In 2018, I once again had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds of people within baseball. Many of their words were shared in my Sunday Notes column, while others came courtesy of the FanGraphs Q&A series, the Learning and Developing a Pitch series, the Manager’s Perspective series, and a smattering of feature stories. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations.

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“My slider will come out and it will be spinning, spinning, spinning, and then as soon as it catches, it picks up speed and shoots the other way. Whoosh! It’s like when you bowl. You throw the ball, and then as soon as it catches, it shoots with more speed and power. Right? “ — Sergio Romo, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher, January 2018

“One of the biggest lessons we learn is that iron sharpens iron. That is 100% how we try to do things with the Rockies — hiring people that are smarter than we are, and more skilled, and have different skills that can complement, and train people to be better at their jobs than I am at my job. That’s how you advance an organization.” — Jeff Bridich, Colorado Rockies GM, January 2018

“We could split hairs and say, ‘Hey, you’re playing in front of a thousand drunk Australians instead of 40,000 drunk Bostonians, and you’re living with a host family instead of at a five-star hotel.’ But The Show is The Show, and in Australia the ABL is The Show.” — Lars Anderson, baseball nomad, January 2018

“Baseball is heaven. Until our closer blows the game.” — Michael Hill, Miami Marlins president of baseball operations, January 2018 Read the rest of this entry »

I last met Miguel Montero on April 29, 2017, when he was with the Chicago Cubs and I was with The Athletic. That was 12,348 days after Montero was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and 341 days before he’d take three plate appearances for the Washington Nationals on April 5, 2018, and thereafter leave the game, apparently for good. Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reported recently that Montero is “pretty much” retired these days, and in this world of oh so very much uncertainty, “pretty much” is good enough for me. Eight months and a few days after he last took the field for a major league team, and forty years before he can reasonably expect his time to end, Miguel Montero the player is about to pass out of our present and into our memories, while Miguel Montero the man lives on.

It seems like a good time to remember the man.

When I last met Miguel Montero, he was in the process of being passed by. Kyle Schwarber had returned from a knee injury that had taken him away from all but the beginning and brilliant ending of the Cubs’ 2016 campaign; Willson Contreras was about to embark upon a sophomore season that seemed to confirm the highest aspirations of his debut. Montero, then 33 and already trailed by the whispers of self-interest which would crescendo into a shout and chase him out of the Chicago clubhouse two months later, was standing in the visitor’s clubhouse in Fenway Park, not all that far from the door, rocking from side to side on heels that weren’t yet ready to play the backup role assigned to them.

At the time, I had the impression of a man torn between what he knew he was and what he wanted to be. Miguel Montero wanted to be a leader, and for a time there in Chicago, he was. The Cubs wouldn’t have won the World Series in 2016 without his brittle, prideful energy — they wouldn’t have beaten the Dodgers 8-4 in Game 1 of the NLCS, they wouldn’t even have gotten to the NLCS that without Montero hard on their asses, chasing them on. The Cubs were led by their catchers in 2016, and Montero and David Ross were the catchers they had. Montero wasn’t the leader of his dreams in 2016, but he was a leader nonetheless, and by early 2017 in Boston he could feel the moment that had placed him there moving on.

For most of us, our daily acts of self-creation are private — contained in the moments in which we choose this, not that, to love this person, not that one, and to do this thing, and not the other. For major league baseball players, that is not so. They are created once the way all people are created, then again in private, over and over, just themselves and the people they love, and then a third time — this is the time that is different — in thousands of moments in the lives of other people. In our lives. Baseball players become the signifiers of other childhoods, and of childhood’s end; they become totems to mark the passage of time, to mark the bounds between one part of life and another that comes after it, and the men behind the totems become incidental to their meaning to us. That is what Miguel Montero became to me. That is what other Monteros have become to others.

I grew up a Cubs fan, but I’m not sure I am one anymore. The team has changed, of course, but far more consequentially to me, so have I. In the spring of 2015, I wrote my first word for Baseball Prospectus, in part about Miguel Montero. That fall, I sat in the press box at Wrigley Field covering the Cubs in the postseason. The next October, I watched them win the World Series. Miguel Montero was one of the last generation of Cubs who I could, ever-so-briefly, worship as larger than life. He was among the last who I first imagined into being when I could not reasonably imagine later standing before him in a cramped Boston clubhouse, watching the man and not the idea of him come to grips with a time passing him by. He was among the last who I did not expect to see swearing at his misfortune, standing awkwardly in his in-betweenness, checking his phone for the latest from his children, smiling and laughing in that ribald childish way of men in the company of men. He was among the last who was not fully real to me.

And now he is not real to any of us, in the way that most of the baseball players of our times are not real. Now he is Miguel Montero, C, 2006-2018. Now he is fixed in our memories as a point of light, whether for his five good seasons and three bad ones with the Diamondbacks, his two years and three months with the Cubs, or those last gasps of relevance with the Blue Jays and Nationals. Most ballplayers pass out of our consciousness this way. They can’t all be Chipper Jones or Mariano Rivera. They can’t all say farewell, and be enlarged permanently in their absence. Most of them are there with us, filling our summers and lengthening our falls, until one day we look up and find them gone. They remain then linked in our memories as signs of that time in our lives, even as the men whose human forms those signs took on continue to age and change before a diminished crowd of spectators. Miguel Montero will likely live many more years. He could become a grandfather, the patriarch of a strong and growing family. He will, apparently, be an agent to as many players as he can get his hands on. He might even pick up a mask and glove one of these days and catch a ball or two in his backyard. He will tell stories of his days in our memories. But he will not be real to most of us, anymore. He will remain fixed in time, as we last knew him. He will not fade away.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 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.

Like Mark McGwire, his rival in the great 1998 home run chase, Sammy Sosa was hailed at the height of his popularity as a hero, a Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, and a great international ambassador for baseball. In the same year that McGwire set a new single-season record with 70 home runs, Sosa hit 66 and took home the National League MVP award. Three times in a four-year stretch from 1998 to 2001, he surpassed Roger Maris‘ previously unbreakable mark of 61 homers, and he hit more homers over a five- or 10-year stretch than any player in history. In 2007, he became just the fifth player to reach the 600-home-run milestone after Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds.

As with McGwire, the meaning of Sosa’s home runs changed once baseball began to crack down on performance-enhancing drugs, with suspicions mounting about his achievements. He was called to testify before Congress in 2005, along with McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and several other players. Sosa denied using PEDs, but while he never tested positive once Major League Baseball began instituting penalties for usage, The New York Times reported in 2009 that he was one of more than 100 players who had done so during the supposedly anonymous survey tests six years prior.

Though his case doesn’t exactly parallel with those of either McGwire or Palmeiro, Sosa received similar treatment from BBWAA voters in his 2013 ballot debut, getting just 12.5% of the vote. Since then, he’s sunk into the single digits (7.8% in 2018) suggesting he’s more likely to fall off the ballot à la Palmeiro than to persist for the full 10 years, as McGwire did. Even beyond the Hall of Fame voting, however, he’s been snubbed by the Cubs, first frozen out of the centennial anniversary of Wrigley Field in 2014, then similarly shunned amid the team’s 2016 championship run. While Bonds, Roger Clemens and others are trending towards eventual election as voters reconsider their hardline stances and their position as the morality police, it’s worth considering Sosa’s exile.

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It’s been long known that the Chicago Cubs would likely form their own regional sports network (RSN) after their partnership with the White Sox, Bulls, Blackhawks, and Comcast ends at the conclusion of the 2019 season. The news that the White Sox, Bulls, and Blackhawks would stick with Comcast, as reported by Bruce Levine, left the Cubs needing their own partner for a new network. The specific details vary, with the Sun-Times reporting the Cubs had agreed to a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group while Bruce Levine indicated Sinclair were merely frontrunners, with Jon Greenberg hearing the same. In addition to the Cubs, Sinclair is also in the bidding to buy 15 more FOX RSNs. That should worry Major League Baseball, but perhaps not just for the reasons many think it should.

Sinclair has been in the news most recently for its political leanings. According to FOX Business, Sinclair “control(s) more than 200 stations in over 100 local markets. The local media empire was built on snapping up these stations around the country and adding an extra element of right-wing commentary to its programming.” The company has come under fire for its content practices across those affiliates and been defended by the President for the same. Those content-based criticisms are surely a concern for many, but their business model also presents a separate potential issue for baseball. While baseball is trying to expand its reach and ensure young people have access to the sport, Sinclair is tied to an older model that could threaten massive carriage fee disputes and blackouts for fans in local markets.

The vast majority of the Sinclair-owned stations are the traditional, over-the-air networks like FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the CW. Anyone with an an antenna and in range of the broadcast tower can view those networks for free, but cable and satellite providers aren’t allowed to simply broadcast those networks. Instead, cable providers must pay a retransmission fee to broadcast those networks on their cable packages (here’s a primer on retransmission fees). Sinclair has leveraged those fees in the past and been a part of the largest blackout in television history.

The biggest issues with Sinclair’s retransmission fees occurred in the lead-up to its eventual purchase of the Tennis Channel. Back in 2015, Dish Network, which has had its fair share of carriage fees disputes, indicated that it had reached agreement to broadcast 129 Sinclair-owned stations, but was being blacked out due to Sinclair’s attempt to gain leverage in its carriage negotiation with an unnamed cable network it was planning to purchase. Roughly five million Dish customers went without local programming.

