The end of an era is coming to Los Angeles. On Thursday at Dodger Stadium, Clayton Kershaw announced that he will retire at the end of this season, and thus will make the final regular season home start of his career on Friday night. The news isn’t exactly a surprise, given that the 37-year-old lefty has been working more or less year-to-year while occasionally musing about retirement since his three-year, $39 million contract expired after the 2021 season. When Kershaw notched his 3,000th strikeout on July 2, it was generally understood as the final major milestone of his illustrious 18-year career that will one day be celebrated in Cooperstown. Just days later, commissioner Rob Manfred named him to the NL All-Star team as a “Legend Pick.”

On Thursday morning, Kershaw sent a group text to his teammates, telling them of his decision to retire. Teammates Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy both revealed that the pitcher had told them of his plans about a month ago, but swore them to secrecy. On Thursday afternoon, the Dodger released a statement regarding the iconic southpaw’s impending announcement.

pic.twitter.com/Y3wehQaONJ

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) September 18, 2025

At his press conference, Kershaw expressed measures of gratitude and relief, his voice occasionally cracking as he thanked the organization and his family. He said that he and his wife Ellen had been discussing his retirement all year. “Usually we wait until the offseason to make a final call, but almost going into this season, we kinda knew this was going to be it,” he said. “So [I] didn’t want to say anything in case I changed my mind, but over the course of the season, how grateful I am to have been healthy and out on the mound, being able to pitch, I think it just made it obvious that this was a good sending-off point.”

With 222 career victories, 3,039 strikeouts, 11 All-Star selections, five ERA titles, three Cy Young Awards (2011, ’13, ’14), an MVP award (2014), a Pitching Triple Crown (2011), a no-hitter (June 18, 2014), and two World Series rings (2020 and ’24), Kershaw is a surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer who will be eligible for election on the 2031 BBWAA ballot. He is 20th all-time in S-JAWS, second among active pitchers behind Justin Verlander, who has one more point (66.1 to Kershaw’s 65.1) in about 700 more career innings. Kershaw’s 2.54 ERA is the lowest of any integration-era pitcher with at least 2,500 innings:

Adjusted for ballpark and league scoring levels, Kershaw’s ERA- is the lowest using those same parameters, barely nosing out Martínez:

If you’re wondering about the rankings of another three-time Cy Young-winning Dodgers lefty, Sandy Koufax pitched to a 2.76 ERA and 75 ERA- in 2,324 1/3 innings; at a 2,000-inning cutoff, he would rank fourth in ERA and seventh in ERA-. Kershaw is tied with outfielder Zack Wheat and shortstop Bill Russell for the most seasons played with the Dodgers (18), and he holds the franchise records for strikeouts and pitching WAR (78.7 fWAR, 77.6 bWAR) while ranking second in wins only to Don Sutton (233).

After reaching free agency following the 2021, ’22 and ’23 seasons, Kershaw mulled the possibility of leaving the Dodgers to sign with the Rangers, his hometown team. But between his various offseason rehabilitation programs, the 2021–22 owners’ lockout, and the Rangers’ financial uncertainty regarding their cable television deal, staying with the team that drafted him out of Highland Park High School with the seventh pick in 2006 — a round that accounts for eight Cy Youngs between Kershaw, 10th pick Tim Lincecum, and 11th pick Max Scherzer — always made more sense. When he reported to Camelback Ranch in February, Kershaw admitted that he may have previously undervalued the possibility of spending his entire career with the Dodgers:

“I don’t think I put enough merit on it at times, what it means to be able to be in one organization for your entire career. You look at people throughout all of sports that have been able to do that, and it is special, it is. I don’t want to lose sight of that. Getting to be here for my whole career, however long that is, is definitely a goal.”

