This year’s Hall of Fame election shutout halted a remarkable run: seven consecutive years of multiple candidates being elected, and 22 candidates over that span, both of which were modern voting era records. Even with this year’s shutout, and the possibility of another one next year — reactions to the specific candidates closest to election, it would appear, rather than to the process as a whole — it’s undeniable that the dynamics of Hall elections have changed.

Consider this: From 1966 to 2005, only three candidates recovered from debuts below 25% to reach 75%, even with 15 years of eligibility: Duke Snider (17.0% in 1970, elected in ’81), Don Drysdale (21.0% in 1975, elected in ’84) and Billy Williams (23.4% in 1982, elected in ’87). Since then, we’ve seen five players elected despite such slow starts, including three from 2017-20. From the 15-year eligibility period came Bruce Sutter (23.9% in 1994, elected in 2006), and Bert Blyleven (17.5% in ’98, elected in 2011), and then once the Hall unilaterally decided to cut eligibility from 15 years to 10 — less to clean up the ballots than to try moving the intractable debate over PED-related candidates out of the spotlight — Tim Raines (24.3% in 2008, elected in ’17), Mike Mussina (20.3% in 2014, elected in ’19), and Larry Walker (20.3% in 2011, elected in ’20).

This year, Gary Sheffield (11.7% in 2015), Billy Wagner (10.5% in ’16), and Todd Helton (16.2% in ’19) all crossed the 40% threshold, the point where the odds of eventual election really start to tilt in a candidate’s favor, and Scott Rolen (10.2% in ’18) topped 50%, the point at which eventual election becomes a near-certainty. If you’ve been reading my coverage for any length of time, you know my line about Gil Hodges being the only exception from the latter group besides the current candidates on the ballot, but consider what the data tells us about landing in the 40-49% range even once. Out of the 40 candidates who have done so since 1966 (the year voters returned to the annual balloting) and are no longer on the ballot, 20 were elected by the writers and another 14 by small committees.

In other words, it’s not unreasonable to think about the aforementioned players finding spots in Cooperstown sometime in the next five years, which is a lot more fun to consider than another year of quarreling over the quartet of polarizing players — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, and Omar Vizquel — whose character issues became the focus of the past election cycle.

In any event, it’s time to break out my crystal ball for my eighth-annual five-year election outlook, an exercise that requires some amount of imagination and speculation. While it’s grounded in my research into the candidates and the history and mechanics of the voting, the changes to the process that have occurred over those eight years raise the question of how valuable that history is from a prognostication standpoint. Revising this annually is a necessity because every incorrect assumption has a ripple effect; the presence of a high-share holdover means less space for and less attention paid to the midballot guys. Read the rest of this entry »

2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to my first chat in this new time slot as well as my first one of 2021!

2:01	Jay Jaffe: While I wait for the queue to gain steam, some housekeeping… First, a fond farewell to colleague Craig Edwards, who’s making a leap to becoming an analyst for the Major League Baseball Players Association https://blogs.fangraphs.com/goodbye-and-thank-you/

2:04

Jay Jaffe: Second, I awoke to the pleasant surprise of having my Missed Time and the Hall of Fame series nominated for a SABR Analytics Research Conference Award. Colleagues Craig, Ben Clemens and Meg Rowley were also nominated in other categories, as were many friends and familiar names. Congrats to all of these fine nominees! Do read these pieces when you get a chance, and vote on them starting next week. https://sabr.org/latest/announcing-finalists-for-2021-sabr-analytics-c…

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Here’s a link to mine: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/missed-time-and-the-hall-of-fame-part-1, https://blogs.fangraphs.com/missed-time-and-the-hall-of-fame-part-2, https://blogs.fangraphs.com/missed-time-and-the-hall-of-fame-part-3

2:05	Jay Jaffe: Here’s my candidate-by-candidate roundup of this week’s Hall of Fame voting. https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/a-candidate-by-candidate-look-at-the-2… My 5-year outlook piece will run on Monday, and wow has it change even with nobody elected this year.

