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When the New York Rangers clinched a playoff berth on March 26, there wasn’t a celebration. There was barely an acknowledgment of the feat in their dressing room after an overtime win against the visiting Philadelphia Flyers.

The accomplishment was procedural, a bridge to greater things.

“If you want to lift the Stanley Cup, you’ve got to get into the playoffs first,” New York center Mika Zibanejad said. “We have bigger goals. That’s Step 1 for us.”

Step 2 is likely winning the Metro Division, the first time the Rangers will have topped their group since 2014-15. Step 3 could be winning the Presidents’ Trophy for the NHL’s best record this season. Then the real journey begins, step after step, until the Rangers lift the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1994 and the second time since 1940.

Unless they stumble and fall out of the postseason, of course.

The Rangers are a confounding team, and not just because they exited the postseason after one round in 2023. On the surface, they’ve been dominant in the standings and solid on both sides of the puck: Through 78 games, they were sixth in goals and seventh in goals against per game. But look under the hood and one finds a team whose 5-on-5 analytics are utterly pedestrian and in some cases below average.

“The New York Rangers are a bit of an anomaly,” said Meghan Chayka, co-founder of Stathletes.

“Elite special teams and goaltending have boosted average processes and results at 5-on-5,” said Mike Kelly, director of analytics and insights at Sportlogiq.

We explored this imbalance earlier this season. The Rangers have only become more successful since then. With the postseason approaching, it seemed like an ideal time to check again to get a sense of how close the Blueshirts might be to capturing the Cup.

Along with Kelly and Chayka, we picked the hockey brains of Garret Hohl, a data analyst who writes The Five Hohl; Jack Fraser of EP Rinkside; and Micah Blake McCurdy of HockeyViz. All of them sought to answer some questions about the Rangers before the Stanley Cup playoffs start, including the biggest one: Are they legitimate Stanley Cup contenders, despite what the analytics tell us?

How do you square the gap between what the analytics tell us about the Rangers and what they’ve done in the standings?

What’s clear about the Rangers is that they have elite special teams. Through 78 games, New York was fourth in the NHL on the power play (26.4%) and third on the penalty kill (83.6%). Artemi Panarin has scored 61% of his points on the man advantage. Zibanejad and Chris Kreider have been solid contributors on both units.

They feasted on the power play under then-coach Gerard Gallant last season too, but the arrival of Peter Laviolette and his staff has improved the penalty kill year over year.

Hohl noted that the Rangers’ penalty differential is also something that sets them apart: Through 78 games, they were fourth in the NHL at plus-32 in penalties drawn versus penalties taken.

As extraordinary as their special teams are, the Rangers’ 5-on-5 play is a bit more concerning, analytically.

“The Rangers have a very ordinary record this season of 5v5 chance generation,” McCurdy said.

This season, the Rangers are 23rd in expected goals percentage at 5-on-5 (48.6%) through 78 games and slightly underwater on percentage of shot attempts per 60 minutes (49.8%), ranking 19th overall. During their recent 13-4-1 heater, their percentage of shot attempts has jumped up to 11th in the league.

Chayka noted that the Rangers’ puck possession has improved after general manager Chris Drury acquired center Alex Wennberg of the Seattle Kraken and forward Jack Roslovic from the Columbus Blue Jackets before the NHL trade deadline, on March 8. While neither trade created headlines like one for Pittsburgh Penguins winger Jake Guentzel might have for the Blueshirts, they’ve made a subtle positive impact already.

“Those additions have meant nearly a full minute more of puck possession per game at 5-on-5,” said Chayka, noting that the Rangers’ total puck possession time jumped from 15:29 at 5-on-5 in their first 62 games to 16:21 in the following 14 games with Wennberg and Roslovic.

But the Rangers are still just 21st in expected goals percentage. Their expected goals per 60 minutes is a few percentage points weaker than the average NHL team, and their suppression is a full percentage point lower than average.

“This is a little surprising for a team at the top of the standings,” McCurdy said. “But while 5-on-5 chance rates are the first and most important thing about any team — I’ve repeatedly called them ‘the foundation of the sport,’ and I stand by that — they aren’t the only thing.”

No, they’re not the only thing, and the Rangers are proving that — like, for example, when these goals are scored or allowed during the game.

In baseball, not all hits are created equally. A grand slam and a solo home run both go into the HR category on the players’ stats page, but obviously, one had a greater impact on the final score than the other.

