2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to today’s chat — the first time I’ve gone back-to-back weeks with a chat since… September! Some housekeeping while we wait for the queue to fill…

2:01	Jay Jaffe: On Monday I published my latest five-year outlook for the Hall of Fame voting https://blogs.fangraphs.com/changing-times-the-next-five-years-of-bbwa…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: And then yesterday and today I published a two-part series on the remaining free agents with spring training less than two weeks away. Here are the position players https://blogs.fangraphs.com/still-on-the-shelves-part-i-top-remaining-…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: And here are the pitchers https://blogs.fangraphs.com/still-on-the-shelves-part-2-top-remaining-…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Seems quite possible it could go down while we’re in this chat. We’ve all got one eye on it

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With spring training suddenly less than two weeks away after the players’ union rejected Major League Baseball’s proposal to delay the start of the season, on Thursday I made note of the recent flurry of free agent activity while rounding up the top players at each position who remain on the market. Six of those placed among our Top 50 Free Agents, including two in our top 10, namely Marcell Ozuna and Justin Turner; as I was writing, a seventh, Kolten Wong, agreed to terms with the Brewers.

Likewise, as I was putting that together, relievers Alex Colomé and Joakim Soria came off the board, and as I turned my attention to this batch of still-available free agent starters and relievers, the Trevor Bauer chase appeared as though it could end before I filed, though that proved to be a false alarm. Anyway, until he signs, this group includes eight free agents in our Top 50, six starters and two relievers. Without further ado…

[Update: Further ado necessary, because on Friday afternoon, Bauer agreed to a three-year, $102-million deal with the Dodgers — not the Mets, a bit of a shock as the sequence below indicates. Ben Clemens’ analysis is here. I’ve left the rest of this article as written.]

Starters

Bauer is the reigning NL Cy Young winner and the top free agent still available according to our list; Craig Edwards placed him third behind J.T. Realmuto and George Springer, both of whom brought home nine-figure deals. The question is whether the 30-year-old righty will do the same. As of Thursday, the pursuit appears to be down to the Mets and Dodgers, with the other teams that have shown significant interest, including the Blue Jays and Padres, having falling by the wayside.

MLB.com’s Jon Heyman reported that the Mets’ offer is believed to be three years and close to $100 million, with an opt-out after the first year. Via MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand, the Dodgers are believed to be interested in a one- or two-year deal possibly worth more than $36 million annually, which would surpass Bauer’s former UCLA teammate Gerrit Cole for the highest AAV in MLB history. On Thursday evening, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported that Bauer had agreed to a deal with the Mets, though six minutes later, Feinsand refuted that report. Read the rest of this entry »

With the players’ union rejecting Major League Baseball’s proposal to delay the start of the 2021 season by a month in hopes of winter coronavirus rates declining, the start of spring training is less than two weeks away, and from a logistical standpoint, so much remains undecided. Will there be a universal designated hitter? Will last year’s experiments with seven-inning doubleheader games and man-on-second extra inning rules carry over? What will the playoff format be? From a personnel standpoint, more than 150 free agents are still looking for work.  

The ice has begun to thaw for some of the top free agents, particularly in the past two weeks as the likes of George Springer, J.T. Realmuto, Michael Brantley, Brad Hand, Marcus Semien, Nelson Cruz, Kolten Wong, Joakim Soria, and Alex Colomé have found homes; news of the last three doing so broke while I was working on this very piece. That still leaves 14 members of our annual Top 50 Free Agents list in limbo, as well as numerous other players outside the 50 who could fill substantial roles.

What follows here is a quick trip around the diamond to note the best players still available at each position, whether they’re in our Top 50 (as six of the following were) or not; admittedly, the cupboard is better stocked in some spots than others. I’ll have a companion piece on the starters and relievers in the near future. Read the rest of this entry »

After breaking apart their bullpen in an effort to cut costs, the Reds took a step towards rebuilding it on Tuesday, agreeing to terms with 34-year-old lefty Sean Doolittle on a one-year deal with a base salary of $1.5 million plus as-yet-unspecified incentives. For as modest an expenditure as it is, Doolittle is just the second major league free agent the Reds have signed this winter from outside the organization (Kyle Farmer was signed to a new major league deal after previously being non-tendered). The two-time All-Star has ample experience closing, something in short supply on the Reds’ current roster, but in order to return to any kind of high-leverage duty, he’ll need to rebound from what was largely a lost season.

