2:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to the first 2022-23 offseason edition of my chat. I’m not sure if this is the Hot Stove or the smoldering wreckage of Twitter, but here we are. I’ve been covering the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot this week, with entries on Fred McGriff, Rafael Palmeiro, Albert Belle, and Don Mattingly, all of which you can get to via the nav bar here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2023-contemporary-baseball-era-committee-c…

2:04

Jay Jaffe: Next up is Dale Murphy, which will run Monday because I added some Deep Thoughts that were brought about by the advent calendar of bad behavior by some of the others on this ballot. I also covered Anthony Rizzo’s return to the Yankees https://blogs.fangraphs.com/anthony-rizzo-heads-back-to-the-bronx/

2:06	Jay Jaffe: I was just looking at his page a little while ago, prompted by a similar question from MLB Network Radio pal Mike Ferrin. I wrote about Goldschmidt’s progress in mid-July (https://t.co/IydUWFrx7r) after which he continued to mash even with a September slump, which is why he’s the NL MVP

2:07	Jay Jaffe: Here’s how he looks via JAWS: First Base (18th): 58.5career WAR |45.37yr-peak WAR |51.9JAWS |5.8WAR/162   Average HOF 1B (out of 23):     65.5 career WAR | 42.1 7yr-peak WAR | 53.8 JAWS | 4.9 WAR/162

2:08	Jay Jaffe: That peak score is 13th all time, nestled between Frank Thomas and Miguel Cabrera. I’d say that the heavy lifting for Goldschmidt is over, and that he’s on his way provided he gets the remaining 250 hits he needs to reach 2,000 (which he in all likelihood will)

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been expanded and updated. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Don Mattingly was the golden child of the Great Yankees Dark Age. He debuted in September 1982, the year after the team finished a stretch of four World Series appearances in six seasons, and retired in 1995 after finally reaching the postseason — a year too early for the franchise’s run of six pennants and four titles in eight years under Joe Torre.

A lefty-swinging first baseman with a sweet stroke, “Donnie Baseball” was both an outstanding hitter and a slick fielder at his peak. He made six straight All-Star teams from 1984 to ’89 and won a batting title, an MVP award, and nine Gold Gloves. Along the way, he battled with owner George Steinbrenner even while becoming the standard bearer of the pinstripes, the team captain, and something of a cultural icon. Alas, a back injury sapped his power, not only shortening his peak but also bringing his career to a premature end at age 34. At its root, the problem was that Mattingly was so driven to succeed that he overworked himself in the batting cage.

“Donnie was one of the hardest workers I had ever seen and played with. He would go in the cage before batting practice and take batting practice. And after batting practice was over, he’d take batting practice,” former teammate Ron Guidry said for a 2022 MLB Network documentary, Donnie Baseball (for which this scribe was also interviewed).

“I should have learned quicker to not to beat my body up, and if I did less, I could perform better,” said Mattingly for the same documentary.

Mattingly debuted on the 2001 Hall of Fame ballot, the last one before I began my own annual reviews, but it was quickly clear that he didn’t have the raw numbers or the support of enough voters to gain entry to Cooperstown. After receiving 28.2% his first time around, he dipped to 20.3% in 2002, spent most of the remainder of his 15-year run in the teens, and was in single digits by the end. What’s more, in two appearances on the Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot in 2018 and ’20, he failed to reach the threshold to have his actual share reported; at most, he received three of 16 votes (18.8%) in his last appearance.

At this point, Mattingly’s best hope for a Hall of Fame berth involves building on his managerial success, though even in that department he has a long way to go. After winning three division titles in five seasons with the Dodgers, he spent seven years toiling for the Marlins and is currently out of a job after stepping down from that job last month. He seems unlikely to be elected this time around, but his candidacy is nonetheless a welcome palate cleanser when compared to the likes of Rafael Palmeiro and Albert Belle. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Albert Belle was baseball’s most notorious bad boy in the 1990s, and he developed into one of the game’s elite sluggers. He flat out terrorized pitchers — and was no picnic for many of those around him — for a decade before a degenerative hip condition forced his retirement at age 34. Even at the height of an offense-heavy era, his numbers are something to behold.

So, too, are stories of Belle’s temper. A 1996 Sports Illustrated cover story, “He Thrives on Anger” — a title taken from a quote by Cleveland clubhouse attendant Frank Mancini, one of Belle’s closest friends — detailed his throwing baseballs at a photographer, hurling epithets at a broadcaster, and chasing teenagers who had egged his house in his Ford Explorer. While Belle overcame early-career problems with alcohol to flourish in the majors, his actions once he did rarely cast his as a feel-good story. Had the behavior that incurred multiple fines and suspensions — not to mention a 1998 domestic battery complaint that was later dropped — occurred two decades later, he could have received even heavier punishment that might have altered his career path. Read the rest of this entry »

While Aaron Judge and Anthony Rizzo both officially rejected their qualifying offers on Tuesday, the Yankees retained the latter nonetheless. The team agreed to terms with the 33-year-old first baseman — New York’s second-best hitter this season, after the big guy — on a two-year, $40 million contract that contains a club option for a third year.

