The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Golden Days Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. It is adapted from a chapter in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For an introduction to the ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Minnie Miñoso

“He played with reckless abandon aimed always at achieving nothing short of total victory; his was flair with a clear work ethic. He stole bases with a game on the line, harassed pitchers with daring base-running ploys, took extra bases and made impossible wall-crashing catches.”—Peter Bjarkman, Baseball with a Latin Beat

In May 2014, the Hall of Fame unveiled “The New Face of Baseball: Osvaldo Salas’s American Baseball Photographs 1950-1958,” an exhibit of the work of a Cuban-born photojournalist who documented the influx of Latin and African-American players into Major League Baseball in the wake of Jackie Robinson’s debut. One of the first photos prominently featured, near those of better-known icons such as Ernie Banks and Willie Mays, is that of Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso, recognized as “the first Afro-Latino big leaguer and the first black player to don a Chicago White Sox uniform.” Not far from the photo is an inscription, set high on the wall:

“Orestes Miñoso was the Jackie Robinson for all Latinos; the first star who opened doors for all Latin American players. He was everybody’s hero. I wanted to be Miñoso. Clemente wanted to be Miñoso.” — Orlando Cepeda⁠

Cepeda’s words are from an interview with the Puerto Rico-born Hall of Fame slugger that plays in the museum’s “¡Viva Baseball!” exhibit, in which Miñoso, “The Cuban Comet,” is prominently featured. While Miñoso’s work as a pioneer is thus acknowledged in the Hall, the fact that he has been deprived of the ultimate honor of induction, despite the combination of his historical importance and his long run as one of the American League’s top players — and before that a star in the Negro Leagues — might rank as the institution’s most glaring injustice.

Some history is in order. Before Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, dozens of players from Latin America played their part in bending it — 53, according to historian Adrian Burgos Jr.⁠ While darker-skinned Latino players who came to the United States had no hope of crossing the color line before Robinson, a smattering of lighter-skinned ones were signed by major league teams, starting with Cuban-born Esteban “Steve” Bellan, who played with the Troy Haymakers and New York Mutuals of the National Association from 1871-73. In 1910, the Reds signed Cuban players Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans, with team president and owner Gerry Herrmann convincing the Cincinnati press that the pair were “two of the purest bars of Castille soap that ever floated to these shores.”⁠ Others followed in their wake. In the early 1920s, the Reds’ Dolf Luque became the first Cuban pitcher to gain stardom. Mel Almada became the first Mexican major leaguer in 1933, Alex Carrasquel the first from Venezuela in ’39 and Hiram Bithorn the first Puerto Rican player in ’42.

Still, the majors were off limits to dark-skinned Latino players until Robinson broke through. Cleveland owner Bill Veeck, the maverick who integrated the American League by signing Larry Doby less than three months after Robinson’s debut, signed Miñoso out of the Negro Leagues after the 1948 season, though he didn’t really get a chance to establish himself in the majors until ’51. Once he did, he became one of the game’s top all-around players, a dynamo with speed, an excellent batting eye, considerable pop, and no shortage of flair. Not only did he have to endure discriminatory practices and racial slights similar to what the first wave of Black players encountered, he faced a language barrier and a foreign culture as well. Opponents hit him with pitches and spewed venomous slurs at him. One team released a black cat onto the field in front of him, calling it “Minnie.” Segregated restaurants and hotels prevented him from dining and staying with his teammates.

In the face of such trying circumstances, Miñoso not only avoided intimidation and retaliation — taking great pains not to play into the stereotype of the hot-blooded Latino — but thrived, earning All-Star honors seven times between 1951 and ’64, placing fourth in the AL MVP voting four times, and winning three Gold Gloves. After that run he played and managed in the Mexican League, then returned to the Veeck-owned White Sox, first as a coach, and then in both 1976 and ’80 as a late-season DH/pinch-hitter. Those stints, which carried into his 50s, made him the second major leaguer to have played in parts of five decades (1940s through ’80s). Blocked from further cameos by commissioner Fay Vincent, he made similar appearances in 1993 and 2003 with the independent Northern League’s St. Paul Saints, whose part owner, Mike Veeck, was a chip off the old block.

While Miñoso’s drawn-out epilogue elevated his status as one of the game’s greatest ambassadors, it may have cost him Hall of Fame votes; for some voters, the gimmickry may have obscured the greatness of his prime. For others, it was simply a matter of the writers most familiar with Miñoso not getting the full opportunity to vote for him. The Hall’s own rules, which prevented voters from considering the totality of his accomplishments on both sides of the color line, cost him as well. Less than three months after falling shy of the necessary votes via the 2015 Golden Era Committee balloting, Miñoso passed away, well into his nineties (that his exact age is something of a mystery figures into our story).

At last, he’s up again, and this time with a twist: His statistics from his three-year stint with the Negro National League’s New York Cubans now count as major league, which serves both to flesh out his statistical record (he’s now credited with over 2,000 hits) and to remind us that he was deprived of a significant chunk of his career.

Miñoso’s most basic biographic details are confusing. The son of Carlos Arrieta and Cecilia Armas was born in El Perico, Cuba, a town near Havana, on November 29 sometime between 1922 and ’25. In his 1994 memoir, Just Call Me Minnie, Miñoso claimed, “I was 19 years old when I arrived in the United States in 1945, but my papers said I was 22. I told a white lie… to obtain a visa, so I could qualify for service in the Cuban army. My true date of birth is the 29th of November, 1925.”

On this matter, however, Miñoso must be regarded as an unreliable narrator. His official website uses the 1922 birth date, while his ’46 Cuban passport shows ’23. Upon news of his passing, the White Sox claimed he was 90 years old, which would put 1924 as his birth year. Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, and the Seamheads Negro Leagues database use 1925. That’s hitting for the cycle — call it The Four Ages of Minnie.

More clearly, the hero of the Four Ages of Minnie was baptized as Saturnino Orestes Arrieta Armas — “‘Arrieta’ for my father and ‘Armas’ for my mother” as he explained in his memoir — but became known as Miñoso because his mother had four children from a previous marriage by that name. “Minnie,” as the story goes, came from a misunderstanding involving a dentist named Dr. Robinson calling for his female receptionist, Minnie. Upon becoming a US citizen sometime in the 1980s, he legally changed his name to Orestes Miñoso.

Growing up, Miñoso worked in the sugar cane fields like his father, and learned baseball while playing in the sandlots with older half-brother Francisco Miñoso. Modeling his game after Cuban star Martin Dihigo (elected to the Hall of Fame in 1977), he played every position at one time or another, including catcher and pitcher. In 1943, he began playing semipro ball for $2 per game for Ambrosia Candy, and worked his way up the sport’s ladder, moving on to cigar manufacturer Partegas’ team, the Marianao winter league team (where he won Rookie of the Year honors in 1945 while making $200 per month) and then the New York Cubans of the Negro National League, who offered him $300 per month. Carrasquel, the aforementioned Venezuelan major leaguer, was the one who signed him.

