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, and was expanded for inclusion in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. 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.
All Edgar Martinez did was hit — the statement is almost entirely true in both the literal and figurative sense. Even after adjusting for his high-scoring surroundings, Martinez could flat-out rake. A high-average, high-on-base percentage hitting machine with plenty of power, his numbers place him among the top 30 or 40 hitters of all time even after adjusting for the high-offense era. Martinez played a key role in putting the Mariners on the map as an AL West powerhouse, emerging as a folk hero to a fan base that watched Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, and Alex Rodriguez lead the franchise’s charge to relevancy, then skip town for more lucrative deals. But while Griffey and Rodriguez were two-way stars at key up-the-middle positions and Johnson a flamethrowing ace, Martinez spent the bulk of his career as a designated hitter. In that capacity, he merely put a claim on being the best one in baseball history.
More than 40 years after it was introduced — in the most significant rule change since the AL adopted the foul strike rule in 1903 — the DH continues to rankle purists who would rather watch pitchers risk injury as they ineptly flail away (Bartolo Colonexcepted). In 2004, Paul Molitor became the first player elected to the Hall after spending the plurality of his career (44% of his plate appearances) as a DH, while a decade later, Frank Thomas became the first elected after spending the majority of his career (57% of his PA) there. By comparison, Martinez took 72% of his plate appearances as a DH, while David Ortiz — whose 2016 victory lap spurred plenty of Hall of Fame discussion — took 88%.
Last month, we talked about the potential conflicts of interest raised by the New York Mets hiring former CAA super agent Brodie Van Wagenen, who used to represent several high-profile Mets, as their new General Manager. Since then, we’ve gained additional information regarding the terms of Van Wagenen’s contract and how he and the Mets have attempted to address those conflict of interest concerns.
It’s worth noting that at the outset, the Mets didn’t offer a terribly specific answer to the question of how Van Wagenen had avoided breaching the fiduciary duty he owed to clients like Jacob deGrom and Yoenis Cespedes (among several others) when he accepted the Mets’ GM job. The day after my initial piece on the subject, John Delcos noted for Forbes that reporters asked Van Wagenen about the conflict of interest.
That was the subject of one of the first questions asked of him this afternoon, and before Van Wagenen could answer, Wilpon interrupted and said he had spoken with the commissioner’s office and Major League Players Association chief Tony Clark, adding, “We have provisions in Brodie’s contract to deal with any conflicts of interest.”
What those provisions are, neither Wilpon nor Van Wagenen would say. Van Wagenen, who, as expected, appeared polished and highly professional, said, ‘The goals between players and management are more in line than people think.'”
That answer doesn’t adequately address the issues attendant with Van Wagenen’s hiring. As I explained on Flipping Bats and Winning Games, agents have knowledge teams don’t, ranging from players’ medical conditions to their desired salaries. And even if players and management were to have similar goals, they’re still adverse negotiating parties. When we found out more about the contractual provisions that addressed conflicts, the details also left something to be desired. Per the New York Post:
Though he is no longer their agent, the 44-year-old is privy to information regarding his former clients that could give the Mets an advantage over a player. And that could also include negotiations for a long-term deal, because Van Wagenen might know their final asking price.
“We didn’t discuss specifics on any one player like that,’’ Wilpon said of deGrom’s future. “I think [deGrom] is to be determined and Brodie is going to have to recuse himself from some of those discussions. He will have to set an overall tone for the organization, which way he wants us to go, and then we’ll have to have some others be responsible for doing the actual contract.”
There are two problems with this approach. First, remember that, as we discussed last time, Van Wagenen was legally required to obtain a waiver of conflict of interest, with informed consent, from each player separately. Based on Jeff Wilpon’s comments, that didn’t happen. We do know that Van Wagenen kept his clients informed.
Van Wagenen said he discussed the move with clients, including deGrom, as it progressed. Said he would like to keep him for a long time.
Wilpon said the Mets have "money put aside" to improve parts of the team, such as player development and analytics departments.
But based on the available reporting, it appears unlikely those conversations included informed consent waivers. For instance, Jacob deGrom told MLB.com that Van Wagenen’s “transition was ‘a little confusing,’ adding that he’s still trying to ‘wrap my head around it.'” And deGrom told the New York Post that “I don’t really know how to feel” about the “conflict-of-interest stuff.” MLB.com relays a conversation between the two that illustrates just how confusing this can get.
Shortly after Van Wagenen became GM, divesting himself of all interests in CAA and forfeiting the chance to represent deGrom in contract negotiations, he chatted again on the phone with his ex-client.
“Have you talked to my agent?” deGrom recalled asking him.
“I don’t know who that is,” Van Wagenen deadpanned.