Doolittle, who spent his past 3 1/2 seasons with the Nationals, made just 11 appearances totaling 7.2 innings in 2020. He landed on the Injured List twice, first missing nearly three weeks in August due to inflammation in his right knee, and then being shelved for the remainder of the season after straining an oblique muscle in mid-appearance on September 10. For what it’s worth — perhaps not much given the sample sizes, though it merits a look to compare to his track record — his average fastball velocity and performance had been trending upwards after the first IL stint, as you can see here:

Doolittle didn’t allow a run over his final six appearances, after being scored upon in four out of five previously, so there’s that, a point to which we’ll return. Read the rest of this entry »

The past week’s game of free-agent infielder musical chairs — which sent Marcus Semien to Toronto, Andrelton Simmons to Minnesota, Tommy La Stella to San Francisco, Enrique Hernández to Boston, and Freddy Galvis to Baltimore — did find a couple of contestants staying in place. Cleveland re-signed Cesar Hernandez, while most notably, Philadelphia retained Didi Gregorius, signing the soon-to-be 31-year-old shortstop to a two-year, $28 million deal. In this nearly stagnant market, that rates as the second-largest contract of any free-agent infielder after DJ LeMahieu’s six-year, $90 million pact.

Gregorius initially landed with the Phillies via a one-year, $14 million pillow contract in December 2019, reuniting with former Yankees manager Joe Girardi, under whom he’d played during the transformative 2015–17 stretch of his career. His comparatively quick return from October 2018 Tommy John surgery had yielded a subpar half-season with the Yankees, as he hit .238/.276/.441 with a 69 wRC+ over the final two months of the ’19 season. Not only did that injury scuttle talks of a long-term extension with the Yankees, but his struggles upon returning also meant no $17.8 million qualifying offer on the way out the door.

Gregorius bounced back in rather impressive fashion in 2020, playing all 60 games and hitting .284/.339/.488 with 10 home runs and a 117 wRC+, an excellent approximation of his 2017–18 production. His defense rebounded as well, to something in the vicinity of average:

In all, Gregorius’ 1.4 WAR not only outdid his modest 0.9 from 2019, but it was also tied for 11th among all shortstops; the rankings were clustered so tightly that he was 0.2 from being eighth or 13th, depending on direction.

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This year’s Hall of Fame election shutout halted a remarkable run: seven consecutive years of multiple candidates being elected, and 22 candidates over that span, both of which were modern voting era records. Even with this year’s shutout, and the possibility of another one next year — reactions to the specific candidates closest to election, it would appear, rather than to the process as a whole — it’s undeniable that the dynamics of Hall elections have changed.

Consider this: From 1966 to 2005, only three candidates recovered from debuts below 25% to reach 75%, even with 15 years of eligibility: Duke Snider (17.0% in 1970, elected in ’81), Don Drysdale (21.0% in 1975, elected in ’84) and Billy Williams (23.4% in 1982, elected in ’87). Since then, we’ve seen five players elected despite such slow starts, including three from 2017-20. From the 15-year eligibility period came Bruce Sutter (23.9% in 1994, elected in 2006), and Bert Blyleven (17.5% in ’98, elected in 2011), and then once the Hall unilaterally decided to cut eligibility from 15 years to 10 — less to clean up the ballots than to try moving the intractable debate over PED-related candidates out of the spotlight — Tim Raines (24.3% in 2008, elected in ’17), Mike Mussina (20.3% in 2014, elected in ’19), and Larry Walker (20.3% in 2011, elected in ’20).

This year, Gary Sheffield (11.7% in 2015), Billy Wagner (10.5% in ’16), and Todd Helton (16.2% in ’19) all crossed the 40% threshold, the point where the odds of eventual election really start to tilt in a candidate’s favor, and Scott Rolen (10.2% in ’18) topped 50%, the point at which eventual election becomes a near-certainty. If you’ve been reading my coverage for any length of time, you know my line about Gil Hodges being the only exception from the latter group besides the current candidates on the ballot, but consider what the data tells us about landing in the 40-49% range even once. Out of the 40 candidates who have done so since 1966 (the year voters returned to the annual balloting) and are no longer on the ballot, 20 were elected by the writers and another 14 by small committees.

In other words, it’s not unreasonable to think about the aforementioned players finding spots in Cooperstown sometime in the next five years, which is a lot more fun to consider than another year of quarreling over the quartet of polarizing players — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, and Omar Vizquel — whose character issues became the focus of the past election cycle.

In any event, it’s time to break out my crystal ball for my eighth-annual five-year election outlook, an exercise that requires some amount of imagination and speculation. While it’s grounded in my research into the candidates and the history and mechanics of the voting, the changes to the process that have occurred over those eight years raise the question of how valuable that history is from a prognostication standpoint. Revising this annually is a necessity because every incorrect assumption has a ripple effect; the presence of a high-share holdover means less space for and less attention paid to the midballot guys. Read the rest of this entry »

2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to my first chat in this new time slot as well as my first one of 2021!