Encouraged by the Dodgers’ signing of Robinson in October 1945 — heralding the upcoming challenge to the majors’ longstanding color barrier — Miñoso came to the U.S. Playing primarily at third base, he starred for the Cubans from 1946-48, helping them win the NNL pennant in ’47 and starting all four of the East-West Games played in ’47 and ’48. By the data we now have thanks to diligent researchers, Miñoso hit .356/.406/.508 (149 OPS+) in 192 PA in 1947, and .344/.381/.556 (176 OPS+) in 161 PA in ’48; his OPS+ ranked second in both seasons, and his slash stats all ranked among the top five save for his 1948 OBP, which was eighth. The Baltimore Elite Giants’ Henry Kimbro led in all four categories in the former season, and in OBP in the latter, while Miñoso placed ahead of familiar names such as Monte Irvin and Luke Easter.

Acting on a tip from Harlem Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein, whose players sometimes suited up for Negro League teams to earn extra money, Veeck purchased Miñoso’s contractual rights from Cubans owner Alex Pompez for $15,000 after Miñoso helped the Cubans win the Negro League World Series in 1948. Sent to Cleveland’s Dayton affiliate to finish out the season, Miñoso set the Central League ablaze, going 21-for-40 with nine extra-base hits in an 11-game trial.

That wasn’t enough for him to crack the lineup. Cleveland won the 1948 World Series with All-Star Ken Keltner at third base as well as Doby and hot-hitting Dale Mitchell in the outfield. In addition to Doby, Cleveland’s roster also included Easter and Satchel Paige, two other former Negro Leaguers. Adding another, at a time when three-quarters of AL teams had yet to integrate, may have seemed like a bridge too far, so Miñoso spent most of 1949 and ’50 pulverizing Pacific Coast League pitching for the San Diego Padres, Cleveland’s highest-level affiliate. He did play nine games for the big club in ’49, debuting on April 19 and becoming just the eighth player to cross the color line:

Miñoso went 3-for-20 during his brief stay with Cleveland and was lost in the shuffle after Veeck — who needed cash to settle his divorce from his first wife, Eleanor — sold the team following the 1949 season. He returned to San Diego for the 1950 campaign, and while he broke camp with Cleveland to start ’51, he was limited to pinch-hitting and backing up Easter, the starting first baseman. On April 30, a day after Miñoso went 5-for-8 with a pair of doubles while starting at first for both games of a doubleheader, he was dealt to the White Sox as part of a three-team, seven-player trade that also included the Philadelphia A’s. The newly liberated Cuban Comet announced his presence in Chicago the next day by clouting a two-run homer off the Yankees’ Vic Raschi as part of a 2-for-4 day. In the process, the White Sox became the sixth team to integrate, following the Dodgers, Indians, Browns, Giants, and Braves.

Miñoso split his time between third base and both outfield corners for the Sox in 1951, hitting a sizzling .326/.422/.500 with 10 homers and a 151 OPS+ while leading the league in triples (14), steals (31) and hit-by-pitches (16), finishing second in batting average and fourth in WAR (5.4). Sox fans took to him to such a degree that September 23 of that season became Minnie Miñoso Day, when the rookie was showered with gifts, including a television and a Packard. Thanks to Miñoso’s performance and the maturations of double play combo Nellie Fox and Chico Carrasquel (nephew of Alex) as well as staff ace Billy Pierce, the White Sox snapped a streak of seven straight losing seasons, improving from 60-94 in 1950 to 81-73.

For his stellar season, Miñoso placed second in the AL Rookie of the Year voting behind the Yankees’ Gil McDougald, and fourth in the AL MVP vote behind three of McDougald’s New York teammates, including the winner, Yogi Berra. Many around the game, including venerable New York World Telegram and Sun scribe Dan Daniel and White Sox general manager Frank Lane, suggested that the Yankees’ pennant weighed too heavily in determining the Rookie of the Year. For what it was worth, The Sporting News gave its own AL Rookie of the Year award to Miñoso, based upon a poll of 227 BBWAA writers instead of just the three per city from the BBWAA vote.

Award or no, Miñoso’s stellar rookie season began an 11-year stretch over which he hit .305/.395/.471 (134 OPS+) with an average of 16 homers, 18 steals and 4.7 WAR per year. He was a constant presence on AL leaderboards, ranking in the top 10 in batting average eight times, in on-base percentage nine times (five times in the top five), and in slugging percentage six times. His OBP received an extra boost via his tendency to crowd the plate and get hit by pitches; he led the league a record 10 times in that painful category, and more than a half-century after the end of his days as a regular, his 195 times taking one for the team still ranks 10th all time.

Those hit-by-pitches carried a cost. In 1955, three years before the AL began requiring all players to wear batting helmets, a pitch from the Yankees’ Bob Grim fractured Miñoso’s skull, sidelining him for 15 games. “I been hit in head eight times. But I rather die than stop playing. Is best game in the world,” Miñoso told the New York World Telegram and Sun’s Lou Miller, who like many other scribes of the era insisted upon quoting Miñoso in broken English. “My first year in big league in 1951 one team — I no tell who — always call me names. They say, ‘We hit you in head, you black ——.’ I think they try make me afraid.”

Remarkably, given all of the times Miñoso was drilled, the 1955 season was the only one in that 11-year span in which he played fewer than 146 games, and the schedule didn’t expand from 154 games to 162 until the final year of that stretch. Nearly 60 years after that incident, in the final interview of his life, Miñoso illuminated the connection between his propensity for being plunked and a larger philosophy of life:

What was I doing wrong in the game, that they’d purposefully want to hit me? They didn’t do it because I’m nice-looking, and I didn’t do it to get the record. I crowded the plate, because if you only have to look middle-outside, you can kill a pitcher, and if it’s outside it’s a ball.

My father and my mother taught me there was a way to pay somebody back, if they tried to break your arm or break your face: Pay them back on the field with a smile on your face. I used to keep my teeth clean all the time, just to make sure that’s how I gave it back to them.

Beyond the beanings, Miñoso led the AL in steals and triples three times apiece, and in total bases once, with eight other top 10 finishes in that category and eight in OPS+. He earned All-Star honors seven times, starting for the AL in 1954, ’59 (the first of two games) and ’60 (both games), and won three Gold Gloves after the award’s introduction in 1957. He finished fourth in the AL MVP voting four times, and ranked among the top 10 in WAR six times, with his 8.2 WAR leading the league in 1954. His 52.2 WAR over the 1951-61 span ranked eighth in the majors, and second in the slow-to-integrate AL behind only Mickey Mantle. Only Fox and Richie Ashburn collected more hits than Miñoso’s 1,861 in that span, while only Ashburn and Mantle topped his 2,806 times on base.

