This week may be Prospects Week here at FanGraphs, but for MLB, this has been Minor Signings Week. The long offseason dance is just about over, and everyone’s now at risk of going to homecoming alone. So rather than a long spiel that sees me reference a historical battle or obscure 18th-century literature, let’s get straight to the moves.

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the beginning of the ninth annual Effectively Wild team-by-team season preview series, discuss a trio of players (Justin Turner, James Paxton, and Jake Arrieta) who re-signed with their most recent or former teams, and preview the 2021 Rays (16:01) with Adam Berry of MLB.com and the 2021 Brewers (57:25) with Will Sammon of The Athletic.

Audio intro: Camera Obscura, "Do it Again"
Audio interstitial 1: The Bats, "The Rays"
Audio interstitial 2: Bombadil, "Wisconsin Wedding"
Audio outro: The Rembrandts, "End of the Beginning"

Link to recap of 2020 team predictions
Link to Jared Diamond on the Rays’ executive tree
Link to Eric Longenhagen’s Rays prospects list
Link to Ben on the opener and Yarbrough
Link to Ian Malinowski on Yarbrough’s arb case
Link to Tony Wolfe on Yelich
Link to Will on Burnes
Link to Will on Williams
Link to Marc Carig on Williams
Link to Jake Mailhot on Williams
Link to Will on Lindblom
Link to Will on Wong and Hiura

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This week, one NL Central team has acquired the best defender at a key infield position. He’ll be playing the 2021 season at age-30, and he was below average offensively in 2020, so it’s not as though there aren’t red flags, but great defense doesn’t grow on trees. That’s right: the Brewers signed Kolten Wong to a two-year, $18 million contract, as Jon Morosi first reported.

While Nolan Arenado might have fallen behind Matt Chapman in the third base defense hierarchy, Wong reigns supreme at second. For three straight years, he’s won the Fielding Bible award at second base. Every advanced defensive metric sees him as the best fielder in the game over the past three years. Bigger fan of the eye test? He can do this:

Okay, fine, single defensive highlights are a bad reflection of talent. But he can do this, too:

I could go on all day if there weren’t an article to write. Wong is one of my very favorite players to watch. This is a transaction analysis, though, so I’ll restrain myself, and merely say that our very good defensive projections for Wong might still be conservative. Read the rest of this entry »

There are baseball stars, there are heroes and legends, and then there is Henry Aaron. The slugging right fielder is remembered mainly for surpassing Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record on April 8, 1974, but even that crowning achievement obscures the all-around excellence and remarkable consistency he demonstrated during his 23-year major league career.

What’s more, Aaron’s accomplishments can most fully be appreciated only with an understanding of the racism he encountered throughout his life and his career, as a Black man who began his professional career in the Negro Leagues, who became a star before half of the teams in the National League had integrated and a champion before the last teams in the American League did so, who emerged as a force for civil rights while becoming the first Black star on the first major league team in the Deep South, who surpassed the most hallowed record produced by the game’s most famous player while facing a nearly unimaginable barrage of hate mail and death threats, and who broke down further barriers after his retirement, as one of the game’s first Black executives and as a critic of the lack of diversity among managers and executives.

More than a Hall of Famer, Aaron was a true titan, an American icon in his own right. Sadly, he is the latest Hall of Famer in an unrelenting stretch to pass away. News of his death was announced on Friday morning, four days after that of Don Sutton, 15 days after that of Tommy Lasorda, and 27 days after that of former teammate Phil Niekro. He was 86 years old, and had been in the news earlier this month as he received a COVID-19 vaccination.

“Hank Aaron was one of the best baseball players we’ve ever seen and one of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” said former president Barack Obama in a statement released on Friday. Former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush paid tributes in statements as well, as did President Joe Biden:

President @JoeBiden on #HankAaron’s legacy: “As a nation, we will still chase the better version of ourselves that he set for us.” pic.twitter.com/xL7AESxaek

— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) January 23, 2021

While Aaron’s story is often cast as that of a man overcoming or ignoring racism and hatred to achieve greatness with quiet dignity, it does the man a disservice to soften his edges and diminish the pain that he felt, and the scars that he bore — particularly given that he did not do so in silence. Surpassing Ruth “was supposed to be the greatest triumph of my life, but I was never allowed to enjoy it. I couldn’t wait for it to be over,” he once said. “The only reason that some people didn’t want me to succeed was because I was a Black man.” 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.

Aramis Ramirez hit more homers than all but six players who spent the majority of their careers at third base, and he also ranks among the top half-dozen from the hot corner in RBI, and fourth in slugging percentage among those with at least 7,000 plate appearances. While that’s not enough to make him a serious Hall of Fame candidate once his 18-year career is placed in its proper context, the three-time All-Star deserves his due as the final entry in the One-and-Done portion of my annual series.

Ramirez put up big offensive numbers while spending his entire career in the NL Central, bookended by stints with the Pirates (1998-2003, ’15) that included a chance to finally represent them in postseason play. He was part of three playoff teams during his 8 1/2-season stint with the Cubs (2003-11), for whom he was a two-time All-Star, and made the last of his All-Star berths during three lean years in Milwaukee (’12-14). The man could hit: Ramirez batted .300 or better seven times, with a high of .318 in 2004; swatted 25 or more homers in a season 10 times, topping 30 four times; and drove in 100 or more runs seven times; he set highs in the last two categories in 2006, when he hit 38 homers and drove in 119 runs. Tellingly, in a hitter-friendly era he only grazed the leaderboards in those triple crown categories, with eight top-10 finishes but just one higher than seventh place.

