This post is part of a series covering the 2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Managers/Executives/Umpires ballot, covering candidates in those categories who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present. For an introduction to the ballot, see here. The eight candidates will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in Nashville on December 3, and anyone receiving at least 75% of the vote from the 16 committee members will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 21, 2024, along with any candidates elected by the BBWAA.

Davey Johnson

Like Billy Martin before him, albeit with far less drinking and drama, Davey Johnson was renowned for his ability to turn teams around. He posted a winning record in his first full season at four of his five managerial stops and took four of the five franchises that he managed to the playoffs at least once. But after six-plus seasons managing the Mets, he never lasted even three full seasons in any other job and never replicated the success he had in piloting the 1986 Mets to 108 wins and a World Series victory. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers provided some clarity with regards to their decimated rotation on Friday, though perhaps not in the most reassuring manner. First, the team reportedly declined Lance Lynn’s $18 million option, and then Clayton Kershaw announced via Instagram that he had undergone shoulder surgery that morning, with hopes of a return to play “at some point next summer.” As if that didn’t raise enough questions, the three-time Cy Young winner and future Hall of Famer did nothing to tip his hand regarding whether he’d seek a return to the Dodgers.

When we last saw the 35-year-old Kershaw in action, he was leaving the mound after retiring just one of the eight Diamondbacks he faced in the Division Series opener. Because the Dodgers were swept in the best-of-five series, he didn’t get a chance to take another turn, though manager Dave Roberts had planned to send him out for Game 4 had the team extended the series. Asked in the immediate aftermath of the team’s elimination what would come next for him, Kershaw responded cryptically, saying, “I don’t know how to answer that right now.”

Kershaw’s inability to articulate his plans at the time was understandable, in part because for the third year in a row he was headed towards free agency, with a chance to leave the only organization he’s known since being drafted out of Highland Park High School in Dallas in 2006. In the past two winters, he had given some consideration to pitching closer to home with the Rangers, but chose to return to the Dodgers after the 2021 season, signing a one-year, $17 million contract after the lockout ended in March ’22, and then re-upping for one year and $20 million last December. Though he missed the 2021 postseason due to forearm discomfort, Kershaw didn’t have any health-related question marks hanging over his head by the time he re-signed either of those deals. This time, he’s in uncharted territory. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers and Max Muncy clearly believe they have a pretty good thing going. Since retooling his swing after being cast off by the A’s, the late-blooming slugger has been a key middle-of-the-lineup component on six straight playoff teams, and part of three pennant winners including their 2020 championship squad. Within the past four years, the Dodgers have inked Muncy to three contract extensions, the latest of which — announced on Thursday — is a two-year, $24 million deal with a club option for a third season, potentially keeping Muncy in the fold through 2026.

Muncy, who turned 33 on August 25, is coming off a season in which he hit .212/.333/.475 and matched his career high with 36 homers, three of them grand slams. The batting average wasn’t pretty (though it was at least above the Mendoza Line) and his 26.4% strikeout rate was his highest since 2018, but his 14.7% walk rate and considerable power helped to make up for it. Amid some ups and downs, his 118 wRC+ was 18 points short of his career mark but still ranked eighth among regular third basemen.

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You might have noticed a surfeit of bunting in this postseason, or at least it seemed that way because Geraldo Perdomo was in the World Series. I, the man who launched an impromptu Bunt Week two months ago, could not let the opportunity pass to sit in judgment of these bunts.

We often decry the sacrifice bunt as a needless waste of outs, but a bunt for a hit can be one of the most audacious, skilled plays in the sport, as beautiful in its own way as a light-tower home run. In fact, every bunt is distinctive and wonderful, and so each must be examined — all 26 of them — for procedural and results-based value, tactical and strategic context, as well as aesthetic value. These are just the 26 bunts that resulted in action, according to Baseball Savant, so be warned: failed bunt attempts are not featured. If you’re looking for that failed Trea Turner push bunt in Game 7 of the NLCS, you will not find it here. (Though for the record, I didn’t hate it.)

Let us judge the bunts. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things – getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable – but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Evan Carter and Corbin Carroll have been great too. Forget trusting your veterans – the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Bryce Harper is important because he’s a great player, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. I’ve already covered the losing managers of the Wild Card round and the ALDS. Dave Roberts is up next.
Read the rest of this entry »

It doesn’t take deep analysis to realize that if your starting pitchers combine to allow 13 runs and record 14 outs, your chances of winning a short series aren’t very good. Likewise if the two superstar MVP candidates atop your lineup go 1-for-21, your four 100-RBI guys combine to drive in one (1) run, and your entire team slugs .250. With numbers like that, it’s not too hard to explain the fate of the 2023 Dodgers, who were swept by the Diamondbacks in the Division Series that concluded on Wednesday night at Chase Field. Despite a slow start to their season and considerable upheaval in their rotation, the Dodgers won 100 games and cruised to their 10th division title in 11 years, but for the third year in a row, they were ousted by a team that finished the regular season miles behind them.