In 2016, Sinclair bought the Tennis Channel, which was then available in about 30 million homes, and said it planned to pair negotiation for that channel with its broadcast networks. For the most part, the plan worked. The Tennis Channel now has roughly 55 million subscribers while nearly every other cable channel has been seeing its numbers drop. But those increases did not come without collateral damage. In addition to the previous Dish Network blackout:

• In the beginning of 2017, Frontier Communications and Sinclair could not agree to a deal in a dispute that affected customers in the Pacific Northwest.
• In September, failure by Sinclair and Hulu to reach an agreement led CBS corporate to undercut Sinclair in markets with a Sinclair CBS affiliate.
• PsVue and Sinclair couldn’t reach an agreement earlier this year.

Sinclair’s attempt to buy half the regional sports networks offering baseball comes on the heels of a failed merger with the Tribune Company that might have meant an even greater reach of local broadcast networks, including those in Chicago and New York. That deal failed when the FCC determined that approving the merger would violate the law that caps the percentage of households into which one owner can broadcast. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai found fault with some of the sales Sinclair proposed to bring it under that cap, saying the sale “would allow Sinclair to control those stations in practice, even if not in name, in violation of the law.” Tribune Media Company has since sued Sinclair for the part they played in halting the deal.

A deal for the Fox RSNs would not require FCC approval, as they are cable channels, but would fall under anti-trust regulations. The problem for baseball is less the federal regulations, and more in how Sinclair would negotiate carriage fees. Of the cities with Fox RSNs, Sinclair owns local stations in Minneapolis, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. They also own stations in a whole host of smaller markets in Michigan, Ohio, California, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and New York. It’s not difficult to imagine how Sinclair might attempt to leverage retransmission fees to extract even more money for the RSNs. With few exceptions, RSNs have had little difficulty gaining entrance to cable providers basic digital package. This isn’t a situation analogous to the Tennis Channel, as the RSNs are already in a large percentage of homes. But if Sinclair raises the price higher than providers are willing to pay, disputes become more likely.

We could also see the RSNs used as leverage to gain greater access for the Tennis Channel; Sinclair could make getting an RSN on cable contingent on the provider accepting the Tennis Channel as well. Both situations would find the RSNs that broadcast baseball games caught in the middle of disputes having very little to do with the popularity of the sport or the desire of fans to watch baseball. While carriage disputes are in some respects inevitable, the results, with the Dodgers being the prime example, can be messy and deprive fans of access to the game and limit the number of new fans the sport can draw. With Sinclair potentially owning the rights to the broadcasts of 16 teams in 16 different markets, might they let a dispute drag out in Cincinnati or San Diego if they thought they could get a better deal in large-market Dallas?

As baseball moves forward, it’s imperative that it avoid these types of disputes, particularly as its audience grows older. Sinclair’s current difficulties negotiating with newer streaming platforms like Hulu and PSVue could be a warning sign that the company will likely cling to its older methods of extracting revenue from customers, and disputes could get worse as the number of cable subscribers shrink. That would be bad news for baseball as it tries to reach the consumers who are ditching cable for these streaming services.

Disney is in the process of buying a large number of Fox Entertainment assets. In order to receive regulatory approval for that purchase, it agreed to sell Fox’s RSNs to ensure that Disney, which owns ESPN, wouldn’t control too much of the cable sports market. The first round of bids was just received and were apparently underwhelming, coming in below the more than $20 billion expected price. According to reports, Sinclair is currently in the driver’s seat to purchase the RSNs if all of the networks are sold as one. It’s possible the RSNs aren’t worth the $20 billion, as initial estimates proposed, but a large part of that misestimation could be because MLB has said it retains control of the digital streaming rights, leaving any potential buyer with an uncertain future and more negotiations to contend with. It could be that at some point, MLB joins the fray in bidding for these networks, so as to easily combine streaming and broadcast rights, but it seems likely they would prefer someone else pay for that guarantee. In the end, Fox may attempt to buy back the stations they’ve sold, but if the highest bidder ends up being Sinclair, it could be in the league’s best interest to make their own bid and ensure a bigger say in controlling its own future. There is considerable risk in making such a purchase, but Sinclair’s track record indicates there is also significant risk in letting it control who gets to watch baseball across the country.