2:06	Jay Jaffe: Get your FanGraphs mug while you still can:  https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-new-fangraphs-mug-is-now-available…

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

The surge via which the Baseball Writers Association of America elected a record 22 Hall of Fame candidates over a seven-year span is over, as the voters pitched a shutout on Tuesday, their second in the past decade, fourth since the return to annual balloting in 1966, and ninth since the Hall’s inception in 1936. Collectively the 401 voters who participated showed enough ambivalence towards the top four returning candidates — Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Omar Vizquel, all of whom have non-performance-related marks against them that were increasingly aired during the cycle — to keep them on the outside looking in, and that ambivalence spilled over to the other 21 candidates on the slate. The 5.87 votes per ballot was the lowest average since 2012, and the 14 blank ballots sent in was a record.

There’s more than just the top-line results to chew on, however, so as promised, here’s my candidate-by-candidate breakdown of the entire slate. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Eight years ago, on the most top-heavy Hall of Fame ballot in at least half a century, the BBWAA voters pitched a shutout, electing nobody in what was seen by some as a referendum on character, particularly as it pertained to candidates linked to the usage of performance-enhancing drugs. On Tuesday, the writers put up a zero again, capping another election cycle dominated by debates over the significance of the on-and off-field transgressions of candidates, and — for the first time since 2012 — lacking any obviously qualified newcomers to the ballot.

Of the 401 ballots cast, a record 14 were blank. Whether those were done as protests against the notion that anybody from this ballot was worthy of enshrinement, or that in electing a record 22 candidates over the past seven years, standards had gotten too lax — those voters will have to answer that question themselves, if they haven’t already. Their ballots are included in the total, thus making it harder for anybody to reach 75%; had those voters instead made paper airplanes out of their ballots and flown them out the window (does anybody still do that?) the threshold for election would have fallen from 301 votes to 290. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

It would be only somewhat hyperbolic to say that the 2021 Hall of Fame election cycle was as contentious and polarizing as the presidential election that preceded it nearly three months ago, but let’s face it, this time around has not been a whole lot of fun. When Hall president Tim Mead opens the envelope to announce the results shortly after 6 pm ET on MLB Network on Tuesday evening, there’s a very good chance that the BBWAA voters will produce a shutout, the writers’ first since 2013 — a ballot that not-so-coincidentally is headlined by some of the same candidates who have split the electorate.

There’s no shutout from FanGraphs readers, however. In our third annual Hall of Fame crowdsource ballot, three candidates cleared the 75% bar, down from four last year and seven in 2019. Not surprisingly, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens did so, just as they’ve done in each of the past two years. However, both members of the gruesome twosome took a back seat to the top close-but-no-cigar candidate from our 2020 crowdsource ballot, and no, I don’t mean Curt Schilling.

Before I get to the results, a refresher on the process. As with the past two years, registered readers of our site (and participating staff, this scribe included) were allowed to choose up to 10 candidates while adhering to the same December 31, 2020 deadline as the actual voters, but unlike the writers, our voting was conducted electronically instead of on paper. This year, 1,152 users participated, a drop of exactly 20% from last year’s 1,440 voters, but one that’s understandable in light of our pandemic-related traffic dip as well as an apparent lack of enthusiasm towards a ballot that, quite frankly, is headed by heels, in that the top four returning candidates in terms of voting percentage have significant issues that would give any character-minded voter pause. Read the rest of this entry »

There are baseball stars, there are heroes and legends, and then there is Henry Aaron. The slugging right fielder is remembered mainly for surpassing Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record on April 8, 1974, but even that crowning achievement obscures the all-around excellence and remarkable consistency he demonstrated during his 23-year major league career.

What’s more, Aaron’s accomplishments can most fully be appreciated only with an understanding of the racism he encountered throughout his life and his career, as a Black man who began his professional career in the Negro Leagues, who became a star before half of the teams in the National League had integrated and a champion before the last teams in the American League did so, who emerged as a force for civil rights while becoming the first Black star on the first major league team in the Deep South, who surpassed the most hallowed record produced by the game’s most famous player while facing a nearly unimaginable barrage of hate mail and death threats, and who broke down further barriers after his retirement, as one of the game’s first Black executives and as a critic of the lack of diversity among managers and executives.

More than a Hall of Famer, Aaron was a true titan, an American icon in his own right. Sadly, he is the latest Hall of Famer in an unrelenting stretch to pass away. News of his death was announced on Friday morning, four days after that of Don Sutton, 15 days after that of Tommy Lasorda, and 27 days after that of former teammate Phil Niekro. He was 86 years old, and had been in the news earlier this month as he received a COVID-19 vaccination.