2:01	Jay Jaffe: While I wait for the queue to gain steam, some housekeeping… First, a fond farewell to colleague Craig Edwards, who’s making a leap to becoming an analyst for the Major League Baseball Players Association https://blogs.fangraphs.com/goodbye-and-thank-you/

2:04

Jay Jaffe: Second, I awoke to the pleasant surprise of having my Missed Time and the Hall of Fame series nominated for a SABR Analytics Research Conference Award. Colleagues Craig, Ben Clemens and Meg Rowley were also nominated in other categories, as were many friends and familiar names. Congrats to all of these fine nominees! Do read these pieces when you get a chance, and vote on them starting next week. https://sabr.org/latest/announcing-finalists-for-2021-sabr-analytics-c…

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Here’s a link to mine: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/missed-time-and-the-hall-of-fame-part-1, https://blogs.fangraphs.com/missed-time-and-the-hall-of-fame-part-2, https://blogs.fangraphs.com/missed-time-and-the-hall-of-fame-part-3

2:05	Jay Jaffe: Here’s my candidate-by-candidate roundup of this week’s Hall of Fame voting. https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/a-candidate-by-candidate-look-at-the-2… My 5-year outlook piece will run on Monday, and wow has it change even with nobody elected this year.

2:06	Jay Jaffe: Get your FanGraphs mug while you still can:  https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-new-fangraphs-mug-is-now-available…

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

The surge via which the Baseball Writers Association of America elected a record 22 Hall of Fame candidates over a seven-year span is over, as the voters pitched a shutout on Tuesday, their second in the past decade, fourth since the return to annual balloting in 1966, and ninth since the Hall’s inception in 1936. Collectively the 401 voters who participated showed enough ambivalence towards the top four returning candidates — Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Omar Vizquel, all of whom have non-performance-related marks against them that were increasingly aired during the cycle — to keep them on the outside looking in, and that ambivalence spilled over to the other 21 candidates on the slate. The 5.87 votes per ballot was the lowest average since 2012, and the 14 blank ballots sent in was a record.

There’s more than just the top-line results to chew on, however, so as promised, here’s my candidate-by-candidate breakdown of the entire slate. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Eight years ago, on the most top-heavy Hall of Fame ballot in at least half a century, the BBWAA voters pitched a shutout, electing nobody in what was seen by some as a referendum on character, particularly as it pertained to candidates linked to the usage of performance-enhancing drugs. On Tuesday, the writers put up a zero again, capping another election cycle dominated by debates over the significance of the on-and off-field transgressions of candidates, and — for the first time since 2012 — lacking any obviously qualified newcomers to the ballot.

Of the 401 ballots cast, a record 14 were blank. Whether those were done as protests against the notion that anybody from this ballot was worthy of enshrinement, or that in electing a record 22 candidates over the past seven years, standards had gotten too lax — those voters will have to answer that question themselves, if they haven’t already. Their ballots are included in the total, thus making it harder for anybody to reach 75%; had those voters instead made paper airplanes out of their ballots and flown them out the window (does anybody still do that?) the threshold for election would have fallen from 301 votes to 290. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

It would be only somewhat hyperbolic to say that the 2021 Hall of Fame election cycle was as contentious and polarizing as the presidential election that preceded it nearly three months ago, but let’s face it, this time around has not been a whole lot of fun. When Hall president Tim Mead opens the envelope to announce the results shortly after 6 pm ET on MLB Network on Tuesday evening, there’s a very good chance that the BBWAA voters will produce a shutout, the writers’ first since 2013 — a ballot that not-so-coincidentally is headlined by some of the same candidates who have split the electorate.

There’s no shutout from FanGraphs readers, however. In our third annual Hall of Fame crowdsource ballot, three candidates cleared the 75% bar, down from four last year and seven in 2019. Not surprisingly, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens did so, just as they’ve done in each of the past two years. However, both members of the gruesome twosome took a back seat to the top close-but-no-cigar candidate from our 2020 crowdsource ballot, and no, I don’t mean Curt Schilling.

Before I get to the results, a refresher on the process. As with the past two years, registered readers of our site (and participating staff, this scribe included) were allowed to choose up to 10 candidates while adhering to the same December 31, 2020 deadline as the actual voters, but unlike the writers, our voting was conducted electronically instead of on paper. This year, 1,152 users participated, a drop of exactly 20% from last year’s 1,440 voters, but one that’s understandable in light of our pandemic-related traffic dip as well as an apparent lack of enthusiasm towards a ballot that, quite frankly, is headed by heels, in that the top four returning candidates in terms of voting percentage have significant issues that would give any character-minded voter pause. Read the rest of this entry »