The following article is part of a series concerning the 2025 Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering long-retired players, managers, executives, and umpires whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 8. For an introduction to the 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.

Tommy John spent 26 seasons pitching in the majors from 1963–74 and then 1976–89, more than any player besides Nolan Ryan, but his level of fame stems as much from the year that cleaves that span as it does from his work on the mound. As the recipient of the most famous sports medicine procedure of all time, the elbow ligament replacement surgery performed by Dr. Frank Jobe in late 1974 that now bears his name, John endured an arduous year-long rehab process before returning to pitch as well as ever, a recovery that gave hope to generations of injured pitchers whose careers might otherwise have ended. Tommy John surgery has somewhat obscured the pitcher’s on-field accomplishments, however.

A sinkerballer who relied upon his command and control to limit hard contact, John didn’t overpower hitters; after his surgery, when the usage of radar guns became more widespread, his sinker — which he threw 85-90% of the time — was generally clocked in the 85-87 mph range. He paired the sinker with a curveball, or rather several curves, as he could adjust the break based upon the speed at which he threw the pitch. He was the epitome of the “crafty lefty,” so good at his vocation that he arrived on the major league scene at age 20 and made his final appearance three days after his 46th birthday. He made four All-Star teams and was a key starter on five clubs that reached the postseason and three that won pennants, though he wound up on the losing end of the World Series each time.

Thomas Edward John Jr. was born on May 22, 1943 in Terre Haute, Indiana. He cut his teeth playing sandlot ball and more organized games at Spencer F. Ball Park, a three-block square with about 10 baseball diamonds used for everything from pickup games to those of two rival high schools, Garfield and Gerstmeyer, the latter of which he attended.

At Gerstmeyer, John excelled in basketball as well as baseball, so much so that the rangy, 6-foot-3 teenager was recruited by legendary Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp, and had over 50 basketball scholarship offers but just one for baseball (few colleges gave those out in those days). When Rupp paid a visit to their household, the senior John told the coach that his son was probably going to bypass college to pursue professional baseball. As the pitcher recalled in 2015:

Rupp said, “Well, we have a pretty good baseball team down in Kentucky, and your son might even be able to make our team.” My dad never liked Rupp, but that really made him mad. He told Coach Rupp, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.” Rupp was furious. His assistant came in and tried to smooth things over, but it didn’t matter.

On the mound, John lacked a top-notch fastball but had a major league-caliber curveball that he learned from former Phillies minor leaguer Arley Andrews, a friend of his father. He pitched to a 28-2 record in high school, and while the Cleveland Indians scout who signed him, John Schulte, expressed concern about his inability to overpower hitters, he signed him nonetheless two weeks after John graduated from Gerstmeyer in 1961 — four years before the introduction of the amateur draft. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of a series concerning the 2025 Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering long-retired players, managers, executives, and umpires whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 8. It is adapted from a chapter in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For an introduction to the ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

“Dick Allen forced Philadelphia baseball and its fans to come to terms with the racism that existed in this city in the ’60s and ’70s. He may not have done it with the self-discipline or tact of Jackie Robinson, but he exemplified the emerging independence of major league baseball players as well as growing black consciousness.”⁠ — William Kashatus, The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 2, 1996

At first glance, Dick Allen might be viewed as the Gary Sheffield or Albert Belle of his day, a heavy hitter seemingly engaged in a constant battle with the world around him, generating controversy at every stop of his 15-year career. It’s unfair and reductive to lump Allen in with those two players, however, for they all faced different obstacles and bore different scars from the wounds they suffered early in their careers.

In Allen’s case, those wounds predated his 1963 arrival in the majors with a team that was far behind the integration curve, and a city that was in no better shape. In Philadelphia and beyond, he was a polarizing presence, covered by a media contingent so unable or unwilling to relate to him that writers often refused to call him by the name of his choosing: Dick Allen, not Richie. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of a series concerning the 2025 Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering long-retired players, managers, executives, and umpires whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 8. First written for FanGraphs in 2019, it has been updated with additional research. For an introduction to the ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m using a new format for our postseason managerial report cards this year. In the past, I went through every game from every manager, whether they played 22 games en route to winning the World Series or got swept out of the Wild Card round. To be honest, I hated writing those brief blurbs. No one is all that interested in the manager who ran out the same lineup twice, or saw his starters get trounced and used his best relievers anyway because the series is so short. This year, I’m sticking to the highlights, and grading only the managers who survived until at least their League Championship series. I already covered Stephen Vogt, Carlos Mendoza, and Aaron Boone. Today, I’m looking at Dave Roberts.

