With pitchers and catchers reporting, we’ll soon see how those moves — and many others — translate to the diamond. We’ve asked ESPN MLB experts to tee up spring training with the stars and storylines they’re most excited about ahead of the 2024 season.
What is the one thing you are most excited about as spring training begins?
Buster Olney: The summerlong pressure that will build on a handful of teams facing must-win seasons. If the Dodgers don’t win the World Series, their season will be regarded as a failure. The Atlanta Braves are right in the middle of their championship window, just before Max Fried and Charlie Morton depart as free agents. The Philadelphia Phillies should’ve won the World Series last fall, and that failure will drive them. The Yankees’ organization needs to take a big step forward in the postseason. This figures to be the last season of Alex Bregman with the Houston Astros. The Texas Rangers have to hang on until Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer return in midseason — and we’ll wonder then about what deGrom and Scherzer will bear this late in their respective careers, as Texas tries to go back-to-back. Every year, there are teams that hope to win the World Series, but this season, there are a lot of teams that need to win the title.
Jeff Passan: The season-long fight for supremacy in the National League between the Braves and Dodgers. With all due respect to the reigning NL champion Arizona Diamondbacks and their predecessor in the World Series, the Phillies, the Braves and Dodgers are the two most talented teams in baseball, replete with stars and hungry for another championship. Logging the most regular-season wins would secure home-field advantage, and while MLB’s postseason is too unpredictable to suggest the Braves and Dodgers will remain in the field by the time the NL Championship Series rolls around, every little advantage counts. These are two superteams, and the two times they meet during the regular season — three games May 3-5 at Dodger Stadium, four games Sept. 13-16 at Truist Park — could be precursors for an October series to remember.
Alden Gonzalez: Not so much excited, but I’m intrigued to see how the frenzy that surrounds Shohei Ohtani — and, to a slightly lesser extent, Yoshinobu Yamamoto — continues to play out. A dozen or so photographers and camera operators have been hanging out every morning, shortly after sunrise, outside the Dodgers’ facility, waiting to catch a glimpse of Ohtani rolling into the players’ parking lot. Roughly 70 media members attended his first interview session on Friday. Later that day, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was asked who on his team could serve as a spokesperson for Japanese media and — half-jokingly, I presume — nominated Jason Heyward. The next morning, Heyward held court twice in front of his locker, with more than 10 reporters circling around him each time. Heyward took it in stride, but also noted: “Shohei’s the guy to talk about Shohei.” The Dodgers have handled all this attention well, but it’s early.
Jesse Rogers: Excited might be the wrong word but I’m wholly invested in how many rabbits agent Scott Boras can pull out of his baseball cap. He has four key free agents. Can he find four teams to match his asking price at this late date? Three? Don’t discount the possibility of it all working out for him and his clients, but that would be quite the Houdini act. Lets not forget, Cody Bellinger, Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery and Matt Chapman are all going to be richer whenever and wherever they sign, but a shorter term deal with opt-outs — meaning they have to prove themselves to would-be suitors again — is a consolation prize.
Bradford Doolittle: This is going to sound overly sentimental, but here goes: I can’t say I’m excited in a way that is unique to the current moment in the sport. I just generally get really amped up with anticipation for the new season during the couple of weeks before spring training begins. Everything is a blank slate right now, and knowing all the checkpoints that lay ahead in the yearly baseball cycle — those first spring games, Opening Day, the playoff races, emergent players, a new Hall of Fame class, the World Series — it’s all embedded in my life rhythm. Sorting out this new puzzle — MLB, 2024 — is what it’s all about. It would be nice, though, if there wasn’t still so much important offseason business yet to be completed, and, sure, there are specific narrative threads I’ll be following based on trends and offseason moves. But it’s the emergent narratives that we don’t yet know about that I enjoy most.
Other than Shohei Ohtani, which player who changed teams are you most interested in seeing in his new uniform?
Olney: Yoshinobu Yamamoto is going to be a fascinating watch following the hyperfocus on him through the winter, his record-setting contract, and whether or not all that squares with how he performs. A number of talent evaluators believe that while he’s being paid like a No. 1 starter, he’s really more of a middle-of-the-rotation type who got big money because he reached free agency at such a young age. Will he be an ace? Will he turn out to be elite? Will that great competitive arrogance he demonstrated in the past help him to adapt in his first year in the big leagues? Will the production match the expectation? Yamamoto will either temporarily obliterate the bias against smaller pitchers, like Pedro Martinez did, or reinforce that bias if he struggles.