It’s not completely analogous, but McCurdy believes that not all goals are created equal, either.

“The regulation goals they’ve scored have come at relatively high-offensive-leverage moments, when they’ve tipped games in their favor, and less often in games that are still safely decided,” he said. “The Rangers have also benefited from the goals they’ve allowed coming at relatively lower-leverage times than you’d expect from pure chance, so that the goaltending they’ve got has benefitted them more than you might expect.”

McCurdy believes these two effects have added upward of nine standings points to the Rangers this season. “They’re the second-luckiest team this season in this sense, after Washington,” he said.

The Rangers have scored the first goal in a game 44 times, tied for fifth in the NHL this season, but they’re also first in the NHL winning percentage (.588) after giving up a contest’s first goal. They’re 33-3-2 when leading after two periods, but they also have the highest winning percentage (.346) when trailing after two periods.

Through 78 games, no team has had won more one-goal games than the Rangers (22), and no team has had a better winning percentage in those games than their 22-4-4 record.

Chayka noted that the Rangers have some shared DNA in that regard with last season’s Presidents’ Trophy winners, the Boston Bruins, who led the NHL in winning percentage in one-goal games and when trailing first.

Their playoff fate might indicate something for the Rangers,” she said, ominously, referencing the Bruins’ shocking first-round loss last year.

The Rangers also have feasted on the Metro Division this season.

“Team goal differentials and the standings tend to have a fairly strong correlation, but that relationship is a lot weaker this year in the Metro,” McCurdy said of the Rangers. “On top of that, they have potentially overperformed their in-division goal differential. They have about a 0.78 in-division point percentage compared to 0.67 outside the division, despite outscoring their divisional opponents by a less significant margin.”

Obviously, some things have broken right for New York to be challenging for the Presidents’ Trophy. But the sum total of the Rangers’ performance wouldn’t dramatically change if their luck did, according to Kelly.

“If you ran this season back again, all things being equal, there’s a good chance the Rangers wouldn’t have quite as good a record, but I don’t believe they would be that far off,” he said. “There are a few other playoff teams that are equal if not greater examples of likely overperforming in terms of process versus results this season.”

Fraser trusts the process. He believes the Rangers are better than what the public analytics models like expected goals are presenting, noting that tracking data reveals them to be the best team at passes across the slot and in the top five for preventing them, for example.

Fraser said there’s about a three-point difference between public and private models for the Rangers’ projected points based on expected goal differential.

“What gets them to the 115 points they’re projected for now is a combination of finishing and goaltending, which has been consistent throughout the season,” Fraser said. “Igor Shesterkin has been fine. But most notably, they’ve gotten excellent performance from a backup for the first time in years.”


What impresses you the most about the Rangers, and what leaves you most confused about them?

The most common theme in the responses: While the Rangers don’t excel at everything, they’re also not terrible at anything.

“They’ve got a lot of pathways to winning games,” McCurdy said. “That will make them hard to play against in the playoffs, where you’d prefer to say, ‘Well, their main strength is X and our plan for that is Y.’ There are too many strengths, and the weaknesses don’t really stick out.”

The worst that could be said about some of the Rangers’ 5-on-5 metrics is that they’re ordinary or slightly below average. But this isn’t a team getting cratered by opponents every game then relying on Shesterkin and Jonathan Quick to drag them into a playoff seed.

Kelly believes the goaltending just needs to be is sufficient for the Rangers to thrive.

“They are virtually unbeatable when they get adequate goaltending, which, since the All-Star break, is far more often than not,” he said. “The Rangers lead the NHL in goals saved above expected per 60 minutes since Shesterkin’s reset at the break. They give up more chances than some other elite teams, but their combination of scoring ability — though top-heavy — and goaltending makes them a real threat.”

Kelly noted that in the first 41 games in which the Rangers’ goalies posted a positive goals saved above expected, they won 39 of them, the best winning percentage in the NHL in that category. They won 95% of those games, with no other team finishing north of 90% in that span.

That’s the goal-prevention story. The goal-scoring story is equally as compelling.

McCurdy noted that the Rangers roster “is good at turning chances into goals, considerably better than league average.”

There’s no better example of this than Panarin, whose 46 goals in 78 games shattered his previous career high. He is fifth in the NHL in goals versus expected goals (12.44), with a 16.1% shooting rate.

His dominance has helped make the Rangers’ top line with Alexis Lafreniere and Vincent Trocheck a “superb” trio, according to Fraser.

