I found this in my notes last week. I have no idea how long it’s been there. It says: “How many times this season has an infielder let the ball go right between their legs?” I had no idea whatsoever. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen it. Probably in a highlight from the 1986 World Series.

Baseball is the ultimate scorekeeping sport, and thanks to sites like ours, when you ask how many times any particular event has happened, the answer is usually easy to find. How often does a righty hit a home run off a lefty in the top of the eighth inning with the tying run in the on-deck circle? It took me twice as long to type that question out as it did to look up the answer: It has happened five times in each of the last three years. Easy. But so far as I know, nobody keeps a count of grounders that go right through the wickets.

Errors get classified in certain ways. Our leaderboard tracks fielding and throwing errors. The play-by-play notes on Baseball Savant add in missed-catch errors. Other sources differentiate between reached-on-error errors and runner-advanced errors. But that’s about it. Because they represent arguably the most embarrassing way to commit an error, between-the-legs errors are special in a human sense, but nobody splits them out into their own column because there’s nothing particularly special about them in a baseball sense. At least, you wouldn’t think so initially. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. Originally written for the 2015 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Wherever Gary Sheffield went, he made noise, both with his bat and his voice. For the better part of two decades, he ranked among the game’s most dangerous hitters, a slugger with a keen batting eye and a penchant for contact that belied his quick, violent swing. For even longer than that, he was one of the game’s most outspoken players, unafraid to speak up when he felt he was being wronged and unwilling to endure a situation that wasn’t to his liking. He was a polarizing player, and hardly one for the faint of heart.

At the plate, Sheffield was viscerally impressive like few others. With his bat twitching back and forth like the tail of a tiger waiting to pounce, he was pure menace in the batter’s box. He won a batting title, launched over 500 home runs — he had 14 seasons with at least 20 and eight with at least 30 — and put many a third base coach in peril with some of the most terrifying foul balls anyone has ever seen. For as violent as his swing may have been, it was hardly wild; not until his late 30s did he strike out more than 80 times in a season, and in his prime, he walked far more often than he struck out.

Bill James wrote of Sheffield in the 2019 Bill James Handbook:

“In all the years that I have been with the Red Sox, 16 years now, there has never been a player the Red Sox were more concerned about, as an opponent, than Gary Sheffield. Sheffield was a dynamite hitter and a fierce competitor… When he was in the game, you knew exactly where he was from the first pitch to the last pitch. He conceded nothing; he was looking not only to beat you, but to embarrass you. He was on the highest level.”

Two decades before that, James referred to Sheffield as “an urban legend in his own mind,” referencing the slugger’s penchant for controversy. Sheffield found it before he ever reached the majors through his connection to his uncle, Dwight Gooden. He was drafted and developed by the Brewers, who had no idea how to handle such a volatile player and wound up doing far more harm than good. Small wonder then that from the time he was sent down midway through his rookie season after being accused of faking an injury, he was mistrustful of team management and wanted out. And when he wanted out — of Milwaukee, Los Angeles, or New York — he let everyone know it, and if a bridge had to burn, so be it; it was Festivus every day for Sheffield, who was always willing to air his grievances.

Later in his career, Sheffield became entangled in the BALCO performance-enhancing drug scandal through his relationship with Barry Bonds — a relationship that by all accounts crumbled before Sheffield could wind up in deeper water. For all of the drama that surrounded him, and for all of his rage and outrageousness, he never burned out the way his uncle did, nor did he have trouble finding work.

Even in the context of the high-scoring era in which he played, Sheffield’s offensive numbers are Hall of Fame caliber, but during his 10 years on the BBWAA ballot, voters found reasons to overlook him, whether due to his tangential connection to PEDs, his gift for finding controversy, his poor defensive metrics, or the crowd on the ballot. In his 2015 debut, he received just 11.7% of the vote, and over the next four years, he gained barely any ground. But from 2019 to ’23, his support roughly quadrupled, from 13.6% to 55% as he annually posted some of the ballot’s biggest gains. His 63.9% share on the 2024 ballot, his last one, is larger than any player who’s been linked to PEDs via BALCO, the Mitchell Report, or a suspension, except for Bonds or Roger Clemens. On this ballot, Sheffield is competing with those two for votes, though the nuances of their respective cases may be lost to some.

Gary Antonian Sheffield was born in Tampa on November 18, 1968 to Betty Gooden Jones, the older sister of the aforementioned Cy Young-winning pitcher, and was raised by Betty and stepfather Harold Jones. Sheffield grew up in the Belmont Heights section of Tampa, a baseball-rich area that from 1981 to ’90 produced seven first- or second-round draft picks, including Sheffield, Derek Bell, Carl Everett, Floyd Youmans, and, most notably, Gooden. Four years older than Sheffield, Gooden was more like a sibling than an uncle, regularly dragging his six-year-old nephew out of bed to face his already-searing fastball, either with the bat or the glove.

Playing for the Belmont Heights Little League All-Stars, Sheffield (along with Bell) was part of the 1980 team that advanced all the way to the finals of the Little League World Series before falling to Taiwan. Amazingly, a partial video of the finals is online; Sheffield started at catcher, batted third and, according to the chyron, entered the game hitting .600 in the tournament. In the condensed video below, he flies out to right field around the 17:30 mark, ropes a double down the left field line at the 43:15 mark, and scores on a Bell groundout after an aggressive tour around the bases.

Sheffield missed a chance to return to the Little League World Series the following year because he was “suspended for raising a bat to his coach during a disagreement,” according to a 2004 New York Times story by Jack Curry. “It took me years to get over that,” Sheffield recounted. “I made a mistake, but I paid the biggest price you could ever pay for it.” He went on to star at Hillsborough High, where he pitched — some scouts preferred his 90-mph fastball to his bat — and played third base. In 1986, he was named the Gatorade National Player of the Year, one of many future major league stars to win the award. The Brewers chose him with the sixth pick of that year’s draft, signing him for a $142,500 bonus. In the pages of Sports Illustrated, Peter Gammons noted in a 1989 profile that Sheffield used some of the money to have his initials inlaid in gold on his front teeth and buy a gold Mercedes.