Indeed, the Dodgers’ exit from the past three postseasons accounts for three of the largest differentials in winning percentage between winner and loser in major league history:

Note the increasing frequency with which such upsets have happened, owing to the continued expansion of the postseason. When the two pennant winners went straight to the World Series, it was less likely their records would differ so greatly unless one won at least 70% of its games. And where we once had one postseason series per year, now we have 11, creating so many more opportunities for what look to be mismatches — except that in a short series, anything can happen, a fact we’ve known for well over a century. Just ask Tinker, Evers, and Chance about the 1906 White Sox, the Hitless Wonders who pantsed their crosstown rivals despite the Cubs having the highest single-season winning percentage in AL/NL history. Read the rest of this entry »

PHOENIX — There are a lot of things I think about more in October than I do in July — Halloween! Hay rides! — but none more so than inevitability. Ideas can have a season, and destiny is the stuff of fall. We look at a series, analyze the players and teams, and look for the sure thing. We know that we’re supposed to acknowledge the randomness of playoff baseball; anything can happen in a short series, after all. But c’mon. C’mon! You thought the Dodgers were going to advance to the NLCS. You weren’t sure — you’re a good nerd — but it felt like they would. It seemed like they should. They won 100 games this season to the Diamondbacks’ 84. They have Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman powering a potent offense. Sure their starters were hurt, but their bullpen was good. They got a bye and a rest and their first two games at home.

And then a funny thing happened: they got beat. They didn’t just lose the NLDS; the Diamondbacks won it, and rather emphatically. When something like that happens, when results run counter to our expectations, we start to look to the underdogs for their own signs of providence. It can all be very flattening, which is a shame, because the plays and players that make up a game deserve to be understood for what they are: not a script, but bits of dynamism unleashed on 48,175 screaming fans. So before we look ahead to the NLCS or back at the Dodgers’ season that was, below are a few such moments and people from Game 3.

The Third Inning
I don’t envy managers their jobs in the postseason. The stakes are unbelievably high, never more so than when you’re staring down potential elimination. You have to manage for today, tomorrow be damned – heck, there might not be a tomorrow. Your task, if you’re Dave Roberts, is to forget about the existence of Clayton Kershaw, Game 4 starter, and spend whatever bullpen bullets you need to in order to survive. Only how could you do that when Clayton Kershaw, Game 1 starter, left such an impression? You might need those bullets. So you watch Lance Lynn give up a leadoff home run to Geraldo Perdomo, who hit six all season. And then after a Corbin Carroll groundout, you watch as Ketel Marte adds another — this one more emphatic at 107.9 mph off the bat. Still you wait. But then Tommy Pham grounds out; Lynn is only at 38 pitches, and the D-backs have a raft of righties stretching all the way to Alek Thomas coming up. You’re almost out of it!

Yeah, about that.

And then, well.

This was the first time in postseason history that a team hit four home runs in an inning, and depending on how generous you’re feeling, Gabriel Moreno did his part twice. (When Moreno’s real-deal home run left the yard, the Chase Field crowd, which had already sung several choruses of “BEAT L.A.,” lost its collective mind. Discrete words couldn’t be mustered; all I could hear from the press box was a roar.) Caleb Ferguson came in to relieve Lynn, but the damage had been done.

The timing of Lynn’s exit deserves some scrutiny. Before Christian Walker’s laser to left field, as the count went to 1-1, the Dodgers bullpen began to stir, but in a wave-your-arms-around-to-loosen-them-up sort of way.

Two pitches into Moreno’s at-bat, the broadcast noted that Ferguson was up and actually throwing. After the game, Roberts said, “You’ve got two outs and a low-pitch count, and you figure that this run of right-handed hitters, you’ve got to be able to navigate it somewhat with two outs, nobody on base. Then two homers later you’re down 4-0. I had some guys ready. Obviously I can’t predict the future. I try not to be reactionary and get ahead of things. I just can’t predict the future. The way he was throwing the baseball, I didn’t expect that.”

