Variously known as the “The Human Vacuum Cleaner,” “Mr. Hoover,” or “Mr. Impossible,” Brooks Robinson set the standard for defensive wizardry at third base, winning a record 16 consecutive Gold Gloves thanks to his combination of ambidexterity, supernaturally quick reflexes, and acrobatic skill. He was an 18-time All-Star, a regular season, All-Star Game, and World Series MVP, and a first-ballot Hall of Famer. More than that, he was “Mr. Oriole” for his 23 seasons spent with Baltimore, a foundational piece for four pennant winners and two champions, and a beloved icon within the community and throughout the game. In 1966, Sports Illustrated’s William Leggett wrote that Robinson “ranked second only to crab cakes in Baltimore.” He may have surpassed them since.

Robinson died on Tuesday at the age of 86. According to his agent, the cause was coronary disease. On the broadcast of the Orioles’ game on Tuesday night, longtime teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Jim Palmer fought back tears to pay tribute. “We all know he’s a great player, he won 16 Gold Gloves, but we also know how special a person he was,” said Palmer, who like Robinson debuted with the Orioles as a teenager, spent his entire career with the team, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. “I think as a young player you make a decision early in your life, ‘Okay, who do I want to emulate? Who do I want to be like?’ Brooks was that guy.” Read the rest of this entry »

After Anthony Rendon revealed that he had indeed suffered a fractured tibia and not a bone bruise, and after Shohei Ohtani cleared out his locker to undergo surgery to repair his torn ulnar collateral ligament, there really was only one more insult to add to the injuries that have defined the Angels’ 2023 season. On Sunday, the team transferred Mike Trout to the 60-day injured list due to continued setbacks in his recovery from wrist surgery, officially ending his season and opening the door to questions about his future with the franchise.

Trout fractured his left hamate while fouling off a pitch on July 3. He had surgery to remove the bone — a treatment that’s supposed to accelerate a return to play — two days later, and was expected to be sidelined for four to eight weeks. He returned on August 22, about seven weeks after surgery, but while going 1-for-4 with an infield single, he felt significant pain in his left hand when hitting and returned to the IL. Though he still hoped to play this season, he ran out of time.

“It’s frustrating,” a visibly emotional Trout told reporters in a media session on Sunday. “It’s been hard on me… It kills me not being out there. I’ve got a lot left in my career, and I can’t just sit around here and mope around. I’ve got to have that positive mindset.” Read the rest of this entry »

2:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my final chat of the 2023 regular season. I’ve got a piece today on the Astros’ September struggles (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/for-one-night-at-least-justin-verlander-st…) and yesterday dared to question the rush to anoint Ronald Acuña Jr. MVP by writing about the role of versatility in Mookie Betts’ candidacy (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mookie-betts-versatility-has-enriched-his-…). Anyway, let’s get to it…

2:11

Jay Jaffe: I think it’s mostly pretty early to entertain a serious Hall of Fame discussion about any starter beyond the big four (Kershaw, Verlander, Scherzer, Greinke) and Cole, and that goes for Snell, who hasn’t even reached 1,000 innings (he’s at 992.2. The shape of his career thus far is unusual in that his two Cy-Caliber seasons account for about 63% of his 21.1 career bWAR; his third-best season by that measure was last year, worth just 2.1 WAR. I’m not sure I can find a good parallel offhand, in that even two-time CY winner Denny McClain had a 4.6-WAR season in 1965, three years before the first of his back-to-back awards. But among HOFers, Jim Kaat going 11 seasons between 5.0-WAR years (1962 and ’74) stands out, though he had some with 4+ WAR in that span

2:12	Jay Jaffe: I think Cole will have serious traction if he stays healthy. Good chance to reach both 200 wins and 3,000 strikeouts (he’s at 144 and 2,147 now). It’s who comes after that that’s the question.

Read the rest of this entry »

If Houston has a problem, that notion was put on hold for at least one night. Having lost four straight three-game series, three to lousy teams, the Astros arrived in Seattle sporting just a half-game lead over the Mariners for the third AL Wild Card spot, 2.5 games behind the Rangers. Fortunately for the Astros — for whom quality starting pitching has suddenly been in short supply this month — Justin Verlander played the stopper, shutting out the Mariners on two hits over his first eight innings in a 5-1 win.

Facing a team that owns the majors’ second-highest wOBA against four-seamers (.377), the 40-year-old Verlander dialed down his fastball usage in favor of his curve, and retired the Mariners in order in seven of his innings. He struck out the side in the second and fourth innings, and got into trouble only in the third, when Dominic Canzone and Josh Rojas hit back-to-back singles and J.P. Crawford followed with a walk. Verlander escaped that jam by inducing Julio Rodríguez to ground into a double play.