“It’s unbelievable how often they manage to get the goalie moving by passing the puck; according to AllThreeZones, all three of them are in the top 15 in high-danger passes leading to a shot,” he said. “What’s most surprising is that Laf and Trocheck have struggled to score goals relative to the quality of their opportunities. So, the question becomes: Will their postseason opponents force them to play a more grinding style or will they start to capitalize even more?”

There’s another key group that has Fraser a little more concerned: The defensive pairing of Adam Fox and Ryan Lindgren, long one of the NHL’s most effective duos.

“What happened to them? The on-ice goal numbers are terrific, as usual, but that team is uncharacteristically getting out-chanced by a huge margin,” he said. “Can Lindgren get back on track?”

Fox and Lindgren had an expected goals per 60 minutes of 2.37 last season, but it has ballooned to 2.83 this season.

Kelly was a little concerned about the Rangers being a top-heavy team. Their top six scorers are all over 50 points on the season; no one else has had more than 30 points through 78 games.

“Can they get some offense from their bottom six? The Wennberg line has been on the right side of things but pretty low-event in its minutes,” Kelly said.

McCurdy was confounded by why the Rangers aren’t even better than they are.

“How [can] their 5-on-5 results manage to be as average as they are, considering the talent necessary to succeed at special teams,” he said. “I guess special teams really do deserve the name.”

Which all leads back to the biggest question about the Rangers.

“Are they for real?” Kelly asked. “I think that’s what we’re all trying to figure out here. As mentioned, they are probably not quite what their record shows. But every time I think I have a handle on them, they surprise me.”


How legitimate are the Rangers as a Stanley Cup contender?

Being the best isn’t always the best thing in the NHL. The Presidents’ Trophy has been awarded to the team with the league’s best record since 1985-86. That team has gone on to win the Stanley Cup only eight times — including the 1993-94 Rangers.

New York has the fifth-best odds at ESPN BET to win the championship. Stathletes gives the Blueshirts a 4.8% chance of winning the Cup, which is 11th-best among current playoff teams.

Kelly said the Rangers would be in his second tier as a Stanley Cup contender.

“I don’t think they have fatal flaws, but it is a slippery slope when you rely so heavily on special teams and goaltending,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t get to a Cup Final or even win the Cup.”

Kelly noted that the Florida Panthers made the Stanley Cup Final last season with an expected goals rate of under 50% at 5-on-5 in the playoffs, an average power play and a lackluster penalty kill. The Tampa Bay Lightning rode dominant special teams and Andrei Vasilevskiy to lift the Cup in 2021.

“In the small sample size that are the Stanley Cup playoffs, elite shooting talent or luck, coupled with strong goaltending, can be enough to win it all,” Kelly noted. “The Rangers are capable of both.”

Hohl noted, using McCurdy’s research, the Rangers are good but that the areas in which the team excels are relatively “less important” when it comes to winning the Cup.

He added that 5-on-5 offense and goaltending are the two most important indicators for a Cup champion, “and they only got two of those going for them.” The next important gauges are 5-on-5 defense and the power play, he said, “and again, they only have one of those two going for them.” Being great on the penalty kills hasn’t been a dependable predictor of NHL champions.

That said, McCurdy feels the Rangers are “as good a bet as any other teams” to win the Cup.

“They’re hardly paper tigers,” he said. “Against general opposition, they have so many strong aspects to their game that they will have a good chance no matter who they play.”

Well, except for one team.

“They’ll match up poorly against a team like Carolina, who will be able to control 5-on-5 play against them almost entirely,” McCurdy said. “[The Canes] might be able to dictate a style of play that will keep the games at 5-on-5 most of the time.”

Chayka also noted that a second-round meeting with the Hurricanes could present a significant block in the road to the Stanley Cup for New York, as Carolina is the top team in the East, according to Stathletes’ Power Score.

Guentzel, the Hurricanes’ trade deadline coup, has eight goals in seven games against the Rangers in his postseason career.

There will be challenges for the Rangers in the playoffs. Plenty of them. But they’ve already shown to be better than expected. It is anyone’s Stanley Cup to lift. Why not bring it back to Broadway?

“This season is so wide open that I don’t have trouble imagining them getting hot at the right time,” Fraser concluded.

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Red Sox activate 3B Bregman from 10-day IL

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Red Sox activate 3B Bregman from 10-day IL

BOSTON — The Red Sox activated All-Star third baseman Alex Bregman from the 10-day injured list before Friday’s game against Tampa Bay.