Miñoso helped the White Sox to seven straight winning seasons from 1951-57, but despite winning as many as 94 games, the team could climb no higher than second place. In December 1957, he was traded back to Cleveland in a four-player deal that sent future Hall of Famer Early Wynn to Chicago. Taking over the mantle of staff ace, Wynn would win the 1959 AL Cy Young award while helping the “Go-Go Sox” — by this time owned by Veeck — to their first pennant since their infamous 1919 one, though they lost to the Dodgers in the World Series.

The Sox reacquired Miñoso as part of a seven-player deal in December 1959, with Veeck granting him an honorary AL championship ring for his role in helping return the club to prominence via the Wynn trade. Again the Cuban Comet made a splash in his first game with Chicago, hitting a pair of homers (including a grand slam) against the Kansas City A’s on Opening Day, thus setting off fireworks on Comiskey Park’s new $350,000 “exploding” scoreboard. Believed to be 37 years old at the time, Miñoso hit a fairly typical .311/.374/.481 with 20 homers, 17 steals and his final All-Star berth.

Miñoso’s performance slipped a bit the following season, and he was traded to the Cardinals in November 1961. Slated to join an outfield that included Curt Flood and Stan Musial, he was limited to 39 games and a meager .196/.271/.278 showing due to a pulled rib cage muscle, then fractures of his skull (again) and right wrist suffered when he crashed into a concrete wall in Busch Stadium. Cardinals trainer Doc Bauman told reporters, “His skull was cracked in five places. It was like hitting a coconut with a hammer.”⁠ A day after being activated, Miñoso was hit in the right eye by an errant warm-up throw.

Just after the season, the Cardinals traded for All-Star outfielder George Altman, making Miñoso expendable. The following spring he was sold to the Senators, who were bound for 106 losses, and struggled in a reserve role. He returned to the White Sox in 1964, but made just 38 plate appearances, mainly as a pinch-hitter, before drawing his release. Commissioner Ford Frick blocked Chicago’s attempt to restore him to the active roster in September, on the grounds that the team had violated the intent of the rules by sending Miñoso to the PCL and then repurchasing him six weeks later.

Still a drawing card in Latin America, and able to play baseball at a reasonably competitive level, Miñoso spent the 1965-74 period in the Mexican League and its minor leagues, generally serving as player/manager. When Veeck repurchased the White Sox in 1976, he hired Miñoso as a coach. Introducing some levity into their 97-loss season, the Sox activated him in September, and Miñoso went 1-for-8 in three games as a designated hitter. His September 12 single off the Angels’ Sid Monge led to a 1977 Topps baseball card celebrating him as the oldest player to hit safely, just short of his 54th birthday, breaking the record of 53-year-old Nick Altrock. That distinction was based on the 1922 birth date; using the ’25 date, he’s merely the fourth-oldest to get a hit. Miñoso remained as a coach through the 1978 season and reappeared for a cameo in ’80, Veeck’s final season of ownership. Though hitless in two pinch-hitting appearances, he joined Altrock as the majors’ only five-decade players.

Vincent quashed the White Sox attempt to reprise that role in 1990, claiming it would be “a publicity stunt that would hurt baseball’s integrity” for a 68-year-old player (as Miñoso was believed to be) to appear in a major league game, and thus not “in the best interests of baseball.” The St. Paul Saints, who as part of the independent Northern League did not answer to Vincent, signed Miñoso to make a cameo in June 1993. In late September that year, after the White Sox had clinched the AL West, acting commissioner Bud Selig and AL president Bobby Brown overturned Vincent’s ruling, clearing the way for another big league cameo, but the Major League Baseball Players Association immediately denounced the plan as “ridiculous,”⁠ so the idea was shelved. Miñoso did make one more appearance for the Saints in 2003, giving him professional appearances in seven decades.

…

On the surface, Miñoso’s traditional stats from his AL/NL days (1,963 hits, 186 homers, 205 steals) don’t cry out for enshrinement, nor do his WAR-based numbers. Including his totals from the NNL — which is now recognized as a major league — does push him past 2,000 hits, which is worth noting, though “The Rule of 2,000” applies to post-1960 expansion era players. No player with fewer than 2,000 hits whose career took place in that period has been elected, while numerous such players who missed time due to segregation or military service have been enshrined.

With the inclusion of Negro Leagues data within major league totals on Baseball Reference, I’ve made a preliminary decision to include the WAR data of players enshrined for their service in integrated leagues within the JAWS set. The impact upon the standards is very minor, as the gains of Doby (7.2 WAR), Campanella (6.0), Robinson (2.1) and Mays (0.0) are hardly drastic. Spread that out over 15 or 20 players at a given position and it’s almost imperceptible.

At this stage, I’ve tabled the usage of the WAR data within the JAWS set for players who spent their entire careers, or the bulk of them, in the Negro Leagues. While we now know more about the careers of Paige, Irvin, and Willard Brown, they played less than 10 years in the AL and/or NL and were elected for their time in the Negro Leagues. They still have comparatively minimal major league data by Hall standards (1,695 innings for Paige, 4,010 plate appearances for Irvin, 1,646 PA for Brown) due to shorter season lengths, and I have yet to settle on a satisfactory methodology for scaling within JAWS, which was not built with this situation in mind. To penalize these players for their short seasons, which were byproducts of the economic realities of segregated baseball — players needed to play an extensive amount of exhibition and barnstorming games to make ends meet, but statistics from those games aren’t considered official — makes no sense within the context of comparative analysis. Referring to Josh Gibson as the 28th-ranked catcher in JAWS on the basis of 38.6 career WAR and 26.9 peak WAR doesn’t do justice to a career that for the moment covers just 598 major league games and includes just three seasons of more than 50.

The upshot for Miñoso is that because he’s being considered for his time in the integrated leagues, I’m including his 3.5 WAR from the NNL, which pushes him from 25th among left fielders to 20th, 11.9 wins below the standard and ahead of just seven out of 20 non-Negro Leagues Hall of Famers (Jim O’Rourke, Joe Kelley, Ralph Kiner, Heinie Manush, Jim Rice, Lou Brock, and Chick Hafey). His peak WAR makes a stronger case, as he ranks 13th, 2.0 wins below the standard, but still ahead of 11 out of the 20 enshrined, including Joe Medwick, Willie Stargell, and Jesse Burkett. Miñoso’s 46.7 JAWS ranks 18th at the position, up from 22nd previously, and ahead of just seven Hall of Famers.

The big question is how much of Miñoso’s major-league career is missing due to circumstances beyond his control, namely baseball’s color line and his age when it was broken, given the uncertainty surrounding his birthdate. The 1922 date that was assumed to be correct during his career places him at 28 years old when he got his first shot at full-time play in 1951 (the same age as Robinson when he debuted), while the ’25 date would make him 25. Given his performances against PCL pitching (.297/.371/.483 in 1949, and .339/.405/.539 in ’50) it seems clear that Miñoso was deprived of at least two big league seasons, and he may have lost as many as five, given his star-caliber play in the NNL, though the 1946 game-by-game data uncovered by Seamheads (.227/.301/.376, 94 OPS+) is at odds with older data from The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues that says he hit .309 that year. Without getting too hung up on that, it’s worth remembering that Miñoso put up 5.1 WAR in in his first full AL season and 4.1 WAR in his seventh-best season within that aforementioned peak; it seems entirely plausible that he could have bettered that while increasing his total value had he arrived earlier.

