Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone, and welcome to the first mailbag of spring training. It’s fitting that this annual day of love coincides with the return of baseball, because all of us are madly in love with this sport. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be spending part of your Saturday reading a Members-only mailbag on a website dedicated exclusively to covering our game. Really, baseball is the game of love. Our fandom begins as passionate affair, and then like any lasting relationship, it requires daily commitment, growing stronger over time. It rewards patience, hard work, and finding joy in both the mundane and the extraordinary. It isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it. How can you not be romantic about baseball?
Speaking of love, nobody I know loves college baseball like Michael Baumann. With Friday marking the start of the college season, he previewed the action to come in two pieces. First, he ran through the seven college teams you need to know in 2026, and then went deep on what he dubbed, “The Ridiculous Firewagon Offenses of College Baseball.” The opening of spring camps also means it’s Prospect Week here at FanGraphs. If you missed any of our coverage, you can find Eric Longenhagen’s audit of our 2019 Top 100 list, David Laurila’s interviews with Cardinals assistant GM Rob Cerfolio and Padres assistant director of player development Mike Daly about their respective farm systems, Brendan Gawlowski’s reflections on what he learned from his worst scouting report during his time as a Pirates pro scout, and Eric’s updated 2026 draft rankings. Early next week, we’ll have our Top 100 Prospects list, as well as those from both ZiPS and OOPSY, along with fantasy rankings and plenty of other prospect coverage. So be sure to come back to the site to check it all out.
That’s the last you’ll read about love and Prospect Week in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about the cost of 1.0 WAR, the legality of a dog playing first base, the number of balls players hit in their careers, and whether a full team of free agents could beat the Rockies. Before we do, though, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
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Is it time to update my expectations for the price of 1.0 WAR in free agency? I’m generally running a scale that puts 1.0 WAR at $8-12 million a year, more for a larger market team, but with the Kyle Tucker and Bo Bichette deals, should I recalibrate to like $15-20 million? Generously thinking Tucker will be a 4.0-WAR player the next few years at $15 million per WAR is only break even for the team right? Is there a rule of thumb teams use like $15/WAR +40% margin kind of thing? Perhaps I’m thinking of this wrong and players are finally getting paid what they’re worth? — Workermonkey
Ben Clemens: It’s definitely time to update your assumptions. Let’s take a quick tour through the state of play in free agency contracts. Tucker is a good example of the top end, though I think your 4.0 WAR “generous” assumption is itself ungenerous. The last time Tucker didn’t eclipse 4.0 WAR in a season was 2020, and, well… In any case, though, the top of the market looks different than the bottom. We project Tucker for 4.9 WAR, and he’s getting $57.2 million in net present value this year for that. That’s $11.7 million per win. Adolis García, Cedric Mullins, Willi Castro, and Austin Hays project for a combined 5.0 WAR next year, and they’re getting paid a combined $29.9 million for that production, or $6 million per win.
When I model free agency contracts, I use a sliding scale in my initial estimate. I have different ones for starting pitchers, relievers, and hitters, but let’s stick with hitters. I peg the first win at $7 million, the second at $9 million, the third at $10.5 million, and everything past that at $12.5 million. This still doesn’t do a perfect job, but it does better. For example, the top five hitters in this year’s free agency class are getting $205 million in average annual value, and they’re projected for around 21 WAR. My staggered formula would give them $202 million, pretty close. Likewise, there are 10 hitters projected for a WAR total between 1 and 1.5 in 2026. They’re getting about $6.5 million per projected win, a hair lower than my estimate but broadly in line. It’s trickier than that because of aging, deferrals, contract options, and all kinds of other wrinkles, but if you start with a staggered scale with big numbers on the top end, you won’t go too wrong.