Aramis Ramirez was born on June 25, 1978 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Unlike so many Dominican players who come from poverty, he was comparatively well off, as his father was a doctor and his mother an accountant. Basketball was his first love; he didn’t start playing baseball until age 13, but the fact that he owned three gloves made up for his deficit in skill relative to other kids in his neighborhood. “I was really bad,” he told Sports Illustrated’s Jamal Greene in 2001, “But if they didn’t let me play, they wouldn’t have enough gloves.” Read the rest of this entry »

If the Brewers had their druthers, Orlando Arcia wouldn’t have played much this year. After the 2019 season, they acquired Luis Urías from the Padres with the intention of making him their starting shortstop. Arcia, a former top prospect whose bat had stagnated, would be relegated to a backup and defensive replacement — or at least, that was the plan.

Things don’t always work out so cleanly, and 2020 had a way of ruining everything. Urías contracted COVID-19 in July and didn’t debut until August 10. The third base situation didn’t quite work out; Brock Holt and Eric Sogard struggled, and Jedd Gyorko played mainly first base — the addition of the universal DH meant that their brief Ryan Braun experiment at first never amounted to much.

In the end, Arcia racked up 189 plate appearances, nearly a full-time slate. That doesn’t sound great for Milwaukee — Arcia put up a 54 wRC+ in 2018 and a 61 in 2019, plumbing the depths of offensive futility. Those are bad numbers even for a glove-first shortstop, but hey, with a DH, you can just bat him at the bottom of the lineup and limit the leverage of those plate appearances, right? 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.

LaTroy Hawkins was just about as well-traveled as they come. The 6-foot-5, 220-pound righty spent 21 years in the majors, pitching for 11 different teams (not counting a return engagement in Colorado) in 44 different ballparks. Generally a setup man (though he did spend time closing), he never made an All-Star team, but he did pitch in the postseason five times with four different franchises, including a World Series with the Rockies. He stuck around long enough to become the 16th pitcher to appear in 1,000 games, and today ranks 10th all-time:

Read the rest of this entry »

MLB managers not named Tony La Russa did Zoom calls with members of the media this past week. Today’s column features highlights from several of those sessions.

—–

Two of the topics Dusty Baker addressed on Monday were job-related. One was the position he currently holds with the Houston Astros, the other was a role that’s never appealed to him. The latter is anathema to baseball’s Most Interesting Man in the World because it wouldn’t allow him to kick back and ruminate on life.

“One reason I never wanted to be a general manager is because you don’t really have an offseason,” Baker told a cohort of reporters. “He works all year, and doesn’t have much time off, but for the general manager, and front office people, this is the most busy time of the year.”

Baker is 71 years old with 23 managerial seasons under his belt. How much longer he’ll sit in that chair is a question he can’t answer, but he’s been around long enough to know that life can come at you from different directions. Much for that reason, he’s simply going with the flow.

“Depends on how I feel [and it] depends on how the team feels about me,” said Baker, who was hired by Houston prior to last season. “Changes are going to come about in life. I tend to think in terms of Walter Alston and Tom Lasorda. Those guys signed a series of 20 one-year contracts. I’m not lame anymore. You know what I mean? A lame duck can’t fly. But my wings aren’t clipped no more. I can always fly.” Read the rest of this entry »

The fact that Andy Haines has been coaching for close to two decades doesn’t make him unique among his contemporaries. But his background does differ. Two years into his tenure as the hitting coach of the Milwaukee Brewers, Haines is just 43 years old. He’s either been coaching or managing for basically his entire adult life.

Haines earned a master’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University, and since that time he’s tutored players in independent ball, at every level of the minors — including as a coordinator — and more recently in the majors. An assistant hitting coach with the Chicago Cubs in 2018, where he worked alongside Chili Davis, Haines was hired into his current role by the Brewers in November of that same year.

———

David Laurila: What stands out to you about today’s hitting environment?

Andy Haines: “What’s prevalent right now is how things have evolved with technology. Hitting is still at the mercy of pitching — it’s still a reactionary event — and the trends in the game somewhat dictate what hitters need to do to have success. You’re seeing guys rip four-seamers at the top. With technology, guys in the minor leagues can practice not only spinning the ball, but how efficiently they can spin it, and where it gets the outs.

“Everybody talks about the trends — the Three True Outcomes — and how the game is being played. For me, those are the challenges on the hitting side. And defense is a part of run prevention, too. The defense in the big leagues is incredible. Front offices have more research tools and sophistication as far as defensive metrics. They play you where you hit the baseball. So there are a lot of things trending that make it challenging to score runs.”

Laurila: How similar are big-league hitting coaches right now? Do they all speak the same language — not just the terminology, but also the concepts being prioritized? 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. Originally written for the 2015 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. 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. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Wherever Gary Sheffield went, he made noise, both with his bat and his voice. For the better part of two decades, he ranked among the game’s most dangerous hitters, a slugger with a keen batting eye and a penchant for contact that belied his quick, violent swing. For even longer than that, he was one of the game’s most outspoken players, unafraid to speak up when he felt he was being wronged and unwilling to endure a situation that wasn’t to his liking. He was a polarizing player, and hardly one for the faint of heart.

At the plate, Sheffield was viscerally impressive like few others. With his bat twitching back and forth like the tail of a tiger waiting to pounce, he was pure menace in the batter’s box. He won a batting title, launched over 500 home runs — 14 seasons with at least 20 and eight with at least 30 — and put many a third base coach in peril with some of the most terrifying foul balls anyone has ever seen. For as violent as his swing may have been, it was hardly wild; not until his late thirties did he strike out more than 80 times in a season, and in his prime, he walked far more often than he struck out. Read the rest of this entry »