This is the second offseason in a row in which Rizzo and the Yankees have agreed upon a two-year deal, but the bells and whistles have changed. Acquired in a 2021 deadline trade with the Cubs, he re-signed with the Yankees once the lockout ended in March via a two-year, $32 million deal that guaranteed him $16 million each year and contained an opt-out after 2022, which he exercised following a very solid performance. This time around, he’s guaranteed $40 million, via $17 million salaries for this year and next plus a $6 million buyout on a $17 million club option for 2025.

Though Rizzo would have gotten a raise by merely accepting the $19.65 million qualifying offer, it didn’t hurt his cause that earlier this week, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that the Astros had identified him as their top target at first base. Yuli Gurriel has manned the spot for Houston for the past three years but is now a 38-year-old free agent coming off a sub-replacement level season (85 wRC+, -0.9 WAR). The thought of the world champions upgrading by taking a piece from the team they swept out of the ALCS probably didn’t sit well in the Bronx, particularly given a market where the top remaining alternative would have been 36-year-old righty José Abreu, a less optimal fit for the Yankees’ lineup. More on that below. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been expanded and updated. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

On July 15, 2005, Rafael Palmeiro became the 26th player to collect his 3,000 hit, and joined Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray as the only players to attain both that milestone and 500 home runs. Even for a player who didn’t get as much recognition as his heavy-hitting peers in the All-Star, MVP, and postseason departments, and who had been viewed more as a compiler who benefited from playing in hitter-friendly ballparks than as a bona fide superstar, the 40-year-old slugger appeared to have secured a spot in the Hall of Fame.

Less than three weeks later, on August 1, 2005, Major League Baseball suspended Palmeiro for 10 days for testing positive for Winstrol (stanozolol), a banned anabolic steroid. Just five players had been suspended before him, none of whom was anything close to a star. For Palmeiro the suspension was all the more humbling because four and a half months earlier, he had wagged his finger in front of Congress while adamantly denying that he used performance-enhancing drugs. For as brief as his suspension was — first-offense penalties would increase to 50 games the following season — it all but ended the debate about Palmeiro’s Hall-worthiness. His career didn’t even outlast the debate; upon returning, Palmeiro played in just seven more games, struggling while enduring a persistent chorus of boos. He didn’t even finish out the season.

Palmeiro wasn’t the first PED-linked star to land on the BBWAA ballot — that distinction belonged to Mark McGwire — but he was the first to do so after being suspended. The voters were unsparing, giving him just 11% of the vote in 2011, and while his share rose to 12.6% the next year, the handwriting was on the wall. As the ballot grew more crowded over the next two years, with the arrivals of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa in 2013, and then Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and Frank Thomas in ’14, Palmeiro was lost in the shuffle. He faded to 8.8% in 2014, then 4.4% the next year, bumping him off the ballot. He’s rarely been heard from since, though he did surface a couple of times to play on independent league teams with his son, Patrick Palmeiro, most recently in 2018.

Palmeiro’s presence on this ballot is puzzling, even given that he’s got the numbers for the Hall. The fact that McGwire, who was never suspended, got the cold shoulder from the 2017 Today’s Game panel without testing positive, and that Bonds and Clemens are also on here without testing positive but with superior credentials as players, suggests a very low likelihood that the voters will tab a lesser player who was suspended. More likely, Palmeiro is here mainly as ballast, a candidate easily overlooked so as to focus voters’ attentions elsewhere. It seems probable that such a result will only reinforce the Hall and the Historical Overview Committee that builds the ballot burying him in oblivion, though if that means that Dwight Evans and Lou Whitaker — both of whom were widely expected to be included in this year’s slate after solid debuts on the 2020 Modern Baseball ballot — it’s tough to complain.

Born in Havana, Cuba on September 24, 1964, Palmeiro emigrated to the U.S. with his parents in 1971, when he was six years old; his father, José Palmeiro, had been an outstanding center fielder on a top Cuban amateur team in his own day. The family settled in Miami, and five or six days a week, José came home from his construction job and took his youngest three sons — the oldest, José Jr., had remained in Cuba to serve in the military — to one of the local diamonds for batting practice and grounders. As a child, Palmeiro learned to filter his father’s negative criticism, understanding how to separate the message to work harder and strive for improvement, from the delivery.