Alas, the long coda to Miñoso’s major league career caused his Hall of Fame candidacy to slip through the cracks in a variety of ways, but not before one of the stranger clerical errors in the modern history of the voting. Though he had been out of the majors for just three years instead of the necessary five, Miñoso was mistakenly included on the 1968 ballot. For as forgettable as his 1963 and ’64 seasons may have been, they did count. Miñoso didn’t get any votes in ’68, but when he was listed again the following year, he received six stray votes.

Miñoso did not appear on the 1970 ballot, the one on which he would have made his debut under current rules. Because the Mexican League, in which he was playing at the time, was (and is) considered part of organized baseball, he was still considered an active player and under a rule in place at the time could not be placed on the ballot. That same rule, only in effect for a few years, delayed consideration of Hall of Famers Warren Spahn and Robin Roberts. At that point, Hall voters of any stripe had not yet begun to consider players on the basis of Negro League accomplishments; the Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues that elected Paige wasn’t established until 1971.

Miñoso’s 1976 and ’80 returns to the majors both reset his eligibility clock, so that he didn’t reappear on the writers’ ballot until ’86, more than two decades removed from his time as a regular. By that point, many if not most of the voters were far more familiar with his cameos than his brilliant prime, to say nothing of the conditions under which he broke in; whatever credit he was due as a pioneer dissipated. He never received more than 21.1% before his BBWAA eligibility finally lapsed after the 1999 ballot. The Veterans Committee, which radically expanded to include all living Hall of Famers, Spink and Frick Award winners (for writers and broadcasters) in 2001, gave Miñoso just 16 out of 81 votes in 2003, his first year of consideration. He fared even worse on the 2005, ’07 and ’09 ballots, none of which elected a single player whose major league career began after 1943.

Miñoso was also bypassed by the Special Committee on Negro Leagues Baseball, which in 2006 elected 17 players to the Hall from a panel of 39 finalists, following half a decade of extensive research into the history of the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black baseball. Neither Miñoso nor Negro Leagues star and manager (and major league scout) Buck O’Neill, the only two candidates still alive at the time, were among the 17. As Burgos, who was a member of the committee, later wrote, voters could not consider Miñoso’s accomplishments in the major leagues in this context, a rule he termed “arcane.” He added:

The end result is that a player who ranks as one of the definitive stars of baseball’s integration era has repeatedly fallen short of election.

Enforcement of this rule has harmed Miñoso and fellow integration pioneer Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe, more than any other candidates from the “Golden Era” of baseball history. Both Miñoso and Newcombe performed three years (or more) in the Negro Leagues, and then waited several seasons in the minors, and not because they lacked big league skills. Rather, they were victims of the slow pace of integration in the majors. Moreover, they had the ironic misfortune of having signed with big league organizations (Cleveland and Brooklyn) that were aggressive in signing talent from the black baseball world… It is an injustice that should have been remedied by the suspension of this rule when it comes to those men who were integration pioneers.

Indeed, the Hall’s insistence upon pigeonholing its honorees worked against Miñoso, since candidates have been classified as Negro Leaguers or major leaguers, players or managers/executives. While Paige, Irvin, and Brown played in the majors, they didn’t have the requisite 10 years in the AL or NL to be considered in that context, so they were elected as Negro Leaguers. Robinson and Doby, on the other hand, did have at least 10 years, but while the former was elected at the first opportunity in 1962, the latter wasn’t elected until ’98, 51 years after he made history, 39 years after the end of his career and just five years before his death. Doby, who began playing in the Negro Leagues in 1942, five years before his MLB debut, had a comparable on-field impact to Miñoso:

The VC recognized Doby’s historical importance, albeit belatedly, while placing his short-career numbers in the context both of his peers (against whom he more than held his own) and the obstacles that he faced (which shortened his career). They ought to have been able to do the same for Miñoso, particularly in light of testimonials such as those of Cepeda, Cuban-born Hall of Famer Tony Perez, and more recent Cuban players such as the White Sox’s José Abreu and Alexei Ramirez, for whom Miñoso’s success in the majors set an example. “Without Minnie, without his courage to leave Cuba for the major leagues, without his willingness to accept taunts and slights, none of us would be major leaguers,” said Ramirez in 2015.

After the VC was overhauled in favor of the three era-based committees, Miñoso received nine out of 16 votes from the 2012 Golden Era Committee while Ron Santo was posthumously elected. On the 2015 ballot, Miñoso received eight out of 16 votes; nobody from among the 10 candidates was elected. At the press conference to announce the results, voter Steve Hirdt said the committee’s disappointment over the failure to elect anyone “is mitigated to some degree by the fact that there will be another day for the candidates,” a load of hogwash that not only stood as a bitter reminder of Santo’s fate, but foreshadowed Miñoso’s. “Don’t tell me that maybe I’ll get in after I pass away,” Miñoso said in his final interview. “I don’t want it to happen after I pass. I want it while I’m here, because I want to enjoy it.”⁠

Alas, Miñoso died on March 1, 2015, meaning that at best, the Hall of Fame will have to write another chapter in its cruel history of belatedly bestowing baseball immortality on all-too-mortal candidates. Given not only his statistical accomplishments but his cultural and historical importance, his omission stands out like a sore thumb. He belongs in Cooperstown alongside Robinson, Doby, Clemente, Banks and the other pioneers and icons who changed the face of baseball. The presence of four players who received more votes in 2015 on this ballot as well (Dick Allen, Jim Kaat, Tony Oliva, and Maury Wills) will make the competition for votes a fierce one. Miñoso shouldn’t take a back seat to any of them, for he’s that important to the story of baseball.

The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Golden Days Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. For an introduction to this year’s ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Ken Boyer

One of three brothers who spent time in the majors, Boyer spent the bulk of his 15-year career (1955-69) vying with Hall of Famers Eddie Mathews and Ron Santo for recognition as the NL’s top third baseman. An outstanding all-around player with good power, speed, and an excellent glove — but comparatively little flash, for he was all business – Boyer earned All-Star honors in seven seasons and won five Gold Gloves, all of them during his initial 11-year run with the Cardinals. In 1964, he took home NL MVP honors while helping St. Louis to its first championship in 18 years.

Boyer was born on May 20, 1931 in Liberty, Missouri, the third-oldest son in a family of 14 (!) children. He was nearly four years younger than Cloyd Boyer, who pitched in the majors from 1949-52 and ’55, and nearly six years older than Clete Boyer, also a third baseman from 1955-57 and ’59-71; four other brothers (Wayne, Lynn, Len, and Ron) played in the minors. The Cardinals signed Ken as a pitcher in 1949, paying him a $6,000 bonus. While his pitching results weren’t awful, he took his strong arm to third base when the need presented itself on his Class D Hamilton Cardinals team; he hit .342, slugged .575, and showed off outstanding defense.