It’s been an amazing run in Los Angeles. Kershaw first turned heads during spring training in 2008. In a March 9 Grapefruit League game against the Red Sox, 10 days short of his 20th birthday, he threw a curveball that buckled the knees of Sean Casey and awed broadcaster Vin Scully, whose nickname for that big-bending pitch stuck: “Ohhh, what a curve ball! Holy mackerel! He just broke off Public Enemy Number One. Look at this thing! It’s up there, it’s right there, and Casey is history.”

Kershaw began that season at Double-A Jacksonville, making 11 starts before being called up to debut against the Cardinals on May 25, 2008. In his prime, he pumped his fastball in the mid-90s — it averaged 95.0 mph in his rookie season, and was still at 94.3 mph as of 2015 — but that famous curveball and its similarly devastating cousin, his slider, are the pitches that have earned him a spot in the pantheon. According to Baseball Savant — which covers the entirety of his career via PITCHf/x and Statcast — batters have hit .145 and slugged .216 with a 36.5% whiff rate against his curve, and hit .183 and slugged .292 with a 38.8% whiff rate against his slider; the former was strike three 753 times, the latter a jaw-dropping 1,332 times.

Though he flirted with adding a changeup here and there, and over the past three seasons has dabbled with an effective splitter, Kershaw’s three-pitch combination, coming from an extremely over-the-top arm slot (62 degrees as of 2020, the first year of Statcast’s measurements in that area, and 56 degrees as of this season), with a familiar hesitation at the top of his delivery, was enough to befuddle batters. His .211 batting average allowed is the second lowest at the 2,500-inning cutoff since integration, nestled between Nolan Ryan (.204) and Martínez (.214), while his 65 OPS+ allowed is second to Martínez’s 61, ahead of Clemens’ third-ranked 68. That dominance drove his success, and that of the Dodgers, for the better part of the past two decades. If the team holds on to win the NL West this season, it will be its 14th division title in his 18 seasons, and its 15th playoff berth.

Kershaw’s announcement comes at a time when he has begun to scuffle a bit; over his last three starts, he’s yielded 10 runs and walked nine in 13 2/3 innings, and he hasn’t lasted six innings since his August 15 start against the Padres — a memorable outing in which he helped the Dodgers halt a four-game losing streak and reclaim a share of first place in the NL West. Even so, he has generally pitched well this season despite working with a fastball that has averaged just 89 mph, topping 90 only a handful of times per start.

After undergoing a pair of offseason surgeries — one to repair the torn meniscus in his left knee, the other to remove a bone spur and repair a ruptured plantar plate in his left foot — Kershaw didn’t make his season debut until May 17. But aside from a start skipped just before the All-Star break, he’s taken the ball on turn, though almost always with five or six days of rest. In 102 innings, he’s pitched to a 3.53 ERA and 3.59 FIP, offsetting a career-low 17% strikeout rate by holding batters to a 4.1% barrel rate and generally avoiding the long ball. The solo homer he allowed to the Padres’ Ramón Laureano in that August 15 outing is the only one he’s served up in his last 60 1/3 innings dating back to July 2. That was the night he struck out Vinny Capra of the White Sox with the 100th and final pitch of his night — a slider on the outside edge of the plate, naturally — to give him an even 3,000 for his career.

That strikeout made Kershaw the 20th pitcher to reach 3,000 but just the fourth left-hander, after Steve Carlton, Randy Johnson, and CC Sabathia. While Kershaw was the fourth-fastest pitcher to reach the milestone in terms of innings pitched, getting there turned into quite a slog due to his injuries, which have prevented him from making 30 starts in any season since 2015 and sent him to the injured list at least once in every season since.

Kershaw finished the 2021 season, his age-33 campaign, needing just 330 strikeouts to reach 3,000, which based on his 2019–21 performances looked doable across a pair of 25-start seasons. While he pitched his way onto the NL All-Star teams in both 2022 and ’23, with ERAs of 2.28 and 2.46, he totaled just 46 starts and 274 strikeouts in that span, leaving him 56 strikeouts shy of the magic mark. With last season bracketed by his recovery from November 2023 surgery to repair the glenohumeral ligaments and capsule of his left shoulder on one side, and the aforementioned left leg surgeries on the other, he made just seven starts totaling 30 innings, with just 24 strikeouts. He was not on the active roster during the Dodgers’ run to a championship, and at the team’s victory parade in Los Angeles, he exclaimed, “I didn’t have anything to do with this championship, but it feels like I have the best feeling in the world — that I get to celebrate with you guys!”