After starring at Jackson High School in Miami, Palmeiro was chosen in the eighth round of the 1982 draft by the Mets, but he bypassed the chance to sign in favor of accepting a baseball scholarship from Mississippi State University. At MSU, he starred alongside fellow future major leaguer Will Clark, becoming a three-time All-American and the first Triple Crown winner in Southeastern Conference history in 1984. In 2019, the pair were honored with statues in front of Dudy Noble Field.

The two teammates were chosen in the first round of the 1985 draft — Clark second overall by the Giants and Palmeiro 22nd by the Cubs. That same round was headed by future Orioles teammate B.J. Surhoff, and it also produced Barry Larkin (fourth, to the Reds) and Bonds (sixth, to the Pirates). Just 15 months later, and 16 days before his 22nd birthday, Palmeiro debuted in the majors, singling off the Phillies’ Tom Hume on September 8, 1986. The next day, he hit a three-run homer off Kevin Gross.

Palmeiro hit .247/.295/.425 in a 22-game cup of coffee, and after beginning the 1987 season at Triple-A Peoria, he was in the majors for good by mid-June. He hit .276/.336/.543 with 14 homers in 84 games as a rookie, then earned All-Star honors and finished second in the NL batting title race in 1988 while hitting a relatively thin .307/.349/.436 with just eight homers. The Cubs had Leon Durham and then Mark Grace at first base during those seasons, so Palmeiro played primarily in left field. After the 1988 season, he was dealt to the Rangers in a nine-player trade that also included Jamie Moyer heading to Texas and Mitch Williams to Chicago.

Palmeiro emerged as a minor star in Texas, leading the American League with 191 hits in 1990 and earning All-Star honors for the second time in ’91, when he hit .322/.389/.532 with 203 hits, a league-leading 49 doubles and 26 homers; his 155 OPS+ ranked fifth in the AL, his 5.8 WAR ninth. He set a career high with 37 homers in 1993, hitting .295/.371/.554 and ranking fourth in WAR (6.9) and sixth in OPS+ (150). The Rangers finished above .500 in four of his five years with the team, but they never won more than 86 games or finished higher than second in the seven-team AL West.

Palmeiro parlayed that big season into a five-year, $30.35 million deal with the Orioles, but not without some drama that involved his former college teammate. Though he wanted to return to Texas, Palmeiro turned down the team’s initial offer of five years and $26 million and entered free agency. The Rangers turned to Clark, who had reached free agency after his impressive eight-year run with the Giants; he agreed to a five-year, $30 million deal. “Palmeiro chose not to come off his original offer one penny; in fact, he went up,” said Rangers president Tom Schieffer while noting that he had been the team’s first choice for a left-handed power hitter.

Palmeiro was stung, particularly by the fact that his former teammate replaced him. “That’s Will,” he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “That’s the way he is. He’s got no class. Friendship didn’t matter to him. He was looking out for himself. I don’t think much of Will. He’s a low-life.”

Palmeiro publicly apologized to Clark the next day, and about three weeks later signed with the Orioles, becoming the marquee addition of new owner Peter Angelos in his quest to build a winner to fit the team’s new Camden Yards ballpark. The move brought him to the team he used to watch train in Miami, and reunited him with manager Johnny Oates, who had coached him with the Cubs.

Over the next five years, Palmeiro hit a combined .292/.371/.545 (134 OPS+) while averaging 36 homers and 4.7 WAR despite the 1994-95 strike. His 39-homer, .289/.381/.546 showing in 1996 helped the Orioles reach the playoffs for the first time since ’83. He homered in three consecutive postseason games, and got on base in all five plate appearances in the infamous Jeffrey Maier game against the Yankees in the ALCS opener, but he hit a lopsided .206/.317/.500 in 41 plate appearances during the playoffs overall as Baltimore fell short of the World Series.

Palmeiro fell off somewhat the next year (.254/.329/.485 with 38 homers), but did win a Gold Glove for his play at first base, which rated at 10 runs above average according to Total Zone. While the O’s made it back to the playoffs again with a star-studded lineup that also included future Hall of Famers Murray, Roberto Alomar, Harold Baines, and Cal Ripken Jr., they again couldn’t get to the World Series.