As a 17-year-old, Sheffield tore up the rookie Pioneer League in 1986 (.365/.413/.640 with 15 home runs and 14 stolen bases in 57 games) and won both the league’s Player of the Year honors and Baseball America’s Short-Season Player of the Year prize. Trouble found him that winter, however, when he was arrested along with Gooden and three others. As the group was returning home from a University of South Florida basketball game, police officers stopped their cars for driving erratically. The confrontation soon turned physical, with Gooden — who by that point had collected Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards as well as a World Series ring in his three big league seasons — “beaten to the ground with nightsticks and flashlights before being handcuffed and shackled,” according to The New York Times. Sheffield was charged with a pair of third-degree felonies for battery on a police officer and violently resisting arrest; he pleaded no contest and was given two years probation. In 2020, in the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, Sheffield wrote that the police “beat all of us unmercifully — beat us with flashlights. Not satisfied, they then loaded us into their cars and took us to the dog track — which was deserted — where they proceeded to assault us again until we were black, blue and swollen.”

The incident began Gooden’s legal troubles — he would test positive for cocaine in spring training just a few months later — which spilled over to Sheffield, who was soon subjected to not-so-random drug testing. Beyond that, his baseball life returned to normal. At 18 in 1987, he earned spots on both the California League and Baseball America All-Star teams. At 19, he hit a combined .327/.395/.579 in hitter-friendly environments at Double-A El Paso and Triple-A Denver, earning a late-season call-up. He debuted on September 3, 1988 against the Tigers in a lineup that included future Hall of Famers Paul Molitor and Robin Yount, though he did not make an official plate appearance as a defensive replacement for Dale Sveum. He went 0-for-4 the next day and ran his hitless string to 0-for-11 before homering and collecting a single off Seattle’s Mark Langston on September 9.

While Sheffield opened the 1989 season as the Brewers’ starting shortstop, he struggled both at the plate and in the field, where the team accused him of “indifferent fielding.” He complained of a right foot injury, but when the team’s doctors found nothing, he was demoted to Triple-A. After initially refusing to play, he was diagnosed with a broken bone in his right foot and filed a grievance with the Players Association, saying he was unjustly demoted. His trust in the Brewers was shattered, and when he returned to the majors two months later, tensions were ratcheted even higher by a forced move to third base — one that he believed was racially motivated. “When a reporter wondered whether I thought the decision had racial overtones, I wasn’t about to lie,” wrote Sheffield in his 2007 memoir, Inside Power. “The white man was given preference, and that was that.” He finished his tumultuous season hitting just .247/.303/.337 with five homers in 95 games and was 12 runs below average defensively, according to Total Zone.

Though Sheffield became angry over what he later claimed was the revocation of a $7 million long-term contract offer from Brewers owner Bud Selig, his bat perked up the following year (.294/.350/.421 with 10 homers) as did his glove (-3 runs via Total Zone), and he finished with 3.1 WAR, a strong showing for an age-21 season. Nonetheless, he was growing unhappier in Milwaukee. In the spring of 1991, he charged general manager Harry Dalton with “ruining this team” — one that slid from 91 wins and a third-place finish in 1987 to successive seasons of 87, 81, and 74 wins. Later, Sheffield would be accused of causing Dalton’s heart attack. Between his frustration and shoulder and wrist injuries, he hit just .194/.277/.320 in 50 games. Dalton, who had refused to trade Sheffield, was fired at season’s end, so the job of sending him out of town was left to successor Sal Bando, who dealt him to the Padres in exchange for three players in late March.

Sheffield’s Milwaukee headaches (and Milwaukee’s Sheffield headaches) weren’t quite over, however. In June, he told the Los Angeles Times’ Bob Nightengale:

“The Brewers brought out the hate in me… I was a crazy man,” Sheffield said. “I hated (Dalton) so much that I wanted to hurt the man. I hated everything about that place. I didn’t even want to come to the ballpark. If I missed a ball or something, so what?

“If the official scorer gave me an error that I didn’t think was an error, I’d say, ‘OK, here’s a real error,’ and I’d throw the next ball into the stands on purpose. I did it all.”

Sheffield recanted the statement in a follow-up with Nightengale: “What I said was out of frustration. They want to take something and run with it. Why would a player purposely make mistakes? I’d never do anything to hurt the team. You get paid to play.” Nightengale did add, “Sheffield said the only time he may have made an error purposely out of anger was when he was in the Brewers’ minor-league system.”

Despite his inflammatory words, there’s no evidence to suggest that Sheffield made intentional errors during his time with the Brewers; many (including me and Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci) have explored the matter and found nothing to support the idea that he may have done so. As to the possibility that he may have done so in the minors, in a 2012 Sports on Earth profile, Sheffield told Jack Dickey of an incident that happened in Class A in 1987:

Future major leaguer Darryl Hamilton threw a ball that short-hopped Sheffield, and Sheffield took the error. He was upset. He yelled at the scorer. This made his manager, Dave Machemer, mad. The next inning, Sheffield threw a ball from short to first as hard as he could, and it sailed into the stands. Machemer walked out onto the field and pulled Sheffield from the game, accusing him of sabotage.

Sheffield says his manager apologized to him in front of the whole team later that night, but the damage had been done. The official scouting report had him as Gary Sheffield, the guy who deliberately threw balls away when he got mad, and that went up to the big club. When he arrived in Milwaukee, none of the veterans, save backup third baseman Ernie Riles, wanted to help him. Sheffield says he’d visit owner Bud Selig’s office every day, asking for a trade. Selig wouldn’t do anything.

Free of Milwaukee, Sheffield broke out with the Padres in 1992, hitting .330/.385/.580; he won the National League batting title, led the league in total bases (323), and ranked second in slugging percentage and OPS+ (168), third in home runs (33), fourth in WAR (6.2), and sixth in on-base percentage. He earned All-Star honors for the first time and placed third in the NL MVP voting behind Bonds and Terry Pendleton. But his stay in San Diego wasn’t long: Along with Fred McGriff, he was part of owner Tom Werner’s infamous salary purge and was dealt to the expansion Marlins on June 24, 1993 in a five-player trade that brought back Trevor Hoffman.

In a season split between the Marlins and Padres, Sheffield’s batting line slipped to .294/.361/.476, his fielding percentage to .899 (the only time it’s truly acceptable to cite fielding percentage is when it reaches the Hobson Line) as he played through shoulder inflammation. Nonetheless, the Marlins wanted to keep him around. In late September, they signed the 24-year-old slugger to a four-year, $22.45 million extension that made him “the highest-paid player on his team, at his position and in his family,” wrote the Tampa Bay Times’ Marc Topkin, referring to Gooden. As a concession to keeping him around, the team wrote a clause into his contract allowing him to play pickup basketball. (Obviously, Aaron Boone didn’t take note.) A few weeks after making him baseball’s highest-paid third baseman, the Marlins revealed they would take Sheffield up on his offer to move to right field.

Between the players’ strike, a bruised left rotator cuff suffered while diving for a ball in 1994, and torn ligaments in his left thumb that required in-season surgery in ’95, Sheffield played in just 150 games over the next two seasons. In October 1995, he sustained a minor gunshot wound to his left shoulder in a failed carjacking while en route to picking up one of his children. After dodging that scare, he was healthy in 1996, playing in 161 games, hitting .314/.465/.624, and leading the league in on-base percentage and OPS+ (189); he ranked second in slugging percentage, home runs (42), and walks (142, against just 66 strikeouts), and ninth in WAR (5.9), a total suppressed by terrible defense (-16 runs) in right field.

The following spring, the Marlins signed Sheffield to a six-year, $61 million contract, the largest in baseball history at the time. The move was of a piece with the team’s two-year stockpiling of high-paid free agents, a list that included Moises Alou, Bobby Bonilla, Kevin Brown, Alex Fernandez, and Devon White. Under manager Jim Leyland, Florida earned a Wild Card berth in 1997 and went on to upset Cleveland in a thrilling seven-game World Series. Sheffield, dealing with further problems in his surgically repaired thumb, collected more walks (121) than hits (110) that year en route to a .250/.424/.446 line with 21 homers, but he hit .324/.430/.592 in September and .320/.521/.500 with 20 walks in the postseason.

The champagne had barely dried when owner Wayne Huizenga and general manager Dave Dombrowski began gutting the Fish, trading Alou, White, Jeff Conine and Robb Nen by Thanksgiving, Brown the next month, and Al Leiter in January. They saved their biggest blockbuster until six weeks into the 1998 season. On May 14, Sheffield, Bonilla, catcher Charles Johnson, and two other players were traded to the Dodgers for the face of the franchise, Mike Piazza (who was flipped to the Mets eight days later), as well as Todd Zeile.

Sheffield scorched opponents in Los Angeles’ notorious pitcher’s park, batting .316/.444/.535 in 90 games as a Dodger before an ankle sprain shelved him. Over the next three seasons, he averaged 38 home runs and annually topped the .300/.400/.500 thresholds, something that only four other Dodgers had done since Dodger Stadium opened in 1962. Inevitably, he grew disgruntled about money in light of the Dodgers’ committing $105 million to Brown and $55 million to Darren Dreifort, a less-established player as well as an oft-injured one. Sheffield first agitated for an extension, then for a trade (Brown dissuaded him). In December 2001, the Dodgers attempted to trade him to the A’s in a deal involving Jermaine Dye. After that fell apart, he was shipped to the Braves for Brian Jordan, Odalis Perez, and a prospect.

Sheffield put up monster numbers in two seasons with the Braves, including a .330/.419/.604, 39-homer season in 2003; his 162 OPS+ and career-high 6.8 WAR both ranked fourth in the league, and he finished third in the MVP voting. Although he helped Atlanta continue its long-running streak of postseason appearances, he went a combined 3-for-30 in the team’s two Division Series losses.

Reaching free agency for the first time at age 35, Sheffield signed a three-year, $39 million deal with the Yankees. Despite an early-season thumb injury, a muscle tear in his left shoulder, and the backdrop of BALCO (more on that below), he turned in another MVP-caliber season, hitting .290/.393/.534 with 36 home runs, 28 of them coming in the 77 games he played in June, July, and August. Ultimately, the torrid September of the Angels’ Vladimir Guerrero — a free-agent alternative to Sheffield the previous winter — kept Sheffield from winning the MVP award; he finished second in the voting, though to be fair, his 4.2 WAR was nowhere near the league’s best. While he had another strong postseason overall (.292/.404/.500 with two homers), he slipped into a 1-for-17 funk just as the Yankees made history by blowing their 3–0 advantage to the Red Sox in the ALCS.

Sheffield put up similar numbers in 2005 (.291/.379/.512 with 34 homers), albeit with less fanfare, then was limited to 39 games in 2006 due to torn ligaments and tendons in his wrist suffered in a collision at first base. Again, he agitated for an extension, but after trading for Bobby Abreu during his absence, the Yankees simply exercised Sheffield’s $13 million option, then dealt him to the Tigers, who obliged by tacking on a two-year, $28 million extension. He started slowly in Detroit, but a three-month hot streak lifted his final line to .265/.378/.462 with 25 home runs. Stung by his exile from New York, he accused Yankees manager Joe Torre of treating Black players harshly and inequitably during an HBO Real Sports segment, but stopped short of calling him racist.

Amid bilateral shoulder woes and an oblique strain, Sheffield slumped to .225/.326/.400 in 2008, his age-39 season. Had he not been under contact and one home run shy of 500, he might have retired, but after the Tigers released him in spring training, he caught on with the Mets — for whom his uncle had starred — and hit a respectable .276/.372/.451 with 10 homers in 100 games. Home run no. 500 came against the Brewers, a pinch-hit shot off reliever Mitch Stetter on April 17, 2009:

After sitting out 2010, Sheffield briefly entertained the thought of a comeback with the hometown Rays before announcing his retirement in February 2011. Later that year, he opened shop as an agent, with reliever Jason Grilli as his first client.

…

On the surface, Sheffield’s stats (including 2,683 hits and 509 homers) appear Hall-worthy, particularly when accompanied by his exhaustive credentials, such as nine All-Star appearances, three top-three finishes in the MVP voting, a World Series ring, a batting title, and prominent all-time rankings in walks (21st with 1,475, against just 1,171 strikeouts), home runs (27th), and RBI (30th). Among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances, his career 140 OPS+ is tied for 50th with Alex Rodriguez, Miguel Cabrera, and Hall of Famers Guerrero, Jesse Burkett, and Duke Snider. He scores 158 (“a virtual cinch”) on the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor. His total of 561 batting runs above average — the offensive component of Baseball Reference’s version of WAR, adjusted for ballpark and era — ranks 29th all time, higher than numerous no-doubt Hall of Famers such as Mike Schmidt, Rickey Henderson, Eddie Mathews, Willie McCovey, Harmon Killebrew, Reggie Jackson, and Carl Yastrzemski.