As for what comes next for Kershaw after Friday’s start, it’s not yet clear. Barring an injury, he will almost certainly be on the postseason roster, but unlike the past two Octobers, the Dodgers are headed toward the playoffs with their best starters healthy and effective. Indeed, since the All-Star break, the Dodgers have the majors’ best rotation in terms of both ERA (3.27) and FIP (2.99); the latter mark is nearly three-quarters of a run better than that of the second-ranked Phillies (3.70). Every starter but Kershaw is missing bats galore:

There’s no question that Glasnow, Snell, and Yamamoto will start for the Dodgers this October, and all signs point to Ohtani being the fourth. The team has kept the two-way superstar on a short leash in his first season back from his second UCL reconstruction surgery; only twice has he reached the five-inning mark or gone past 70 pitches. Though the Dodgers have considered the possibility of using Ohtani in relief à la the 2023 World Baseball Classic championship game, that prospect is complicated by the fact that removing him would cost the team its designated hitter spot — thus requiring Ohtani to play the outfield in order to remain in the game, something he hasn’t done since 2021. Manager Dave Roberts all but shut that alternative scenario down earlier this week, saying in part, “[T]o think that now it’s feasible for a guy that’s just coming off what he’s done last year, or didn’t do last year, to then now put him in a role that’s very, very unique… You potentially could be taking on risk, and we’ve come this far, certainly with the kid gloves and managing.”

As for the other two starters, Sheehan has been brilliant lately but may face an innings cap given in his first year back from Tommy John surgery. Both he and Kershaw could be used as multi-inning relievers, possibly able to go three or four innings after a starter goes five or six, which would help to mitigate a bullpen that’s been torched for a 5.43 ERA this month. “I feel that there’s a place for him on our postseason roster,” Roberts said of Kershaw on Thursday. “I don’t know what role, but I think that the bottom line is, I trust him. And so, for me, the postseason is about players you trust.”

The postseason has often been a fraught subject when it comes to Kershaw. His 4.49 ERA in October is nearly two full runs higher than his regular season mark, and his 3.81 postseason FIP nearly one run higher than his regular season one (2.85), with his home run rate almost doubling, from 0.74 to 1.39. At times he’s been let down by his offenses and his bullpens, as is the case for just about every starting pitcher given enough opportunities. At times he’s been let down by his managers; think Don Mattingly leaving him in to allow eight seventh-inning runs in the 2014 Division Series opener against the Cardinals. At times he’s been let down by his opponents’ skullduggery and his own hubris; in the wake of commissioner Rob Manfred’s investigation into the Astros’ 2017 sign-stealing scheme, Kershaw expressed regret in early 2020 that he didn’t heed warnings to change signs with a runner on second base in Game 5 of the World Series, during which he allowed six runs. And of course, at times Kershaw has been let down by his own failing body; he retired just one out of eight Diamondbacks in the Division Series opener in 2023 while pitching through the shoulder issues that led him to undergo surgery less than a month later.

While his postseason heroics never reached the level of a Gibson or a Madison Bumgarner, Kershaw has had some shining moments in October. He made a dominant pair of starts against the Braves in the 2013 Division Series, allowing one earned run in 13 innings. He came out of the bullpen on one day of rest to record a two-out save in Game 5 of the 2016 Division Series against the Nationals, after closer Kenley Jansen had thrown 2 1/3 innings; Kershaw followed that with seven shutout innings against the Cubs in Game 2 of the NLCS. He struck out 11 while allowing one run and three hits in seven innings against the Astros in the 2017 World Series opener at Dodger Stadium, where Houston’s notorious trash cans were out of reach. He spun eight shutout innings with 13 strikeouts against the Brewers in the 2020 NL Wild Card Series clincher, and authored two gutty wins in that year’s World Series against the Rays, the second of which, in Game 5, came after Tampa Bay’s bizarre walk-off win in Game 4 and set up the Dodgers’ chance to clinch.