“Yeah, me neither,” deGrom said, laughing.
For now, deGrom is still working out that detail, as he tries to determine how Van Wagenen’s move to the Mets’ front office might affect him.
That doesn’t sound like someone who provided informed consent for Van Wagenen’s new job, and there have been no reports confirming that deGrom – or any of Van Wagenen’s other ex-clients – signed any such written waivers.
Now, Van Wagenen did say that he would recuse himself from dealings with his former clients, which is good. But Wilpon suggested something else.
“The GM gives some guidance, but he’s not totally involved with every last detail,” Wilpon said. “[Van Wagenen] can give us direction. He just can’t be involved in the negotiation. Is it something we are worried about? No. We gave it a lot of thought and obviously I went through the process of making sure that everybody was OK with doing this kind of arrangement, of bringing an agent in to our side.”
For legal purposes, if Van Wagenen is providing “guidance” or “direction,” it really doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t in the room for negotiations. A true recusal would require him to have nothing whatsoever to do with his former clients’ contract negotiations. Direction and guidance creates the possibility – or at least the appearance – that he could disclose private information to those doing the negotiating. Avoiding that possibility would require the Mets’ General Manager to be absent from dealings regarding the Mets’ biggest stars, which creates a host of practical problems, as Phil Mushnick correctly notes.
Exactly how is that going to work? When, for example, deGrom’s future is discussed and determined, Van Wagenen will leave the room or, to be extra cautious, leave the country? Or will that determination be a quick process completed while the new GM, with no say whatsoever, is out to lunch?
His input won’t be solicited, known, weighed or, at the very least, fully suspected? Or are we to believe that the Mets hired a GM whom they’ll gag and handcuff when it’s time to make big decisions? Van Wagenen seems too smart to not know better. But we’re not?
So far, we haven’t seen Van Wagenen recuse himself from Noah Syndergaard trade talks, even though he represented the ace right-hander before taking the Mets job. And Van Wagenen raised eyebrows when he said that ex-client Tim Tebow, who this year posted a 106 wRC+ (along with a 34.6% strikeout rate and an unsustainable .418 BABIP) in Double-A, would nevertheless get promoted to start the 2019 season.
““I reject the notion that I’m going to be in a conflict of interest now or that I’m going to compromise my own reputation, past behavior and my own integrity,” Van Wagenen said to the New York Times‘ James Wagner. But that’s sort of the problem – Van Wagenen doesn’t appear to give the possibility of conflicts of interest its due consideration. And there are potential issues on the other side of trades, too. As Wagner notes: “Some G.M.’s may be leery of what inside information Van Wagenen has if he, say, offers a Met who is a former client of his in a trade.”
So the concerns now go beyond internal conflicts of interest. Can Brodie Van Wagenen run the Mets as he needs to with such significant limitations? Or will he circumvent those limitations in order to get the best deals for his team? At this point, we just don’t know. It would be a relatively simple fix, too; if the parties did follow the law, they could confirm they had written conflict waivers from all involved. But the fact that the Mets and Van Wagenen have allowed the situation to percolate suggests they may not have taken that step – and now, for better or worse, every move Van Wagenen makes will be viewed through that lens moving forward.
Five years after leaving his hometown Braves for New York City, and two years after winning a title in Houston, Brian McCann returned to Atlanta Monday night on a one-year deal worth $2 million. This deal would have made sense even if the Braves hadn’t also signedJosh Donaldson Monday night; Kurt Suzuki and Tyler Flowers shared catching duties for Atlanta in 2018, and Suzuki is now a Washington National. But with Donaldson also in the fold, the picture is crystal clear: The Braves expect to win the National League East for a second straight year, and Brian McCann, fresh off the high of two straight trips to the LCS, wants a piece of the action.
The upside for the Braves here is pretty obvious. McCann probably isn’t going to put up a wOBA above .350 ever again, as he did five times in his previous nine seasons for Atlanta, but he’s only one season removed from three consecutive years of wOBAs above .320, and Baseball Prospectus‘ catcher metrics still have him as a passable if not exceptional defensive receiver. Package that on-field skill-set with the kind of gruff, beardy clubhouse leadership that big-league executives always seem to think young teams need, and you’ve got a perfectly solid backup catcher at a reasonable price. In a catching market that saw Jeff Mathis get $3 million a year on a multi-year guarantee, the Braves could have done a lot worse. Steamer certainly thinks so: Read the rest of this entry »
One year ago, Josh Donaldson was coming off of a very good season, hitting 50% better than league average on his way to 5.1 WAR despite missing six weeks early in the year with a right calf injury. If Donaldson had hit free agency then, he would have been the best position player on the market and likely would have bested J.D. Martinez’s contract despite being a couple of years older. But he didn’t, and after an injury-riddled 2018, the soon-to-be-33 year-old surveyed the market, and opted for a one-year, $23 million deal with the Atlanta Braves, per Ken Rosenthal.
Donaldson faced a difficult decision this winter. He could have tried to cash in on his previous success and get the highest guarantee possible. In our review of the Top 50 Free Agents, both the crowd and Kiley McDaniel assumed that route, and predicted three year deals with an average annual value between $18 and $20 million. It’s possible that Donaldson preferred the Braves for personal reasons, having grown up in Alabama. Holding out for a better deal would have included some risk for Donaldson if this year’s market proves to be slow like last year’s did. The middle ground with a player opt-out after one season might have made the most sense, but that also might have taken more time to develop and lessened the guarantee in the first year. The deal Donaldson did strike with the Braves is not devoid of risk, however. Read the rest of this entry »
For the most part, the baseball industry shuts down over Thanksgiving break, but everyone’s back now, and the Braves have signed Josh Donaldson, to say nothing of Brian McCann. The Mariners are reportedly trying to figure out a way to trade Robinson Cano. The Diamondbacks are reportedly more interested than ever in trading Paul Goldschmidt. Bryce Harper‘s on the market! Manny Machado’s on the market! Let’s spend a few minutes talking about DJ LeMahieu.
As a veteran player, LeMahieu profiles as a fairly ordinary free agent. He’s a second baseman who turned 30 in July, and last year he posted a wRC+ of 86. The year before, he posted a wRC+ of 94. The Rockies declined to extend to LeMahieu a qualifying offer, which would’ve been worth $17.9 million, and MLB Trade Rumors thinks LeMahieu will eventually sign somewhere for $18 million over two years. Kiley McDaniel thinks he’ll sign somewhere for $22 million over two years, and the median FanGraphs crowd estimate put him at $36 million over three years. Pretty good money, all things considered, and LeMahieu is going to be a regular. But let me shine a brighter light on his skillset. I want to show you something that might well influence LeMahieu’s ceiling.
The following article is the first part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2018 Hall of Fame ballot. It has been adapted from The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. 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.
Nobody closed the door like Mariano Rivera. The wiry, unflappable Panamanian not only set the all-time record for saves (652), he prevented runs at a greater clip relative to his league than any other pitcher. Yet neither of those accomplishments capture his brilliance in October. During Rivera’s 19-year-career, the Yankees missed the playoffs just twice, and for all of his regular season dominance, he was even better when the stakes were the highest, helping the Yankees to five championships. He was the last man standing on the mound an unprecedented four times, securing the final outs of the World Series in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2009.
Rivera did all of this while relying almost exclusively on one pitch, a cut fastball discovered almost by accident in 1997, his first year as closer. Even when batters knew what was coming — and at speeds as high as 98 mph in his younger days, it was coming fast — they could rarely predict its sideways movement well enough to make hard contact. If they connected at all, they often broke their bats. Teammates and opponents marveled at the success of the pitch, while writers placed it in the pantheon of great signature offerings, alongside Nolan Ryan’s fastball, Roger Clemens’ splitter, Sandy Koufax’s curve, Steve Carlton’s slider, Pedro Martinez’s changeup, and Hoyt Wilhelm’s knuckleball.
Debates have long raged over how to value relievers and determine their fitness for the Hall of Fame, no small task given that just six are enshrined, as much for their roles in shifting the paradigm for closers as for the numbers they racked up. Yet Rivera’s case shuts those debates down like they’re opponents trailing by three runs in the ninth inning of a playoff game. He’s so far ahead of the field on so many levels that one could argue he’s the lone reliever outside the Hall worthy of entry, and as the top newcomer on the 2019 ballot, he’ll likely become just the second reliever to gain first-ballot entry, after Dennis Eckersley (2004).
Cindy Hyde-Smith is not a baseball player. This is undoubtedly the first time her name has ever been mentioned on this site, and, with any luck, it will also be the last. That’s because Ms. Hyde-Smith is a Republican United States Senator from Mississippi, a state that has no major league baseball team. After being appointed to the seat earlier this year to replace the ailing Thad Cochran, she’s running to be elected in her own right, facing Democrat Mike Espy in a high-profile run-off Senate election set for November 27.
Ordinarily, this isn’t something we would cover at FanGraphs. But over the weekend, Major League Baseball found itself in a bit of hot water after donating $5,000 to Ms. Hyde-Smith’s campaign.
Hall of Fame debate season is upon us, and subjectivity is inherent in the process. For every no-brainer candidate there are always several for whom a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down is largely in the eye of the beholder. Pushing bias aside — not always an easy exercise — one must weigh a ton of factors. Think “The Scales of Justice,” but with WAR, win totals, and DRS taking the place of a blindfold, a balance, and a sword.
Cutting to the chase, Omar Vizquel — arguably the most-polarizing player on the current ballot — probably deserves to be enshrined in Cooperstown. Attempting to not clumsily put a thumb in my eye while stating his case, I hereby offer the following statistical facts:
Vizquel ranks 43rd all-time with 2,877 hits. Nine of the 10 players directly below him on that list — Brooks Robinson among them — are in the Hall of Fame. The one who is not is Harold Baines. Vizquel had more hits as a shortstop than did Cal Ripken.
Many of you are home, or traveling home, for the Thanksgiving holiday. Not only aren’t you in the mood to read about baseball — I bet you’re especially not in the mood to read about Derek Dietrich, who the Marlins designated for assignment on Tuesday. I’m not really in the mood to linger on Derek Dietrich, myself, which is why I’m going to do this fast. Won’t waste your time. I’ll get to the point and leave you alone.
Dietrich is a useful player. He’s 29 years old, and he has a career wRC+ of 109. He can play a lot of positions, albeit none of them all that well. Hidden in the numbers, however, is that Dietrich has a specialty. Now, whenever anyone talks about players getting hit by a lot of pitches, the name that ought to come to mind is Brandon Guyer. We’ve written about Guyer at FanGraphs before, and indeed, if you set a low enough minimum, Guyer is easily the all-time leader in HBP rate. But Guyer has 1,487 big-league plate appearances. What if you set the minimum at, say, 1,500?
Given that cutoff, here are the highest career HBP rates since the turn of the last century:
1900 – 2018, minimum 1500 career plate appearances.
Dietrich has a lower rate than Guyer, but he’s also played a lot more than Guyer. Dietrich’s the all-time leader with a 1,500 PA cutoff. He’s the all-time leader with a 2,000 PA cutoff. Yes, it’s true that Guyer is more anomalous, but Dietrich is anomalous as well. As these things go, that’s a pretty healthy lead Dietrich has over second place.
Dietrich’s the all-time leader, maybe with a minimum-related asterisk, but all rate-stat leaderboards come with some kind of minimum, and they’re always arbitrary. So I want to give Dietrich his moment in the sun, in what’s otherwise probably a pretty crappy week for him. Dietrich has been hit by 93 pitches. He’s been hit by 13 pitches in an 0-and-2 count. He’s been hit by 39 pitches with the pitcher ahead. He’s been hit by seven pitches by Tanner Roark.
Courtesy of Baseball Savant, here are all the pitches that hit Dietrich somewhere, or were at least judged to have done so:
Here’s that weird low one over the plate:
Here’s one close to the strike zone:
Here’s another one close to the strike zone:
Here’s one I just think is kind of quirky:
Here’s the one time he’s been hit with the bases loaded:
Here’s the one worth the most positive win probability added:
And here’s the one that happened in the lowest-leverage situation:
At least in terms of WPA, Dietrich’s career hit-by-pitches have been worth almost a combined three wins. Dietrich has been hit by 93 pitches while drawing just 144 walks — a dozen of which have been intentional. Dietrich hasn’t exactly built a career around getting hit by the baseball, but getting hit by the baseball has given his career a jolt, and it’s a career that’s going to continue, despite all of the aches and pains. Every year, Derek Dietrich feels a lot of pain in his legs and his elbow. And, every year, for pitchers facing Derek Dietrich, he is a pain in the ass.
In 2017, Corey Dickerson was 28 years old, playing for the Rays. He spent a lot of his time at DH, but still, he was a solidly above-average hitter, and he finished as a 2+ win player. He had another two years of team control, and he was due for a raise in his second year of arbitration. During the offseason, though, the Rays designated Dickerson for assignment. Shortly thereafter, he was sent to the Pirates for a modest return. Part of the Rays’ thinking at the time was that they could easily replace Dickerson with C.J. Cron.
In 2018, Cron was 28 years old, playing for the Rays. He spent a lot of his time at DH, but still, he was a solidly above-average hitter, and he finished as a 2+ win player. He has another two years of team control, and he’s due for a raise in his second year of arbitration. On Tuesday, though, the Rays designated Cron for assignment. He might be traded or claimed any day. If the Rays receive anything, it will be a modest return.
It doesn’t look good when one of baseball’s cheapest franchises cuts ties with a player who’s due for a raise. It doesn’t look good when anyone cuts ties with a player coming off a legitimately productive full season. Cron’s projected salary for next year is only a little north of $5 million. By the numbers, he was worth more than that last season. Yet, as is usually the case, it’s not hard to figure out what’s happening, when you take a closer look. A variety of factors have come together to make Cron almost freely available.