The bad news is that Sheffield’s defensive numbers — a mix between Total Zone and (from 2003 onward) Defensive Runs Saved — are all-time awful. His -195 fielding runs rank as the second-lowest total of all time, ahead of only Derek Jeter (-243). That whopping total suppresses Sheffield’s career and peak WAR totals, as well as his JAWS: His 60.5 career WAR ranks 20th among right fielders, 9.2 wins below the average Hall of Famer at the position; his 38.0 peak WAR ranks 29th, 4.2 wins below the standard; and his 49.3 JAWS is 25th, 6.7 points shy of the standard. His career WAR is higher than 16 of the 30 non-Negro Leagues right fielders, his peak higher than 12 of the 30, and his JAWS higher than 14 of the 30. The shape of Sheffield’s line strongly resembles that of Hall of Famer Dave Winfield (64.2/37.9/51.0), a 12-time All-Star who put up huge counting stats (3,110 hits, 465 home runs) but with defense (-91 runs) that bumps him below the bar on all three fronts.

Is that a Hall of Famer? I’m troubled by the extent to which those outlying defensive stats — largely estimates from the pre-batted-ball-type era — nuke Sheffield’s value. That goes double when they’re compared to his defensive numbers via alternative methodologies. Baseball Prospectus’ Fielding Runs Above Average pegs him at -89 runs for his career. Michael Humphreys’ Defensive Regression Analysis, which was available at the now-bygone Baseball Gauge and has been used for Negro Leagues defensive data and incorporated into the sabermetric component of the past decade of Gold Glove voting, puts him around -108 runs. Both are bad, but neither is as extreme an outlier, and such figures push him much closer to the JAWS line for right fielders; my back-of-the-envelope estimate using DRA’s defensive numbers lifts him to 68.2/39.7/54.0, 2.7 points below the JAWS standard.

Beyond that is the PED issue. In the October 11, 2004 issue of Sports Illustrated, Verducci reported that Sheffield told the grand jury that he was introduced to BALCO by Bonds, a casual friend who invited him to train with him in San Francisco before the 2002 season. Trainer Greg Anderson gave Sheffield what the slugger believed to be a cortisone-type cream to rub on his surgical scars, but it was in fact the testosterone-based steroid known as “the cream.” He said he was not told it was an illegal steroid:

“I put it on my legs and thought nothing of it. I kept it in my locker. The trainer saw my cream,” he told the grand jury. Though he soon broke off ties with Bonds due to an unrelated matter, he used the cream during the season, a relatively down one in which he hit a representative .307/.404/.512 but with just 25 homers. He was shocked to find out it was a steroid.

In 2014, Verducci, whose stance on PEDs with regards to Hall of Fame candidates is much more hard line than mine, revisited Sheffield’s unique situation:

Sheffield is the only star I know who, as an active player, without provocation admitted to using steroids; he did so in a 2004 SI story I wrote. Why would he make an admission? Because, he told me, he had testified under oath that he had been duped into using them.

Sheffield said he told the BALCO grand jury the previous year that Bonds arranged for him to use “the cream,” “the clear” and “red beans,” which prosecutors identified as steroid pills from Mexico. Sheffield, however, said he was told the substances were legal arthritic balms or nutritional supplements…. When he later learned that the BALCO products were steroids, he told me, “I was mad. I want everybody to be on an even playing field.”

That’s it; we have no evidence that ties Sheffield to steroids other than those several weeks before the 2002 season when Sheffield lived at Bonds’s home. Even during 2002, when players were resisting the idea of steroid testing, Sheffield spoke out in favor of it [see here], saying, “I would like to see testing. I mean you see how much guys are using it. Unless you’ve got something to hide, you won’t mind testing, right?”

My own stance with regards to PED-linked candidates, which I spell out annually, is to distinguish between what came before the introduction of testing and suspensions in 2004 (though the initial effort was so weak that the first suspensions didn’t come until a year later) and what came afterwards. The PED problem was the result of a complete institutional failure that implicated the commissioner, the owners, the Players Association, and even reporters. (Don’t forget, the guy who broke the news about androstenedione in Mark McGwire’s locker was initially ostracized within the industry.) If baseball couldn’t punish users during that “Wild West Era,” then voters shouldn’t apply a retroactive morality. That’s not to say that they need to rubber stamp every alleged user, but those allegations should be viewed in context.

Thus, I don’t see Sheffield’s BALCO link as disqualifying. Having investigated his throwing error issue and seen my findings corroborated by others, I’m satisfied that it’s no reason to strike him down either, though Brewers fans will never let the matter rest, and during his time on the BBWAA ballot, some voters refused to do their homework.

For years, Sheffield’s BALCO connection and the error thing made him a hard sell to voters, particularly in light of some incredibly crowded ballots:

That crowd and Sheffield’s comparatively subpar JAWS made it difficult to justify fitting him onto my own virtual ballots, even given that he was a personal favorite, as my voluminous writing on the subject going back over 20 years suggests. I did find room for him on my final virtual ballot in 2020, and after becoming eligible to vote the following year, I included him on my ballots all four times he appeared.

The thinning herd of strong candidates was probably the biggest driver of Sheffield’s improved fortune during the second half of his run on the ballot, though my additional vote (and any guidance I offered my fellow voters) couldn’t have hurt. After debuting at 11.7% in 2015, he dipped as low as 11.1% in ’18, but more than doubled his support from ’19 (13.6%) to ’20 (30.5%). He jumped to 40.6% in 2021, but then stagnated before jumping again to 55% in 2023 and 63.9% in ’24.

With the exception of Bonds, Clemens, and Curt Schilling, every candidate who has received at least 50% before falling off the writers’ ballot has eventually been elected by a small committee. The bad news for Sheffield is that all three fared poorly in their first appearance on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee in 2023; Schilling is not on this ballot, but Bonds and Clemens are. Between the institution’s ability to control who serves on such committees and the potential loss of any nuance when it comes to lumping Sheffield in with other players linked to PEDs, a future election for him by committee is hardly a foregone conclusion. Yet if I had a ballot, I’d check his name. I’m convinced he belongs in Cooperstown.

Like Dick Allen, who was finally elected last year, via the Classic Baseball Era Committee, Sheffield ranks among the game’s greatest hitters, but his case requires some additional digging to appreciate. Both players were particularly mishandled by their original teams, and both were portrayed in ways that rarely afforded them the benefit of the doubt thereafter, which carried ramifications for how they comported themselves and how they were perceived. It’s worth reconsidering how that happened. Fortunately for Sheffield, he had a longer career than Allen, putting up numbers that more easily speak for themselves. Here’s hoping they get him to Cooperstown in a more timely fashion.

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to the first offseason edition of my weekly chat.