Regarding Kershaw’s career, one other blemish can’t escape mention. Twice in the past three seasons, he has upstaged the Dodgers’ annual LGBTQ Pride Night, and it’s cost him some amount of goodwill. In 2023, he publicly pressured the Dodgers to rescind an invitation to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a drag troupe that describes itself as a “leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns.”

The Dodgers at first heeded the calls of Kershaw and others to disinvite the Sisters, only to reverse course after they received backlash for canceling on them. But Kershaw’s comments did force the team to accelerate its announcement of its Christian Faith and Family Day, for which the pitcher served as the primary organizer. “This has nothing to do with the LGBTQ community or Pride or anything like that,” he said at the time. “This is simply a group that was making fun of a religion — that I don’t agree with.”

It might have been easier for some to overlook Kershaw’s reaction to the Sisters as an isolated incident had it not been for this year’s Dodgers Pride Night on June 13, when Kershaw altered his cap, which featured the team’s interlocking LA filled in with the colors of the rainbow. On it, he wrote “Gen. 9:12-16,” an Old Testament verse that, as Michael Elizondo at True Blue LA notes, has been “frequently used by homophobic Christians to denounce the LGBT community as their appropriation of the rainbow is allegedly blasphemous.” On a night meant to celebrate diversity, Kershaw instead chose a message of defiance and intolerance.

Particularly in these politically polarizing times, with LGBTQ+ rights under daily attack by the Trump administration, Kershaw’s move was divisive and disappointing, but it went unchallenged on the Dodgers beat even as the photo of him wearing the altered hat went viral. As best I can tell, he’s never publicly commented on the matter, so if a picture is worth a thousand words, he’s left that image to be his statement on the subject without offering any alternative interpretations. Three months later, the cap controversy was still being referred to on social media as news of Kershaw’s retirement announcement began to circulate.

Kershaw is not without his imperfections, his impact in the game not without complication. Inarguably, he has defined one of the most fruitful eras in Dodgers history while carving his own niche, not only as one of the best pitchers of his generation, but of all time. His public persona has been marked by his charitable foundation, Kershaw’s Challenge, which according to its web page has raised $23 million “to support at-risk children and families around the globe,” as well as his comments denouncing racial injustice in June 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Yet it also carries with it his Pride Night remarks and protest at a moment of profound vulnerability for the LGBTQ+ community. To appreciate Kershaw’s immense legacy is to view him in his totality, the greatness, the disappointments, and everything in between, all taken together.

The Astros have spent nearly the entire season missing the superstar version of Yordan Alvarez, first because the 28-year-old slugger struggled during March and April and then because he missed nearly four months due to a fractured metacarpal in his right hand. He heated up upon returning to the lineup in late August, but on Monday night he sprained his left ankle, an injury likely to sideline him for the rest of the regular season and perhaps longer. He’s not the only American League star whose best hope for returning to the lineup is during the playoffs, as Blue Jays shortstop Bo Bichette has been ruled out for the rest of the regular season with a sprained ligament in his left knee.

Alvarez suffered his injury in the first inning of Monday night’s game against the Rangers in Houston. He followed Jeremy Peña’s leadoff single by drawing a walk against Jack Leiter. Carlos Correa then hit a weak comebacker toward the mound; Leiter tried to throw while on the ground but airmailed the ball far beyond the reach of first baseman Jake Burger. Peña scored easily as Adolis García retrieved the ball, but the right fielder’s throw home was nearly in time to nab Alvarez, who instead of sliding went in standing up, only to slip on home plate. He immediately began limping, had to be helped into the dugout, and did not return to the field — he started in left field — when the half-inning ended. Instead, right fielder Jesús Sánchez shifted to left and Zach Cole entered the game in right. Cole, who homered off the Braves Hurston Waldrep in his first major league plate appearance on September 12, hit his second homer off Leiter in the fifth inning of what turned out to be a 6-3 win.