But perhaps he should have. Lynn led baseball in home runs allowed this year with 44, a total that represents the sixth-most allowed in a single season in major league history. All those past long balls don’t guarantee future ones, but if you were going to pick a way for Lynn to join the Dodgers’ parade of ineffective Division Series starters — including his performance, LA’s starting trio mustered a disastrous 25.07 ERA across a mere 4.2 innings of work — a home run or two seemed a likely culprit.

In the bottom of the sixth, after Michael Grove had thrown an inning and Alex Vesia was busy dispatching Arizona’s 7-8-9 hitters, the broadcast noted the perhaps curious absence of Ryan Pepiot. Lauren Shehadi offered that Roberts had told her, “Listen, I have to manage this like there are two more games after it. Pepiot, he’s a bulk guy, we’ve seen it all season long, and if I’m going to get through this series, I need to think past Game 3.”

Roberts’ line of thinking about two outs and right-handed hitters and the bases being empty is logical enough when it comes to Lynn. He’s right, too, that a bulk guy might be useful as a backstop to Kershaw, who even when he’s not having a start like he did in Game 1 isn’t exactly going eight strong these days. But both answers suggest a lack of urgency, too great an emphasis on the cares of later and not enough on the here and oh-crap-we’re-about-to-go-home now. Get a guy up! Bring him in! Consider throwing your bulk dude! Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. In the third inning, a stoppable force met an extremely moveable object, and unfortunately for the Dodgers, Lynn budged. Roberts probably should have done the same.

The Dodgers Offense
We’ve all had bad days at work. The coffee machine breaks, your presentation goes badly, someone’s on a stinky food kick. Sometimes, though, those bad stretches linger. During the regular season, the Dodgers had the third-best wRC+ in the majors. They hit the second-most home runs and had the second-highest wOBA. They scored just 41 fewer runs than the Braves, and the Braves had an historically good offense. Betts and Freeman were simply marvelous.

Then the calendar flipped to October, and suddenly there was printer toner everywhere. By now you’ve probably heard that Betts and Freeman combined to go just 1-for-21 this postseason. All that pair of MVP candidates could muster was an infield single off the bat of Freeman in Game 2. And they weren’t alone. As a unit, the Dodgers hit .177/.248/.250, “good” for a 40 wRC+; they managed four extra-base hits the entire series. They were outscored 19–6 and never led in the series. J.D. Martinez went 0-for-4 in Game 3. A reshuffled Game 3 lineup resulted in Austin Barnes pinch-hitting against Andrew Saalfrank with the bases loaded and two outs in the seventh rather than David Peralta standing in against a lefty. Barnes swung at a first-pitch sinker and grounded out; it was the last time Los Angeles had a runner in scoring position. After Max Muncy struck out in the ninth, Will Smith managed a single, but a pair of flyouts ended the Dodgers’ season, as the Diamondbacks’ bobcat mascot danced around in a red speedo with “BEAT LA” emblazoned on the butt and the players whooped.

It was a bad night at work, and one of the cruel things about baseball is that where the rest of us muddle through lousy meetings and frustrating expense reports in the hopes of getting a break, the best cure for a down game is simply more time at the office. Even when the copy machine is jammed.

The Young Snakes in the NLDS
Perhaps nothing is better for defying expectations than the emergence of young stars. The likes of Carroll and Moreno (who had to leave the game early but is fine) have bolstered the Diamondbacks all season, and the playoffs are no exception:

As MLB.com’s Sarah Langs pointed out, the Diamondbacks are the third team in postseason history with four players age 23 or younger with a home run in a single postseason, joining the 2020 Braves quartet of Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley and Cristian Pache and the 2015 Cubs core of Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, Jorge Soler, and Javier Báez.

Brandon Pfaadt
It would be easy to forget Brandon Pfaadt in all of this. A Wild Card sweep and the quirks of when the National League’s off-days fell meant the Diamondbacks were set up to throw Merrill Kelly and Zac Gallen twice each in the NLDS. They still needed a Game 3 starter, however, and that job fell to Pfaadt. His initial foray into postseason pitching didn’t go great: seven hits and three earned runs (including a two-run home run) in just 2.2 innings of work in his Wild Card start versus the Brewers. The first three hitters he faced that night reached; he leaned too heavily on his fastball.

His outing Wednesday night went much more smoothly. The rookie needed 17 pitches to retire his first Brewers hitter; in the first inning on Wednesday, a Betts’ groundout required five, fly outs from Freeman and Martinez needed only one apiece, and boom, one inning down. Though still fastball-heavy, he mixed in more changeups along with a few breaking balls, presenting the more varied arsenal that he and the Diamondbacks staff had identified earlier in the week as so important.