Why do we see this graduated salary scale? It reflects supply and demand. Of the top 50 offensive free agents this year, we’re projecting four for 3.5 or more WAR, six for 2.5-3.5 WAR, 10 for 1.5-2.5 WAR, and 20 for 0.5-1.5 WAR. If you think of free agent salaries as chasing rare and desirable profiles, it’s clear why the top players get a disproportionate per-WAR salary. Figuring out the exact shape of contracts – how many years, how much age-related decline to apply to projections, how to structure all of this within the competitive balance tax and each team’s particular on-field needs – is very complicated. But as a rule of thumb, the 7/9/10.5/12.5 salary scale has done well for me.
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Are there any rules saying a golden retriever can’t play first base? — Chase
Michael Baumann: I feel like everyone should know that Matt assigned me this question four hours after I’d posted a column in which I bragged about my affinity for rulebook and CBA minutiae. Feels like punishment.
Nevertheless, when the readers call, I will answer. Let’s start at the beginning, with the official rulebook.
And the collective bargaining agreement.
So far, so good.
The rulebook is also maximally broad on defining the players. Most references to “man” come in references to position — e.g., first baseman, four-man outfield — that are understood to be neutral in terms of gender. I see no reason why the same logic couldn’t be extended to species.
The word “person” appears 36 times in the rulebook, in three contexts: First, describing someone on the field, but not necessarily a player. Second, as described by the following rulebook definition: “The PERSON of a player or an umpire is any part of his body, his clothing or his equipment.” So in the sense of “on his (or her or their) person.”
Third, in the definition of a manager: “A person appointed by the Club to be responsible for the team’s actions on the field, and to represent the team in communications with the umpire and the opposing team. A player may be appointed manager.”
A more creative philosophical or legal thinker than I might try to make a case for animal personhood, but I think this establishes that the manager must be a human being. Rule 5.04(b)(5) states: “The batter’s legal position shall be with both feet within the batter’s box,” which assumes a bipedal batter. But the dog could fulfill that requirement by placing all four feet within the batter’s box.
I’m gonna be real with you here: I don’t think there’s anything in the official rulebook that says a dog can’t play baseball.
Here’s Rule 1.01, under the section, “Objectives of the Game.”
Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, played on an enclosed field in accordance with these rules, under jurisdiction of one or more umpires.
What constitutes a “player” is not defined, either here or in the section on definitions of terms. Players are usually defined by their role: “pitcher,” “fielder,” “runner,” and so on.
I thought that maybe we might get tripped up on the equipment here, especially as Chase’s question specifically mentions the dog playing first base. But Rule 3.05, which governs the first baseman’s glove, starts: “The first baseman may wear a leather glove or mitt not more than thirteen inches long…”
May wear. Not shall wear or must wear. The same wording appears in Rule 3.06, which covers other fielding gloves. So we don’t even have to account for a special canine-ergonomic mitt that might hinder our golden retriever’s gait. Rule 3.03(a) defines the requirements of a uniform and Rule 3.03(i) restricts the type of spikes available to use, but a strict reading of the rules does not say anything about wearing shoes at all. Even if they did, we could get our dog those little running booties.
A dog would be required to wear a uniform that matches the ones its teammates are wearing, as per Rule 3.03(c). And the dog would need to wear a helmet while batting and running the bases, as specified in Rule 3.08(a). But putting a dog in a baseball uniform and batting helmet would just make it more adorable, in my opinion.
Could a dog play first base well? Surely not. Could it be trained to stand in certain places well enough to count as a player for the purposes of fulfilling the definition of a first baseman? Sure. Isn’t that what Rowdy Tellez has been doing for the past five years?
In summary, if you can get a dog on the roster, you can play it in a major league game at first base or any other position. Genuinely, there’s nothing in the rulebook that says the dog can’t play baseball.
Unfortunately, I don’t think you could get a dog on the roster. At first, I thought there would be a hang-up with age; even if the dog in question were born outside the U.S., Canada, or Puerto Rico, it couldn’t sign with a professional team until it turned 16, which is really stretching things for a big dog like a golden retriever.
As much as dogs slip through the cracks in the MLB rulebook, in the real world there are some obstacles to a dog playing professional baseball. All major league players have to sign a uniform player contract, and apparently dogs (or animals of any kind) aren’t considered competent to sign a legally binding document like that.