After a strong walk year in 1998 during which he tallied 6.3 WAR (seventh in the league), 43 homers (sixth, and a career high) and a second Gold Glove, Palmeiro returned to Texas via a five-year, $45 million contract. He turned down a $50 million offer in order to be closer to his family, and again was reunited with Oates, who had been fired by the Orioles after the ’94 season. In the hitter-friendly Ballpark at Arlington, he set career highs in all three slash stats (.324/.420/.630) in 1999 as well as homers (47) and RBIs (148) — the last three figures all ranked second in the league — while helping the Rangers to their third division title. He finished fifth in the MVP balloting, his highest showing ever, and won one of the most dubious Gold Gloves in history in a season where he played just 28 games in the field, spending most of his time DHing.

Palmeiro hit .284/.390/.566 (140 OPS+) and averaged 43 homers during his five-season stint in Texas; his total of 214 dingers during that span were surpassed only by Sosa, Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Jim Thome. Between the high-scoring era, the hitter-friendly environment, and his increasing amount of time at DH, his total of 20.9 WAR during that stretch (4.2 per year) ranked 35th among position players — good but not as valuable as his raw numbers would suggest. On May 11, 2003 he hit his 500th homer off Cleveland’s Dave Elder, becoming the 19th player to reach that plateau.

Palmeiro turned 39 at the end of that season, and after entering the free agent market yet again, decided to return to Baltimore to chase 3,000 hits. Whether due to age or environment, his power dissipated; he declined from 38 homers and a .508 slugging percentage in his final year in Texas to 23 and .436 with the Orioles in 2004.

Prior to the 2005 season, Palmeiro was among the former teammates named as a steroid user by Jose Canseco in his tell-all book, Juiced. Canseco claimed that during his 1992-94 stint with the Rangers, he had not only introduced Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez and Ivan Rodriguez to steroids, but to have personally injected them as well. Palmeiro denied the assertion via a statement: “At no point in my career have I ever used steroids, let alone any substance banned by Major League Baseball. As I have never had a personal relationship with Canseco, any suggestion that he taught me anything, about steroid use or otherwise, is ludicrous.” In March, both Canseco and Palmeiro were among the major leaguers subpoenaed to testify under oath in front of the House of Representatives Government Reform Committee regarding the spread of steroids in baseball. Palmeiro was blunt in his testimony. “I have never used steroids. Period,” he said, punctuating his denial by wagging his finger at the panel.

That image was still burned into the collective consciousness when Palmeiro collected his 3,000th hit, a double off Seattle’s Joel Pineiro, on July 15. Just over two weeks later, all hell broke loose when MLB announced that he had tested positive for a banned substance. Palmeiro claimed to have not taken the drug intentionally and received a 10-day ban, the penalty in place at the time for first offenders. A celebration in honor of his milestone hit was canceled, and when he returned from his suspension, he was showered by so many boos that he took to wearing earplugs. That state of affairs didn’t last long. After collecting just two hits in 29 plate appearances over a two-week span, he left the team and never played in the majors again. In September, the Associated Press reported that he had been sent home by the Orioles after implicating teammate Miguel Tejada as having provided him with an allegedly tainted B-12 supplement, both before MLB’s Health Policy Advisory Committee and a Congressional perjury investigation.

Palmeiro was not prosecuted any further, but he remained haunted by the way his career ended, and continued to contend that the offending substance came from a tainted B-12 vial. He came and went on the writers’ ballot, and while he gave up on hopes of reaching the Hall of Fame, he shifted towards an attempt to salvage his reputation by staging an unlikely comeback. In 2015, at the age of 50, he made a one-game cameo with the independent Sugar Land Skeeters of the Atlantic League, for whom his son Patrick — who was born in 1990, drafted by the Pirates in 2009, and spent 2012-14 in the White Sox system following college — was playing; he went 2-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.

In December 2017, Palmeiro told The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal that he was planning another comeback with the intention of returning to the majors. “Maybe 12 years later, if I can come back and prove I don’t need anything as an older player with an older body, then people might think, OK, maybe he didn’t do anything intentionally,” he said.

Though he was in better physical shape than in 2015, a return to the majors proved to be a pipe dream, but Palmeiro did rejoin his older son (his younger son, Preston, was born in 1995, drafted by the Orioles in the seventh round in 2016 and spent ’22 with the Angels’ Double-A Rocket City affiliate) as a member of the independent Cleburne Railroaders of the American Association. This time, in his age-53 season (!), he played 31 games and hit .301/.424/.495 with six homers. His May 21 homer made him the oldest professional player to homer, while on July 13, he and his son both homered (the latter twice).

53-year-old Rafael Palmeiro's still got some dingers left in him ? pic.twitter.com/ts1fU6mkeh

— SportsDay Rangers (@dmn_rangers) May 22, 2018

Alas, knee problems that resulted in surgery limited his play, and while he intended to continue the following year, both he and Patrick were released in the spring.