“Hank Aaron was one of the best baseball players we’ve ever seen and one of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” said former president Barack Obama in a statement released on Friday. Former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush paid tributes in statements as well, as did President Joe Biden:

President @JoeBiden on #HankAaron’s legacy: “As a nation, we will still chase the better version of ourselves that he set for us.” pic.twitter.com/xL7AESxaek

— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) January 23, 2021

While Aaron’s story is often cast as that of a man overcoming or ignoring racism and hatred to achieve greatness with quiet dignity, it does the man a disservice to soften his edges and diminish the pain that he felt, and the scars that he bore — particularly given that he did not do so in silence. Surpassing Ruth “was supposed to be the greatest triumph of my life, but I was never allowed to enjoy it. I couldn’t wait for it to be over,” he once said. “The only reason that some people didn’t want me to succeed was because I was a Black man.” Read the rest of this entry »

Don Sutton did not have the flash of Sandy Koufax, or the intimidating presence of Don Drysdale. He lacked the overpowering fastball of Nolan Ryan, and didn’t fill his mantel with Cy Young awards the way that Tom Seaver or Steve Carlton did. He never won a World Series or threw a no-hitter. Yet Sutton earned a spot in the Hall of Fame alongside those more celebrated hurlers just the same. He was one of the most durable pitchers in baseball history, as dependable as a Swiss watch.

Alas, durability does not confer immortality. Sutton died on Monday at the age of 75, after a long battle with cancer. Son Daron Sutton, a former pitcher and broadcaster in his own right, shared the news on Twitter on Tuesday:

Saddened to share that my dad passed away in his sleep last night. He worked as hard as anyone I’ve ever known and he treated those he encountered with great respect…and he took me to work a lot. For all these things, I am very grateful. Rest In Peace. pic.twitter.com/cvlDRRdVXa

— Daron Sutton (@lifeisgreatsut) January 19, 2021

Sutton is already the second Hall of Famer to pass away in 2021. His former manager, Tommy Lasorda, died on January 7. Both deaths follow a year in which a record seven Hall of Famers died. Friends, we’ve got to stop meeting like this.

In a career that spanned 23 years and was bookended by stints with the Dodgers (1966-80, ’88), with detours to the Astros (’81-82), Brewers (’82-84), A’s (’85), and Angels (’85-87), Sutton started 756 games, more than any pitcher besides Young or Ryan. The wiry, frizzy-haired righty listed at 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds not only avoided the Disabled List until his final season at age 43, he never missed a turn due to injury or illness until a sore elbow sidelined him after his penultimate start in the summer of 1988. Upon retiring, he went on to a successful second career as a broadcaster, primarily with the Braves.

Like Lasorda, Sutton occupied a special place in this young Dodger fan’s life. I was nine years old and riding in the way-back of my family’s maroon-and-faux-wood-panel Chevy Caprice station wagon on a road trip to California on August 10, 1979 when my father conjured up a radio broadcast of the Dodgers game. It was my introduction to the golden voice of Vin Scully, who shared booth duties with Jerry Doggett, calling Sutton’s franchise record-setting 50th shutout, a 9-0 victory over the Giants fueled by a Derrel Thomas grand slam and Mickey Hatcher’s first career homer. You could look it up. Thereafter, no matter where he roamed, I always rooted for Sutton, and grew to love the wit and brutal honesty that accompanied his workmanlike approach and made him eminently quotable, during and after his career.

“Comparing me to Sandy Koufax is like comparing Earl Scheib to Michelangelo,” he once said after surpassing his former teammate on some franchise record list. Read the rest of this entry »

The last time he was a free agent — and one of the top free agents in the game, at that — Jon Lester struck gold, and so did the Cubs, who won their first championship in 108 years in the second season of his six-year, $155 million deal. This time around, the stakes are much lower. On the heels of a disappointing 2020 campaign, Lester didn’t even crack our Top 50 Free Agents list, but per ESPN’s Jeff Passan, he’s leaving Chicago to take a one-year, $5 million contract with the Nationals.

The exact terms and structure of the deal have not been officially announced, though Passan also reported that it includes a mutual option for 2022 for an as-yet-undisclosed amount. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported that the deal actually pays Lester just $2 million in salary for 2021, with $3 million in deferred money due in 2023. The Cubs have already paid Lester a $10 million buyout on his $25 million mutual option for 2021.

