Imai in the Major Leagues in terms of arm angle, velocity and movement.

Yuri Karasawa over at JapanBall, who offers a treasure trove of insight on NPB players, recently noted in a video breakdown of Imai that Imai and Castillo have a very similar pitch profile. And given Castillo's success as a workhorse with Seattle, that's a good thing for Imai.

If you're looking for a higher-end all-around comp for Imai at the Major League level, Castillo is the type of pitcher that best fits the bill.

Sep 24, 2025

 · 

2:11

Luis Castillo strikes out 10 over 7 1/3 innings

 

2) He has a style like Max Scherzer

When it comes to how Imai deploys his pitches -- on top of just what his stuff looks like -- there are some other interesting MLB pitchers who take a similar approach. One of them is Scherzer.

Imai is fastball-slider dominant, especially against right-handed hitters. Over 90% of Imai's pitches vs. righties last season were four-seamers and sliders. Then he adds his offspeed pitches vs. lefties, going mainly fastball-slider-changeup (with some splitters mixed in, too). Those three pitches made up over 90% of Imai's offerings vs. lefties, and if you include the splitter, that's nearly everything he threw to opposite-handed hitters.

Scherzer is a good example of a big league right-hander who has that type of approach with a similar arsenal and an arm slot on the low side (though Imai's will likely be lower still). We're talking about the present-day version of Scherzer here, but even that version of Scherzer just had a postseason resurgence for the Blue Jays.

Scherzer is also four-seam and slider heavy vs. righties, with those two offerings accounting for over 70% of his pitches in 2025, and he's fastball-slider-changeup heavy vs. lefties, with those three pitches making up over 80% of his usage.

Oct 16, 2025

 · 

1:57

Max Scherzer strikes out five, earns win in Game 4

 

Imai wants to attack hitters in the same locations as Scherzer with those pitch types, too, most notably with the high fastballs that Scherzer is famous for. Imai said recently: "I focus on throwing a rising, high fastball from that low release -- almost like I’m driving it upward from below."

Pitchers like Castillo, or even Jacob deGrom, also have approaches like Imai generally, but Scherzer is all four-seamers, while Castillo throws a lot of sinkers. Scherzer's stuff at this stage of his career is more like Imai's, while deGrom is more sheerly overpowering. But we're just going for the same type of platoon pitch mix here, and this is what you'll likely see from Imai.

3) He has a fastball like Joe Ryan

Let's get into some comparisons for Imai's individual pitches, not just his arsenal as a whole. We'll start with the fastball.

Eno Sarris for The Athletic has taken a look at this already, using Imai's velocity and movement data and assuming he'll have an arm angle around 20 degrees, which would be among the most sidearm out of MLB right-handed starters.

Castillo's name once again comes up, but the strongest comparison is to Ryan, whose four-seamer is a big-time strikeout pitch for the Twins right-hander. Ryan got 109 K's on four-seamers alone in 2025, making him one of just four pitchers with 100-plus strikeouts on those heaters.

Ryan, like Imai, throws his fastball from a low slot (he had a 26-degree arm angle in 2025) with very similar induced rise (14 inches, the same as Imai) and run (13 inches to Imai's 15).

Imai's fastball has the potential to be like Ryan's, which would make it a very effective MLB-caliber heater. But there's also an X-factor for Imai in MLB: his velocity. Imai sat at 95 mph in NPB in 2025, but he showed the ability to dial up his four-seamer much higher than that.

In the Majors, pitchers tend to throw at their max velocity more often -- "emptying the gas tank," so to speak -- so there's a chance Imai's velo could even tick up, which could make his four-seamer an even bigger swing-and-miss weapon.

4) He has offspeed variety like Paul Skenes

Imai's slider is his best secondary pitch, generating a 46% swing-and-miss rate in 2025. But his offspeed is more interesting in what it shows about how Imai has tried to evolve as a pitcher over time.

First of all, it's noteworthy that Imai features a changeup first when he goes offspeed, not just a splitter, which is the signature of many Japanese aces, including Yamamoto.

Imai does throw a splitter, though, and has increased its usage in recent seasons as his strikeouts have also jumped up. And he now throws a new "Vulcan" changeup with a different wide grip, which he added during the 2025 season after learning it from one of his teammates. (The Vulcan changeup is sometimes classified as a sinker.)

Here's what those three offspeed pitches look like coming out of Imai's hand, as captured by Karasawa in his breakdown for JapanBall:

The fact that Imai throws three different offspeed pitches -- which all yielded whiff rates over 40% last season -- reflects a quality that is increasingly prevalent in MLB today: the ability to throw multiple pitch types within the same pitch group, whether it's multiple fastballs, multiple breaking pitches or multiple offspeed.

In 2025, the "Year of the Pitch Mix" in Major League Baseball, pitchers did that more than ever before, as they try to create an edge by expanding their pitch arsenals. Still, there are not a ton of Major League starters who throw both a changeup and splitter, let alone three offspeed variations like Imai.

Paul Skenes is the biggest and best example of someone who does, featuring both his splitter (aka, the "splinker") and a separate changeup. There are also a handful of others like Seth Lugo, or Yu Darvish, although they tend to use at least one of their offspeed pitches much more sparingly amid their sea of different pitch types. Shota Imanaga also threw both a splitter and changeup more regularly like Imai as a rookie in 2024, but he phased out the changeup in 2025.

Facing left-handed hitters in NPB last season, Imai threw 16% changeups, 7% splitters and 4% Vulcan changes. It will be interesting to see how he mixes and matches those varieties of offspeed pitches to attack Major League lefties.

5) He has a backwards slider like Trey Yesavage

There's one last unusual quality Imai has: That slider, his No. 1 secondary, often has "backwards" movement.

In other words, Imai's slider tends to move toward his arm side -- left to right -- rather than breaking to the glove side like nearly every other slider in professional baseball. And his slider can be very nasty.

One of the only MLB sliders that moves like Imai's is Trey Yesavage's. And we just watched that one dominate in the 2025 playoffs.

The Blue Jays rookie phenom delivers the ball nothing like Imai. Yesavage has one of the highest over-the-top release points in the Majors, while Imai will likely have one of the lowest. But their sliders share that one rare quality.

If Imai's slider keeps that same movement profile in MLB, it could add some deception against Major League hitters who aren't used to seeing sliders break that way. But it also could make the pitch something of a wild card. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

It will be fascinating to see how Imai's stuff and arsenal plays against major league hitters. Comparisons to present day Max Scherzer and Luis Castillo aren't particularly exciting but if he's able to squeeze a little more juice out of his arsenal by pitching near max effort a little more often I do like his chances of having a lot of success out of the rotation.

[rydermike]

Mets sign Devin Williams 3/45

[BTS]

Steamer updated their Murakami projection and has him putting up a 115 wRC+ with a 33.6% K-rate 

[mphenhef]

2 minutes ago, BTS said:

Steamer updated their Murakami projection and has him putting up a 115 wRC+ with a 33.6% K-rate 

[BTS]

2 minutes ago, mphenhef said:

It's such a weird profile. The fact that he's projected to be comfortably above average offensively with a k-rate like that is pretty crazy. I won't be surprised if there are teams out there willing to pay big money for a 26-year old with prodigious power, hoping they can coach him to a ~30% k-rate. 

[Brownie19]

27 minutes ago, BTS said:

It's such a weird profile. The fact that he's projected to be comfortably above average offensively with a k-rate like that is pretty crazy. I won't be surprised if there are teams out there willing to pay big money for a 26-year old with prodigious power, hoping they can coach him to a ~30% k-rate. 

Sounds like the current projection is Chris Davis in 2012 & 2016, but the upside is Chris Davis 2013 & 2015

[BTS]

2 minutes ago, Brownie19 said:

Sounds like the current projection is Chris Davis in 2012 & 2016, but the upside is Chris Davis 2013 & 2015

Seems like almost a perfect comp. Similar expected K-rates, they both walk a lot, both have 70-80 grade power, both LH hitting 1B etc... 

[Stangstag]

4 hours ago, BTS said:

It's such a weird profile. The fact that he's projected to be comfortably above average offensively with a k-rate like that is pretty crazy. I won't be surprised if there are teams out there willing to pay big money for a 26-year old with prodigious power, hoping they can coach him to a ~30% k-rate. 

Sounds like Miguel Sano with more risk/less data 

[Jimcanuck]

So the Angels sign Manoah $1.95M.

 

[Stangstag]

Just now, Jimcanuck said:

So the Angels sign Manoah $1.95M.

 

Seems like a good spot for him to end his career 

[Spanky__99]

58 minutes ago, Stangstag said:

Seems like a good spot for him to end his career 

lol... geez, man. I hope it works out for him, seems like an alright guy.

[jaysblue]

1 hour ago, Jimcanuck said:

So the Angels sign Manoah $1.95M.

 

Hopefully Christopher Lloyd and his crew are around next season. 

[G-Snarls]

Got himself a major league deal at least 

[rydermike]

So I guess the Braves didn't like his medicals after claiming him and then non-tendering him. 

[Rafters]

Ponce 3 yrs with Jays

[Spanky__99]

9 minutes ago, Rafters said:

Ponce 3 yrs with Jays

Holy s***, noice!

[Laika]

holy flucking sharts the White Sox guaranteed Anthony Kay $12M 

[John_Havok]

30 minutes ago, Laika said:

holy flucking sharts the White Sox guaranteed Anthony Kay $12M 

2 years, 5 milllion per season with a 2 Million buy out on a mutual option for 2028 of 10million, plus 1.5 possible in incentives over the first two years. 

Good for Kay I guess. White Sox playing in the kiddie pool of FAs which is probably where they should be 

[Terminator]

30 minutes ago, Laika said:

holy flucking sharts the White Sox guaranteed Anthony Kay $12M 

That's pretty wild. They must plan on starting him.

ChiSox might know a few things about pitching. Maybe he can stick.