Boyer’s progress to the majors was interrupted by a two-year stint in the Army during the Korean War; he didn’t play at all in 1952 or ’53. Upon returning, the 23-year-old Boyer put in a strong season at Double-A Houston in 1954, then made the Cardinals out of spring training the following year, and even homered in his major leagued debut, a two-run shot off the Cubs’ Paul Minner that trimmed an eighth-inning lead to 14-4. That was the first of 18 homers Boyer hit as a rookie while batting .264/.311/.425 (94 OPS+); he also stole 22 bases but was caught a league-high 17 times.

Boyer came into his own in 1956, batting .306/.347/.494 (124 OPS+) with 26 homers and making his first All-Star team. It was the first year of a nine-season run across which Boyer would hit a combined .299/.364/.491 (124 OPS+) while averaging 25 homers and 6.1 WAR; seven times, he ranked among the NL’s top 10 in WAR while doing so five times apiece in batting average and on-base percentage, and four times in slugging percentage. Boyer set career highs in home runs (32), slugging percentage (.570) and OPS+ (144) in 1960, then followed that up with highs in WAR (8.0), AVG, and OBP while hitting .329/.397/.533 (136 OPS+) in ’61. He made the All-Star team every year from 1959-64, including the twice-a-summer version of the event in the first four of those seasons.

The Cardinals were not a very good team for the first leg of Boyer’s career; from 1954-59, they cracked .500 just once. With Boyer absorbing the lessons of Stan Musial and helping to pass them along to a younger core — first baseman Bill White, second baseman Julian Javier, center fielder Curt Flood, and later catcher Tim McCarver — the team began trending in the right direction. The Cardinals went 86-68 in 1960, and continued to improve, particularly as right-hander Bob Gibson emerged as a star. After going 93-69 and finishing second to the Dodgers in 1963 — a six-game deficit, their smallest since ’49 — they matched that record and won the pennant the following year, spurred by the mid-June acquisition of left fielder Lou Brock; they beat out a Phillies team that closed September with 10 straight losses. Boyer hit .295/.365/.489 while driving in a league-high 119 runs. In a case of the writers rewarding the top player on a winning team with the MVP award, he took home the trophy, though his 6.1 WAR ranked 10th, well behind Willie Mays (11.0), Santo (8.9), Phillies rookie Dick Allen (8.8), Frank Robinson (7.9) et al.

Though Boyer hit just .222/.241/.481 in the seven-game World Series against the Yankees and his brother Clete, he came up big by supplying all the scoring via a grand slam off Al Downing in the Cardinals’ 4-3 win in Game 4. Additionally, he went 3-for-4 with a double and a homer in the Cardinals’ 7-5 win in Game 7. His brother also homered, to date the only time that’s happened in World Series play.

Hampered by back problems, Boyer slipped to a 91 OPS and 1.8 WAR in 1965, his age-34 season, after which he was traded to the Mets for pitcher Al Jackson and third baseman Charley Smith. Boyer rebounded to a 101 OPS+ and 2.9 WAR, albeit on a 95-loss team going nowhere. The following July, he was traded to the White Sox, who were running first in what wound up as a thrilling four-team race that went down to the season’s final day. The White Sox were managed by Eddie Stanky, who had been at the helm when Boyer broke in with the Cardinals. Though Boyer didn’t play badly, he appeared in just 67 games for the team before being released in May 1968. He was picked up by the Dodgers, spending the remainder of that season and the next with them.

After his playing days were done, Boyer managed in the minors, then took over the Cardinals from early 1978 to early ’80; in his one full season (1979), he guided the team to an 86-76 record and a third-place finish. While he moved into a scouting role and was slated to manage the team’s Triple-A Louisville affiliate in 1982, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on September 7 of that year, at age 52.

Boyer never got much traction in the BBWAA voting, either before or after his death. From 1975-79, he maxed out at 4.7%, and was bumped off the ballot when the Five Percent rule was put in place in 1980. He was one of 11 players who had his eligibility restored in 1985, only five of whom cleared the bar and remained on the ballot, along with Allen, Flood, Santo, and Vada Pinson. He remained on the ballot through 1994, topping out at 25.5% in ’88, nowhere near enough for election. Neither did he fare well via the expanded Veterans Committee in the 2003, ’05, and ’07 elections, maxing out at 18.8% in the middle of those years. Similarly, on both the 2012 and ’15 Golden Era ballots, he finished below the threshold where they announce the actual vote totals so as not to embarrass anyone.

All of which is to say that within this Golden Days group, Boyer might feel like ballast, here to round out a ballot without having much chance at getting elected. That’s a shame, because he was damn good. For the 1956-64 period, he ranked sixth among all position players in value:

That’s a pretty good group! Of course the comparison is manicured perfectly to Boyer’s best years, but even if I expand the range to cover the full extent of his career, he’s ninth on the list, in similar company (Kaline, Clemente, and Banks passes him), and one spot ahead of Santo. Boyer was a better fielder than Santo (via Total Zone, +73 runs to +21), and a better baserunner (+19 runs to -34, including double play avoidance), though not as good a hitter (116 OPS+ to 125).

Even having lost time to military service, Boyer ranks 14th among third basemen in JAWS, just 1.4 points below the standard, with a seven-year peak that ranks ninth, 3.2 points above the standard. At a position that’s grossly underrepresented — there are just 15 enshrined third basemen, not including Negro League players, compared to 20 second basemen, 23 shortstops, and 27 right fielders — that should be good enough for Cooperstown.

If I had a ballot for this group, Boyer would be one of my four choices. I don’t expect that enough voters will see it that way, but I do appreciate that he’s being kept in the conversation, and will get his due someday.

Maury Wills

A switch-hitting shortstop in the majors for 14 seasons (1959-72), mostly with the Dodgers, Wills is generally credited with reviving the art of the stolen base, a particularly useful tactic in the run-parched environment of Dodger Stadium in the early-to-mid 1960s. The electrifying Wills led the league in steals every year from 1960-65, setting a since-broken major league record with 104 in ’62 — a performance that helped him earn NL MVP honors — while playing a significant role on three Dodgers world championship teams.

Born on October 2, 1932 in Washington, DC, Wills starred in three sports at Cardozo High School, earning all-city honors in all three, and drew particular interest from colleges as a quarterback and safety, but “baseball was my true love,” as he later said. The Dodgers, on the hunt for Black players in the wake of Jackie Robinson’s breakthrough, signed him in the summer of 1950 for a bonus of just $500, far short of the $6,000 Wills and his family envisioned.

Wills toiled in the minors for parts of nine seasons (1951-59), twice leaving the Dodgers’ organization via conditional deals; he spent 1957 playing for the Reds’ Triple-A affiliate, the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League, and went to spring training with the Tigers in ’59. The turning point for Wills actually came in 1958, after the Dodgers reclaimed him from the Reds, when Triple-A Spokane Indians manager Bobby Bragan encouraged the righty-swinging Wills to learn to switch-hit, moving him even closer to first base.