I asked a lawyer friend of mine, who shared some insight on the condition that she remain nameless on account of this being a stupid question that she doesn’t want coming up when potential employers Google her.
In short, dogs don’t have the capacity of abstract thought required to enter into a legal contract. “There can be no meeting of the minds, unless it’s two dogs contracting with each other.” (This caused me to ask if that means a dog can sign a contract with the White Sox.)
So while there’s no rule that says a dog can’t play baseball, there is apparently a law (or at least case law) that says dogs can’t sign a contract to play professional baseball. And since that’s a requirement for getting into the league, an Air Bud scenario seems to be off the table. Unless someone comes up with a smart enough dog.
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How many balls do you think a major leaguer hits in a 20-year career? — bobbyt0805
Davy Andrews: Alright, Bobby. I love a good Fermi problem, so I’m not afraid to talk balls if you’re not. Let’s use Freddie Freeman as an example. He debuted in 2010, which means his entire career 16-year career is within the pitch-tracking era. In fact, no player has hit more balls over that time than Freeman’s 13,563. That’s 6,417 fair balls and 7,146 fouls. It’s roughly 5.6 per game, 904 per season; here I’m dividing by 15, because Freeman only got into a handful of games in 2010. That makes 18,080 over the course of a 20-year career, but that’s just within the games.
It’s important to remember that you can’t just swing and swing and swing endlessly. If you’ve ever watched batting practice before the game, you know that players jump in and out of the cage frequently, and they do so for a reason. Swinging is hard work, and if you keep at it for long, you’ll get tired. You’ll take tired swings, not firing your hips all the way, letting the bat head drop, not engaging your top hand. All of a sudden, you’re practicing the wrong mechanics, training yourself to take bad swings. That’s bad news.
It’s also really hard on your hands. Cage work is usually tough work, seeing tough pitches at high speeds, often with a Trajekt machine these days. When you don’t square a pitch up, it hurts. Your hands have little protection in the way of muscle or fat. It doesn’t take too much imperfect contact to cause bruising or swelling, or to break the hook off your stupid hamate bone. Or, like Matt McLain in 2024 and so many others, you can take too many swings and end up straining an oblique.
That said, I think professional players tend to take a lot of swings per day. They start with tee work and soft toss, then they do batting cage work, maybe on-field batting practice, and then possibly even more cage work during or after the game. They often do multiple rounds per day. In a video from last spring training, Brenton Doyle hit 20 balls during his 8:00 AM warm-up drills. That’s before whatever cage work, live BP, and actual spring training games happened that day. Freeman grew up with his dad throwing him batting practice every day, three buckets of 48 balls each.
In a video where he emphasized that he has a simple routine and doesn’t like to take too many swings before the game, Aaron Judge said he hits 30 balls in tee work and soft toss. Then he does cage work, then batting practice, then plays the actual game. So let’s take Judge’s word for it that 30 swings is a simpler warm-up routine. We’ll say the average player does 40 between tee work and soft toss.
Now we’ll add in another 40 in the batting cage, probably starting with the slider machine, then seeing fastballs, then working on whatever particular things the individual player likes to work on, and then taking some pitches off the Trajekt machine.
Then we’ll add another 25 for on-field batting practice, another five during the actual game itself, and another 15 for any in-game cage work. Add all that up and we’re at 130 per game. That feels at least in the vicinity to me, based on some of the upper bounds I’ve read about. Mookie Betts described a time during a 2024 slump when he took 300 to 400 swings in a single day in order to get right. In 2018, Tommy Pham reported swinging 300 times in a single day while trying to recover from an injury. Clearly, taking that many swings is so notable that it’s a real rarity. In 2017, Aaron Altherr described a similar rarity of taking 100 to 150 swings to get ready for a single at-bat. So we’re going with our figure of 130. That’s 21,060 per season and 417,960 over the course of a career. But that’s just during the regular season.