Passan: Perhaps because Juan Soto is set to hit free agency after the season, or because the Yankees are coming off a mediocre 2023 season, the marriage between one of this generation’s best hitters and MLB’s winningest franchise has flown under the radar this winter. Everything is lining up for a whale of a season, though, and the prospect of Soto and Aaron Judge hitting back-to-back is incredibly tantalizing. Soto loves the spotlight. He relishes the short porch in right field. And coming off a season in which he played all 162 games and hit a career-high 35 home runs, he’s smack in the prime of his career: 25 years old, healthy and ready to show why the Yankees giving up a five-player package in a trade with the San Diego Padres for just one year of club control will ultimately be worth it.
Gonzalez: You could make the case that no player changed the dynamic of his new division more than Corbin Burnes (sorry, Juan Soto). The Orioles possess the best young nucleus in the sport. They won 101 games last year while many of those players were still in the development stages of their careers. They should keep ascending. But they needed a big move to fortify the top of their rotation. Burnes certainly provides that. He has fallen short of his Cy Young form of 2021 these last couple years, but he was still really good for the Milwaukee Brewers last year, with a National League-best 1.07 WHIP in 193⅔ innings. He’s entering his walk year now, and he’ll join Kyle Bradish (already really good) and Grayson Rodriguez (should be better in Year 2). The Orioles are ready to go.
Rogers: I’m with Jeff, but not because this is Soto’s free agent season. There were three possible players available this winter who could have transformed the Yankees’ offense, and they got one of them. The other two were Ohtani and Bellinger. Brian Cashman has been on a multiyear mission to balance his lineup, with sobering results. Joey Gallo didn’t do it. Brett Gardner didn’t either. Matt Carpenter ultimately couldn’t. The list of lefties goes on and on. Anthony Rizzo helped, but they needed more from the left side of the plate and they got one of the best. It’s all or nothing for the Yankees on offense, and with Soto, the Yankees might just be back on top — assuming they stay healthy.
Schoenfield: Well, Yoshinobu Yamamoto switched teams, from the Orix Buffaloes to the Dodgers, so I’m going with him. His stats from Japan look like something out of the deadball era: ERAs of 1.39, 1.68 and 1.16 over the past three seasons. With his command and three-plus pitches (mid-90s fastball, splitter and curveball), the Dodgers signed him to a 12-year $325 million contract, clearly believing he can be a No. 1 starter. He’ll face a lot more power hitters than he did in Japan, where the overall levels of offense are much lower than in MLB, so we’ll have to see how he adapts to that new environment.
Doolittle: Maybe it’s just a contrarian reaction to the predominant style of baseball that’s being played in the majors these days, but I’ve increasingly become enamored of throwback, high-average hitters who control the bat and give strikeout pitchers fits. Thus, Luis Arraez has become one of my favorite active players. Along those lines, I am really looking forward to seeing if Jung Hoo Lee can become that kind of hitter on top of the San Francisco Giants‘ daily lineup, possibly with even a little more pop. Over the past two years for the Kiwoom Heroes, he walked 115 times and struck out just 55 times. He hit .340 over seven KBO seasons beginning when he was 18. Not saying that will translate all the way to MLB, but it will be great to see him try.
Which team are you far more interested in today than you were a year ago at this time?
Olney: The Boston Red Sox. A year ago they were drifting on the fringes of contention, but now Boston is a franchise facing a serious transition and serious problems. Forget the polite “adviser” title — Theo Epstein is going to be the most influential voice in baseball operations, and manager Alex Cora is entering the last year of his contract at a time when the team seems to be facing major money issues. We have grown accustomed to the Red Sox being a financial superpower and a championship contender, but they seem to be as far removed from that kind of stature as they have been in almost a quarter century — especially while inhabiting the rugged AL East, which has been made even more formidable by the ascension of the Orioles. It’ll be interesting to see the first steps of Epstein and Craig Breslow as they work to restore the Red Sox.
Passan: It might be a year early for the Detroit Tigers to win the American League Central. But if there’s any division for an ascendant team to inhabit, the Central is it. The reigning champion Minnesota Twins have signed three free agents this winter (Carlos Santana, Jay Jackson, Josh Staumont) and lost Sonny Gray, who finished second in the AL Cy Young voting. The Cleveland Guardians have done even less. The Kansas City Royals bulked up with a cache of free agents but are coming off a 106-loss season. The Chicago White Sox are rebuilding. Which leaves a relatively clear path for a Detroit team that has a host of young talent already in the big leagues — led by left-hander Tarik Skubal and outfielder Riley Greene — with more to come. Colt Keith should start at second base after signing a pre-debut extension. And keep an eye on Jackson Jobe. The former No. 3 overall pick will move fast, and him showing up at Comerica Park in 2024 should surprise no one.