With Hall of Famer Pee Wee Reese having retired after the 1958 season, the Dodgers’ first in Los Angeles, the team was in search of a shortstop. With neither Don Zimmer nor Bob Lillis panning out, and with Wills batting a sizzling .313/.387/.391 with 25 steals at Spokane, he was called up in early June. By early July, he was the regular. While his .260/.298/.298 (55 OPS+) showing was subpar, it still represented an upgrade over the even weaker performance of Zimmer, and he sizzled in September (.345/.382/.405) as the Dodgers won a three-way pennant race over the Giants and Braves, beating the latter twice in a best-of-three tiebreaker series at season’s end. Wills started all six World Series games as the Dodgers beat the White Sox.

Finding a home atop the batting order midway through the 1960 season, Wills used his skills as a bunter and base thief to ignite Los Angeles’ offense. He hit .295/.342/.331 while stealing a league-high 50 bases in 62 attempts, good for 2.5 WAR. After stealing 35 bases the following year while making his first All-Star team, Wills swiped a whopping 104 — a mark that stood until it was broken by Lou Brock in 1974 — in 117 attempts in 1962. He surpassed Ty Cobb’s single-season record of 96 in the Dodgers’ 156th game, the same number Cobb needed in 1915 (his Tigers played two tie games), satisfying commissioner Ford C. Frick’s ruling on whether his feat would count as the major league record.

The frequent running took a physical toll on Wills, amplified by opposing groundskeepers adding sand to the clay around first base to make traction more difficult. Still, he hit .299/.347/.373 with 10 triples and 130 runs scored; including his 19 baserunning runs (the highest single-season total in B-Ref’s database) and average-ish defense that nonetheless earned him a Gold Glove, he finished with 6.0 WAR, good for fourth in the league. His performance was such a unique throwback that he beat out heavy-hitters like NL home run and WAR leader Willie Mays and teammate Tommy Davis (.346/.374/.535, 230 hits, 27 homers, 153 RBI) to win the NL MVP award.

Alas, the Dodgers lost the pennant via a playoff versus the Giants — which did enable Wills to set a still-standing record of 165 games played in a regular season — but they would win the World Series in 1963 and ’65, with Wills hitting for a career-best 112 OPS+ (on a .302/.355/.349 line) in the former year and stealing 94 bases in the latter before making a stellar showing (.367/.387.467) against the Twins (starring Golden Days ballot-mates Jim Kaat and Tony Oliva) in the Fall Classic.

Wills made five All-Star teams from 1961-66, but he fell out of favor with his sinking batting averages and on-base percentages, not to mention his going AWOL to play banjo with Don Ho and Sammy Davis Jr. during the Dodgers’ post-1966 World Series trip to Japan to play a exhibition games. With Walter O’Malley already in a foul mood due to the sudden retirement of Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers’ owner ordered general manager Buzzie Bavasi to trade Wills.

Bavasi complied, sending Wills to the Pirates, for whom he had two very good seasons, hitting for a 98 OPS+, stealing 81 bases, and totaling 7.8 WAR. Drafted away by the Expos in the expansion draft in late 1968, he became increasingly unhappy to the point of briefly retiring in early June, but was soon dealt back to the Dodgers along with future pinch-hitting legend Manny Mota in exchange for Ron Fairly and Paul Popovich. He stuck around until 1972, the year that Bill Russell emerged as the regular shortstop and the first piece in place for what would become the game’s longest-running infield.

Wills retired with 586 steals, 21 more than any other player from 1920-72; today, his total ranks 20th all-time. Though he ranked among the league’s top 10 in stolen base percentage eight times from 1960-68, by modern standards his career 73.8% success rate is nothing special. Even so, he was 55 runs above average on the basepaths and another 21 above average in double play avoidance; his combined total for the aforementioned 1920-72 period ranked second only to Luis Aparicio, and overall it’s still 22nd.

For all of that, Wills’ batting line was pretty unremarkable even given the adjustments for his low-scoring environment; his 88 OPS+ is one point ahead of that of Ozzie Smith, but he was merely average defensively, no small accomplishment for a 14-year career at a premium defensive position, but no wizard. Even accounting for his baserunning, he dented the WAR leaderboard only in 1962. He ranks just 48th at the position in JAWS, below every enshrined shortstop as well as current BBWAA candidate Omar Vizquel; Carlos Correa (34.2) will pass him next year. Even giving Wills a subjectively sizable bonus for restoring the stolen base to prominence, and for the level of excitement and entertainment he must have created with his speed and small-ball skills — an aspect that’s not very well captured in WAR — I just don’t see where he’s a strong enough candidate for election.

Not every voter has felt that way. Wills debuted on the 1978 ballot with 30.3% of the vote, a share that portends a reasonable chance of eventual election. By 1981, he climbed to 40.6%, but then things took a turn. The Mariners named him as their manager on August 4, 1980, to take over for the fired Darrell Johnson. Wills’ lack of experience — he had passed up a chance to manage in the minors at Bavasi’s encouragement, though had managed in Mexican winter leagues for a few years — quickly showed. Not only did the Mariners go 20-38 in the remainder of that season and start the next one 6-18, but he made “unconscionable strategic mistakes, third-grade, sandlot mistakes. And he compounded his mistakes by claiming to know all or by blaming somebody else,” to use the description of Steve Rudman of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. His brief tenure was a veritable fiasco.

It turns out Wills had a bigger problem: cocaine. Accounts vary as to whether it was the spring of 1980 before he was hired, or the following spring, after a longtime romantic relationship ended with his partner running off with another ballplayer to whom he’d introduced her during the 1980-81 offseason. After being fired, he spiraled downward, freebasing cocaine, drinking daily, and covering his windows with blankets. He had already left a rehab program prematurely when in December 1983 he was arrested for driving a car reported as stolen, and possessing an estimated $7 worth of cocaine. Both charges were eventually dismissed, and Wills eventually cleaned up, with former Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe and executive Fred Claire both playing parts in getting him help. He returned to baseball as an instructor (I spotted him tutoring Dodgers neophytes in bunting in Dodgertown in the springs of both 1989 and 2003, and at an Ogden Raptors game in 2010).

Electorally, the damage was done as far as the writers were concerned. Wills spent 15 years on the BBWAA ballot but didn’t even reach 30% after 1981, and only intermittently broke 25%. He topped out at 40% on the expanded Veterans Committee ballots in 2007, but receded to 23.4% two years later and wasn’t included on the 2012 Golden Era ballot. He did receive 56.3% on the 2015 one, however, placing him fourth behind Allen, Oliva, and Kaat, and so it’s fair to say that he’s got some momentum coming into this ballot. Again, I think he’s far from the best choice available, but if Harold Baines can get elected by a 16-member committee, so can Wills, who at least left a bigger mark on baseball history. We’ll see.