Last week, as part of a three-team trade, the Indians sent Edwin Encarnacion to the Mariners, and the Mariners sent Carlos Santana to the Indians. Now, that part of the trade was at least partially motivated by money, but both Encarnacion and Santana remain players who could and should have roles on competitive ballclubs. Encarnacion is a 1B/DH in his 30s, and he’s coming off a 115 wRC+. Santana is a 1B/DH in his 30s, and he’s coming off a 109 wRC+. They were above-average hitters, if also diminished from their peaks.

On Tuesday, the Cubs signed veteran utility guy Daniel Descalso for two years and $5 million. Descalso is a versatile sort in his 30s, and he’s coming off a 111 wRC+. And as a matter of fact, it should be even higher, since Descalso played for the Diamondbacks, and our park factors haven’t yet accounted for their newly-installed humidor that turned Chase Field into a more neutral hitting environment. You’re probably not used to having to think about Daniel Descalso, but he’s quietly breathed new life into his career.

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The major-league phase of Thursday’s Rule 5 Draft began with its annual roll call of clubs confirming the number of players currently on their 40-man rosters and ended with a total of 14 players being added to new big-league clubs. Dan Szymborski offered ZiPS projections here for the players taken earlier today. Below are brief scouting reports on the players selected, with some notes provided by Kiley McDaniel.

But, first: Our annual refresher on the Rule 5 Draft’s complex rules. Players who signed their first pro contract at age 18 or younger are eligible for selection after five years of minor-league service if their parent club has not yet added them to the team’s 40-man roster. For players who signed at age 19 or older, the timeline is four years. Teams with the worst win/loss record from the previous season pick first, and those that select a player must not only (a) pay said player’s former club $100,000, but also (b) keep the player on their 25-man active roster throughout the entirety of the following season (with a couple of exceptions, mostly involving the disabled list). If a selected player doesn’t make his new team’s active roster, he is offered back to his former team for half of the initial fee. After the player’s first year on the roster, he can be optioned back to the minor leagues.

These rules typically limit the talent pool to middle-relief prospects or position players with one-dimensional skillsets, though sometimes it involves more talented prospects who aren’t remotely ready for the majors. This creates an environment where selections are made based more on fit and team need than just talent, but teams find solid big-league role players in the Rule 5 every year and occasionally scoop up an eventual star. Let’s dive into the scouting reports on this year’s group.

First Round

1. Baltimore Orioles
Richie Martin, SS (from A’s) – Martin was a 2015 first rounder out of the University of Florida, drafted as an athletic shortstop with some pop who was still raw as a baseball player. Martin had really struggled to hit in pro ball until 2018, when he repeated Double-A and slashed .300/.368/.439.

He has average raw power but hits the ball on the ground too often to get to any of it in games. Houston has been adept at altering their players’ swings, so perhaps the new Orioles regime can coax more in-game pop from Martin, who is a perfectly fine defensive shortstop. He should compete with incumbent Orioles Breyvic Valera and Jonathan Villar, as well as fellow Rule 5 acquisition Drew Jackson, for middle infield playing time. But unless there’s a significant swing change here, Martin really only projects as a middle infield utility man.

2. Kansas City Royals
Sam McWilliams, RHP (from Rays) – McWilliams was an overslot eighth rounder in 2014 and was traded from Philadelphia to Arizona for Jeremy Hellickson in the fall of 2015. He was then sent from Arizona to Tampa Bay as one of the players to be named later in the three-team trade that sent Steven Souza to Arizona. McWilliams is pretty raw for a 23-year-old. He spent two years in the Midwest League and posted a 5.02 ERA at Double-A when the Rays pushed him there after the trade.

He has a big fastball, sitting mostly 93-94 but topping out at 97. He’ll flash an occasional plus slider but it’s a rather inconsistent pitch. The industry thought McWilliams had a chance to grow into a backend rotation arm because his stuff is quite good, but he has a much better chance of sticking as a reliever right now.

3. Chicago White Sox (Traded to Rangers)
Jordan Romano, RHP (from Blue Jays) – Romano is a 25-year-old righty who spent 2018 at Double-A. He’s a strike-throwing righty with a fastball in the 91-93 range and he has an average slider and changeup, both of which reside in the 80-84 range. His command is advanced enough that both of his secondaries play up a little bit. He likely profiles as a fifth starter or rotation depth, but the Rangers current pitching situation is quite precarious and Romano may just end up sticking around to eat innings with the hope that he sticks as a backend starter or swingman when they’re competitive once again.

4. Miami Marlins
Riley Ferrell, RHP (from Astros)- Ferrell was a dominant college closer at TCU and was consistently 93-97 with a plus slider there. He continued to pitch well in pro ball until a shoulder aneurysm derailed his 2016 season. Ferrell needed surgery that transplanted a vein from his groin into his shoulder in order to repair it, and the industry worried at the time that the injury threatened his career. His stuff is back and Ferrell is at least a big league ready middle reliever with a chance to be a set-up man.

5. Detroit Tigers
Reed Garrett, RHP (from Rangers)
Garrett’s velo spiked when he moved to the bullpen in 2017 and he now sits in the mid-90s, touches 99 and has two good breaking balls, including a curveball that has a plus-plus spin rate. He also has an average changeup. He’s a fair bet to carve out a bullpen role on a rebuilding Tigers team.

6. San Diego Padres
No Pick (full 40-man)

7. Cincinnati Reds
Connor Joe, 3B (from Dodgers) – The Reds will be Joe’s fourth team in two years as he has been shuttled around from Pittsburgh (which drafted him) to Atlanta (for Sean Rodriguez) to the Dodgers (for cash) during that time. Now 26, Joe spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. He’s a swing changer who began lifting the ball more once he joined Los Angeles. Joe is limited on defense to first and third base, and he’s not very good at third. He has seen a little bit of time in the outfield corners and realistically projects as a four-corners bench bat who provides patience and newfound in-game pop.

8. Texas Rangers (Traded to Royals)
Chris Ellis, RHP (from Cardinals)- Ellis, 26, spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. One could argue he has simply been lost amid St. Louis’ surfeit of upper-level pitching but his stuff — a low-90s sinker up to 94 and an average slider — did not compel us to include him in our Cardinals farm system write up. The Royals took Brad Keller, who has a similar kind of repertoire but better pure stuff, and got more out of him than I anticipated, so perhaps that will happen with Ellis.

9. San Francisco Giants
Travis Bergen, LHP (from Blue Jays)- Bergen looked like a lefty specialist in college but the Blue Jays have normalized the way he strides toward home, and his delivery has become more platoon-neutral in pro ball. He has a fringy, low-90s fastball but has two good secondaries in his upper-70s curveball and tumbling mid-80s change. So long as he pitches heavily off of those two offerings, he could lock down a bullpen role.

10. Toronto Blue Jays
Elvis Luciano, RHP (from Royals)- Luciano turns 19 in February and was the youngest player selected in the Rule 5 by a pretty wide margin. He was acquired by Kansas City in the trade that sent Jon Jay to Arizona. Though he’ll touch 96, Luciano’s fastball sits in the 90-94 range and he has scattershot command of it, especially late in starts. His frame is less projectable than the typical teenager so there may not be much more velo coming as he ages, but he has arm strength and an above-average breaking ball, so there’s a chance he makes the Jays roster in a relief role. He has no. 4 starter upside if his below-average changeup and command progress. If he makes the opening day roster, he’ll be the first player born in the 2000s to play in the big leagues.

11. New York Mets
Kyle Dowdy, RHP (from Indians)
Dowdy’s nomadic college career took him from Hawaii to Orange Coast College and finally to Houston, where he redshirted for a year due to injury. He was drafted by Detroit and then included as a throw-in in the Leonys Martin trade to Cleveland. He’s a reliever with a four-pitch mix headlined by an above-average curveball that pairs pretty well with a fastball that lives in the top part of the strike zone but doesn’t really spin. He also has a mid-80s slider and changeup that are fringy and exist to give hitters a little different look. He could stick in the Mets bullpen.

12. Minnesota Twins
No Pick (full 40-man)

13. Philadelphia Phillies (Traded to Orioles)
Drew Jackson, SS (from Dodgers)- Jackson is a plus runner with a plus-plus arm and average defensive hands and actions at shortstop. He’s not a great hitter but the Dodgers were at least able to cleanse Jackson of the Stanford swing and incorporate more lift into his cut. He had a 55% ground ball rate with Seattle in 2016 but that mark was 40% with Los Angeles last year. He also started seeing reps in center field last season. He projects as a multi-positional utility man.

14. Los Angeles Angels
No Pick (team passed)

15. Arizona Diamondbacks
Nick Green, RHP (from Yankees)- Green has the highest present ranking on The Board as a 45 FV, and we think he’s a near-ready backend starter. Arizona lacks pitching depth, so Green has a pretty solid chance to make the club out of spring training. He induces a lot of ground balls (65% GB% in 2018) with a low-90s sinker and also has a plus curveball.

16. Washington Nationals
No Pick (team passed)

17. Pittsburgh Pirates
No Pick (team passed)

18. St. Louis Cardinals
No Pick (full 40-man)

19. Seattle Mariners
Brandon Brennan, RHP (from Rockies)- Brennan is a 27-year-old reliever with a mid-90s sinker that will touch 97. He has an average slider that relies heavily on it’s velocity more than movement to be effective. The real bat-misser here is the changeup, which has more than 10 mph of separation from Brennan’s fastball and dying fade.