Lester, who turned 37 on January 7, is a nine-time postseason participant, six-time All-Star and three-time World Series champion with 193 career wins and 2,397 career strikeouts, but he’s coming off the worst of his 15 major league seasons. Though he went to the post 12 times and ran his streak to making an essentially full complement of starts for the 13th straight year, he was cuffed for a 5.16 ERA (116 ERA-) and a 5.15 FIP while striking out just 15.8% of the hitters he faced, the third-lowest mark of any qualifying pitcher. His drop of nearly six percentage points relative to 2019 was the fourth-largest among the 22 pitchers who qualified for the ERA title in both seasons:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox didn’t have much to write home about in 2020, skidding to a 24–36 record and a fifth-place finish in the AL East. Though they have yet to make a major splash thus far this winter, they did make a move on Saturday, re-signing southpaw Martín Pérez to a one-year deal that constitutes a pay cut and opens questions about a rotation that was the majors’ worst in 2020.

Pérez, who turns 30 on April 4, joined the Red Sox after an uneven 2019 spent with the Twins, during which he was very good in the first half and nearly useless in the second. He was the only Boston pitcher to make more than nine starts last season, and, well, the results weren’t stellar, as he once again faded late in the year. He did start 12 times, tied for fifth in the majors, and his 4.50 ERA in 62 innings was actually a bit better than league average (97 ERA-) despite a 5.58 ERA over his final six starts. His 4.88 FIP, though, was a significant step down from league average (111 FIP-); his 17.6% strikeout rate was only a bit off his career-high 18.6% in 2019, but his 10.7% walk rate was a career worst. All told, his season was worth 0.4 WAR, which prorates to about 1.0 over a full campaign. Pérez had been worth more in five of his previous seven seasons in Texas and Minnesota, so there’s no mistaking this for being the top of his game.

What was interesting about Pérez’s performance — and I admit I may be stretching the definition of “interesting” — was that he posted the lowest groundball rate of his career. His 38.5% rate was 12 points below his previous career mark and 9.5 below  his 2019 mark; eyeballing our season stat grid, I found only half a dozen bigger drops over the past decade, though 62 innings doesn’t tell us as much as a full-season workload. Anyway, Fenway Park isn’t a great place to start serving up fly balls, but Pérez’s 1.16 homers per nine was his lowest mark since 2017, and he had no real difference between home and road splits, which may tell you a bit about the East Coast ballparks in which he toiled.

Since Pérez is going back to Fenway, the fly balls do rate as a concern, but his Statcast numbers do show that he’s done a good job of limiting hard contact since ditching his slider in favor of his cutter in 2019. In 2020, his 29.2% hard-hit rate ranked in the majors’ 90th percentile, and his average exit velocity of 86.3 mph was in the 85th percentile, versus 96th for the former and 93rd for the latter the year before. Before that, he’d never been better than middling in either category, and sometimes bad enough to slip into the bottom quartile.

Pérez threw the cutter 30.8% of the time in 2019 and 32% in ’20, and he’s gotten good results with the pitch. When batters have made contact with his cutter in that span, they’ve produced the majors’ second-lowest exit velocity and xwOBA:

While Pérez got fewer grounders via the cutter in 2020 (34%) than 2019 (44%), that alone doesn’t compensate for his shifting profile. He also dialed back his sinker usage from 24.8% to 17.7% and compensated with his curve and changeup. That cost him some grounders, and he also got fewer grounders this past year via his four-seam fastball — a drop from 40% to 19% — while doing a much better job of keeping those pitches out of the center of the strike zone:

Thanks to the better location, batters went from hitting .370 and slugging .740 when they connected with Pérez’s four-seamer in 2019 to .233 and .533 in ’20, respectively — and he did that despite the average velocity on that pitch dropping from 94.2 mph to 92.2.

Still, it was an unremarkable season all told for Pérez, and effectively, he’s taking a small pay cut after making $6 million in 2020 and then accepting a $500,000 buyout after having his $6.85 million club option declined. He’ll get a $4.5 million base salary for 2021, with additional boosts of $100,000 for passing the 130-, 140-, 150-, 160-, and 170-inning thresholds. Those same thresholds also add $100,000 apiece to his $6 million club option for 2021, while reaching 180 innings adds another $250,000, meaning that he could max out with a $6.75 million option.