…

Setting the steroid saga aside for the moment, Palmeiro’s dual milestones suggest he belong in Cooperstown. Save for the banned-for-life Pete Rose, every player who reached the 3,000 hit mark prior to Palmeiro was elected to to the Hall on his first try, though since then, Biggio needed three tries, and Rodriguez came nowhere near election (34.3%) in his ballot debut last year. Meanwhile, all of the previous members of the 500 home run club save for McGwire were elected to the Hall of Fame as well, though it took four ballots for Harmon Killebrew to gain entry and five for Eddie Mathews. Since then, six other PED-linked players (Bonds, Sosa, Gary Sheffield, Manny Ramirez, and Rodriguez) have failed to gain entry, with Thomas, Thome, Ken Griffey Jr., and David Ortiz the only ones to make it.

The common knock against Palmeiro — that he racked up his numbers under extremely favorable conditions and was never considered a star — doesn’t entirely hold up under scrutiny. His total of four All-Star appearances is indeed low for a potential Hall of Famer, but he received MVP votes in 10 seasons, and while he cracked the top 10 in those votes just three times, that still means he was considered among the league’s best hitters in half of the seasons he played. He scores 178 on the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor metric, which measures how likely (not how deserving) a player is to be elected, with 100 rating as “a good possibility” and 130 “a virtual cinch.” For what it’s worth, Palmeiro didn’t derive a great advantage from his home parks, hitting .285/.375/.527 in Chicago, Texas and Baltimore, and .291/.366/.502 elsewhere, a fairly typical split.

Of course, we’ll never know the extent to which PEDs affected Palmeiro’s performance, and we don’t even know for how long he was using them. He wasn’t setting the world ablaze during the season in which he tested positive, and we don’t know whether he used the drugs during his prime — a time when offense was at its highest point in decades, and PED use was on the rise as well — or simply made a mistake as his career was waning. Was he caught red-handed after years of relying upon the drugs? Was he set up by a teammate? We don’t know and I’m not sure we ever will. That said, I don’t think it’s going too far out on a limb to suggest that even knowing those answers isn’t likely to get Palmeiro into Cooperstown, and that he will instead remain a cautionary tale.

It wasn’t hard to see this coming. Despite taking over their jobs in the wake of the team’s sign-stealing scandal and leading the Astros to the AL’s best record since then, with a 2020 trip to the ALCS, a ’21 pennant and ’22 World Series win to boot, general manager James Click and manager Dusty Baker were both working without contracts beyond this season. Normally, such successful leaders are offered extensions well before their deals expire, but Astros owner Jim Crane refused the courtesy, sending both into the postseason as lame ducks. Both Click’s three-year deal and Baker’s one-year deal officially expired on October 31, before the final out of the team’s World Series triumph. Amid the celebration, Crane said he’d address the matter the following week, and while Baker agreed to return via a one-year deal, Click rejected a one-year offer, ending his tenure atop Houston’s front office.

Frankly, under such circumstances, a single-year offer is an insult, particularly for an organization’s highest-ranking baseball official, the person who is supposed to be the architect of the team. At this point in his storied career, the 73-year-old Baker may be fine with going year to year, but Crane had to know that the 44-year-old Click, who spent 14 years in the Rays’ front office but had never served as a GM before being hired in February 2020, would decline such an offer. With no current GM openings, the parting of the ways may mean that Click spends part or all of 2023 as some team’s special advisor or vice president, not unlike what Alex Anthopoulos did with the Dodgers between his runs as general manager with the Blue Jays and Braves. It does seem likely that by this time next year, Click will get to execute his vision via the security of a long-term deal.

Click inherited a roster that had been put together by predecessor Jeff Luhnow, who was suspended for a year by Rob Manfred as well as fired by Crane when the commissioner issued his report detailing the Astros’ illegal sign-stealing activities in January 2020. Maintaining and augmenting that roster over the past three seasons was no small task given the departures of stars Gerrit Cole, George Springer, and Carlos Correa via free agency. While Click was able to do so largely with players who entered the organization on Luhnow’s watch, it still takes the right judgment to decide that rookie Jeremy Peña, with zero major league experience, was ready to fill Correa’s shoes as of Opening Day, or that Framber Valdez. Cristian Javier, and Luis Garcia could replace the likes of Zack Greinke and Wade Miley. That Click did so with Crane — a demanding boss whose background is with his air-freight logistics business, not in a baseball front office — nosing his way into the operations side post-Luhnow shouldn’t be held against him. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been expanded and updated. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Despite being an outstanding hitter, Fred McGriff had a hard time standing out. Though he arrived in the major leagues the same year as Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro and was the first player to lead each league in home runs since the Dead Ball Era, he never matched the career accomplishments of either of those two men, finishing short of round-numbered milestones with “only” 493 home runs and 2,490 hits. The obvious explanation — that he didn’t have the pharmaceutical help that others did — may be true, but it was just one of many ways in which McGriff’s strong performance didn’t garner as much attention as it probably merited.