20. Atlanta Braves
No Pick (team passed)

21. Tampa Bay Rays
No Pick (full 40-man)

22. Colorado Rockies
No Pick (team passed)

23. Cleveland Indians
No Pick (team passed)

24. Los Angeles Dodgers
No Pick (full 40-man)

25. Chicago Cubs
No Pick (team passed)

26. Milwaukee Brewers
No Pick (team passed)

27. Oakland Athletics
No Pick (team passed)

28. New York Yankees
No Pick (full 40-man)

29. Houston Astros
No Pick (team passed)

30. Boston Red Sox
No Pick (team passed)

Second Round

San Francisco Giants
Drew Ferguson, OF- Ferguson is a hitterish tweener outfielder with a good combination of bat-to-ball skills and plate discipline. He has a very short, compact stroke that enables him to punch lines drives to his pull side and he’s tough to beat with velocity. Ferguson doesn’t really run well enough to play center field and lacks the power for a corner, so his likely ceiling is that of a bench outfielder.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 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.

Despite being an outstanding hitter, Fred McGriff had a hard time standing out. Though he arrived in the major leagues in the same year as Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro and was the first player to lead each league in home runs since the dead-ball era, he couldn’t match the career accomplishments of either of those two men, finishing short of round-numbered milestones with “only” 493 home runs and 2,490 hits. The obvious explanation — that he didn’t have the pharmaceutical help that others did — may be true, but it was just one of many ways in which McGriff’s strong performance didn’t garner as much attention as it merited.

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

That those distinctions carry some amount of ironic cachet today is evidence that McGriff might have been just too gosh-darn wholesome a star for an increasingly cynical age. On the other hand, it’s far better to be remembered for pointing a finger in the service of a timeless baseball fundamentals video than providing sworn testimony in front of Congress. But it hasn’t translated to support from Hall of Fame voters. McGriff debuted at 21.5% on the 2010 ballot, peaked at 23.9% two years later, and is now in his final year of eligibility, with little hope of escaping the ballot’s lower reaches. Unfortunately for him, advanced statistics haven’t helped his cause, but with the elections of four living ex-players in the last two years by the Era Committees, he may well face a more sympathetic voting body in the near future.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago Cubs. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. That can be found here.

Other Prospects of Note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.All This Pitching Depth

Erich Uelmen, RHP
Paul Richan, RHP
Matt Swarmer, RHP
Javier Assad, RHP
Michael Rucker, RHP
Bryan Hudson, LHP
Ryan Lawlor, LHP

Uelmen has the best velo of this group (a low-90s sinker) and his changeup might be enough to offset potential platoon issues caused by his low arm slot. He could be a 40 on this list at some point during the year. Richan throws a ton of strikes with five fringy pitches. Swarmer has a trick pitch changeup and might end up like Trevor Richards. Assad is a maxed-out righty with advanced pitchability for his age. His stuff is average. Rucker can really spin a curveball and has a weird delivery that helps him fool hitters; it might work in short bursts in the bigs. Hudson was a 6-foot-8 midwest projection arm who hasn’t really developed much, but he’s a ground ball machine. Lawlor was signed after a few Independent ball outings. He sits 90 mph but has a plus curveball.

Latin Americans with Upside

Rafael Morel, SS
Yonathan Perlaza, SS
Jose Lopez, CF
Joel Machado, LHP
Fabian Pertuz, SS
Luis Vazquez, SS
Fernando Kelli, CF

Morel signed for $800,000 in July. He has a plus arm, quick actions, a good frame, and his swing has good foundation. Perlaza is a stocky, try-hard spark plug who ignited the AZL Cubs lineup during the summer. His ceiling is probably that of a max-effort utility guy. Lopez signed for $1.5 million in July. He’s a 55 runner with a 55 arm, and he has bat speed but his swing needs an overhaul. Machado is athletic and has a great arm action. He was only sitting in the mid-80s the last time we got an update on him, but we think he’s going to throw pretty hard in the future, and he really gets off the mound well. Pertuz is a somewhat mature Colombian shortstop with some present pull pop and feel for the zone. Vazquez projects as a glove-only utility man. Kelli is a 70 runner with bat speed but everything else about him is fringy right now.

Bench Bats

Wladimir Galindo, 3B
Mark Zagunis, OF
Jhonny Pereda, C
D.J. Wilson, OF

Galindo has 6 power. He has below average contact skills and a below average glove. Zagunis is on the 40-man and projects as a perfectly fine fifth outfielder who can take a walk and pinch run. Pereda might get popped in the Rule 5 draft because he’s an okay catcher with an approach. Long term, he projects as a third catcher. Wilson’s speed has gone backwards and his bat hasn’t really developed, due at least in part to bad injury luck.

System Overview
Several positions players in this system had rough years due to assignments beyond their capabilities. Aramis Ademan, Jose Albertos, Chris Morel and Nelson Velazquez are all examples of this. Most of the college pitching the Cubs have drafted lately is developing as expected, which is to say that several of those players are already viable depth options if the big league staff has several injuries, but none of them have much upside. Overall, this system still appears to be below average due to recent trades that siphoned star power from the very top of the farm, but there’s enough here that the Cubs have the ammo to make some trades without totally gutting the system, so long as some of the younger guys on this list take a step forward next year.

I’d like to ask your permission to depart from my normal subject. Usually, I tell you what the law says on a given matter. It may not seem like it, but the law doesn’t really account for what I think. Some of what I tell you is what I think is right, and some of the law I tell you about is the sort of thing that, were I able, I would strike as immoral, or stupid, or both. But the law generally doesn’t care what Sheryl Ring thinks of it, and while I do, in some of my cases, advocate for changes in the law, I’m not going to do that here.

This time, with your permission, I’m going to talk about feelings. My feelings. About why I love baseball. About why I have always loved baseball. And about how it impacts me when baseball doesn’t quite love me back. This piece is about the human cost of major league baseball teams employing alleged domestic abusers. This isn’t about policy; what MLB should do about the issue, I will leave for another day. This is about my stakes.

At its best, baseball can transport us to the place of hopes and dreams, where impossibly high barriers no longer seem insurmountable and mortal humans become giants. Baseball writing can do much the same, done well. Earlier this year, in a piece that still resonates with me, Meg Rowley said this:

Communities are home to all kinds of folks engaged in different bits of sin and kindness, all experiencing different stakes. We’re knit together by our sins and our kindnesses, sometimes quite uncomfortably. One such sin is the everyday kind, the sort of casual meanness and lack of care we all wade through all the time. It’s a smaller kind, but we still find ourselves altered by it.

It’s a passage I’ve found myself reflecting on this week after the Cubs made the decision to tender troubled and suspended shortstop Addison Russell a contract; earlier in the offseason, it seemed as if Russell wouldn’t be back with the team in 2019. Following the decision, both Russell and the Cubs’ President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein released statements to explain their decisions. To define the path forward. Russell spoke of being responsible for his actions, using words like “therapy” and “progress.” Epstein spoke of accountability, and partnership, with Russell and organizations committed to domestic violence prevention. They spoke of the future. But the discussion left me unsettled. And as I thought about it, I came back to Meg’s piece.

That was the everyday sin, the sin of disrespect and unfeeling. It is what makes our community less than perfect and less than perfectly welcoming. It is troubling, this lack of care.

I fell in love with baseball when I was a little girl. But back then, it wasn’t from watching games. I didn’t watch my first baseball game until the Yankees’ short-lived 1995 playoff run. The next year was when I came out to my mother for the first time. My mother didn’t want a trans daughter, and so she hid me away. I became the family secret, kept in my room for days at a time and brought out at night, after my sisters were asleep, for my mother to try the latest “de-transing” technique she had learned. Sometimes they were physical. Sometimes they were worse. She’d hit me, or have my father hold me down whilst she held a towel over my head and poured vinegar on it – yes, that is what we now call “waterboarding.” She chose vinegar because the fumes made it hard to breathe. One of my mother’s favorite games was to have my father hit me with a belt. But not by starting off that way; that wasn’t her style. She would hold me down at the kitchen table, and start by hitting the table with the belt. And then again, a little closer. Again, a little closer. Again, a little closer. I’d flinch, each time, as the belt drew closer, until the impact finally came.

Afterwards, confined to my room again in the early hours of the morning, my father would sneak in after my mother was sleeping. He’d regale me with stories about the game the Yankees had played the previous day, telling me about pitcher’s duels and mammoth home runs. And he’d always end the same way: “Don’t tell your mother.”

I became a Yankees fan because of my father – because of what those stories did for me. As the years passed, my father’s stories became my lifeline. He would, on occasion, talk my mother into letting me watch a baseball game on television. Usually, he would slip me box scores without her knowing, or leave the newspaper’s baseball pages underneath my pillow. And when he persuaded my mother to let me go outside, I would spend hours with a yard-sale softball bat and a tennis ball, throwing up a ball and hitting it, over and over again, pretending I was the first woman on the Yankees.

