This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. 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.

In a span of just over 10 years, Thurman Munson hit just about every high note a ballplayer could. A first-round draft pick in 1968, he made his major league debut the following summer, and won AL Rookie of the Year honors in 1970. He made his first of seven All-Star teams in 1971, won the first of three Gold Gloves in ’74, and claimed AL MVP honors in ’76 while helping the Yankees to their first pennant in 12 years. They lost that year’s World Series to the Reds, but won back-to-back championships over the Dodgers in 1977 and ’78. Through it all, Munson stood out as an exceptional two-way player, a natural leader and a fiery competitor. He was tough and durable, with a gruff disposition towards the media and certain teammates, but a soft underbelly. As Gabe Paul, the Yankees’ general manager from 1973-77, said of him, “Thurman Munson is a nice guy who doesn’t want anybody to know it.”

Less than a year after the Yankees won the 1978 World Series, it was over — not just Munson’s stellar career but his life. Munson had taken up flying in the spring of 1978, earning his pilot’s license and flying home to his wife and three children in Canton, Ohio on his off days. On August 2, 1979, while practicing takeoffs and landings at the the Canton-Akron airport, Munson crashed his Cessna Citation twin engine jet — which he had purchased less than a month prior — 870 feet short of the runway after approaching at too steep an angle. His two passengers, one of them a flight instructor, escaped, but Munson, who was wearing his safety belt but not his shoulder harness, was paralyzed from the neck down. The wreckage was engulfed in flames before he could be rescued. He was less than two months past his 32nd birthday.

Unlike Roberto Clemente in 1973 and Roy Halladay in 2019, Munson was not posthumously elected to the Hall of Fame at the first opportunity. In fact, he never came close, debuting on the 1981 ballot (via a rule that waived the otherwise-mandatory five-year waiting period, adopted in the wake of Clemente’s death) with 15.5% of the vote and lingering for the full 15 years without again reaching 10%. His candidacy was further ignored when he was on the ballots of the expanded Veterans Committee in 2003, ’05, and ’07, but like Lou Whitaker and Dwight Evans, he’s finally getting his chance this year via the smaller committee format. His career is ripe for reevaluation. While his counting stats are understandably short given his premature death, his WAR totals — specifically his number eight ranking in seven-year peak and his number 12 ranking in JAWS — suggest that he would be a good fit for Cooperstown, particularly at an underrepresented position. Read the rest of this entry »

In part four of a six-part series — the AL East, AL Central, and AL West pieces have been published — I’ll be highlighting each team’s most notable free agents and how it could fill the resulting void on the roster. A player’s rank on our recently released Top 50 Free Agents list, along with Kiley McDaniel’s contract estimates from that exercise, are listed where relevant. In some cases, the team already has a capable replacement ready to step in. In others, it’s clear the team will either attempt to re-sign their player or look to the trade or free agent markets for help. The remaining cases are somewhere in between, with in-house candidates who might be the answer, but aren’t such obvious everyday players to keep the team from shopping around for better options.

Here’s a look at the National League East.

Atlanta Braves | Depth Chart | Payroll

Josh Donaldson, 3B
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 4
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 3 years, $71M

The Braves didn’t waste much time identifying Donaldson as their preferred third baseman for 2019 and inked him to a one-year, $23 million deal last November. A year later, Austin Riley is ready to step in at the hot corner while Donaldson, who will turn 34 next month, is expected to land a multi-year deal in the range of $20-$25 million per season.

As great a fit as he is in Atlanta, Donaldson will likely get better offers elsewhere with the Braves expected to prioritize starting pitching and catching. That doesn’t rule out a return, especially if the team can fill their biggest needs without breaking the bank. Read the rest of this entry »

Nobody in the baseball community expressed surprise when Yordan Alvarez took home the American League Rookie of the Year award on Monday. After all, Alvarez hit like Mike Trout over 369 plate appearances, finishing second in the majors in wRC+ among those with at least 300 trips to the plate. His 3.8 WAR led all AL rookies by a wide margin; second-place John Means was nearly an entire win behind.

But if you had a time machine and went back to the start of the 2019 season, people would undoubtedly be befuddled to learn that Alvarez claimed the ROY hardware. Rather, you might have expected the honor to go to the best hitting prospect in recent memory: Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

At the beginning of the season, Guerrero seemed poised to be the Rookie of the Year. As Eric and Kiley wrote in February, “He should […] immediately become one of the game’s most exciting, productive hitters. He is the cornerstone of the Blue Jays franchise, and perhaps a cornerstone of our sport.” Expectations were through the roof; here at FanGraphs, 20 of the 32 writers who voted in our preseason awards predictions had Guerrero winning the award. Alvarez was not on our collective radar.

In a vacuum, Guerrero did not have a bad season. Not every 20-year-old is Juan Soto, and for Guerrero to hit .272/.339/.433 with a 105 wRC+ at this age is still impressive. Since 2000, there have only been 25 individual position-player seasons with at least 200 plate appearances taken by a player aged 20 or younger. Guerrero’s wRC+ ranks 15th. Granted, there is survivorship bias here, as the only players to even be in the majors by age 20 are those who are supremely talented. But even among those supremely talented youngsters, Guerrero’s bat was still in the middle of the pack. Again, we’re reminded of expectations versus reality. We expected Guerrero to be the best, and when he wasn’t, it came as a bit of a surprise. On the whole, however, he wasn’t bad. Read the rest of this entry »

From 2015-18, the Cincinnati Reds pitching staff was an unmitigated disaster. Their rotation posted the lowest WAR in baseball over that span, and so did their bullpen. Following the 2018 season, there were signs that relievers were coming along, but the rotation was still a tire fire. Luis Castillo, far and away the best arm on the team, was suddenly having trouble keeping the ball in the yard. The second-most valuable pitcher on the staff was Matt Harvey, who was about to leave in free agency with seemingly little fight from the front office. The organization entered yet another winter with the rotation seemingly a gaping hole and with no quick fix in sight.

And yet quickly fix it they did. The team traded for three starting pitchers in the offseason, and even more importantly, they hired Derek Johnson away from Milwaukee to take over as pitching coach. In one season, they went from 27th in the majors in pitching WAR to ninth, and they did so without the benefit of a prospect bursting onto the scene and excelling. It was nothing short of a stunning turnaround, one that should have launched the team into contention. If only the lineup had hit. Unfortunately for the Reds, an offense that had hovered around the middle of the pack the previous two years dropped to 25th in baseball in wRC+ in 2019. Like the pitching staff a year ago, the lineup is riddled with holes. Is the organization capable of another quick turnaround?

In 2019, the Reds ranked in the bottom third of baseball in walk rate, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage in 2019. Statcast paints an even worse picture — no team in the majors had a lower average exit velocity, and only the Mariners had a worse hard-hit rate. Cincinnati was fifth-worst in baseball in expected slugging and seventh-worst in expected wOBA. The Reds’ offense was largely punchless throughout the season, and without a couple of hitters going on power tears late in the year, it could have looked much worse. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox have had a sad start to the offseason, even by the standards of baseball’s recent payroll doomsaying. While some teams have intimated that they won’t increase payroll, the Sox have gone further; owner John Henry announced that they plan on dropping below the luxury tax threshold for 2020, setting the tone for a strange winter where cutting salary might matter more than the eventual product on the field.

Viewed through that lens, it’s somehow a bad development when one of the best hitters in baseball chooses to stay on your team. J.D. Martinez was the 16th-best qualified hitter by wRC+ last year, and that was a down year. He elected not to opt out of his current contract, and is slated to make $23.75 million next season — a steal if he hits his Steamer projection, and a useful piece for a team with no other DH options. And yet, when you set artificial salary constraints on yourself, things tend to snowball.

With Martinez in the fold, things took an even weirder turn. The offseason rumor mill seems increasingly convinced that the Sox will offload Mookie Betts to save the last year of his salary and avoid an appropriately costly extension, reaping some prospects in return and cutting payroll in the bargain. I’ll attempt to quantify what this might do to the team, but let me say upfront: this seems like an obviously bad choice to me. Dan Shaughnessy hit pieces aside, Betts is probably the best non-Trout player in baseball. You don’t trade someone like that and take a step forward.

But okay, fine, let’s go through the math of trading Betts. We’ll do the grim calculus of turning player contracts into cash amounts first: if you value a win on the free market at $8 million, Betts’ 6.6 WAR projection is worth $52.8 million. If Betts earns his projected arbitration salary of $27.7 million, that works out to $25 million in surplus value. That sounds reductive, and it is. Mookie Betts isn’t an asset worth $25 million to the Red Sox; he’s one of the best players in baseball, and also a great bowler in his spare time. But if we’re doing the math, that’s the starting point. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2019, Jake Odorizzi went from being a promising middle of the rotation arm to one of the best starting pitchers in baseball. With a career-best 3.36 FIP and a nearly 5% jump in his strikeout rate, he was able to post the highest WAR (4.3) of his six-plus seasons in the major leagues. His pitching arsenal, spearheaded by improvements to his four-seam fastball, became as effective as it’s ever been and transformed Odorizzi into a front-line starter.

Throughout his career, Odorizzi’s fastball has been somewhat pedestrian. From 2016 to 2018, it seemed to get worse; his fastball velocity dipped a little each year, as it gradually dropped more than 1 mph. In fact, almost all of his pitches got slower over that span. In an interview with our own David Laurila, Odorizzi confessed he was dealing with some mechanical issues that could have stemmed from past health problems.

But in 2019, Odorizzi’s four-seamer never dipped below 90 mph; the aforementioned drop in his fastball velocity was reversed, with the right-hander again sitting closer to the mid-90s, and for just the third season in his major league career, the pitch maxed out at over 95 mph.

That extra tick in velocity might not seem like a lot, but moving from the 90-92 mph range to 93-95 mph can make a big difference. In 2019, the league-average wOBA on 90-92 mph four-seamers was .398. Moving up to 93-95 mph (Odorizzi’s 2019 range) drops that figure 46 points to .352; Odorizzi saw an improvement on his four-seamer wOBA from a .301 to .245. Read the rest of this entry »

In his career, Adam Wainwright has started 330 games, pitched in 410, and thrown 2209 and a third innings, including the postseason. Every one of those games has been in a St. Louis Cardinals uniform, and for at least one more season, his 16th season in the majors, the 38-year-old will pitch for the redbirds. The Cardinals announced the news, though has of this writing, terms have not been disclosed.

Update: Ken Rosenthal is reporting the deal is for $5 million guaranteed with $5 million in potential incentives. The guarantee looks to be a bit of a bargain given Wainwright’s 2019 and is under both Kiley McDaniel and the crowd’s estimates.

Wainwright turned 38 years old near the end of August, but that didn’t stop him from putting up a solid regular season campaign with an even better postseason. He ranked 29th on our list of Top 50 Free Agents, with Kiley McDaniel and the crowd expecting a one-year deal worth between $8 million and $10 million. I wrote the blurb that accompanied those predictions, and noted that Wainwright was in line for a much better deal than the one he had to settle for a year ago:

Heading into last offseason, Adam Wainwright couldn’t have been thrilled to find himself at a point in his career where he had to accept a contract with a low guaranteed salary and a ton of incentives based on games started, but he looks to be in much better shape after meeting those incentives in 2019. The 38-year-old started 30 games and put up a league average FIP and ERA. He was even better in the postseason, with 19 strikeouts in 16 and two-thirds innings to go along with just three walks and three runs. His fastball sits at just 90 mph, but heavy use of his signature curve keeps hitters off balance. It’s difficult to envision Wainwright and the Cardinals separating after 15 seasons, and after the year he just had, his guarantee should be a bit higher than the $2 million he got last winter.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the third of a six-part series — you can see the AL East here and the AL Central here — I’ll be highlighting each team’s most notable free agents and how it could fill the resulting void on the roster. A player’s rank on our recently released Top 50 Free Agents list, along with Kiley McDaniel’s contract estimates from that exercise, are listed where relevant. In some cases, the team already has a capable replacement ready to step in. In others, it’s clear the team will either attempt to re-sign their player or look to the trade or free agent markets for help. The remaining cases are somewhere in between, with in-house candidates who might be the answer, but aren’t such obvious everyday players to keep the team from shopping around for better options.