Bregman, who has been sidelined since May 24 with a right quad strain, returned to his customary spot in the field and was slotted in the No. 2 spot of Boston’s lineup for the second of a four-game series against the Rays. He sustained the injury when he rounded first base and felt his quad tighten up.

A two-time World Series winner who spent the first nine seasons of his big league career with the Houston Astros, Bregman signed a $120 million, three-year contract in February. At the time of the injury, he was hitting .299 with 11 homers and 35 RBI. Those numbers led to him being named to the American League’s All-Star team for the third time since breaking into the majors with the Astros in 2016.

Bregman missed 43 games with the quad strain. Earlier this week, he told reporters that he was trending in a direction where he didn’t believe he would require a minor league rehab assignment. With three games left before the All-Star break, the Red Sox agreed the time was right to reinstate a player to a team that entered Friday in possession of one of the AL’s three wild-card berths.

“He’s going to do his part,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said before Friday’s game. “Obviously, the timing, we’ll see where he’s at, but he’s been working hard on the swing … visualizing and watching video.”

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How Jim Abbott changed the world

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How Jim Abbott changed the world

JIM ABBOTT IS sitting at his kitchen table, with his old friend Tim Mead. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were partners in an extraordinary exercise — and now, for the first time in decades, they are looking at a stack of letters and photographs from that period of their lives.

The letters are mostly handwritten, by children, from all over the United States and Canada, and beyond.

“Dear Mr. Abbott …”

“I have one hand too. … I don’t know any one with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy.”

“I am a seventh grader with a leg that is turned inwards. How do you feel about your arm? I would also like to know how you handle your problem? I would like to know, if you don’t mind, what have you been called?”

“I can’t use my right hand and most of my right side is paralyzed. … I want to become a doctor and seeing you makes me think I can be what I want to be.”

For 40 years, Mead worked in communications for the California Angels, eventually becoming vice president of media relations. His position in this department became a job like no other after the Angels drafted Abbott out of the University of Michigan in 1988.

There was a deluge of media requests. Reporters from around the world descended on Anaheim, most hoping to get one-on-one time with the young left-handed pitcher with the scorching fastball. Every Abbott start was a major event — “like the World Series,” Angels scout Bob Fontaine Jr. remembers. Abbott, with his impressive amateur résumé (he won the James E. Sullivan Award for the nation’s best amateur athlete in 1997 and an Olympic gold medal in 1988) and his boyish good looks, had star power.

That spring, he had become only the 16th player to go straight from the draft to the majors without appearing in a single minor league game. And then there was the factor that made him unique. His limb difference, although no one called it that back then. Abbott was born without a right hand, yet had developed into one of the most promising pitchers of his generation. He would go on to play in the majors for ten years, including a stint in the mid ’90s with the Yankees highlighted by a no-hitter in 1993.

Abbott, and Mead, too, knew the media would swarm. That was no surprise. There had been swarms in college, and at the Olympics, wherever and whenever Abbott pitched. Who could resist such an inspirational story? But what they hadn’t anticipated were the letters.

The steady stream of letters. Thousands of letters. So many from kids who, like Abbott, were different. Letters from their parents and grandparents. The kids hoping to connect with someone who reminded them of themselves, the first celebrity they knew of who could understand and appreciate what it was like to be them, someone who had experienced the bullying and the feelings of otherness. The parents and grandparents searching for hope and direction.

“I know you don’t consider yourself limited in what you can do … but you are still an inspiration to my wife and I as parents. Your success helps us when talking to Andy at those times when he’s a little frustrated. I’m able to point to you and assure him there’s no limit to what he can accomplish.”

In his six seasons with the Angels, Abbott was assisted by Mead in the process of organizing his responses to the letters, mailing them, and arranging face-to-face meetings with the families who had written to him. There were scores of such meetings. It was practically a full-time job for both of them.

“Thinking back on these meetings with families — and that’s the way I’d put it, it’s families, not just kids — there was every challenge imaginable,” Abbott, now 57, says. “Some accidents. Some birth defects. Some mental challenges that aren’t always visible to people when you first come across somebody. … They saw something in playing baseball with one hand that related to their own experience. I think the families coming to the ballparks were looking for hopefulness. I think they were looking for what it had been that my parents had told me, what it had been that my coaches had told me. … [With the kids] it was an interaction. It was catch. It was smiling. It was an autograph. It was a picture. With the parents, it ran deeper. With the parents, it was what had your parents said to you? What coaches made a difference? What can we expect? Most of all, I think, what can we expect?”

“It wasn’t asking for autographs,” Mead says of all those letters. “They weren’t asking for pictures. They were asking for his time. He and I had to have a conversation because this was going to be unique. You know, you could set up another player to come down and sign 15 autographs for this group or whatever. But it was people, parents, that had kids, maybe babies, just newborn babies, almost looking for an assurance that this is going to turn out all right, you know. ‘What did your parents do? How did your parents handle this?'”

One of the letters Abbott received came from an 8-year-old girl in Windsor, Ontario.

She wrote, “Dear Jim, My name is Tracey Holgate. I am age 8. I have one hand too. My grandpa gave me a picture of you today. I saw you on TV. I don’t know anyone with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy. I hope to see you play in Detroit and maybe meet you. Could you please send me a picture of you in uniform? Could you write back please? Here is a picture of me. Love, Tracey.”

Holgate’s letter is one of those that has remained preserved in a folder — and now Abbott is reading it again, at his kitchen table, half a lifetime after receiving it. Time has not diminished the power of the letter, and Abbott is wiping away tears.

Today, Holgate is 44 and goes by her married name, Dupuis. She is married with four children of her own. She is a teacher. When she thinks about the meaning of Jim Abbott in her life, it is about much more than the letter he wrote back to her. Or the autographed picture he sent her. It was Abbott, all those years ago, who made it possible for Tracey to dream.

“There was such a camaraderie there,” she says, “an ability to connect with somebody so far away doing something totally different than my 8-year-old self was doing, but he really allowed me to just feel that connection, to feel that I’m not alone, there’s other people that have differences and have overcome them and been successful and we all have our own crosses, we all have our own things that we’re carrying and it’s important to continue to focus on the gifts that we have, the beauty of it.

“I think sometimes differences, disabilities, all those things can be a gift in a package we would never have wanted, because they allow us to be people that have an empathetic heart, an understanding heart, and to see the pain in the people around us.”

Now, years after Abbott’s career ended, he continues to inspire.

Among those he influenced, there are professional athletes, such as Shaquem Griffin, who in 2018 became the first NFL player with one hand. Griffin, now 29, played three seasons at linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks.

Growing up in Florida, he would watch videos of Abbott pitching and fielding, over and over, on YouTube.

“The only person I really looked up to was Jim Abbott at the time,” Griffin says, “which is crazy, because I didn’t know anybody else to look up to. I didn’t know anybody else who was kind of like me. And it’s funny, because when I was really little, I used to be like, ‘Why me? Why this happen to me?’ And I used to be in my room thinking about that. And I used to think to myself, ‘I wonder if Jim Abbott had that same thought.'”

Carson Pickett was born on Sept. 15, 1993 — 11 days after Abbott’s no-hitter. Missing most of her left arm below the elbow, she became, in 2022, the first player with a limb difference to appear for the U.S. women’s national soccer team.

She, too, says that Abbott made things that others told her were impossible seem attainable.

“I knew I wanted to be a professional soccer player,” says Pickett, who is currently playing for the NWSL’s Orlando Pride. “To be able to see him compete at the highest level it gave me hope, and I think that that kind of helped me throughout my journey. … I think ‘pioneer’ would be the best word for him.”

Longtime professional MMA fighter Nick Newell is 39, old enough to have seen Abbott pitch for the Yankees. In fact, when Newell was a child he met Abbott twice, first at a fan event at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan and then on a game day at Yankee Stadium. Newell was one of those kids with a limb difference — like Griffin and Pickett, due to amniotic band syndrome — who idolized Abbott.

“And I didn’t really understand the gravity of what he was doing,” Newell says now, “but for me, I saw someone out there on TV that looked like I did. And I was the only other person I knew that had one hand. And I saw this guy out here playing baseball and it was good to see somebody that looked like me, and I saw him in front of the world.

“He was out there like me and he was just living his life and I think that I owe a lot of my attitude and the success that I have to Jim just going out there and being the example of, ‘Hey, you can do this. Who’s to say you can’t be a professional athlete?’ He’s out there throwing no-hitters against the best baseball players in the world. So, as I got older, ‘Why can’t I wrestle? Why can’t I fight? Why can’t I do this?’ And then it wasn’t until the internet that I heard people tell me I can’t do these things. But by then I had already been doing those things.”