“When he stepped on home plate, I had a front-row seat,” Peña said after the game. “His ankle kind of twisted, and when he had to plant again, I saw it twist again. And it’s not pretty. You don’t want to see that, especially Yordan Alvarez. We need him.”

You can see video of the play in question here, but you’re on your own if you want to seek out the still shot of Alvarez’s leg bending in ways that it shouldn’t. Colleague Dan Szymborski invoked Stretch Armstrong in his piece on the teams most impacted by injuries this year, which should give you an idea. Read the rest of this entry »

With just 12 days left to go in the regular season, two teams — the Brewers and Phillies — have clinched playoff berths, and on Monday the latter became the first to win its division. From among the four other division races, only in the AL West and NL West are the second-place teams closer than five games out, putting the chances of a lead change in the range of low-fat milk. With the exception of those two races, the lion’s share of the remaining drama centers around the Wild Card races.

Once upon a time, this space would be filled with my reintroduction of the concept of Team Entropy, but through the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, Major League Baseball and the players’ union traded the potential excitement and scheduling mayhem created by on-field tiebreakers and sudden-death Wild Card games in exchange for a larger inventory of playoff games. The 12-team, two-bye format was designed to reward the top two teams in each league by allowing them to bypass the possibility of being eliminated in best-of-three series. Often, however, things haven’t worked out that way, because outcomes in a best-of-five series are only slightly more predictable than those of a best-of-three.

Aside from the Dodgers beating the Padres in last year’s Division Series, every National League team that has earned a first-round bye under the newish system had been bounced at the first opportunity, with the Dodgers themselves falling in rather shocking fashion in both 2022 and ’23. The AL has had only one such upset in that span: the 2023 Rangers, who beat the Orioles and went on to win the World Series. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks!

12:02

Jay Jaffe: For the fifth straight Tuesday, we’re doing this — which I think might be a season high. A lack of travel will do that.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, on Friday I wrote about Mookie Betts’ turnaround (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mookie-betts-may-salvage-his-season-yet/), and yesterday he was named the NL Player of the Week and had a big night against the Phillies in a losing cause, with a solo homer and a pair of sac flies.

12:05

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about the Mets’ slide; remarkably, they’ve gone 32-49 since Senga was injured on June 12. Their problems basically stem from running out of arms. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/amid-the-collapse-of-their-pitching-the-me…

12:05

Jay Jaffe: I’m working on a piece about the remaining playoff races. it’s not Team Entropy but it’s what we have, and it’s helpful to understand the tiebreakers and remaining scenarios

12:08

Jay Jaffe: Pouring one out for Robert Redford, whom I particularly loved in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Sting (both with Paul Newman). If you’re young enough that those movies aren’t familiar to you, by all means waste no time in seeing them. As for The Natural and the baseball connection, eh, i don’t hate the movie like i do Field of Dreams, but it’s got problems.

Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time — as of June 12, to be exact — the Mets had the best record in the majors (45-24) and a 5 1/2-game lead over the Phillies in the NL East. That afternoon, however, their rotation took a major hit when Kodai Senga strained his right hamstring. He hasn’t fully recovered his form, and it’s been mostly downhill for the Mets since then, even with their attempts to fortify their bullpen at the trade deadline, the arrival of some impressive rookie starters, and an MVP-caliber stretch by Juan Soto. The team entered Sunday on an eight-game losing streak that pushed them to the brink of elimination from the NL East race, and in danger of falling out of the third NL Wild Card spot.