Which isn’t to say that he went totally unnoticed during his heyday, but some of the things for which he received attention were decidedly… square. Early in his major league career, McGriff acquired the nickname “the Crime Dog” in reference to McGruff, an animated talking bloodhound from a public service announcement who urged kids to “take a bite out of crime” by staying in school and away from drugs. He also appeared in the longest-running sports infomercial of all time, endorsing Tom Emanski’s Baseball Defensive Drills video, a staple of insomniac viewing amid SportsCenter segments on ESPN since 1991.

That those distinctions carry some amount of ironic cachet today is evidence that McGriff might have been just too gosh-darn wholesome a star for an increasingly cynical age. On the other hand, it’s far better to be remembered for pointing a finger in the service of a timeless baseball fundamentals video than accompanying sworn testimony in front of Congress. Read the rest of this entry »

Never let it be said that the National Baseball Hall of Fame can’t throw us a curveball now and then. On Monday, the institution announced the eight-man slate for the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot, and while it contained some of the expected names — including those of 2022 BBWAA ballot “graduates” Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling, whose candidacies now enter a new phase — it also omitted some and retreaded a few candidacies that have never gained much traction. This ballot has something to frustrate everyone.

I’ll get to the omissions below. The full ballot includes the aforementioned trio, whose 10-year tenures on the writers’ ballot ended in January, with all three falling short of the 75% needed for election, as well as two other candidates making their first Era Committee ballot appearances: Fred McGriff and Rafael Palmeiro. The other three candidates, Albert Belle, Don Mattingly, and Dale Murphy, have all previously appeared on multiple Era Committee ballots.

The Contemporary Baseball Era Committee is one of three created by the Hall in its latest reconfiguration of the process for considering players whose eligibility on the BBWAA ballot has lapsed, as well as managers, executives, and umpires. The changes were announced in April, replacing a system of four Era Committees (Early Baseball, Golden Days, Modern Baseball, and Today’s Game) that voted on a staggered basis within a 10-year cycle. The new system — the fifth different one put in place of the old Veterans Committee since 2001 — divides candidates into just two timeframes: those who made their greatest impact on the game before 1980 (Classic Baseball Era), including Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black players, and those who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present day (Contemporary Baseball Era). While the Classic Baseball Era ballot can include non-players, those from the Contemporary Era will be considered on a separate ballot.

As if consolidating the pools of candidates didn’t already make it harder for a given individual to land on a ballot, the size of the ballot itself has shrunk from 10 candidates to eight, and the number of whom each of the 16 voters can choose has been reduced from four to three. It all feels like a heavy-handed reaction to the voting from last December, when two candidates from the Early Baseball period (Bud Fowler and Buck O’Neil) and four from the Golden Days period (Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso, and Tony Oliva) were elected.

The Contemporary Baseball Players ballot will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on Sunday, December 4, and anyone elected will be inducted in Cooperstown on Sunday, July 23, 2023. Next December, the Contemporary Baseball ballot for managers, umpires, and executives will be considered, and in December 2024, candidates for the Classic Baseball ballot will get their turn, with the cycle continuing on a triennial basis — that is, if the Hall doesn’t decide to change things up yet again. Read the rest of this entry »

Dusty Baker is on the outside no longer. On Saturday night, the manager with the highest win total of any skipper never to pilot a World Series winner shed that distinction, as the Astros secured their championship by beating the Phillies, 4–1, in Game 6 at Minute Maid Park. After managing for 25 seasons — 12 of them with at least 90 wins — and reaching the World Series two other times (2002 and ’21), the 73-year-old Baker finally won one:

We are crying. ? #WorldSeries pic.twitter.com/DnUQ67bz25

— MLB (@MLB) November 6, 2022

Not that he hadn’t already tasted champagne as the All-Star left fielder of the 1981 Dodgers. That makes him one of seven men to win championships as a player and manager during the division play era (1969 onward), and one of 22 overall, not counting player-managers.

Saturday’s victory made Baker the oldest manager to win a World Series, but he viewed the significance of his accomplishment differently. “I don’t think about being the oldest,” he told reporters after the victory. “I don’t think about my age. But I do think about being the third Black manager with Dave Roberts and my good friend Cito Gaston, who was responsible really for me as a kid when I first signed with the Braves.”

In a game that’s all too lacking in diversity at the leadership levels, Baker has remained mindful of his status. Prior to Game 6, he said, “I do know that there’s certain pressure from a lot of people that are pulling for me, especially people of color. And that part I do feel. I hear it every day… and so I feel that I’ve been chosen for this.”