Griffin.

Pickett.

Newell.

Just three of the countless kids who were inspired by Jim Abbott.

When asked if it ever felt like too much, being a role model and a hero, all the letters and face-to-face meetings, Abbott says no — but it wasn’t always easy.

“I had incredible people who helped me send the letters,” he says. “I got a lot more credit sometimes than I deserved for these interactions, to be honest with you. And that happened on every team, particularly with my friend Tim Mead. There was a nice balance to it. There really was. There was a heaviness to it. There’s no denying. There were times I didn’t want to go [to the meetings]. I didn’t want to walk out there. I didn’t want to separate from my teammates. I didn’t want to get up from the card game. I didn’t want to put my book down. I liked where I was at. I was in my environment. I was where I always wanted to be. In a big league clubhouse surrounded by big league teammates. In a big league stadium. And those reminders of being different, I slowly came to realize were never going to go away.”

But being different was the thing that made Abbott more than merely a baseball star. For many people, he has been more than a role model, more than an idol. He is the embodiment of hope and belonging.

“I think more people need to realize and understand the gift of a difference,” Dupuis says. “I think we have to just not box everybody in and allow everybody’s innate light to shine, and for whatever reasons we’ve been created to be here, [let] that light shine in a way that it touches everybody else. Because I think that’s what Jim did. He allowed his light to permeate and that light, in turn, lit all these little children’s lights all over the world, so you have this boom of brightness that’s happening and that’s uncontrollable, that’s beautiful.”

“Southpaw – The Life and Legacy of Jim Abbott,” a new edition of ESPN’s “E60,” debuts Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN; extended version streaming afterward on ESPN+.

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Cubs’ PCA on track for $1.1M from bonus pool

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Cubs' PCA on track for .1M from bonus pool

NEW YORK — Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong is projected to receive the largest amount from this season’s $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool based on his regular-season statistics.

Crow-Armstrong is on track to get $1,091,102, according to WAR calculations through July 8 that Major League Baseball sent to teams, players and agents in a memo Friday that was obtained by The Associated Press.

He earned $342,128 from the pool in 2024.

“I was aware of it after last year, but I have no clue of the numbers,” he said Friday. “I haven’t looked at it one time.”

Pittsburgh pitcher Paul Skenes is second at $961,256, followed by Washington outfielder James Wood ($863,835), Arizona outfielder Corbin Carroll ($798,397), Houston pitcher Hunter Brown ($786,838), Philadelphia pitcher Cristopher Sánchez ($764,854), Cincinnati shortstop Elly De La Cruz ($717,479), Boston catcher Carlos Narváez ($703,007), Red Sox outfielder Ceddanne Rafaela ($685,366) and Detroit outfielder Riley Greene ($665,470).

Crow-Armstrong, Skenes, Wood, Carroll, Brown, De La Cruz and Greene have been picked for Tuesday’s All-Star Game.

A total of 100 players will receive the payments, established as part of the 2022 collective bargaining agreement and aimed to get more money to players without sufficient service time for salary arbitration eligibility. The cutoff for 2025 was 2 years, 132 days of major league service.

Players who signed as foreign professionals are excluded.

Most young players have salaries just above this year’s major league minimum of $760,000. Crow-Armstrong has a $771,000 salary this year, Skenes $875,000, Wood $764,400 and Brown $807,400.

Carroll is in the third season of a $111 million, eight-year contract.

As part of the labor agreement, a management-union committee was established that determined the WAR formula used to allocate the bonuses after awards. (A player may receive only one award bonus per year, the highest one he is eligible for.) The agreement calls for an interim report to be distributed the week before the All-Star Game.

Distribution for awards was $9.85 million last year, down from $11.25 million in 2022 and $9.25 million in 2023.

A player earns $2.5 million for winning an MVP or Cy Young award, $1.75 million for finishing second, $1.5 million for third, $1 million for fourth or fifth or for making the All-MLB first team. A player can get $750,000 for winning Rookie of the Year, $500,000 for second or for making the All-MLB second team, $350,000 for third in the rookie race, $250,000 for fourth or $150,000 for fifth.

Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. topped last year’s pre-arbitration bonus pool at $3,077,595, and Skenes was second at $2,152,057 despite not making his big league debut until May 11. Baltimore shortstop Gunnar Henderson was third at $2,007,178.

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