While Pérez is a solid choice to provide stability at the back of a rotation, the real question is how much closer to the front of the Red Sox rotation he’ll be in 2021. Between the departure of Rick Porcello via free agency, the inclusion of David Price in the Mookie Betts trade, and the subsequent losses of Chris Sale to Tommy John surgery and Eduardo Rodriguez to COVID-19-related myocarditis, the Sox had just one rotation holdover from 2019 to ’20: Nathan Eovaldi, who was limited to nine starts by a right calf strain. As a result, the team was forced to call upon the likes of rookies Tanner Houck and Chris Mazza, veterans Colten Brewer, Zack Godley, Nick Pivetta, and Ryan Weber, and assorted openers to round out their starting five. The results were dismal: The unit’s 5.34 ERA ranked 25th in the majors; its 5.50 ERA 29th; and its 0.4 WAR dead last.

The plan is to have Eovaldi — who hasn’t made more than 21 starts in a season since 2015 — and Rodriguez in the rotation to start 2021. Sale, who went under the knife last March, will hopefully be back by midseason, as the team is taking a conservative approach with his rehab. The Sox are still in the market for a mid-rotation upgrade, with the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier listing names such as Rich Hill, Jake Odorizzi, James Paxton, José Quintana, and Masahiro Tanaka among the potential targets. Unless they land one of them, then Houck, Pivetta, and the recently signed Matt Andriese will be in the mix to fill the other two spots at the start of the season. Prospects Bryan Mata and Connor Seabold, who have 18 starts between them at Double-A and nothing higher than that yet, could be in play for later in the year. Most of those pitchers may be better fits in the bullpen than the rotation, but if the Red Sox aren’t pushing to compete, now is the time to find out what they’ve got. Meanwhile, chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom is reportedly considering the possibility of a six-man rotation given the increased workloads his starters will face. Besides Sale and Rodriguez, none of the other pitchers currently on the roster threw more than 135 innings in 2019.

All of which is to say that amid so many question marks, Pérez brings the Red Sox a bit of certainty if not a great deal of upside. He’ll eat innings in what isn’t likely to be the most memorable Red Sox season of the millennium. If he’s good enough, he might pitch himself onto a contending club down the stretch.

The staredown is over, and the first of this winter’s top-tier free agents has signed. Per ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the Yankees are finalizing a six-year, $90 million deal to bring back DJ LeMahieu, who over the past two seasons has been one of the game’s top hitters and most valuable players.

That outcome — a surprise given his latter-day performances with the Rockies — has a whole lot to do with the way the now-32-year-old infielder adapted to the Bronx, to such an extent that “The Machine” likely has more value to the Yankees than to any other team. Even so, this is a comparatively reasonable deal that fits the Yankees well, as its lower average annual value will aid the team when it comes to the Competitive Balance Tax. At the same time, from a dollars-and-wins standpoint, it may not bode tremendously well for this winter’s other top free agents.

When the Yankees signed LeMahieu to a two-year, $24 million deal, he was coming off a tepid 91 wRC+ over the final two seasons of his seven-year run in Colorado. Even so, his glovework had boosted his value to 4.1 WAR in that span, giving him a reasonable floor, and our own Jeff Sullivan saw his high contact rate, right-handedness, ability to hit to the opposite field, and modest pop as reminiscent of one Derek Jeter. Due to a slew of injuries, the Yankees leaned upon LeMahieu more than most observers expected, and between his defensive versatility and indeed, his ability to go oppo with his fly balls — thereby taking advantage of Yankee Stadium’s short right field porch — he emerged as one of the toughest outs in the league.

LeMahieu, who had reached double digits in home runs just twice with the Rockies and topped out at 15 in 2018, hit a major league-high 16 opposite field homers at home in 2019-20 (out of 36 total) while continuing to pull enough groundballs hard enough to put up eye-opening numbers. After batting .327/.375/.518 (136 wRC+) with 5.4 WAR in 2019, he hit a sizzling .364/.421/.590 in ’20. His batting average in the latter season made him the first modern player to win batting titles in both leagues; Ed Delahanty won the NL in 1899, and the AL in 1902, his last full season before going over Niagara Falls. Read the rest of this entry »