Gonzalez: The D-backs, by a lot. I didn’t see them as a contending team at this time last year and they made it all the way to the World Series. But it’s how they’ve since doubled down that has me so intrigued. The D-backs could have taken a backseat in the wake of the Dodgers’ staggering offseason. They could have — like a lot of teams — used the RSN uncertainty as an excuse not to spend. Instead, they lavished $80 million on Eduardo Rodriguez, a perfect fit for the middle of their rotation, and spent another $50 million-plus to add Joc Pederson and bring back Lourdes Gurriel Jr. They’re not better than the Dodgers, but they’re a top five team in the National League.
Rogers: The Cincinnati Reds. We could ultimately look back and wonder why we didn’t see this explosion coming, as they showed enough signs last year. I’m not convinced it’s all going to come together, but of all those second- or third-tier teams out there, I think Cincinnati has the best chance to make a serious leap in a winnable division. It’s probably going to come down to that young staff, but when it comes to stuff, Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, Graham Ashcraft and Brandon Williamson have it. Now they need to harness it better. The combination of talent on the mound and in the field make the Reds contenders in the NL Central — and my favorite to win the division.
Schoenfield: The Orioles. A year ago, they were coming off an 83-79 season and looked like a .500 team — interesting, for sure, but not necessarily compelling. Now they’re coming off a 101-win season, are adding Holliday and Burnes to the mix and have a slew of other interesting young players and rookies like Jordan Westburg, Heston Kjerstad and Coby Mayo who could impact the lineup. I can see Grayson Rodriguez turning into an All-Star in his sophomore season and they have a young catcher in Samuel Basallo who might be a top-three prospect by the end of the season. The glory days are back in Baltimore and I suspect I might be watching them more than any other team in 2024.
Doolittle: The Royals. No, really. Last year I was actually pretty ticked off at them because it just didn’t seem like they were doing anything very well as an organization. And I’m not sure that’s changed. For one thing, I don’t think I’ve seen a Top 100 prospect list this year that has even one Royal listed on it. How is that possible for a team coming off 106 losses at the big league level? Yet the Royals spent the winter actually trying. They signed players people have heard of. They gave Bobby Witt Jr. an epic-length extension. They are being proactive about making a new ballpark development a reality. None of their acquisitions are game-changers but as a group, players like Adam Frazier, Hunter Renfroe, Will Smith and Michael Wacha raise the floor of the roster. They’ll need all of their young players to level up a tier or two. This includes Witt, who has MVP potential. But if the Royals can hover near .500 — a very big if — in the AL Central, that’s probably soft contention, and then you can add from there. It’s a tiny sliver of hope, but it’s more than what seemed possible when last season ended.
It’s a new era for the College Football Playoff, with the field growing from four to 12 this season. That means three times as many programs will gain entry, but, beginning with Tuesday’s initial playoff rankings, there’s three times as much room for outrage, too.
Under the old rules, there was a simple line of demarcation that separated the elated from the angry: Who’s in?
Now, there are so many more reasons for nitpicking the committee’s decisions, from first-round byes to hosting a home game to whether your supposedly meaningful conference has been eclipsed by teams from the Group of 5.
And if the first rankings are any indication, it’s going to be a fun year for fury. There’s little logic to be taken from the initial top 25 beyond the committee’s clear love for the Big Ten. Penn State and Indiana make the top eight despite having only one win combined over an ESPN FPI top-40 team (Penn State over Iowa). That Ohio State checks in at No. 2 ahead of Georgia is the most inexplicable decision involving Georgia since Charlie Daniels suggested the devil lost that fiddle contest. Oregon is a reasonable No. 1, but the Ducks still came within a breath of losing to Boise State. Indeed, the Big Ten’s nonconference record against the Power 4 this season is 6-8, just a tick better than the ACC and well behind the SEC’s mark of 10-6.
But this is the fun of early November rankings. The committee is still finding its footing, figuring out what to prioritize and what to ignore, what’s signal and what’s noise. And that’s where the outrage really helps. It’s certainly not signal, but it can be a really loud noise.
