A new avenue to pursue a competitive advantage, a gray area as to whether it’s considered cheating, a paper ban that goes unenforced, bad behavior spreading around the league through player movement, executives shocked — shocked! — that such behavior is happening on their teams, a commissioner sounding out of touch as he publicly downplays the severity of the problem, once-celebrated achievements now tainted… if the outlines of baseball’s current sign-stealing scandal sound familiar, it’s because they’ve followed a pattern similar to that of the performance-enhancing drug problem that enveloped the game in the 1990s and early 2000s. Of course, there are key differences between the two, but both found Major League Baseball well behind the curve and struggling both to catch up and regain credibility on the issue.

That thought came to mind on Tuesday, as the sign-stealing saga took a new turn when The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich reported that in 2018, the Red Sox used their video replay room in an attempt to decipher opponents’ sign sequences, a practice that proliferated after instant replay reviews were introduced in 2014, one that was broadly prohibited but generally unenforced until 2018. Three members of the 2018 Red Sox told The Athletic that multiple teammates used the team’s video room, which was just a few steps from the home dugout, to break down opponents’ signs. Unlike the bang-on-a-trash-can system Rosenthal and Drellich reported the Astros having used in 2017, the Red Sox did not directly communicate to batters what pitch was coming, instead relaying that information through the dugout to the baserunner and then to the hitter.

While the efficacy of either system is still murky, both the Astros and Red Sox flouted the rules, and both went on to win the World Series in the year they did so, coincidentally beating the Dodgers. While rumors have circulated regarding other teams’ usage of replay rooms and other means to steal signs electronically, thus far the substantiated allegations have been limited to those two clubs, who share a common denominator: Alex Cora, who as bench coach of the Astros in 2017 is said to have played a key role in their sign-stealing system, and who left following that season to manage the Red Sox, a job he still holds. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 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. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Given their propensity for injuries, even the best pitchers will break your hearts. The impact of so many hard throws takes its toll on the body, and no matter how talented, not every pitcher can survive long enough to build a resumé worthy of Hall of Fame consideration. In the latest installment of my completest series, two big righties who could dial it up to the high 90s with their fastballs teamed up at the outset of their careers to help the Marlins capture an unlikely championship, and while both excelled further, to the point of making multiple All-Star teams, the ups and downs of the job took their toll, sidelining both by their mid-30s.

Josh Beckett

At his best, when healthy, Josh Beckett was an All-Star, a Cy Young contender, and a championship-caliber pitcher who offset his high-90s heat with a filthy, knee-buckling curve. Indeed, he played a vital role on two World Series winners, first the upstart 2003 Marlins and then the ’07 Red Sox. Alas, injuries — particularly recurrent blisters and shoulder woes — limited him to just four seasons of at least 30 starts, and prevented him from reaching the heights expected of him. The grind of pitching was just too much for his body to stay in working order for two years in a row, and sometimes even for a full season; he developed a notable tendency to excel in odd-numbered years while struggling in even-numbered ones. But when he was good, he was very, very good. Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and happy new year! It’s been awhile since I got into a rhythm with these chats, so it’s good to be back at it. Hope you all  had a nice holiday break.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: It sounds like it’s nearing the finish line given that there are apparently multiple 4-year offers out there. I’d imagine we get resolution in the next week

12:05

Jay Jaffe: So much of Bryant’s value depends upon the outcome of the grievance and whether he has two years of control remaining instead of one. in the abstract, he’d obviously be a nice upgrade for the Yankees, but how much talent they give up for him hinges upon that decision, which will probably (but not definitely) go against him

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 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. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Batch three of my completist series features a pair of Dominican-born sluggers whose unorthodox paths to the majors stand in stark contrast to those of their countrymen — not better or worse, just different, and eye-opening. Both players beat long and circuitous paths around the majors and had power galore, topping out at 46 homers apiece, but their approaches at the plate were night and day, as were their secondary skills.

Carlos Pena

Dominican-born but American-raised, Carlos Peña was a first-round pick who struggled to live up to that billing, passing through the hands of five teams in eight years before landing in Tampa Bay. While he joined a cellar-dwelling club that had known no previous success, he played a key part in their turnaround while establishing his own foothold in the majors. For a few years, he ranked among the league’s top sluggers, and among its most patient. Read the rest of this entry »

Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Ford… Don Larsen did not have a career that placed him among the pantheon of great Yankees. Indeed, he was quite the journeyman, a league-average righty who toiled for seven teams during his 14-year major league career (1953-65, ’67) without making a single All-Star team. Yet on October 8, 1956, Larsen captured lightning in a bottle, assuring himself a permanent welcome among pinstriped legends and throughout baseball by throwing the only perfect game in World Series history. Larsen, who became a regular at Old Timers’ Day celebrations alongside more decorated Yankees, died of esophageal cancer on Wednesday in Hayden, Idaho at the age of 90.