By that point, the Astros led 4-0, having banged out three second-inning runs against Luis Castillo via a trio of hard-hit balls from Mauricio Dubón, Martín Maldonado, and Jose Altuve, with Yordan Alvarez adding a fourth-inning homer. From the double-play ball through the end of the eighth, Verlander retired 16 straight Mariners. Given the intact shutout and a pitch count of just 91, manager Dusty Baker sent him out to start the ninth, but Rojas’ double into the right field corner ended Verlander’s night, and Bryan Abreu closed things out, though Rojas came around to score. Verlander struck out eight, benefited from a pair of diving stops by first baseman José Abreu, and allowed just six hard-hit balls out of 18 in play, none of them barrels. Read the rest of this entry »

With apologies to Matt Olson, Freddie Freeman, and Corbin Carroll, the race for the NL MVP Award has essentially boiled down to two players: Ronald Acuña Jr. and Mookie Betts. It’s an incredibly close one, with the pair producing such similar batting lines that they’re tied for the NL lead with a 169 wRC+. Betts has the edge in both the FanGraphs and Baseball Reference versions of WAR, Acuña has the edge in several counting stats, and each player has added some unique additional flavors into the mix.

For Acuña, those largely center around his prolific baserunning. Aided by the new rules — particularly the limits on pickoff throws — and unhindered by a drop in sprint speed in the wake of his 2021 ACL tear, he’s stolen 68 bases, the highest total in the majors since 2010. With his 40th homer coming against the Nationals on Friday, he has just the fifth 40–40 season ever, and now the most steals of any player in that club, surpassing Alex Rodriguez’s 46 from 1998 (to go with 42 homers). With one week remaining, he needs two steals to become the first player ever to combine 40 homers and 70 steals in the same campaign, in what’s arguably the greatest power-speed combo season anybody has seen.

There’s certainly value to such an accomplishment, though we’re entering the realm of intangibility. We’re already crediting the value of his homers and steals within the context of the rest of his offensive stat line, but things like wOBA, wRC+, and WAR don’t tell us how much to care about a player reaching round-numbered milestones like these, even if they’re without precedent. Even less clear-cut is the attempt to examine the extent to which Acuña’s baserunning has helped his teammates, mainly by giving them more fastballs to hit. Colleague Esteban Rivera established that yes, players do see more fastballs when he’s on first, but their performances against those fastballs wasn’t uniformly better. “Acuña is most likely helping his teammates see more heaters,” he concluded. “What they do with those pitches, though, is completely up to them.”

Betts isn’t without his own cool counting stat achievements. His two-run double off Ross Stripling on Saturday night gave him 105 RBIs out of the leadoff spot, a record (Acuña is third at 101). Meanwhile, he’s hit 12 leadoff homers, one shy of the single-season record set by Alfonso Soriano in 2003, and his career-high 39 homers are two shy of the post-World War II record for the most by a player listed at 5-foot-9 or shorter, currently held by Roy Campanella. But bigger (if more difficult to measure) impact he’s made is with his sudden burst of Zobristian versatility: In the wake of Gavin Lux tearing his right ACL in late February, Betts has started 69 games in the infield — 56 at second base and another 12 at shortstop — in his most infield play in nearly a decade. Read the rest of this entry »

The rookies took the spotlight this past Saturday in Baltimore, as the Orioles battled the Rays and clinched their first playoff berth since 2016 via an 8-0 victory. Leading the way on the offensive side was 22-year-old Gunnar Henderson, who led off the first inning with a first-pitch single off Tyler Glasnow and came around to score the game’s first run, then added a two-run homer in the second and an RBI single in the fourth, helping to stake rookie starter Grayson Rodriguez to a 5-0 lead. The 23-year-old righty turned in the best start of his brief big league career, spinning eight shutout innings while striking out seven and allowing just five baserunners. A day later, when the Orioles beat the Rays in 11 innings to reclaim the AL East lead, a trio of rookies — Shintaro Fujinami, Yennier Cano, and DL Hall — combined to allow just one hit and one unearned run over the final three frames.

Earlier this month, colleague Chris Gilligan highlighted the contributions of this year’s rookie class. With just under four weeks to go in the regular season at that point, rookie pitchers and position players had combined to produce more WAR than all but three other classes since the turn of the millennium. Collectively they’re now second only to the Class of 2015 (more on which below), and since the publication of that piece, four teams besides the Orioles, all heavy with rookie contributions, have made headway in the playoff races. The Dodgers clinched the NL West for the 10th time in 11 years on Saturday, while the Mariners and Diamondbacks are clinging to Wild Card spots, and the Reds are in the thick of the NL race as well. Read the rest of this entry »

2:04

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to another edition of my weekly chat — the first one in two weeks. It’s been a lively time around Casa Jaffe-Span lately due to pending real estate transactions; I missed last week’s caht and was late setting this one up. Since i’m also late in securing lunch, I’m going to let the queue fill up for a few more minutes and then light this candle.

2:12

Jay Jaffe: This isn’t just a proposal, they actually appear to have a deal, so yes. Other than the fact that they literally could not get any other deals done until now, what I don’t get is how this one solves one of the big problems that Tropicana Field has faced, which is simply getting to the ballpark given its location.

2:12	Jay Jaffe: Because this park will be right near the current one

2:13	Jay Jaffe: and it’s a dome, not even a retractable.

2:13	Jay Jaffe: it will be interesting to see how this ignites the discussion of expansion to 32 teams. When I wrote about Salt Lake City’s surprising bid, it was clear that solving the Oakland and Tampa Bay stadium issues was necessary and both have now been, uh, dealt with.

Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Wainwright rose to the occasion. Summoning vintage form to pitch like the staff stalwart he’s been for the better part of the past two decades instead of the palooka he’s been for most of this season, the 42-year-old righty tossed seven shutout innings against the NL Central-leading Brewers at Busch Stadium. Thanks to a solo homer by catcher Willson Contreras and two more scoreless innings from his bullpen, Wainwright collected the 200th win of his career, and provided some long-awaited cheer and relief for the Cardinals and their fans in an otherwise dismal season.

If you haven’t been paying attention, most of what you need to know about how hard-won this milestone was is right there in Wainwright’s ERA: his seven scoreless frames lowered his mark from 7.95 to 7.40. You’re not going to notch many victories allowing runs at that clip, and in most organizations, you wouldn’t get many opportunities to keep trying, particularly when the underlying numbers do nothing to mitigate that ugly top line. The Cardinals, now 67-83 and en route to their first sub-.500 season since 2007, have continued sending him out there nonetheless, at times seeming to do so out of a sense of loyalty to a player who’s been a vital part of 10 playoff teams, two pennant winners and one champion rather than a clear-eyed judgment of his current abilities.

For one night, all that was put aside. Facing a team that began the day 18 games ahead of the Cardinals in the standings, and lacking even the pedestrian fastball velocity he could summon earlier this season, Wainwright nonetheless kept the Brewers off balance while working into and out of trouble in the majority of his innings. His one-out, first-inning walk to William Contreras was erased by a 4-6-3 double play off the bat of Carlos Santana. After retiring the side in order in the second, he induced Contreras to hit a slow chopper to Paul Goldschmidt to escape a two-on, two-out jam to end the third. In perhaps his most impressive sequence of the night, after serving up a two-out double to Willy Adames, he struck out Rowdy Tellez to end the fourth via a well-placed 87-mph sinker, that after the slugger had fouled off three curveballs and a cutter. He ended the sixth erasing another single by Contreras with another double play at the expense of Santana, who hit a 98.8-mph hot shot straight up the middle but right at shortstop Masyn Winn, who stepped on second and threw to first. After Mark Canha smacked a leadoff single on an 87.6-mph sinker — his fastest pitch of the night — then took second on a grounder and stole third with two outs, Wainwright stranded him, as Lars Nootbar chased down Josh Donaldson’s fly ball into the left-center gap. Read the rest of this entry »

In the Beforetimes, mid-September brought my annual check-in on the potential for end-of-season chaos in the playoff races via the Team Entropy series. With last year’s introduction of an expanded and restructured postseason, however, Major League Baseball did away with the potential for scheduling mayhem in favor of a larger inventory of playoff games. Along with the expansion of the playoff field from 10 teams to 12 and of the Wild Card round from a pair of winner-take-all games to a quartet of three-game series, MLB also eliminated all winner-take-all regular-season tiebreaker games. In the name of efficiency, we have no more Games 163 and no more potential Bucky Dents. Instead, ties, even for spots where the winner would receive a postseason berth and the loser would go home, are decided by mathematics. It’s enough to make a fan want to shout, “Hey, Manfred, pull your head out of a spreadsheet and watch an elimination game!”

The untangling of the often-chaotic scenarios by which those one-game tiebreakers could come about was Team Entropy’s raison d’etre. But particularly with so many close races, there’s still enough untangling to do in potentially complex tie scenarios that I’ve chosen to continue a version of this exercise, pouring out a cold one for what might have been. If what we’re left with isn’t exactly chaotic, you can thumb your nose at the commissioner as you take a seat on the Team Un-Tropy bandwagon. Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine trading Mookie Betts. Chaim Bloom must have done that, must have considered all of the angles and potential outcomes of such a move, including the possibility that he would be saddled with it as his legacy — then sold principal owner John Henry on a vision of the Red Sox without the superstar right fielder in order to be hired as the team’s chief baseball officer in October 2019. That trade has not worked out well for the Red Sox, who have made the playoffs just once since winning the 2018 World Series, behaving more like a mid-market franchise than the league’s third-most valuable one. And while Bloom had put something of a stamp on the post-Betts roster, the rest of his vision will not be realized. On Thursday, the Red Sox fired him, kicking off a search for new leadership of their baseball operations department for the fourth time since Theo Epstein departed for the Cubs in October 2011.

Unlike predecessors Ben Cherington (2011–15) and Dave Dombrowski (2015–19), Bloom didn’t win a championship during his run to offset the team’s disappointing seasons. On his watch, the Red Sox went just 267–262 from the start of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season to the point of his dismissal, becoming more notable for their belt-tightening than for their on-field success. They made the playoffs only in 2021, when they went 92–70, finishing second in the AL East, then beating the Yankees in the Wild Card Game and the Rays in the Division Series before losing to the Astros in the ALCS. They finished last in the division in both 2020 (24–36) and ’22 (78–84) and fired Bloom while tied for fourth with the Yankees at 73–72, with just a 0.3% chance of making the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry »