Kendall Graveman surprised me with something he said during the ALCS. Talking with the 30-year-old, then-Houston Astros reliever, I learned that it was only recently that he truly learned a breaking ball. As the now-free agent put it, “I didn’t throw one forever, really. I didn’t know how to spin it.”
He spun a lot of good ones during the 2021 season. Throwing more breakers than at any point in his career, Graveman had 61 strikeouts and allowed just 35 hits in 53 relief appearances comprising 56 innings. Toeing the rubber for both the Seattle Mariners and the Astros — he switched teams shortly before the July trade deadline — he logged a 1.77 ERA and a 3.19 FIP. Opponents slashed just .130/.193/.196 against the right-hander’s slider.
Graveman signed a free agent deal with the Mariners in November 2019, six-plus after entering pro ball as Toronto’s eighth-round pick out of Mississippi State University. Why did it take him so long to master the intricacies of such an important facet of his craft?
“Some pitching coaches have a very good understanding of how to teach something, and I ran into some people over in Seattle who taught me how to throw a breaking ball,” said Graveman. “Since when I was young, I would cup out of the hand and that would get me on the outside and not creating good spin. That’s as opposed to throwing it like a fastball. We started taking it out like a fastball and letting the wrist be loose, and started seeing positive signs with the spin.”
The General Manager Meetings, which are taking place this week in Carlsbad, California, are generating this offseason’s first free-agent rumors, but here’s a little advice for you: Don’t read too much into this, at least not yet. I’m coming to you from a position of experience, as I used to attend these meetings when I worked for the Astros, with the specific task of organizing, scheduling and frequently conducting tête-à-têtes with agents, and they mean very little.
I’ve spent numerous November days and nights at various bougie resorts in Arizona and California, and while I’d love to tell you exactly what happens at the GM Meetings, I’m not in a position to do that. There are a number of actual meetings that occur, discussing arbitration, overall finances of the game, and the labor situation, but other than various social events with open bars and yummy snacks, along with the occasional informal roundtable to brainstorm on rules and processes, I never attended any of them. I had a very different assignment, but quite frankly, meeting with agents is a hell of a lot more fun than sitting in a ballroom staring at Power Point slides presented by the commissioner’s office.
The process begins in the weeks leading up to the meetings, as teams spend their Septembers and Octobers preparing for the off-season, sometimes in parallel with the work that is involved for a team that’s in the playoffs. Free agents, both real and potential (based on non-obvious option/opt-out decisions), are lined up and prioritized. Player agents are frequently just known, and if not, are accessed via MLB’s internal eBIS system. The week before is spent drawing up a schedule for your team during the meetings themselves. Texts are sent and times are set throughout the week for what will be the first sit-downs of the offseason. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
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 Bainescan get elected by a 16-member committee, so can Wills, who at least left a bigger mark on baseball history. We’ll see.
The period between the end of the World Series and the official start of free agency is usually uneventful, with teams taking care of procedural moves to get their rosters ready for the long offseason. That wasn’t the case for the Reds. On the first day of the offseason, the team traded Tucker Barnhart to the Tigers for infield prospect Nick Quintana. A day later, Nick Castellanos exercised his opt-out clause, forgoing two more years in Cincinnati and $34 million in total salary to test the market. A few days later, the Cubs announced they had claimed a surprisingly available Wade Miley off waivers. It was a pretty eventful few days for the Reds, and they now enter the offseason with a lot more question marks hanging over their roster than they had before the Fall Classic’s conclusion.
All three of these moves have significant implications for the Reds’ payroll in 2022. In a media session after the Barnhart trade last Wednesday, Reds general manager Nick Krall explained the reasoning behind that move: “Going into 2022, we must align our payroll to our resources and continue focusing on scouting and developing young talent from within our system.” That same rationale explains why Miley was so freely available to the league on waivers. While Castellanos opting out of his two remaining years with the club was unsurprising after his phenomenal 2021, his $17 million salary next year is now off the books, and both Barnhart and Miley held club options for next season — $7.5 million for the former and $10 million for the latter.
Even though those comments from Krall are couched in business speak, it’s not hard to understand the direction the Reds are headed this offseason. After a hefty increase in payroll from just over $100 million in 2018 to a non-pro-rated $149 million in ’20, the Reds look like they’re about to cut spending for the second season in a row. Even with Castellanos, Barnhart, and Miley off the roster, their estimated payroll for 2022 currently comes out to $131 million, $10 million over their final payroll figure for this season and just $17 million below the franchise high-water mark from 2020.
Given that payroll number and their comments, the Reds probably don’t have much room to add any players to address the numerous holes on their roster. They currently have just over $70 million in salary committed to five players in 2022: Joey Votto ($25MM), Mike Moustakas ($16MM), Sonny Gray ($10.7MM), Eugenio Suárez ($11.3MM), and Shogo Akiyama ($8MM). And that doesn’t take into account the 10 players due to receive a raise in salary arbitration this offseason. It’s likely they’ll try to move Moustakas, Gray, or another one of their high-priced players to free up further salary space. But this isn’t a case of addition by subtraction; the Reds are taking steps to field a team that constitutes a significant step back from the competitive rosters from the last two seasons. Read the rest of this entry »
Mark Vientos profiles as a middle-of-the-order basher in a big-league lineup. Currently the No. 5 prospect in the New York Mets system, the 6-foot-4, 205-pound third baseman is coming off a season where he slashed .281/.352/.581 and hit 25 home runs in just 349 plate appearances between Double-A Binghamton and Triple-A Syracuse. One of the youngest players in his draft class when he was taken 59th overall in 2017 out of Plantation, Florida’s American Heritage High School, the right-handed hitting corner infielder put up those numbers at 21 years of age.
Vientos discussed his approach and early-career development prior to the end of the minor-league campaign.
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David Laurila: How would you describe yourself as a hitter?
Mark Vientos: “I like to consider myself an all-around type of hitter. A lot of people consider me just a power threat, but I feel like I can hit for average and power. As time goes on, and as I mature at the plate, I think my patience and discipline is going to be a lot better. I’m learning how they’re pitching me at these levels. Hopefully soon I’ll be at the major-league level and will be figuring out how they pitch me there.
“How teams pitch you differs, too. How the Red Sox [affiliate] pitches you might differ from how the Blue Jays pitch you. It’s about recognizing those things, but for the most part I’m looking for a fastball, because that’s the best pitch I could hit. I handle the fastball well.”
Laurila: Your writeup in this year’s Baseball America Prospect Handbook said that while you can square up most fastballs, you struggle with spin from right-handers. To what extent is that true? Read the rest of this entry »
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):
Revised HOF Era Committee Schedule
Year
Committee(s)
2017
Today’s Game (1988-present)
2018
Modern Baseball (1970-1987)
2019
Today’s Game (1988-present)
2020
Modern Baseball (1970-1987)
2021
None
2022
Golden Days (1950-1969) and Early Baseball (to 1949)
Welcome to perhaps the most uncertain edition of FanGraphs’ annual top-50 free-agent rankings. In past years, luminaries like Dave Cameron, Kiley McDaniel, and Craig Edwards have helmed this exercise. This year, I’ve enlisted a little help from my friends to fill their shoes.
Below, I’ve ranked the top 50 free agents and provided contract estimates for each of them. For the top 25 players, I’ve also written some short commentary, alternately about their potential suitors and what makes them enticing. Devan Fink, Brendan Gawlowski, Kevin Goldstein, Jay Jaffe, Eric Longenhagen, Dan Szymborski, and Jon Tayler have provided their own breakdowns for each player in the top 50 (with me chipping in for a few guys at the end), focusing mainly on the players themselves rather than their market.
Players are ranked in the order that I prefer them. That’s often the same as ranking them in contract order, but not always. In some cases, I’d prefer a player who I expect will get less money over one who stands to make more. I’ll generally make note of that in the accompanying comment, but just to reiterate, the list isn’t exclusively ordered by descending average annual value, or total dollars, or anything of that sort. All dollar amounts are estimated guarantees. Plenty of contracts in the bottom half of this list could end up with team options tacked on, but those aren’t included in these estimates. Some players in the top 10 could end up with opt outs, which also aren’t included. Unless otherwise noted, all projections are Steamer 2022 projections. The listed ages indicate the age-season the player is about to play.
We’ve made a note of which players received a Qualifying Offer, which is worth $18.4 million this year. Teams had five days after the World Series to make those offers, after which time players have 10 days to accept or decline. The uncertain nature of this year’s collective bargaining agreement makes predicting whether players will accept Qualifying Offers more difficult than usual. As a refresher, if a player receives and declines a qualifying offer, the team that eventually signs them forfeits a draft pick, while the team that made the offer gains one. Which draft picks change hands depends on the circumstances of both teams, as well as the total dollar value of the contract signed. Read the rest of this entry »
In his own words, Ivan Johnson is “just a normal 23-year-old guy with some tools… who is going to take it as far as I can go.” It’s a humble self-assessment. Currently the No. 14 prospect in the Cincinnati Reds system, the switch-hitting middle infielder is coming off a strong season split between Low-A Daytona and High-A Dayton. A fourth-round pick in the 2019 draft out of Chipola College, Johnson put up an identical 125 wRC+ at both levels.
The Atlanta native’s initial collegiate experience after matriculating from Kennesaw Mountain High School was brief. Originally at the University of Georgia, Johnson transferred to Chipola for his sophomore year. Talent-level wasn’t a major factor.
“It was circumstantial more than anything,” explained Johnson, who is playing with the Arizona Fall League’s Surprise Saguaros. “Our shortstop [Cam Shepherd] was coming off a Freshman All-America year, so I would have had to move over to second where we had an older guy [LJ Talley] who was more used to what the SEC was all about. So I wouldn’t say I wasn’t ready. I think I kind of showed that in my JUCO year.”
Johnson put up a 1.078 OPS at Chipola, impressing scouts not only with his production and plus athleticism, but also with the fact that he swings from both sides. That he does so is product of advice he received at young age. Told by “some older baseball minds” that it would advantageous once he began facing more-mature pitchers, the natural right-handed hitter decided “to just run with it.” 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…
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.