The combination of Pete Alonso’s walk-off three-run homer off the Rangers’ Luis Curvelo, and losses by both the division-leading Phillies and the Giants (who now trail the Mets by 1 1/2 games in the Wild Card race) helped the Mets stave off those ignominious scenarios for the moment. Even so, the Phillies’ magic number to clinch is one, as they lead the NL East by 12 games with 12 to play. Not only are the Giants (75-74) on the Mets’ tail, but the Diamondbacks (75-75) are just two games behind, with the Reds (74-75) 2 1/2 behind. Read the rest of this entry »

Mookie Betts entered the year as an eight-time All-Star, six-time Gold Glove winner, the majors’ only active position player with three World Series rings, and a likely future Hall of Famer. Not one to back down from a challenge, he’s turned himself into an exceptional shortstop after spending a good chunk of 2024 battling the position to a bloody draw. Yet after a mysterious illness knocked him out of the season-opening Tokyo Series and sapped his strength, he spent the first four months of this season struggling at the plate due to mechanical compromises and, by his own admission, a spiral of self-doubt. Over the past six weeks, he’s finally come around — and not a moment too soon as the Dodgers cling to a narrow NL West lead.

The offensive decline of the 32-year-old Betts seemed to come out of nowhere. Though he missed eight weeks last summer due to a fractured left hand, and didn’t hit the ball nearly as hard as in 2023, when he set a career high with 39 homers, Betts had an excellent season at the plate. He hit .289/.372/.491, with all three slash stats placing among the NL’s top eight and his 140 wRC+ ranking fifth — down 25 points from 2023, but matching his career mark to that point.

He hasn’t come close to approximating that level this season. Shortly before the Dodgers departed for Japan, Betts contracted a mysterious virus that not only sidelined him for those two games against the Cubs, but also prevented him from eating full meals and caused him to lose 23 pounds, no small matter for a 180-pound athlete. Yet he was back in the lineup for the Dodgers’ stateside opener against the Tigers on March 27, homered twice the next day, and started all but two of the team’s next 54 games. Read the rest of this entry »

Does anybody want to win the National League batting title? Granted, with all these statheads devaluing batting average and instead offering fancier stats that identify more productive hitters, batting titles ain’t what they used to be. Nonetheless, with less than three weeks to go in the regular season, it bears noting that just one NL qualifier has a batting average of .300 or better, namely Trea Turner — and he just landed on the injured list.

The 32-year-old Turner left Sunday’s game against the Marlins in the top of the seventh inning after running to first base, where he was safe on a throwing error by shortstop Otto Lopez. He felt his right hamstring “grabbing on me,” as he described it afterwards, and was replaced by a pinch-runner. An MRI on Monday showed that he’d suffered a Grade 1 hamstring strain — thankfully not as serious as the Grade 2 left hamstring strain that knocked him out of action for six weeks last season; the Phillies think he could be back after just a 10-day IL stint. Even so, the move came on the same day that the team also placed third baseman Alec Bohm on the IL due to a cyst in his left shoulder; suddenly the Phillies are down half an infield. Luckily for them, they now own an nine-game lead in the NL East.

Thanks in large part to a 4-for-5 night on Friday, Turner is currently hitting .305/.356/.458 (125 wRC+). That’s the highest his batting average has been since June 17 (.308); he was as low as .281 as recently as August 13 but had been on fire over the past four weeks, batting .420/.448/.620 (197 wRC+) since then to overtake Will Smith (who at the time led the NL at .312), Xavier Edwards (.308), Freddie Freeman (.300) and everyone else vying for the title. Turner already has a batting title, having led the NL with a .328 mark in 2021. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Mets signed Juan Soto to a 15-year deal last December, they expected him to be the heaviest hitter on a contending team, a player who would factor into the Most Valuable Player voting. Odds are that they didn’t price his base-stealing ability into his record-setting, $765-million contract, yet with just under three weeks remaining in the regular season, the 26-year-old slugger has not only set a career high in steals, but he might very well become the first player this season to join the 30-homer, 30-steal club.