This week’s Anger Index:
There are only two possible explanations for BYU’s treatment in this initial ranking. The first is that the committee members are too sleepy to watch games beyond the Central time zone. The second, and frankly, less rational one, is they simply didn’t do much homework.
It’s certainly possible the committee members are so enthralled with metrics such as the FPI (where BYU ranks 28th) or SP+ (22nd) that they’ve determined the Cougars’ actual record isn’t as important. This is incredibly foolish. The FPI and SP+ certainly have their value, but they’re probabilistic metrics, designed to gauge the likelihood of future success. They’re in no way a ranking of actual results. (That’s why USC is still No. 17 in the FPI, despite Lincoln Riley spending his days wistfully scrolling through old pictures of Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray and wondering if Oklahoma might want to get back together.)
To look at actual results paints a clear picture.
BYU (No. 4) has a better strength of record than Ohio State (No. 5), has played roughly the same quality schedule as Texas and has two wins against other teams ranked in the committee’s top 25 — as many as Ohio State, Texas, Penn State, Tennessee and Indiana (all ranked ahead of the Cougars) combined.
Indiana’s rags-to-riches story is wonderful, of course, but how can the committee compare what BYU has done (wins over SMU and Kansas State) against Indiana’s 103rd-ranked strength of schedule?
And this particular snub has significant effects. The difference between No. 8 and No. 9 is a home game in the first round, of course, though as a potential conference champion, that’s a moot point. But what if BYU loses a game — perhaps the Big 12 title game? That could not only doom the Cougars from getting a first-round bye, but it could quite likely set up a scenario in which the Big 12 is shuffled outside the top four conferences entirely, passed by upstart Boise State.
What’s clear from this first round of rankings is the committee absolutely loves the Big Ten — with four teams ranked ahead of a subjectively more accomplished BYU team — and the Big 12 is going to face some serious headwinds.
There’s a great, though little watched, TV show from the 2010s called “Rectify,” about a man who escapes death row after new evidence is found, only to be constantly harassed by the same system that fraudulently locked him away for 20 years. This is basically the story of SMU.
Let’s do a quick blind résumé here.
Team A: 8-1 record, No. 13 strength of record, two wins vs. ranked opponents, loss to SP+ No. 22, .578 opponent win percentage
Team B: 7-1 record, No. 15 strength of record, two wins vs. ranked opponents, loss to SP+ No. 91, .567 opponent win percentage
OK, you probably guessed Team A is SMU. The Mustangs have wins against Louisville and Pitt — both relatively emphatic — and their lone loss came to No. 9 BYU, which came before a quarterback change and included five red zone drives that amounted to only six total points.
Team B? That’s Notre Dame. The Irish have the worst loss by far (to Northern Illinois) of any team in the top 25, beat a common opponent by the same score (though, while SMU outgained Louisville by 20 yards, the Cardinals actually outgained Notre Dame by 115) and have played one fewer game.
The difference? SMU has the stigma — of the death penalty, of the upstart program new to the Power 4, of being unworthy. Notre Dame is the big brand, and that results in being ranked three spots higher and, if the playoff were held today, getting in, while the Mustangs are left out.
There are three two-loss SEC teams ranked ahead of Ole Miss, which seems to be a perfectly reasonable consensus if you look at the AP poll, too. But are we sure that’s so reasonable?
Two stats we like to look at to measure a team’s quality are success rate (how often does a team make a play that improves its odds of winning) and explosiveness. Measure the differentials in each between offense and defense, then plot those out, and you’ll get a pretty clear look of who’s truly dominant in college football this season.
Explosive Play differential vs. Successful Play differential
Auburn & Ark make no sense Iowa & Iowa St are twinsies! Is Ole Miss undervalued? pic.twitter.com/h87SKCdOtr
That outer band that features Penn State, Texas, Miami, Ohio State and Indiana (and notably, not Oregon, Alabama, LSU or Texas A&M)? That’s where Ole Miss lives.
The Rebels have two losses this season, each by three points, both in games they outgained the winning team. They lost to LSU on the road and, yes, somehow lost to a dismal Kentucky team. But hey, LSU lost to USC, too. It has been a weird season.
SP+ loves Ole Miss. The Rebels check in at No. 4 there, behind only Ohio State, Texas and Georgia.
The FPI agrees, ranking the Rebels fifth.
In ESPN’s game control metric, no team is better. Ole Miss has the third-best average in-game win percentage. That suggests a lot of strange twists, and bad luck was involved with its losses. These are things the committee should be evaluating when comparing like teams.