The champagne from the Braves’ World Series win is barely dry and the offseason business of baseball is underway. Meanwhile, it’s going to be a bountiful season in terms of Hall of Fame debate if not results. On Friday afternoon, the Hall released the long-awaited 10-person ballots for both the Early Baseball and Golden Days Era Committees. Not only were both slates and their respective elections delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but this is the first time that either group has been considered under the staggered four-Era Committee format announced in the summer of 2016 — and the first time that Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black baseball candidates have been considered since 2006. Both ballots will be voted upon by separate 16-member committees on December 5, with the results announced at 6 pm ET on MLB Network’s MLB Tonight.

This is also the first time that two Era Committee groups have been considered within the same election cycle, a dizzying proposition for those of us trying to sort it all out. And all of this is separate from the BBWAA slate of recently-retired candidates, which will be announced on November 22. If you’re wondering where we are in the staggered Era Committee schedule, this should clear things up (note that the year designated is for induction, and that the voting generally occurs in December of the previous year):

The Early Baseball Era Committee ballot covers candidates who made their greatest impacts in baseball prior to 1950. The 10 candidates, all deceased, are Bill Dahlen, John Donaldson, Bud Fowler, Vic Harris, Grant “Home Run” Johnson, Lefty O’Doul, Buck O’Neil, Dick “Cannonball” Redding, Allie Reynolds and George “Tubby” Scales. Read the rest of this entry »

When Freddie Freeman clutched the throw from Dansby Swanson to secure the final out of this year’s World Series, the 2021 Braves instantly matched the total number of championships won by the franchise from 1991-99, a span during which a core laden with future Hall of Famers won five pennants but lost four World Series. That this year’s Cinderella team stands with that dynasty — yes, I’m using that word to describe even a non-contiguous run — in total championships is a reminder of one of current third base coach Ron Washington’s famous catchphrases: “That’s the way baseball go.”

Indeed, the game does not always distribute its rewards evenly or justly, and sometimes the player or team that’s streaking or simply lucky is the one that wins, particularly in a short series, where injuries and hot hands can have a disproportionate effect. Suffice it to say that if NLCS MVP Eddie Rosario were a true-talent .383/.456/.617 hitter, he would not have been available at the trade deadline in exchange for a sack of Pablo Sandoval’s laundry.

This is not intended to slight the Braves, who were clearly a better team than their full-season .547 winning percentage — lower among World Series winners than all but the 2014 Giants (.543), 2000 Yankees (.540), 1987 Twins (.525), and 2006 Cardinals (.516) — indicated. From the point of the trade deadline, when they were 51-54 (.486) but had reassembled their outfield on the fly with Rosario, Adam Duvall, Joc Pederson, and future World Series MVP Jorge Soler, they went 37-19 (.661), outplaying every team in the majors but the white-hot Dodgers (.772) and Giants (.729). In the postseason, they knocked off the 95-win Brewers, 106-win Dodgers, and 95-win Astros by going a combined 11-5 and never facing an elimination game themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

There was no farewell tour, no long goodbye, and no fairytale ending. Instead, out of the blue on the day that would have been Game 7 of the World Series had Tuesday’s outcome gone the other way, was a stark, almost shocking tweet from The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly:

BREAKING NEWS: Sources tell The Athletic that Buster Posey will announce his retirement tomorrow. More to come…

— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) November 3, 2021

Wait, what? Posey just finished a season in which he earned All-Star honors for the seventh time, having come back from opting out of the 2020 season out of consideration for his family and two solid but injury-marked seasons, one of which ended with surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right hip. At the age of 34, while adhering to a strict two-days-on, one-day-off load management plan designed to keep him available and productive, he hit .304/.390/.499 with 18 homers (his highest total since 2015), a 140 wRC+ (his highest mark since 2014), and 4.9 WAR, tops among all catchers and tied for eighth among all NL players. He did that while helping the Giants to a major league-high and franchise-record 107 wins, then continued to torment the division rival Dodgers with a two-run homer off Walker Buehler in the two teams’ first-ever postseason game — nearly the first splash hit by any right-handed batter at Oracle Park, save for a water tower in right field — and then three hits the following night.

At the tail end of a nine-year, $169 million contract that he signed in March 2013, Posey had a $22 million club option with a $3 million buyout — hardly a cheap proposition, but a no-brainer for a big-spending team dealing with a franchise icon and a new window of contention. A multi-year extension seemed even more likely, particularly with the possibility of the universal designated hitter on the horizon. President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi had already signaled his intent to retain Posey one way or another, saying after the team’s elimination, “He is in our estimation the best catcher in baseball this year. Obviously [we] want to have conversations with Buster and continue to have internal conversations about that, but having him on this team next year is a high priority.”

Posey chose to walk away from all that in order to be with his family, which now features two adopted twin daughters who were born prematurely last summer and spent time in the newborn intensive care unit. He also chose to forgo the daily grind of a job via which he’s been concussed at least twice, in 2017 and ’19, and probably more than that given the number of foul tips off his mask that have left him dazed; he was in concussion protocol for one such shot in late July. Then there are the collisions, the most serious of which fractured his left fibula, tore three ligaments in his left ankle, and required three screws to pin the bone in place while it healed, plus a separate surgery to remove the hardware. That one cost him most of the 2011 season, the follow-up to his NL Rookie of the Year-winning campaign, and resulted in the addition of a rule to eliminate unwarranted contact at the plate.

This is Koufaxian stuff, a player retiring despite still performing at an elite level. The parallel between Posey and Sandy Koufax isn’t perfect, though both played just 12 years in the majors, accumulated numerous individual honors and reached the pinnacle of their respective positions in helping their teams win three championships, then departed abruptly. So far as we know, Posey isn’t playing through anything as debilitating as the three-time Cy Young winner’s chronic arthritis, but the long-term effects of multiple concussions are nothing to trifle with, and Posey, already a father of two before the adoption, has two new reasons to want to make sure he enjoys his retirement years.

Read the rest of this entry »

The flip side to the story of the Incredible Shrinking Postseason Starter — which, in fact, has only suffered more shrinkage since I published that piece about two weeks ago — is the expanded use of bullpens during this postseason. For the second year in a row, they’re throwing more than half of all innings this October, a situation that probably owes as much to the unique conditions of baseball in the time of the coronavirus pandemic as it does to analytically-inclined management.

Due to a combination of injuries and desperation, this past weekend’s three World Series games saw the six starters combine for just 17.2 innings, with only one lasting longer than four — and that one, Ian Anderson — was removed with a no-hitter in progress! Meanwhile, a total of 28 relievers came through the bullpen gates, an average of nearly five per team per game; they combined for 34.1 innings, nearly double the total of the starters but allowed just 10 runs to the shellshocked starters’ 24. Yes, the Braves’ use of the inexperienced Dylan Lee and Tucker Davidson to start Games 4 and 5 had something to do with it, but even Framber Valdez, the author of this postseason’s only eight-inning start, was chased after allowing five runs for the second straight turn. Valdez, in fact, has allowed 10 runs in this World Series, while the rest of his staffmates have yielded just eight.