As the manager who took over the Astros amid the fallout from their illegal electronic sign stealing, Baker was an inspired if counterintuitive choice. A commanding presence in the clubhouse and with the media, he helped deflect attention away from an owner who shirked responsibility and a squad whose star players seemed to go through the motions in apologizing for their roles in the scandal before swiftly pivoting to an us-against-everyone rallying cry. Though hardly averse to the use of sabermetrics in decision-making, Baker also brought a warmth and humanity to an organization whose commitment to analytics under general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch had often been described as dehumanizing even before the trash can banging scheme came to light.

Only five players remain from the 2017 squad whose World Series victory over the Dodgers was subsequently tainted by the revelations of their sign stealing: Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Yuli Gurriel, Lance McCullers Jr., and Justin Verlander. The combination of their minimal contrition and Major League Baseball’s decision not to discipline them (particularly the hitters) for their participation has made them villains in the eyes of many fans, booed everywhere but Houston. Baker indicated his belief that such treatment galvanized the team:

“The boos and the jeers that we got all over the country, it bothered these guys, but it also motivated them at the same time. And it wasn’t an us against the world thing. It was more of a come together even closer type thing.”

Perhaps, but anger toward the 2017 group — and anyone else in an Astros uniform — for what McCullers frankly termed “the whole cheating scandal” still runs deep. On social media, seemingly minor matters that arose during this World Series, such as Aledmys Díaz leaning into a pitch, Martín Maldonado using a grandfathered Albert Pujols bat, and Framber Valdez removing his glove on the mound and rubbing his hands together were taken as evidence that they were still cheating, somehow. On the one hand, the paranoia is quite silly, particularly as the Phillies didn’t seem to get too worked up about such matters. On the other hand, this is the price that the Astros and MLB must continue to pay for what transpired… and what didn’t. For many fans, Baker’s victory is the most, if not the only, palatable way to accept the Astros’ championship.

In winning the World Series, Baker has almost certainly secured himself a spot in the Hall of Fame. His resumé might have been enough without a championship, as he ranks fourth in playoff appearances (12, a product of the Wild Card era but also a reminder of his routine success), ninth in victories (2,093), 10th in games managed (3,884), and 15th in games above .500 (303). Wilbert Robinson (1902, ’14–31) and Al Lopez (1951–69), each of whom won two pennants but lost twice in the Fall Classic, are already enshrined, as is every manager with at least 2,000 wins save for Baker and the recently un-retired Bruce Bochy, who has a spot awaiting him given his three World Series wins:

From a childhood in Riverside and Sacramento through a 19-year career as a major league outfielder with the Braves, Dodgers, Giants, and A’s, and then a quarter-century as a manager, Baker’s road to Cooperstown has been a long one. As the only manager ever to guide five franchises to division titles (the Giants, Cubs, Reds, Nationals, and Astros), he already had an achievement that set him apart from his peers, albeit one that he didn’t quite feel was cause for celebration. “I don’t really think nothing, other than why was I on so many different teams,” he told reporters as the playoffs began last year. “I’m serious. I feel fortunate to have gotten that many jobs, but I feel unfortunate that I shouldn’t have lost jobs when I was winning.”

Indeed, as I’ve noted before, at three of his previous four stops, Baker departed after seasons with at least 90 wins and postseason berths. In 2002, he won 95 games in guiding the Giants to their first World Series since 1989; it was the fourth time in six years his team had topped 90 wins, and third with a playoff berth. Yet the Giants didn’t offer him a contract after the 2002 World Series due to his strained relationship with managing partner Peter Magowan, and Baker landed with the Cubs. He nearly took them back to the World Series in his first season, only to be derailed by the Steve Bartman play and the Cubs’ sudden unraveling; by his fourth season in Chicago (2006), the team was 66–96 and in need of a new direction. The Cubs let his contract expire, the only time he left a losing team.

In 2008, Baker took over the Reds; after back-to-back, sub-.500 finishes, his team won 91 games and the NL Central in 2010, its first postseason berth since 1995. Following another sub-.500 season, he won 97 games and another NL Central title in 2012, but after 90 wins and a Wild Card berth in ’13, he was fired nonetheless. It took him two years to land another managerial job, and despite leading the Nationals to back-to-back NL East titles and seasons of 95 and 97 wins, the team let his contract lapse.

In 2019, Baker got as far as a second interview for the Phillies opening that went to Joe Girardi, whose team didn’t make the playoffs in either of the next two seasons. Girardi was fired after a 22–29 start in early June, but Rob Thomson guided them on an unlikely run that took them all the way to Game 6.