I started to write my own stories and tell them to myself, about players I’d read about in the newspaper clippings my father left for me. When I was 13, my father arranged for me to help Bob Socci, the play-by-play announcer for the local minor league team, the Frederick Keys (the Orioles’ High-A affiliate), with his radio broadcast. Bob let me announce a couple of innings, which was the high point of my childhood. (My father convinced my mother to allow this by agreeing that my birthday would thereafter go unacknowledged.) I announced the game like it was another of my stories. I announced that game over and over to myself in the months that followed.

When I was 16, broken from years of abuse, I became actively suicidal. I went to my mother and begged her for help. She told me she hoped I did kill myself, because then she would be rid of her family shame. And then she told me to be sure I left no marks on my body, because it would make her look bad at my funeral. She recommended that I hang myself, because she could hide the marks with a collared shirt. It was in that moment that I realized that if I was going to be saved, I would have to save myself. I did it by telling myself a different baseball story every day, over and over. I made teams, spent hours projecting fictional triple-slash lines and standings, doing all the math by hand. That was my life between the ages of 8 and 16, when I started college. There was no school, there was no outside world. But there were the stories.

So when the Yankees acquired Aroldis Chapman — who was the first player suspended under baseball’s domestic violence policy — when they acquired him not once, but twice, it felt, oddly, like a personal betrayal. It felt, as Meg so aptly stated when describing our community’s sins, like disrespect and unfeeling. I felt unwelcome. The Yankees had gone from an escape from my pain to a reminder of the same. It felt as if the Yankees didn’t care about that pain, or the pain of other survivors. I don’t mean to compare myself to Chapman’s victim, nor to claim that our experiences, what we went through, are the same. But I do know what it’s like to have a member of your family inflict physical pain. I know what it’s like to have a family member try to kill you, on purpose. I know what it’s like to be smaller, weaker, unable to fight back except by simply staying alive. I know what it’s like to want to end it all, and have a family member hate you so completely that she openly wished for you to die.

There are an untold number of Cubs fans who understand the pain I’m talking about. It’s the type of pain that only comes from having a spouse, a domestic partner, a loved one, a parent, treat you like you are unworthy of love and deserve nothing, nothing but that pain and hardship. There’s something Melisa Reidy-Russell, Addison Russell’s ex-wife, wrote on her Instagram that captures this feeling.

But, somehow he could ALWAYS find a way to make me feel like it happened because of me, or because I wasn’t listening to him. It was ALWAYS my fault – You don’t realize it, but its a sick mind game that you get sucked into – All your source of happiness somehow is controlled by that one person, depending on how they decide to treat you on a daily basis. Feeling the need of affirmation from him became the main source of how I felt happiness. Always trying to please him to show him I was good enough, strong enough, worthy enough… it consumed me & before I realized it, I was so far gone from the person I used to be.

She might as well have been describing how I felt as a little girl about my mother. It is the feeling an abuser creates in their victim. Bruises heal, and scars fade. The emotional pain can last a lifetime. And, like an old wound that aches when it rains, it crops up every so often. The Cubs’ decision to retain Russell did that for me.

It’s easy to forget sometimes, but there’s a human side to baseball. Not just that players are human beings – they are, of course – but also that we, the fans, are human. We don’t watch baseball because we have to. We watch baseball because it brings us joy. It brings us happiness. It mimics life, yes, but it’s also an escape from that life. Baseball doesn’t owe Addison Russell a job. But it does owe us, the fans, a game that takes us away from our pain and into a better world, one where everything is possible, even 100-mile per hour fastballs and frisbee sliders. Keeping Addison Russell elevates the push to create the perfect baseball team over the perfect baseball experience.

When I was a little girl, baseball loved me when no one else did. For that, I will forever love baseball back. But I wonder sometimes if baseball still loves me. It’s a difficult feeling. It’s a hard question to ask. I’d like to be able to stop asking it. Russell and Chapman, Roberto Osuna and Derek Norris – they remove me from the stories. They turn the stories dark, and remind me of the monsters that can people them. I’d like to have my stories back. But more than that, I’d like to have baseball think my stories matter.

Some may say it was choking. Some may say it’s a new curse. Some may even say it was due to only scoring two runs in 22 innings of two must-win games against the Brewers and Rockies. However it happened, the Cubs were the first team dispatched of the ten playoff teams, baseball’s answer to the point-of-view character in the first chapter of a George RR Martin book.

The Setup

This may be a bit of obscure trivia, but the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016, a matchup against the Cleveland Indians that determined which team could waste enough cheap beer to fill a very disappointing swimming pool.

Following up on a World Series championship is always a bit of a tricky problem to approach for a team. Since new seasons start every year–a very fortunate fact for those of us employed as baseball writers–there’s no final happy ending in which everyone walks off into the sunset. Even championship teams have difficult decisions to make, often centered around how much you’re willing to tinker with a winning roster while also keeping the team’s core more-or-less together.

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