Differentials like that, in which relievers have been much more effective than starters, help to explain what we’re seeing. While starting pitchers are often the stars who offer more name recognition to casual fans, given the urgency of October baseball there’s little sense in riding a starter who’s getting beaten up, regardless of the underlying reasons or the theoretical entertainment value. With the Astros carrying 13 pitchers on their 26-man World Series roster and the Braves 12, there are more than enough relievers to go around. Just one reliever pitched in Games 3, 4, and 5 — which is to say, made back-to-back appearances without a day off: the Astros’ Ryne Stanek, whose first appearance was just one batter and four pitches long. Only one other reliever in the entire postseason has pitched on three straight days, the Red Sox’s Martín Pérez. Read the rest of this entry »

Though they lost on Sunday night, the Braves still own a three-games-to-two lead over the Astros in the World Series thanks in large part to the work done by their bullpen. Due to the season-ending injuries to starters Huascar Ynoa and Charlie Morton, the unit has had to do a whole lot of heavy lifting, throwing two-thirds of the team’s innings (29.1 out of 44). What’s more, in Games 4 and 5, not only did manager Brian Snitker have to patch together bullpen games, he began them by giving the ball to a pair of pitchers, lefty Dylan Lee and righty Tucker Davidson, who barely had any big league experience at all. Lee, in fact, had never started a big league game before, making that move without precedent in any of the previous 115 World Series. The gambit met with only limited success, as both pitchers were shaky, but the Braves nonetheless managed a split, taking Game 4 before losing Game 5.

Lee and Davidson are hardly the first such pitchers to be thrown into the World Series fire despite a dearth of experience. In fact, such October surprises are part of a rich tradition. What follows here is a non-comprehensive look back at the Braves’ pair plus eight other pitchers with minimal major league experience before the Fall Classic (which isn’t to say that they’re the youngest), and how they fared.

Ken Brett, 1967 Red Sox (1 regular season appearance)

The older brother of Hall of Famer George Brett as well as two other brothers (Bobby and John) who briefly played professionally, Ken Brett stands as both the youngest and least experienced pitcher in World Series history. The fourth pick of the 1966 draft out of El Segundo High School in California, Brett rose quickly through the minors, and was just nine days past his 19th birthday when he debuted with two innings of relief work in a loss to Cleveland on September 27, 1967. At the time, the “Impossible Dream” Red Sox were 80-70, tied for second in a four-way race. When they pulled out the pennant, manager Dick Williams included the precocious lefty on the roster without hesitation because, as he later said, “He had the guts of a burglar.” Read the rest of this entry »

Only two pitchers have ever thrown a postseason no-hitter: the Yankees’ Don Larsen with his perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, and the Phillies’ Roy Halladay in the 2010 Division Series opener. On some level, the Braves’ Ian Anderson was vying to be the third; in Game 3 of the World Series on Friday night, he held the Astros hitless through five innings. But even from the start, anybody who has watched this postseason — where starters have averaged a hair over four innings per game — and understands the impact of the year-over-year workload increases that these pitchers are shouldering following the pandemic-shortened 2020 season could have told you that he wouldn’t get a chance to finish the job. That was doubly true on a raw and rainy night in Georgia and with a rested bullpen behind him. Backed by just two runs, Anderson and four relievers carried the no-hitter into the eighth and settled for a two-hit shutout, giving the Braves a 2–1 World Series lead.

Houston’s first hit finally came via a chip shot — 39 degrees, 70.7 mph — into left field by pinch-hitter Aledmys Díaz, the first batter faced by reliever Tyler Matzek. It fell in just in front of left fielder Eddie Rosario; according to Statcast, the catch probability for the play was 85%, but with shortstop Dansby Swanson running toward him and the cost of missing the ball being the tying run in scoring position, Rosario chose not to lay out.

It proved to be the right move. In fact, just about every major move the Braves made in Game 3 proved to be the right one, particularly manager Brian Snitker’s decision to trust his bullpen, no-hitter or not.

Read the rest of this entry »

2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, and welcome to today’s chat! Thankfully the technical snarls that knocked last week’s chat off the table aren’t an issue today; apologies to those who showed up to that one or waited around for it to materialize to no avail.

2:01

Jay Jaffe: As I’m on recap duty for Game 3 tonight, I did not write for today but did a piece about Eddie Rosario’s hot streak yesterday https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/despite-a-rough-night-eddie-rosario-ha… and spoke to Kevin Goldstein about Dusty Baker https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-audio-kris-bubic-chats-changeups… and my recent piece on his managerial evolution and Hall of Fame case https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dusty-baker-job-security-and-the-hall-of-f…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Pitcher strikeouts strongly correlate with run prevention and future success, but the relationship doesn’t work the same way for hitters, in that a lot of high strikeout hitters have good power and generally strong production.

2:06	Jay Jaffe: Dick Allen should be a Hall of Famer. Dick Allen is not yet a Hall of Famer. Hopefully on December 5, that status changes (see here for more about this year’s Era Committee schedule https://blogs.fangraphs.com/with-experts-on-the-negro-leagues-involved…)

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One of the more endearing (or maddening) features of postseason baseball is the random journeyman who seemingly comes out of nowhere to go on a tear long enough that he helps push his team through to the World Series. In the grand tradition of non-stars-turned-League Championship Series-MVPs such as Eddie Pérez, Cody Ross, Delmon Young, and Howie Kendrick comes Eddie Rosario. The Braves’ left fielder went 14-for-25 with three homers in the NLCS against the Dodgers, and carried that hot streak through Game 1 of the World Series against the Astros, though his 11-game hitting streak came to an end on Wednesday night; he was also charged with an error on a play that helped break open Game 2.

The 30-year-old Rosario has hit .426/.471/.702 (207 wRC+) with three home runs and 11 RBI in the postseason thus far while collecting hits in every game through the first two rounds, and adding two in the World Series opener. All of those homers and nine of those RBI came in the NLCS, when he hit .560/.607/1.040 and tied the single-series postseason record for hits shared by Albert Pujols (2004 NLCS), Hideki Matsui (2004 ALCS), Kevin Youkilis (2007 ALCS), and Marco Scutaro (2012 NLCS). Rosario is the only one from that group to need only six games to reach 14 hits instead of seven.

Rosario’s arc is all the more remarkable because he didn’t even debut for the Braves until August 28, that after being given away for essentially nothing twice within the past year. After six solid but unspectacular seasons with the Twins, where his power was often offset by low on-base percentages and occasionally spotty defense — his career highs of 32 homers and 109 RBI in 2019 yielded just 1.2 WAR, for example — he was non-tendered last December. He signed a one-year, $8 million deal with Cleveland in late January, but hit just .254/.296/.389 (86 wRC+) with seven homers and 0.3 WAR in 78 games before landing on the injured list with an abdominal strain in early July. Read the rest of this entry »