Despite a slow start that included just three home runs and two stolen bases through the end of April, Soto has clubbed 38 homers and is just three away from his career high, set last year with the Yankees. He’s already had additional seasons with 34 and 35 homers (2019 and ’23, respectively), so any total in that range is hardly out of the norm. What’s remarkable is that he now has 29 steals, a country mile beyond his previous career high (he stole 12 in both 2019 and ’23), and more than he swiped from 2022–24 combined (25 steals). At this writing, he’s third in the NL in homers but 11 behind leader Kyle Schwarber. By comparison, he’s fifth in the league in steals but just eight off the lead, held by Oneil Cruz.

Soto stole seven bases (in 11 attempts) last year, and averaged about nine steals for the 2021–24 span. He added five steals in May to those two in April, but he stole just two more in June. Once July hit, though, and especially after the All-Star break, he started running more frequently, with four of his six steals for the month coming in a nine-game span from July 19–28. He’s maintained a similar clip since then, with 11 steals in August — tied with Jazz Chisholm Jr. for the major league lead in that month — and three more in September. That’s a major league-leading 18 steals in 20 attempts over his past 45 games, a 65-steal pace! Chisholm is second over that same span with 17. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to another edition of my Tuesday chats. We’ve got a nice little streak of four straight weeks going, something that  hasn’t happened since May and June, just before the summer travel began.

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, in case you missed it, I wrote a tribute to Davey Johnson, who passed away over the weekend. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/davey-johnson-1943-2025-a-man-ahead-of-the…

12:05

Jay Jaffe: I’m more convinced than ever that Johnson belongs in the Hall. Nothing against Lou Piniella, who missed by one vote on the 2024 Era Committee ballot while Jim Leyland got elected — with Johnson in the “5 votes or fewer scrum — but Johnson’s managerial career is superior to Piniella’s in everything but length, and he was a real innovator in terms of his usage of personal computers and his carrying on the Earl Weaver legacy.

12:06

Jay Jaffe: Anyhoo, I’ve got a piece in the pipeline today about candidates for the 30-30 club. Would you believe Juan Soto is the closest to joining from among this year’s crop, and that he has more steals over the past ~2 months than any major leaguer? Yeah, weird times.

12:12

Jay Jaffe: I touched upon this a few weeks ago when I did my Hall of Fame progress series (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/cooperstown-notebook-the-2025-progress-rep…). I think the answer might be Chris Sale, who is 36 years old, has 143 wins, and has the next-highest S-JAWS after Verlander, Kershaw, and Scherzer (49.2). I don’t see him getting to 200 wins, but 3,000 strikeouts is a possibility (he needs 454), and between his perennial Cy Young candidacy and his bWAR rankings (including six times in his league’s top 5), I think he’s going to be the best choice we see for a few years.

Read the rest of this entry »

As both a player and a manager, Davey Johnson was a standout and a man ahead of the curve. In a 13-season playing career that spanned from 1965 to ’78, primarily as a second baseman with the Orioles and Braves, he made four All-Star teams, won three Gold Gloves, played in three World Series, and set a home run record. In a 17-season managerial career that stretched from 1984 to 2013, covered five different teams, and included a decade-long hiatus, Johnson won six division titles, one Wild Card berth, a championship, and two Manager of the Year awards. He’s indelibly linked to the Mets, first for making the final out in their 1969 upset of the Orioles and then for piloting their ’86 juggernaut to a World Series win at the peak of a six-season run.

Johnson had a knack for turning around losing teams, and for connecting with his players. Decades before the analytical revolution took hold in baseball, he was a pioneer in the use of personal computers by managers, at a time when the machines were still a novelty. Drawing upon his offseason studies at Trinity University — from which he earned a B.S. in mathematics — and Johns Hopkins, as well as his experience playing for Earl Weaver with the Orioles, he was renowned for using statistical databases to figure out probabilities and optimize his lineup and bullpen matchups.

Johnson, who last worked in baseball as a consultant for the Nationals in 2014, died on Friday in Sarasota, Florida following a long illness. He was 82 years old. Read the rest of this entry »