Here’s a look at the American League West.

Houston Astros | Depth Chart | Payroll

Gerrit Cole, SP
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 1
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 7 years, $242M

Wade Miley, SP
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 32
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 1 year, $9M

It would be impossible to replace Cole, who might just be the best pitcher on the planet right now. With a projected payroll that is currently above $200 million for next season, the Astros do not appear to be in a strong position to re-sign the 29-year-old. But that doesn’t put them in desperation mode, by any means.

The return of Lance McCullers Jr., who missed all of 2019 recovering from Tommy John surgery, will help to offset the potential loss of Cole and give the Astros a formidable trio to lead their rotation along with Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke. Pitching depth is also strong with Jose Urquidy in line for a rotation spot and several others capable of helping out in 2020. But considering that Verlander and Greinke will be 37 and 36, respectively, on Opening Day, and McCullers hasn’t pitched in a game since last October, they aren’t expected to stand pat this offseason. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. It is adapted from a longer version included in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Ted Simmons was one of baseball’s true iconoclasts. He denounced the Vietnam War, wore his hair long, nearly became a test case for the Reserve Clause, and was as conversant in 18th century fireplace utensils (yes, really) as he was the tools of ignorance and the curveballs of opposing pitchers. Oh, and he could switch-hit well enough to rank among the position’s best offensively. With eight All-Star appearances, he was hardly unheralded, but Simmons nonetheless tended to get lost among the bounty of great catchers from the 1970s. Seven of the top 16 in the JAWS rankings hail from that decade, including three of the top four, namely Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, and Carlton Fisk. Simmons wasn’t quite their equal, but he ranks 10th, just ahead of Modern Baseball ballot-mate Thurman Munson (12th), with Gene Tenace (13th) and Bill Freehan (16th) not far behind.

Such a concentration of top-tier players at a single position in a given time period is hardly unprecedented, even among those already enshrined. Using the Hall’s own definition of activity — at least one game played in a given season — five enshrined catchers were active every year from 1929-37 except ’30. Every other position except third base (which like catcher, has just 15 enshrinees, the lowest at any position besides relievers) has stretches with six or seven active players, with the seven left fielders from 1975-76 the largest of the recent concentrations. Read the rest of this entry »

If you watched any baseball at all this postseason, the topic of using starters as relievers probably came up. The Nationals used the tactic frequently, and the Cardinals, Dodgers, Braves, Yankees, Twins, Astros, and A’s all had at least one pitcher who was primarily a starter appear in relief. And when those pitchers came in, the same concern was always raised. “Hey,” the concern roughly goes, “this team should put the starter in at the beginning of the inning to put him in the best position to succeed.”

Teams mostly stick to this advice. But I’ve never been one to take rules like this for granted. After all, plenty of other baseball aphorisms turned out to be nothing but high-minded nonsense. Bat your best hitter third. Bunt runners into scoring position. Focus on batting average. The list goes on.

Some of those are nonsense. But there’s a kernel of logic to using only starters with a clean start to an inning. Starters are creatures of habit, with complex pre-game routines designed to get them to peak readiness just in time for the start of a game. Take them out of this environment, ask them to get ready on a moment’s notice, and they might not be completely up to speed when they step on the mound.

It’s not that starters can’t handle having runners on base, in other words. After all, starters pitch with runners on base all the time. Instead, the issue is that with runners on base, the first batter a pitcher faces is sure to be important. Could it be that starters simply aren’t throwing at 100% for the first batter they face when they’re coming into the game in relief?

To test this theory out, I looked at every instance of a starter pitching in relief in the playoffs over the last five years. It’s inherently a limited sample, but starters pitch in relief in the regular season in very different circumstances, and I deemed them different enough that the playoff data would be more relevant. I bundled mid-inning appearances and start-of-inning appearances together; after all, my theory is that insufficient warmups cause pitchers to underperform against the first batter, regardless of the base/out state. Read the rest of this entry »