12:02

Jay Jaffe: I’ve reached the midway point in my evaluation of the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot, which was released a week ago. Festivus has come early, for today I took another look at Gary Sheffield, his never-ending list of grievances, and his prodigious offensive production https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2026-contemporary-baseball-era-committee-c…

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday, it was Carlos Delgado, who went one-and-done on the 2015 ballot https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2026-contemporary-baseball-era-committee-c…

12:03

Jay Jaffe: before them it was Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy, whose profiles you can reach via the navbar above either of those linked articles.

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Tomorrow’s subject is Jeff Kent, which leaves Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Fernando Valenzuela to round out the ballot.

12:05

Jay Jaffe: Before I sunk my teeth into the Era Committee stuff, I had a piece last week positioning the Dodgers dynasty within the context of other dynasties from the post-1960 expansion era https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-dodgers-dynasty-takes-its-place-among-…

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday was a big day for baseball’s old-heads. Ken Rosenthal published a piece in The Athletic in which 41-year-old Max Scherzer declared his intention to keep pitching. Justin Turner’s agent told Jon Morosi that the soon-to-be-41-year-old plans on playing in 2026. Kyle Hendricks, 35, has had enough, however. The man who started Game 7 of the 2016 World Series for the Cubs is hanging ‘em up after 12 seasons in The Show.

As a geriatric Millennial myself, these decisions got me thinking. Clayton Kershaw has retired, Kenta Maeda is going back to Japan, and Adam Ottavino was just trying to talk his way into the Rockies’ president of baseball ops job. My generation is going extinct, at least on the baseball diamond. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Meg break down the federal indictment of Emmanuel Clase and Luis L. Ortiz, including the documentary and statistical evidence of their alleged pitch-fixing, the implications for the sport and sports gambling, the unanswered questions, the dark comedy, and more (plus a real-time reaction to an MLB betting reform and an answer to an email about parenting in the age of ubiquitous sports-betting ads).

Audio intro: Ted O., “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Jonathan Crymes, “Effectively Wild Theme 2”

Link to government press release
Link to indictment
Link to NBA story
Link to Ben’s article
Link to pitches reel
Link to Shoeless Joe info 1
Link to Shoeless Joe info 2
Link to MLB press release
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Just in time to push back the withdrawal symptoms from the lack of baseball, it’s awards week! We started, as usual, with the Rookie of the Year awards, and in the National League, Drake Baldwin earned the hardware, finishing with 21 first-place votes to Cade Horton’s total of nine. Baldwin was the only candidate to appear on all 30 ballots. Horton finished second, followed by Caleb Durbin, Isaac Collins, and Daylen Lile.

Did the BBWAA members entrusted with this task make good picks? That’s for you to decide. I’m here for my usual task of explaining/justifying/defending how I voted in my award this year, the NL Rookie of the Year award. I like to think I do a pretty good job, but I personally feel my responsibility for addressing my vote ought to go beyond the confidence I may have in my own competence. This is ostensibly an expert panel, not a federal election, so a vote here isn’t a question of my right to have one but my duty to exercise it thoroughly. People in the baseball community, from the most casual fans to the players themselves, ought to know why I voted for someone and not others. This is especially true when many disagree with me, such as my past first-place votes for Jackson Merrill last year and Trevor Rogers in 2021. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. Originally written for the 2015 election at SI.com, it has been expanded and updated. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Though blessed with as much talent to crush a baseball as nearly anyone in his era, Carlos Delgado had a hard time getting the attention that his performance might have merited. Almost certainly, that owed something to the record numbers of balls flying out of the park during his heyday, with a proliferation of 30- or 40-homer seasons. That he spent the bulk of his prime in Toronto, arriving just after the Blue Jays’ back-to-back world championships but unable to aid in replicating that accomplishment, didn’t help either; not until late in his career would he reach the postseason.

Beyond that, Delgado didn’t fit the mold of what the public has come to expect from professional athletes. The controversies in which he was engulfed weren’t the garden-variety ones of so many other jocks — money, respect, performance-enhancing drugs, off-field lifestyle. No, they were bigger. In an age when most athletes shirk political stances because they can narrow their public appeal and impact their personal brands, Delgado was unafraid to protest against what he felt was wrong, even if his stance was unpopular. He spoke out against the United States Navy using part of his native Puerto Rico for bombing practice, and publicly opposed the war in Iraq. He took a stand by taking a seat (to borrow a headline from The New York Times), refusing to go through the motions during the post-9/11 ritual of “God Bless America” — an action that prefigured San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality against people of color in 2016. Delgado was the conscientious slugger.

Deglado’s outspokenness and activism stemmed from his admiration for Hall of Famer and Puerto Rican hero Roberto Clemente. He died six months after Delgado was born, but his legacy of humanitarianism and fighting for social justice left a deep impression on Delgado. He wore Clemente’s no. 21 briefly with the Blue Jays and later with the Mets, and thanks to his charitable endeavors — which included raising money for homeless, underprivileged and handicapped Puerto Rican children, and sponsoring college scholarships through his Extra Bases Foundation, Delgado won the 2006 Roberto Clemente Award.

Conscience and good numbers won’t get you much closer to Cooperstown than good numbers alone will, however. Delgado once appeared to be within reach of 500 home runs — a milestone that might have guaranteed him entry to the Hall given his PED-free reputation — but a 2009 hip injury that led to three surgeries in 18 months proved too much to overcome. While he might have stuck around on a less crowded BBWAA ballot, he landed on one of the most densely packed in the institution’s history, didn’t receive enough support to remain eligible, and had to wait out the remainder of his 10-year term before he could appear on an Era Committee ballot. Even now, his presence rates as a surprise given how rarely such candidates get a second shot. I don’t expect Delgado to get strong support, but it’s a hopeful sign for the process, and in the meantime, the slugger’s exemplary career is worth another look.

Carlos Juan Delgado was born on June 25, 1972 in the coastal city of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. His mother, Carmen Digna Hérnandez, was a medical laboratory assistant, while his father, also named Carlos (“Don Cao”), was a drug and alcohol counselor, “a social worker by heart” who passed along his sense of compassion to his son. Large for his age, young Carlos played catcher in Little League, though other sports, including swimming, track and particularly volleyball, competed for his attention. As a junior at José de Diego High School in Aguadilla, he attracted the attention of scouts from the Blue Jays, Expos, Mets, Rangers, and Reds thanks to his strong arm, left-handed power, high baseball IQ, and advanced approach at the plate. He signed with the Blue Jays as a non-drafted free agent at age 16 in October 1988, two years before Puerto Rico became subject to the amateur draft. He received a bonus of $90,000 but was allowed to finish his studies and graduate on schedule.