One team’s second choice is another team’s skipper, so it’s fortunate for the Astros that the then-70-year-old Baker was available when owner Jim Crane needed to make a quick but credible hiring to replace Hinch just a couple of weeks before pitchers and catchers reported for the 2020 season.

As we all know, the world shut down and the season was delayed by nearly four months. With Verlander lost to a forearm strain (he would eventually need Tommy John surgery), and Altuve, Bregman and Gurriel considerably less productive than before (ahem), the Astros went just 29–31 under Baker during the pandemic-shortened season. Even so, they finished second in a weak AL West and made the expanded playoffs as the sixth seed. There they caught fire, sweeping the Twins in the Wild Card Series, beating the A’s in a four-game Division Series, and taking the Rays to seven games in the ALCS before falling. Houston won 95 games last year, then knocked off the White Sox and Red Sox before losing to the Braves in a six-game World Series. This year, the Astros won an AL-high 106 games, then swept both the Mariners and Yankees to reach the World Series again.

Despite falling behind by losing Games 1 and 3, the Astros came back to subdued the Phillies by winning three straight; the first two of those came at Citizens Bank Park, where Philadelphia had gone 6–0 during the postseason to that point. Beginning with a combined no-hitter started by Cristian Javier, the Astros held the Phillies to three runs and nine hits over their final three games, a .101/.223/.180 showing.

In losing the aforementioned games, Baker drew criticism for sticking too long with the struggling Verlander and McCullers; the pair combined to allow 12 runs in 9.1 innings, and a quicker hook might have given the Astros a better shot at winning. Yet the Astros allowed just six runs (five earned) in the 44.2 innings thrown by their other pitchers in the World Series, and the team as a whole posted a 2.29 ERA over the course of the postseason. Baker rarely called a wrong number when it came to his bullpen, which pitched to an 0.83 ERA in 54.1 innings for the postseason. The Astros went 11–2 during their march to the championship, including 5–1 in one-run games. Baker may not have run the team flawlessly, but it’s hard to find much fault with his performance.

This was a very different team from the won that one in 2017, as well as a reminder that the criticisms that were so easy to levy at Baker a decade or two ago no longer apply. Young pitchers thriving on his watch and handled with care? The 28-year-old Valdez (1.44 ERA in 25 innings) and 25-year-old Javier (0.71 ERA in 12.2 innings) were the team’s two best starters in October and November, and maxed out at 104 and 97 pitches, respectively; they helped compensate for Verlander and McCullers both posting ERAs above 5.00. Young position players getting playing time? Hello, Jeremy Peña, the first rookie position player to win World Series MVP honors, and at 25 years and 45 days old, the youngest position player to do so. Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker are less than a year older than Peña, and both are already grizzled veterans, with three postseasons of regular play under their belts. Sacrifice bunts? Nine all season, four by the light-hitting Maldonado, and just two in the postseason, one of which — the bunt by Peña in ALCS Game 3 — was part of a daring sequence where only an insurance run was at stake.

I suspect the baseball world outside Houston will remain salty when it comes to the Astros so long as Altuve and Bregman wear the blue and orange, and perhaps so long as Crane owns the team, given his longstanding reputation for avoiding accountability. Crane hardly seems like a delight to work for, and it has not escaped notice that neither Baker, who entered the season on a one-year contract, nor general manager James Click, who is in the final year of a three-year deal, have contracts for 2023. Neither is a lock to return, though it’s believed that Baker will receive an extension offer, and that he wants to continue his career. “I’ve always said if I win one, I want to win two,” he said. Even if the rest of the baseball world may prefer another team wear the crown, it’s very hard to wish anything but the best for Dusty.

2:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! And welcome to my first chat of November. That was one hell of a game last night. I wrote about Nick Castellanos’ ongoing struggles at the plate, something I had planned to do even before he wound up in the position to be the hero or make the final out. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/inevitably-game-5-found-the-slumping-nick-…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: (Elsewhere on the site, Davy Andrews has a look at Castellanos’ defense https://blogs.fangraphs.com/nick-castellanos-outshines-the-gold-glover…)

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I had a look at the ongoing outsized impact of home runs in the constricted offensive environment we see in October/November https://blogs.fangraphs.com/no-hitters-are-great-but-the-long-ball-sti…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: and now, on with the show…

2:06

Jay Jaffe: Well, a lot would depend upon what the Yankees do to fill the void left by Judge’s absence, because it’s not like they’d go into the season without some other big bat or upgrades. But in terms of which team’s roster as it would stand looks the strongest  if they don’t retain their free agents, I suspect it might be the Blue Jays

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