In front of 64,519 fans at Yankee Stadium, facing the defending champion Dodgers — who sported a lineup that featured future Hall of Famers Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, and Duke Snider — the 26-year-old Larsen retired all 27 batters he faced, seven by strikeout. The last of those was Dale Mitchell, pinch-hitting for pitcher Sal Maglie, who had held the Yankees to two hits and five runs. On Larsen’s 97th pitch of the afternoon, Mitchell checked his swing on a pitch on the outside corner. “Got him!” exclaimed Vin Scully, who had taken the baton from Mel Allen in calling the game for NBC. “The greatest game ever pitched in baseball history by Don Larsen, a no-hitter, a perfect game in a World Series… When you put it in a World Series, you set the biggest diamond in the biggest ring.”

Note that Scully erred in referring to “only the second time in baseball history” where such a feat had happened. To that point, it had been over 34 years since the previous perfect game, and there had been just five in major league history: two in 1880, then ones by Boston’s Cy Young (May 5, 1904), Cleveland’s Addie Joss (October 2, 1908), and Chicago’s Charlie Robertson (April 30, 1922). Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 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. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Batch two of my completist series features a pair of 400-homer sluggers who spent their final four years as teammates on the South Side of Chicago, that after having briefly crossed paths — in an organizational sense, at least — in Cincinnati in 1998. While both routinely put up big home run and RBI totals — reaching 40 homers eight times between them, and driving in 100 runs 12 times — their lack of speed and subpar defense made for surprisingly low WAR totals that quashed any real debate about Hallworthiness. Which isn’t to say that they didn’t have their moments during compelling careers…

Adam Dunn

At 6-foot-6, 240 pounds, Adam Dunn was built like a football player — and he was, to the point of signing a letter of intent to play for the University of Texas — but he could pulverize a baseball as well. In a 14-year career (2001-14), “The Big Donkey” reached 40 homers in a season six times, and 30 in a season another three times; he homered with a frequency topped by just a dozen players in baseball history. An exceptionally disciplined hitter, Dunn wore pitchers out, walking at least 100 times in a season eight times. He racked up his share of strikeouts as well, at one point breaking Bobby Bonds‘ single-season record, and in fact retired as the King of the Three True Outcomes — the player who either homered, walked, or struck out in the highest share of plate appearances of anybody with at least 4,000 career plate appearances, and the exemplar of a set of trends that for better or worse has come to define 21st century baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite best-laid plans, seemingly nothing went right for the Mets’ bullpen in 2019, and the same can be said for Dellin Betances. The team is hoping both can change their luck in 2020, and earlier this week signed the 31-year-old righty to a one-year, $10.5 million deal that includes both a player option for 2021 and a vesting option for ’22. Though the move is hardly inexpensive or risk-free, it’s a worthwhile gamble on a reliever who prior to missing nearly all of the past season due to injuries spent five years as one of the AL’s best and most dominant with the crosstown Yankees.

After throwing more innings out of the bullpen than any other pitcher from 2014-18 (373.1), Betances didn’t complete a single frame at the major league level in 2019. First, his arrival in camp was delayed by the birth of his son, and after he showed diminished velocity in a March 17 Grapefruit League appearance, he was diagnosed with shoulder impingement. He began the regular season on the injured list, and worked towards a return, but following a rough showing during an April 11 simulated game, he received a cortisone shot for shoulder inflammation, a problem that was soon linked to a bone spur that the Yankees — but not the pitcher — had known about since 2006, the year they drafted him in the eighth round out of a Brooklyn high school. Moved to the 60-day injured list, Betances ramped up towards a return, but renewed soreness led to a June 11 MRI, which revealed that he’d suffered a low-grade lat strain. He finally began a rehab assignment with the Trenton Thunder on September 6, during the Eastern League playoffs, and made three postseason appearances for them before being activated by the Yankees, who hoped that he would augment their bullpen for the postseason.