Delgado was just 17 when he began his professional career with the Blue Jays’ St. Catharines (Ontario) affiliate in the New York-Penn League. He went homerless while hitting .180/.345/.236 in 31 games, but improved to .281/.382/.417 in 1990 while repeating the level as an 18-year-old, after which a member of the Blue Jays’ player development program told Baseball America, “He’s the No. 1 prospect in our whole organization.”

Delgado showed prodigious power as he climbed through the Jays organization, pounding 18 home runs for the team’s Myrtle Beach affiliate in his first year of full-season ball in 1991, then 30 homers (with a .324/.402/.579 line) at High-A Dunedin in 1992, and another 25 at Double-A Knoxville in 1993; he entered each of the latter two seasons ranked among the game’s top five prospects by Baseball America. He made his major league debut on October 1, 1993, the Jays’ 160th game of the season, taking over from Randy Knorr behind the plate in the sixth inning and drawing a walk off Baltimore’s Todd Frohwirth in his only plate appearance. He was left off the postseason roster, however, and while the Blue Jays beat the Phillies in the World Series to win their second straight title, they didn’t return to the postseason again during Delgado’s 12-season tenure in Toronto.

Satisfied with their tandem of Pat Borders and Knorr behind the plate, the Jays decided to give Delgado a shot in left field midway through spring training in 1994. Delgado — who had only played a few innings in the outfield in winter ball — did so passably enough to get the Opening Day nod against the White Sox. He responded by collecting his first two major league hits, a single off Jack McDowell and a 428-foot moonshot off Dennis Cook that was celebrated in the pages of Sports Illustrated; it was followed by a 445-foot homer off Alex Fernandez the next day, and then another one and another one. But after launching eight home runs in the season’s first 13 games, he fell into an extended slump, homering just once more as his batting line sank to .215/.352/.438 before he was demoted in early June.

Delgado spent the rest of the strike-shortened season and most of the next one at Triple-A Syracuse, hitting a combined .319/.404/.577 with 41 home runs in 176 games, and with the development of his bat far outstripping that of his glove, he hung up the tools of ignorance for good at the end of 1994. However, that offensive dominance had only intermittently translated to the majors. In two stints with the Blue Jays in 1995, he hit just .165/.212/.297, and although most of his defensive innings with Toronto came in left field, it was clear the Jays didn’t see him as a long-term fit on the grass; while in the minors that year, he learned to play first base. Given the extent of the Blue Jays’ struggles — particularly in the latter season, when they went just 56-88 while getting comparatively mediocre production from first baseman John Olerud (112 OPS+) and 38-year-old designated hitter Paul Molitor (101 OPS+), it’s fair to wonder why the team didn’t try to give Delgado a longer look, particularly after the promising start to his 1994 season.

Still shy of his 24th birthday, Delgado put a claim on a full-time role with the Jays in spring training in 1996, serving as the primary DH and playing a bit of first base. He broke out offensively, homering 25 times while batting .270/.353/.490 for a 112 OPS+, and after Olerud was traded to the Mets in December, Delgado took over the starting first base job in 1997. He clouted 30 homers while hitting .262/.350/.528 with a 127 OPS+, but between shaky defense, the positional penalty from DH duty, and rising offensive levels, those seasons were worth just 3.7 WAR combined.

Thanks to improved performances against left-handed pitching and an increased amount of respect from opposing hurlers, Delgado’s offensive numbers continued to climb. From 1998-2003 he hit a combined .295/.413/.585 for a 155 OPS+ and an average of 40 home runs, 101 walks (17 intentional), and 5.3 WAR per year. He topped the 40-homer plateau three times in that span, with a high of 44 in 1999; he ranked in the AL top 10 in all six seasons and in the top five three times, but never higher than second. He also placed second in the league in slugging percentage twice, first in 2000, the year he put up career-best slash stats (.344/.470/.664) en route to a 181 OPS+ (which ranked third), and then a second time in ’03, when he hit .302/.426 /.593 and led the league with a 161 OPS+ and 145 RBI. During that stretch, he had five games of at least three home runs, matching Sammy Sosa for the major league lead; on September 25, 2003, against the Devil Rays, he became the 13th player ever to homer four times in one game. Even as four-homer games go, that one was something special. His second blast, off Jorge Sosa, was the 300th of his career, and his third and fourth homers led off innings with the Blue Jays down a run; they eventually won 10-8.

Despite that consistent production, the 2000 and ’03 seasons marked the only times that Delgado placed in the league’s top 10 in WAR (sixth in both seasons with 7.3 and 5.9, respectively), earned All-Star honors, or made a dent in the MVP voting; he finished a solid fourth in 2000 and a very close second behind Alex Rodriguez in ’03. Beyond the fact that the Blue Jays finished in third place in the AL East in all six of those seasons from 1998-2003, and that their attendance was middle-of-the-pack, it’s not entirely clear why he flew so far under the radar. For that six-year span, he ranked fourth among first basemen in WAR (31.6), behind Jason Giambi (37.3) and Hall of Famers Todd Helton (35.1) and Jeff Bagwell (32.7). His 155 OPS+ was fourth among that same group, behind Mark McGwire (180), Giambi (165), and Hall of Famer Jim Thome (157), while his 237 homers were third, trailing only Rafael Palmeiro (257) and Thome (248). In the AL, Thome started the 1998 and ’99 All-Star Games, and Giambi did so in 2000 and ’02, with Olerud (2001) and Delgado (2003) sneaking in once apiece. While it’s true that some of the aforementioned first basemen with whom he vied for attention would later be connected to PEDs, it’s also true that stretch was a high-scoring one, with over 5.0 runs scored per team per game and more hitters reaching the 30- and 40-homer plateaus than ever before.

The Blue Jays rewarded Delgado for his production amid an uncertain ownership situation. In December 1999, they signed him to a three-year, $36 million contract, which made him the 10th-highest paid player in the majors in terms of annual salary and included the right to demand a trade after the 2000 World Series — or to become a free agent if that request went unfulfilled. With Delgado completing his career-best season one month after Rogers Communications purchased the Blue Jays in September 2000, the new owners got out in front of his option by reworking his contract into a four-year, $68 million deal that for the moment made his $17 million annual salary the majors’ highest; two months later, Rodriguez’s 10-year, $252 million deal with the Rangers blew it out of the water.

Off the field, Delgado found other ways to stand out, taking it upon himself to carry on the legacy of Clemente by using his platform to speak out for social justice. In April 2001, he joined 10 other Puerto Rican celebrities — singers Jose Feliciano and Ricky Martin, actor Benicio del Toro, boxer Felix Trinidad, and fellow slugger Juan Gonzalez among them — in taking out full-page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post calling for the United States to cease using Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico with a population of around 9,400, as a Navy bomb-testing site, which it had done since 1938. The toxic air particles produced by the testing were believed to cause of higher rates of cancer and other serious illnesses in the island population. After a protracted battle that drew the support of more politicians and celebrities, the Navy withdrew from Vieques in May 2003.

Delgado was also the rare athlete to take a stand against the war in Iraq. In an act of simple protest, at the start of the 2004 season, he regularly chose to remain in the dugout during the playing of “God Bless America,” a staple in ballparks since the September 11, 2001 bombings. “I never stay outside for ‘God Bless America,’” he told the Toronto Star in July 2004. “I actually don’t think people have noticed it. I don’t [stand] because I don’t believe it’s right, I don’t believe in the war.” He elaborated on that topic:

“It’s a very terrible thing that happened on Sept. 11,” Delgado said. “It’s [also] a terrible thing that happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. I just feel so sad for the families that lost relatives and loved ones in the war.

“But I think it’s the stupidest war ever,” he said. “Who are you fighting against? You’re just getting ambushed now… You’ve been looking for weapons of mass destruction. Where are they at? You’ve been looking for over a year. Can’t find them. I don’t support that. I don’t support what they do. I think it’s just stupid.”

Delgado’s protest had the backing of the Blue Jays — even teammates who disagreed with his views — but it exposed him to hecklers; I witnessed an incident at Yankee Stadium myself, but was heartened to find fans around me far angrier at the perpetrators than at the player.

On the field, Delgado missed five weeks of the 2004 season due to an oblique strain, and while he finished with 32 home runs, his .269/.372/.535 (129 OPS+) batting line was his worst since 1997. A free agent that winter, he surprised the baseball world by signing a four-year, $52 million deal with the Marlins, one so heavily backloaded that it included just $4 million in the first year. He put up strong offensive numbers (.301/.399/.582, 160 OPS+, 33 homers), but abysmal fielding (-20 Defensive Runs Saved) limited him to 2.8 WAR. Two years removed from their second championship, the Marlins won 83 games, but when they failed to secure public financing for a new ballpark and finished dead last in the league in attendance, owner Jeffrey Loria ordered the roster torn apart. On the same day that the Marlins traded Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell, and Guillermo Mota to the Red Sox for Hanley Ramirez, Aníbal Sánchez, and two other players, they dealt Delgado to the Mets for Mike Jacobs, Yusmeiro Petit, and a third player.

Upon acquiring Delgado, the Mets made clear that they expected him to fall in line when it came to “God Bless America,” with chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon telling reporters, “[Majority owner] Fred [Wipon] has asked and I’ve asked him to respect what the country wants to do.” While manager Willie Randolph voiced support for Delgado’s right to voice his opinion, general manager Omar Minaya steered clear of doing so. Wrote Newsday’s Wallace Matthews:

“Even if you disagree with his politics, Delgado’s willingness to break out of the mold corporate America loves to jam us in set him apart from the thousands of interchangeable young men who thrive athletically and financially in our sports-crazed culture… But no. One of the few pro athletes who had the guts to say no is now a yes man. And the silencing of his voice, whether you agree with it or not, is not a victory for democracy but a defeat.”

“I don’t want my personal opinions to distract the team,” Delgado said during spring training in 2006, “but, just because I abide by the rules, does not mean my opinion has changed.”

Beyond the politics, Delgado was a hit. Sandwiched between fellow Puerto Rican Carlos Beltrán and David Wright in the middle of the lineup, he clubbed 38 homers, his highest total since 2003, and hit .265/.361/.548 for a 131 OPS+. On August 22, he went yard twice off the Cardinals’ Jeff Weaver; the second shot, a grand slam, was Delgado’s 400th career home run.

The Mets won 97 games, giving the 34-year-old slugger his first taste of the postseason, and he rose to the occasion, batting a combined .351/.442/.757 with four home runs and 11 RBI in 43 plate appearances. Delgado homered and drove in the go-ahead run in the Division Series opener against the Dodgers, setting off a three-game sweep, and while his two long balls in Game 2 of the NLCS against the Cardinals went for naught, he drove in five runs with a double and a homer in a Game 4 rout. The Cardinals drew warier of pitching to him, walking him three times in a tight Game 7 that remained deadlocked into the ninth inning. Yadier Molina’s solo homer off Aaron Heilman put the Cardinals ahead, and while the Mets loaded the bases against Adam Wainwright, Beltrán struck out looking to end the game while Delgado waited on deck.

Thus began a three-year string of near-misses for the Mets; they would be eliminated on the final day of the regular season to wind up outside the playoff picture in each of the next two years. Though his overall numbers took a dip, Delgado hit .321/.383/.566 with four homers in September 2007; unfortunately, he also missed 14 games due to a right hip flexor strain, and the Mets’ 6-8 record in his absence contributed to their falling a game short of the NL East title. The hip would continue to cause problems. Delgado missed time in the spring of 2008 and started slowly (.198/.297/.323 in April), but he picked up steam as the year went on and put up another monster September (.340/.400/.649 with eight homers) to finish with 38 home runs. But again, the Mets fell a buck short.

Delgado’s strong finish left him just 31 homers from 500, and it appeared he still had something left in the tank heading into his age-37 season. The Mets picked up his $12 million option for 2009, but things soon unraveled. Though he started well, after playing just 26 games, Delgado needed surgery to repair a torn right hip labrum in late May, and couldn’t make it back before season’s end. After undergoing microfracture surgery in the same hip in December, he attempted a comeback with the Red Sox in late 2010, but played in just five minor league games before pain and problems with his other hip proved too much to surmount. He announced his retirement in April 2011. “There comes a moment when you have to have the dignity and the sense to recognize that something is not functioning,” he said at the time. “You can’t swim against the current.”

…

Though he doesn’t have a whole lot to point to in terms of All-Star appearances (just two), awards, league leads, postseason performances, black ink, and major milestones, Delgado scores 110 (“a good possibility”) on the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor, which attempts to quantify such accomplishments as those which aren’t reflected by WAR. Notably, that score is nestled between Hall of Famers Willie McCovey (111) and Willie Stargell (107), and 10 points head of McGriff.

Had Delgado reached 500 home runs — a shortfall that owes as much to his being trapped in Triple-A in 1994–95 as to his having played his final major league game before his 37th birthday — he might have had a fighting chance at Cooperstown, if for no other reason than his PED-free reputation. Seven of the 10 players who reached the 500-homer plateau between 1999 and 2009 were linked to PED usage at some point in their careers, including fellow Contemporary Era candidates Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield, and current BBWAA candidates Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez. Likewise, seven of the players who rank among the top 12 in home runs from 1996–2008 — a span during which Delgado’s total of 457 ranked sixth in the majors — were linked to PEDs. Among players outside the Hall who were never suspended for PED use or alleged to have used by the Mitchell Report or other credible sources, only Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera hit more homers than Delgado, and neither has yet to come up for election by the writers.

Beyond the home runs, Delgado’s career .546 slugging percentage and 138 OPS+ are both impressive, but they still rank a modest 18th among players with at least 5,000 plate appearances between 1993 and 2009; a lot of guys from that time were pulverizing the ball. Among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances — the cutoff I generally use for full careers when considering Hall candidates — Delgado’s 138 OPS+ ranks 60th all time, two points below Cabrera, Rodriguez, Sheffield, and Hall of Famers Vladimir Guerrero and Duke Snider, and one point below Giambi, Reggie Jackson, Norm Cash, and Bob Johnson. He’s four points ahead of McGriff, and five ahead of Helton and another Hall of Fame first baseman, Orlando Cepeda.

Including those homers, Delgado had a knack for timing. Three times (2000, ’03, and ’05), he led his league in WPA. Statistically, his big problem is that beyond his bat, he doesn’t score well in terms of advanced metrics. His subpar baserunning (-26 runs) and defense (-65 runs) cut into his value; he finished with just three seasons above 5.0 WAR, and six above 3.0. His 44.4 career WAR is 21.6 wins below the standard of enshrined first basemen and ranks 40th at the position; while that’s better than fellow Contemporary Era candidate Don Mattingly (42.4), Delgado is ahead of just three Hall of Fame first basemen, namely Gil Hodges (43.8), Jim Bottomley (36.0), and George “High Pockets” Kelly (25.4). Likewise, Delgado’s 34.5 peak WAR ranks 40th, 0.1 below Cepeda and ahead of only four enshrined first basemen. At 39.4, he ranks 38th among first basemen in JAWS, well below McGriff (44.3) but ahead of Mattingly (39.1) and three Hall of Fame first basemen: Hodges (38.7), Bottomley (32.9), and Kelly (24.8).

The bottom line is I don’t see any strong statistical justification for voting for Delgado. BBWAA voters didn’t see any either, giving him just 3.8% of the vote, but that comes with a caveat, as he was on a ballot that featured 16 players with a JAWS of at least 50.0 (one shy of the post-1966 record set the previous year) and 14 future Hall of Famers, including the elected Craig Biggio, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and John Smoltz.

That said, I’m glad Delgado is up for a vote. The history of players who have gone one-and-done on BBWAA ballots and then gotten second chances on Era Committee ballots is a short one. Aside from Ted Simmons, who made three such ballots and was finally elected on the 2020 Modern Baseball ballot, Joe Carter, Will Clark, and Lou Whitaker are the only ones who have gotten placement prior to Delgado, with Carter and Clark getting two chances on a couple of weak Today’s Game ballots. I’m all for giving such candidates another look, and hope this means that Whitaker, Jim Edmonds and Johan Santana (both of whom will be eligible for the first time on the 2029 Contemporary Baseball ballot, if the system remains as is), and others get their day, as well.

While Delgado may not have the numbers to merit a plaque in the Hall of Fame, he has left behind an impressive legacy: that of a top-flight athlete willing to take a stand on things that mattered far from the playing field. We could always use more of those.

Hello, my name is Brendan Gawlowski. I could do the Troy McClure thing and list all of my previous bylines, but I’d prefer to just say that it’s a pleasure returning to FanGraphs after nearly four years away. Back in early 2022, I took a job as a pro scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates and I’ve been scouting minor leaguers ever since. In a few cases, I had a role in bringing players to Pittsburgh. It was a blast and I am grateful for the experience.

But for as much fun as I had, the job wore on those around me. I spent more than 80 nights on the road last year, a grueling schedule that’s rough on families in any situation and was increasingly unreasonable in mine. When I joined the Pirates, I was 30, childless, and ready to stretch my legs after two years of lying low and masking up. In the intervening years, a series of significant events made it hard to balance my passion for scouting with my responsibilities at home. My wife and I had a baby. A year later, we found ourselves facing a cancer diagnosis and long-term treatment. Our parents started battling their own medical problems. Through it all, I tried to be around as much as I could, but the realities of my schedule led to stressful compromises. The logistics of doing the job while being more than a replacement-level family member were hard to manage. This past July, I pulled an all nighter and drove from Corpus Christi to Houston to catch a 6 AM flight back home to Seattle, stepped inside for a quick shower, and then bolted two hours north to Bellingham for a birthday party. During that last stretch, my wife made her annual gentle suggestion that another path was possible.

And what a path this is. FanGraphs’s reputation as a leader in baseball analysis is well earned, particularly in the prospect space. For as long as he’s been at it, Eric has done an incredible job of covering the landscape. From my perspective, the breadth, depth, and nuance of his analysis is worth the price of a Membership all by itself. I learned plenty from him before, during, and after our time working together in my first stint here. The listing for this position came at the perfect time and I applied with gusto: I loved working as a scout, but the opportunity to join Eric in a full-time capacity, to continue evaluating baseball players while also getting another couple of months at home, was too enticing to pass up. Read the rest of this entry »

Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz have been on non-disciplinary paid leave since July, as Major League Baseball investigated the two men’s involvement in a prop betting scandal. The allegation was that Ortiz had intentionally thrown at least two pitches outside the strike zone after tipping off bettors that he would do so. Armed with this advance knowledge, Ortiz’s confederates had profited in extremely specific prop bet markets.

Clase soon joined Ortiz on the sidelines, though the specifics of his supposed wrongdoing were not made public at the time. Both pitchers spent Cleveland’s terrific stretch run, and its playoff series against Detroit, in limbo.

Well, the other shoe dropped on Sunday, and what a shoe it is. The United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York indicted the two pitchers on four counts: wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery, and money laundering conspiracy. The first three counts come with a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment, each. Money laundering conspiracy has a five-year maximum. Ortiz was arrested in Boston on Sunday morning, and his attorney maintained his client’s innocence in advance of a scheduled Monday court appearance. Clase is not in custody as of this writing, but his attorney says he “is innocent of all charges and looks forward to clearing his name in court.” Read the rest of this entry »