We’ll add another 130 for each of the 60 days of spring training. We’ll say that our example player gets another 10 days of reps for the playoffs, then takes the rest of the month of October off for rest and recovery. Lastly, we also need to take the offseason into account. In one video of a random offseason day, Betts showed himself hitting 41 balls, and I would guess that he hit at least another 40 that ended up on the cutting room floor. So over November, December, and January, let’s give each player 60 balls per day, then cut it down to 50 because we assume they’ll take a couple weekends and holidays off here and there.
Now let’s add everything up.
Spring Training: 130 balls x 60 days = 7,800
Regular Season: 130 balls x 162 days = 21,060
Playoffs: 130 balls x 10 days = 1,300
Offseason: 60 balls x 90 days = 5,400
Total: 35,560 balls per year
Times 20 Years: 711,200
So that’s our estimate, 711,200 balls over the course of a 20-year career. Obviously, this will vary widely. If you’re a player like Judge, who doesn’t like to take that many pregame swings, takes a lot of pitches, and runs a higher whiff rate, your number could be down below half a million. If you’re someone like Freeman, who takes tons of swings before the game and fouls off tons of pitches during it, you could be up over a million. Either way, it’s probably enough.
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As of today (February 7), could you sign a team of free agents that would be better than the Rockies? — Jeremy William Fox
Dan Szymborski: OK, Jeremy, since this is still the busy ZiPS season, I’m game with trying to best the Rockies with the free agents remaining. Unless I’ve screwed something up, everyone in this little section was still a free agent as of the morning of February 7. To get this, I simply assembled the best team I could in ZiPS, replaced them with the Rockies (who have crept up to 63 wins since our last projection with some useful depth signings), and re-ran the simulation to see if I could improve their record. And I did! With the best free agents available through that date, I got a team that managed to go 64-98 in the simulation.
| Po | Player(s) | Starters | Relievers |
|---|---|---|---|
| C | Jonah Heim | Zac Gallen | Michael Kopech |
| 1B | Nathaniel Lowe | Alex Cobb | Jalen Beeks |
| 2B | Thairo Estrada | Chris Bassitt | Danny Coulombe |
| 3B | Ramón Urías | Max Scherzer | Dauri Moreta |
| SS | Jose Iglesias | Nick Martinez | John King |
| LF | Max Kepler | Justin Verlander | Max Kranick |
| CF | Austin Slater | Shelby Miller | |
| RF | Mike Tauchman | ||
| DH | Marcell Ozuna | ||
| Reserve | Gary Sánchez | ||
| IF | Luis Urías | ||
| OF | Starling Marte | ||
| OF | Manuel Margot | ||
| Minors | Ty France | Zack Littell | Justin Wilson |
| Minors | Alex Verdugo | Jose Quintana | José Leclerc |
| Minors | Jesse Winker | Luis García | Lucas Giolito |
| Minors | Luis Rengifo | Nestor Cortes | Andrew Chafin |
| Minors | Tommy Pham | Joey Lucchesi |
This team does have a few highlights. Since I could sign all the free agents I wanted, even though there’s nobody particularly good, I greedily was able to stock a pretty good stable of emergency fill-ins in the minors. There are also some lowlights, as expected with a team flirting with 100 losses. The center field situation is particularly bleak, as major league teams haven’t left many players capable of manning center without someone playing a vaudeville piano in the background. And I’m certainly not happy with my middle infield. But I do have an assortment of random guys who can put up a 105 OPS+!
Now, the question leads to a second one: Should you build a team like this? Abso-frigging-lutely not. This would be one of the most depressing teams fighting not to lose 100 games that I have ever seen. Even once you get past the sad realization that you’re watching a bunch of guys who were much better at baseball years ago and are now at the worst points in their careers, you’re also watching a team with just about zero upside. This team can’t win now, and there’s absolutely nobody in there who would be meaningfully better in the future. But as an exercise in theoretical history that should never actually be made, I think we can count this as a victory on those limited grounds.
* This article was originally published here
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