Betances made his lone major league appearance for the season on September 15, striking out both Blue Jays he faced (Reese McGuire and Brandon Drury) and topping out at 95 mph. After the second strikeout, he did the slightest of celebratory hops and landed awkwardly on his left foot. Watch here around the 15-second mark:

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 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. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

It’s “no such thing as a perfect ballot” season. As far back as 2013, my second year at SI.com, I’ve used that refrain to describe the difficulty of winnowing a nearly unmanageable backlog of plausible Hall of Fame candidates down to 10, the maximum allowed per voter. With an unprecedented flood of 20 players elected over the past six cycles, and just one obvious choice among the newcomers, the backlog has abated, which should make the process of voting easier. Nonetheless, with my annual exercise in filling out a virtual ballot comes an acknowledgement of the numerous subjective choices that go into even the most objective-minded ballots. As with so many other endeavors, perfection may be unattainable, but that’s not to say it’s not worth pursuing.

Despite the work I put into Hall of Fame research in general, and into my annual series in particular, I still don’t have a vote, but after breaking down ballots for 19 election cycles — 17 since introducing the system that became JAWS, and nine since gaining admission to the BBWAA — I’m just one year away. At this time next year, I’ll be explaining my actual ballot and reporting it to Ryan Thibodaux and the Tracker troupe. Whether filling out a virtual ballot or an actual one, my process is still the same. I perform this exercise to illustrate the hard choices a voter faces, and to do so by the ballot submission deadline (December 31). As always, I am guided by my JAWS system, but not enslaved by it, for there are considerations that a comparative Wins Above Replacement-based methodology — which can account for the widespread variations in scoring from era to era and ballpark to ballpark (producing the occasional double-take) — can’t capture, including pennant race and postseason contributions, awards and honors, and historical importance.  Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 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. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

For better or worse, I’m a completist. In 16 years of analyzing Hall of Fame ballots using my JAWS system, I’ve never let a candidate pass without comment, no matter how remote his chance of election. From the brothers Alomar to the youngest Alou and the elder Young, I’ve covered ’em all. Thus it’s my sworn duty to tackle the minor candidates on the 2020 BBWAA ballot in addition to the major ones — of which there were 18 this year. That leaves 14 to go.

To be eligible for election, a player must appear in games in at least 10 major league seasons, with a career that ended at least five calendar years ago, and then be nominated by at least two members of a six-member screening committee — a step that can produce some arbitrary results, as I’ve noted in the past. Getting this far is a victory unto itself, but these candidates aren’t going any further; given that none has received a single vote from among the 50 ballots published so far, it’s fair to say that none is going to get the 5% necessary to remain eligible, let alone the 75% needed for election. Just the same, these one-and-done candidates were accomplished players who deserve their valedictory, and in this series, they’ll get it.

Our first batch covers a quartet of infielders who intermittently played up to All-Star levels (not that they were always recognized for doing so). But once they reached their 30s, their careers began to fall apart, with injuries generally playing a prominent role. Be forewarned: these are not the happiest tales in this series.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 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. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Like Johan Santana, Roy Oswalt, and many a great pitcher before them, Cliff Lee burned brightly but briefly. Though he lacked a high-velocity fastball, the 6-foot-3, 205-pound lefty — “lean like a knife blade, with a club fighter’s big jaw,” as Pat Jordan described him in 2011 — had a deceptive delivery and precision command of a broad arsenal of weapons. His mid-career addition of a cut fastball, inspired by — who else? — Mariano Rivera turned him from an innings-eater into an ace.

From 2008-13, Lee was arguably the best pitcher in baseball. His 36.8 WAR over that span was nearly four full wins ahead of the second-ranked Clayton Kershaw, who to be fair was a late-May call-up at the start of that stretch (by fWAR, Lee had a 1.5-WAR lead over second-ranked Justin Verlander). Over that six-year span, Lee had the majors’ second-lowest ERA (2.89), the lowest FIP (2.85) and walk rate (1.33 per nine), and the highest strikeout-to-walk ratio of any pitcher with at least 600 innings. During that time, which began when Lee was 29 and fresh off the sting of having spent a good chunk of the previous season in Triple-A while his teammates came within one win of the AL pennant, he won a Cy Young award, pitched for two World Series teams, was traded three times, made four All-Star teams, and signed the third-richest deal for a pitcher to that point.

Lee threw 1,333.2 innings in that span, the fifth-highest total in baseball. Unfortunately, his elbow could only handle so much. A flexor pronator strain limited him to 13 starts in 2014, his age-35 season, and aside from a single spring training outing in 2015, he never pitched in a game again. As I noted in the context of Oswalt’s Hall of Fame case last year, Lee’s total of 2156.2 innings is fewer than all but one enshrined starter — not Sandy Koufax but Dizzy Dean. While not truly a viable candidate for Cooperstown, he nonetheless merits a full-length entry in this series.

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