Ever since Roki Sasaki's agent, Joel Wolfe, met with the media at the Winter Meetings, there’s been speculation about which team might be the best fit to land the prized right-hander, who was recently posted by his Japanese team, the Chiba Lotte Marines. As one executive put it when asked

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Let's dive into some questions to go with the leftovers ...

With Paul Skenes and Luis Gil taking home their leagues' respective 2024 Rookie of the Year Awards, it's time to turn our attention to 2025.

The Arizona Fall League is over, with tremendous prospects shutting things down for the offseason. All 30 teams have made their 40-man roster decisions, adding big-name prospects and some sleepers to keep an eye on. So what’s a prospect hound to do? Answer your questions, of course! We answered a

Season No. 32 of the Arizona Fall League is in the books, with the Salt River Rafters beating the Surprise Saguaros, 3-2, in the Championship Game on Saturday. It was another fall full of top prospects and top performances. Below is the 2024 MLB Pipeline All-AFL Team. This is based

PHILADELPHIA -- The Phillies added three starting pitchers to the 40-man roster on Tuesday night, protecting them from next month’s Rule 5 Draft: right-handers Mick Abel (Phillies’ No. 6 prospect), Jean Cabrera (No. 13) and Moisés Chace (No. 26). The Phillies are looking to create as much starting pitching depth

For six more weeks again this year, some of the best prospects in baseball shined in the Arizona Fall League, the game’s most elite prospect circuit. Now it’s time to give out some hardware. The Fall League annually awards the Joe Black MVP Award to its top performer, and since

When you’re as good as Andrew Painter can be on the mound, a rehab assignment can turn into an award-winning performance. After a two-year layoff following Tommy John surgery, the goal was for the No. 32 prospect in baseball to simply get his first competitive innings in the Arizona Fall

This story was excerpted from Todd Zolecki's Phillies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

SURPRISE, Ariz. – Mission accomplished. Andrew Painter arrived in the Arizona Fall League six weeks ago, having not pitched in game action since he sprained his elbow during a Spring Training appearance on March 1, 2023. He tried to rehab the injury before having Tommy John surgery that July, and

Here are the top performers from the fifth week of AFL action:

With the Arizona Fall League's Home Run Derby and Fall Stars Game on tap for the weekend, Jim Callis, Jonathan Mayo and Jason Ratliff open this week's podcast with a discussion of which top prospects they're most excited to see show out and dive into the choices on Final 2

Here are the top performers from the fourth week of AFL action:

SURPRISE, Ariz. -- The Andrew Painter comeback tour continued on Wednesday afternoon. The fourth Arizona Fall League start for the No. 32 prospect in baseball delivered similar results to the Phillies phenom’s previous outing: three scoreless innings, three strikeouts, no walks and one step closer to being ready for a

This fall, for the first time, the majority of Arizona Fall League stadiums are outfitted with Statcast technology. That enables us to peek under the hood and get a better sense of how some of the game’s best prospects are performing on the annual elite prospect circuit. With that in

This story was excerpted from Todd Zolecki’s Phillies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- In many ways, Glendale’s starter Thursday was the old Andrew Painter, the one who posted a zero in 11 of his 22 appearances and finished with a 1.56 ERA across three levels during a legendary 2022 run. In other ways, it was a new Painter. Sure, he’s

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- By now, Phillies infield prospect Bryan Rincon understands that fulfilling his dream of becoming a big leaguer isn’t going to be a walk in the park, that sacrifices will have to be made. He committed to his first big one with his family in Venezuela a few

Here are the top performers from the second week of AFL action:

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Fifteen months removed from Tommy John surgery that cost Andrew Painter the entirety of his 2024 regular season, the velocity has returned in spades for MLB’s No. 32 prospect.

PEORIA, Ariz. – Just beyond the outfield walls of Carroll B. Land Baseball Field, the home of Point Loma Nazarene University, sits the Pacific Ocean in all its cerulean splendor. While Otto Kemp's first two Arizona Fall League homers may not have splashed down into the water, they gave a

The 32nd season of the Arizona Fall League is a week old, and already, there are top prospects standing out amid the field of, well, top prospects. Here are the top performers from the first week of AFL action:

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Sound the alarm, Andrew Painter is back on the hill. As Philadelphia’s top-ranked pitching prospect took a deep breath and threw his warmup tosses ahead of his first game action since March 2023, an ambulance siren blared outside of Scottsdale Stadium -- a moment of levity amid

NEW YORK -- The Phillies struggled to find a reliable No. 5 starter in the final months of the 2024 season. They hope it isn’t an issue next year. The Phillies think Andrew Painter will be a candidate at some point. The 21-year-old is Philadelphia’s No. 1 pitching prospect and

There is definitely more than one way to build a winning Major League team, and the 12 clubs headed to the postseason in 2024 prove that. On one hand, there are the Tigers and Guardians, the AL Central teams leading the way with 16 and 15 homegrown players on their