It wasn’t all good. Of the 12 balls the Dodgers put in play, six were classified as hard-hit by Statcast, and the double in the fifth that ended his night would have been a home run in 28 other ballparks. He was bolstered by more good bullpen work; though they allowed two runs, the Snakes ‘pen, which had caused so much consternation this season and inspired the deadline trade for Paul Sewald, posted a 3.27 ERA and 2.44 FIP during the DS. But it was a marked improvement, and one the Diamondbacks have to find encouraging. After all, as Lovullo put it to the media on Tuesday, you need more than two pitchers to get through the postseason, and Arizona isn’t done yet.

I got a little anxious last night. It was nothing major. I was sad that the Orioles were being eliminated from the playoffs. I was also sad about the way it was going down, which called to mind a cartoon character being tossed face-first through a saloon door while the bartender shouts, “And stay out!” I was a little drained from making conversation at a long group dinner. And I knew this article could really use another draft, which meant getting up early before a doctor’s appointment that I was already a little nervous about. All minor things, but the result was that when I answered a question from my wife, something in my voice made her stop and ask if I was okay.

Everyone deserves to feel seen. I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling lonely, and I am well aware that it’s privilege to have someone who cares enough about you to know whether you’re telling the truth when you say, “I’m fine.” But also, sometimes you really are close enough to being fine that you’d rather have your slightly sour mood slip by unnoticed. Humans are very picky creatures.

I imagine baseball players must feel that way a lot of the time. It’s nice to be recognized for your accomplishments, but it’s got to feel weird that anybody on earth can look up your batting average, and that a whole lot of your neighbors already know it without needing to look it up. Think about how often you see a player who has no idea that they’ve achieved some amazing statistical accomplishment until an interviewer asks them about it. On Saturday, Carlos Correa was too busy actually playing in the playoffs to know that he’d passed David Ortiz and Derek Jeter on the all-time playoff RBI list. Read the rest of this entry »

In Game 1 of the NLDS, the 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks raced to a commanding 11-2 victory over the 100-win Los Angeles Dodgers, their longtime tormenters in the NL West. While Game 2’s 4-2 win wasn’t quite as dominant, it nevertheless lifted the D-backs to a 2-0 series lead and the brink of a sweep. With a combination of patience (forcing Bobby Miller to throw 52 pitches in under two innings) and guile (becoming the second team to notch four stolen bases in a game this postseason), the upstart Arizonans firmly established themselves as legitimate title contenders.

Though the Los Angeles crowd roared at Miller’s first 100-mph heater, déjà vu set in within a few hitters. With the bases loaded and no one out in the top of the first, Christian Walker rocketed a four-seam fastball 105.6 mph off the bat to deep center. But while James Outman missed his first chance on Saturday, he didn’t blink this time, leaping and snagging the slicing drive and limiting the damage to a sac fly:

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Caleb Ferguson is far from the biggest name on a Los Angeles Dodgers team that won 100 games during the regular season. Much for that reason, people who don’t closely follow the perennial NL West powerhouse probably don’t know how effective he’s been. To little fanfare, the 27-year-old southpaw made 68 appearances and went 7-4 with three saves while posting a 3.43 ERA and a 3.34 FIP over 60-and-a-third innings. Moreover, his numbers were even better if you discount the seven times he served as an opener. As a reliever, Ferguson won seven of nine decisions with a 3.02 ERA and a 3.07 FIP. His K-rate out of the pen was a tasty 27.5%.

Home cooking has been to his liking. Pitching at Chavez Ravine — Dodger Stadium if you will — the Columbus, Ohio native logged a sparkling 1.10 ERA while holding opposing hitters to a paltry .190/.258/.267 slash line.

Those things said, Ferguson is a square peg in a round hole when it comes to one of the organization’s well-known strengths. Analytics aren’t his thing.

“I guess it has the characteristics of a high-spin fastball,” Ferguson replied when I asked about the movement profile of his mid-90s four-seamer, a pitch he relied on 66.5% of the time this year. “But I don’t really look at the metrics, to be honest. I just come in and try to make good pitches. More than anything, I try to throw the ball in the safest spot to each guy. When I look at scouting reports, it’s basically just the safe zones and the danger zones.”

Ferguson likewise claimed not to know the metrics on his 33.5 percent-usage slider (Baseball Savant classifies the pitch as a cutter). Nor is he interested in knowing. Read the rest of this entry »