But how about this comparison?
Team A: 7-2, 23 points per game scoring margin vs. FBS, 1 loss to unranked, three wins vs. SP+ top 40
Team B: 7-2, 19 points per game scoring margin vs. FBS, 1 loss to unranked, three wins vs. SP+ top 40
Pretty similar, eh?
Of course, one of them is Ole Miss. That’s Team A this time around.
Team B is Alabama, ranked five spots higher.
Sure, this situation can be resolved quite easily this weekend with a win over Georgia, but Ole Miss starting at the back of the pack of SEC contenders seems like a miss by the committee, even if the math will change substantially before the next rankings are revealed.
Oh, thanks so much for the No. 25 nod, committee. All Army has done is win every game without trailing the entire season. Last season, when Liberty waltzed through its weakest-in-the-nation schedule, the committee had no objections to giving the Flames enough love to make a New Year’s Six bowl. But Army? At No. 25? Thirteen spots behind Boise State, the Knights’ competition for the Group of 5’s bid? Something tells us some spies from Air Force have infiltrated the committee’s room in some sort of Manchurian Candidate scenario.
Sure, the Seminoles are terrible now, and yes, the committee this season has plenty of new faces, but that doesn’t mean folks in Tallahassee have forgiven or forgotten what happened a year ago. Before the committee’s playoff snub, FSU had won 19 straight games and averaged 39 points. Since the snub, the Noles are 1-9 and haven’t scored 21 points in any game. Who’s to blame for this? Mike Norvell? The coaching staff? DJ Uiagalelei and the other struggling QBs? Well, sure. But it’s much easier to just blame the committee. Those folks killed Florida State’s playoff hopes and ended their run of success. The least they could do this year is rank them No. 25 just for fun.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Alabama A&M linebacker Medrick Burnett Jr. remains hospitalized after sustaining a head injury during a game.
Burnett was still in the hospital Tuesday, according to an Alabama A&M spokesperson. The school hasn’t disclosed details of the injury Burnett suffered during a collision against Alabama State on Oct. 26.
A fundraising request on gofundme.com had raised more than $17,000 of a $100,000 goal as of Tuesday, and the school also set up an emergency relief fund. The gofundme goal included money to help the family pay for housing so they could be with him.
“He had several brain bleeds and swelling of the brain,” Burnett’s sister, Dominece, wrote in a post on the page. “He had to have a tube to drain to relieve the pressure, and after 2 days of severe pressure, we had to opt for a craniotomy, which was the last resort to help try to save his life.”
An update on Saturday said Burnett had had complications, but didn’t elaborate.
Burnett is a second-year freshman from Lakewood, California. He transferred from Grambling State during the offseason.
College Football Senior Writer for ESPN. Insider for College Gameday.
Nebraska is adding former Houston and West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen to the staff as an offensive consultant, sources told ESPN.
Holgorsen will work with the offensive staff in a role that will evolve as the season goes on, per sources. Holgorsen joins the staff after spending this season with TCU as an offensive consultant.
He joins Nebraska at a time when the offense — and freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola — have been mired in a rut of uneven play and the team is on a three-game losing streak.
In Nebraska’s six conference games, the Cornhuskers rank No. 12 in the Big Ten in offense, No. 14 in rushing offense and No. 11 in passing offense. Offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield has drawn criticism during Nebraska’s recent offensive slump, which has seen a dip in the passing game of Raiola, who was ESPN’s No. 11 recruit and the top pocket passer in the 2024 recruiting class.
Raiola has the third-most interceptions among Big Ten quarterbacks with eight, trailing Michigan State‘s Aidan Chiles (11) and USC‘s Miller Moss (9), who is being benched by the Trojans in favor of Jayden Maiava for next week’s matchup with the Cornhuskers.
In the past four games, Raiola has thrown just one touchdown and six interceptions. After starting 5-1, Nebraska is 5-4 and needs a win during a tough closing stretch to clinch the program’s first bowl game since 2016. That’s the longest drought of any team in power conference football.
Nebraska has a bye this week before next week’s visit to USC.
In adding Holgorsen, they are bringing in a coach who is a noted quarterback tutor and author of prolific offenses. Over the years he has worked with a slew of top college quarterbacks as an assistant and head coach — Graham Harrell, Case Keenum, Brandon Weeden, Geno Smith, Will Grier and Clayton Tune.
Holgorsen arrived in Lincoln on Monday, per sources.