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 with the series on the line, that’s a good decision regardless of the 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 behind closed doors for new strategies or unconventional bullpen usage 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 Luke Weaver and Brent Honeywell were also important contributors this October. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Mookie Betts is important because he’s great, not because he already had two rings. 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. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — By closing out the Yankees with an unexpected World Series-clinching save two days after his brilliant Game 3 start put the Dodgers on the brink of a title, Walker Buehler had made a statement. Now, speaking to Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal and millions of viewers moments after striking out Alex Verdugo on a knuckle curve in the dirt, he had a message: “For our organization, we deserve this. We’ve been playing really good baseball for a lot of years. Everyone talks shit about 2020 and whatever, but there’s not much they can say about it now.”

Buehler was referring to the way that the Dodgers’ streak of 12 consecutive playoff appearances, which includes 11 NL West flags and three previous pennants, had been downplayed by some critics because the team not only had won only one championship during that epic run, but also because its lone title had followed the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. For many of the dozen core members who have remained with the team since (or in Enrique Hernández’s case, returned after a stint elsewhere), the application of that asterisk chafed.

“Get that Mickey Mouse shit out of your mouth,” said a champagne-and-beer-soaked Max Muncy during the ensuing clubhouse celebration, referring to the slight. “Now it’s two [championships], baby. Now it’s two… What are you going to say now?” Read the rest of this entry »

Since the start of 2013, the Dodgers have been the best team in baseball. Over that 12-season span, they’ve won the National League West 11 times, made it to the NLCS seven times, and made it to the World Series four times. Their 1,215 regular season wins are 95 more than the team in second place, and their 64 postseason wins are also the most in the game. Despite all that, until late Wednesday night, they’d only managed one championship. What deserves to go down as one of the most impressive dynasties in the history of the game has been consistently denied that sort of recognition because of the delightful, infuriating unpredictability of playoff baseball. During an absolutely wild World Series Game 5, that unpredictability finally worked in the Dodgers’ favor.

This paragraph is just a list of things that happened during Game 5, so hold on tight. There was a brief no-hit bid from one starter and a disastrous, abortive start from the other. There were monster home runs, broken bat singles, seeing-eye grounders, great defensive plays, calamitous errors, inexcusable mental mistakes, a five-run inning, a five-run comeback, unearned runs, nearly catastrophic baserunning decisions, a catcher’s interference, a disengagement penalty, a surprisingly high number of sacrifice flies, a starter coming in to get the save on one-day’s rest, and, I’m absolutely certain, a bunch of other stuff that I’m too fried to remember. The only thing that didn’t happen, thankfully, was two ding dongs grabbing Mookie Betts. In the end, the Dodgers were the team left standing, securing a 7-6 victory over the Yankees at Yankee Stadium for their eighth World Series title in franchise history and the second in the past five years. Read the rest of this entry »

Scheduling a bullpen game in the World Series is, to some extent, outside Dave Roberts’ control. More than half of his useful starting pitchers are on the IL, so he has to do something. Game 4 isn’t the perfect spot for Johnny Wholestaff — the way MLB’s playoff format works, it’s the only game of the series that isn’t adjacent to an off day — but it’s also the only spot in a four-man rotation that’s guaranteed to only come up once.

The Dodgers’ manager was fortunate, however, in that by the time Game 4 rolled around, his team was already up 3-0 in the series. No team has ever overturned such a deficit in World Series play, and only once in baseball history has a team come back from 3-0 in any best-of-seven series. This we all knew going in. I was mildly surprised to learn that history is even less kind to clubs that spot their opponents the first three games of a Fall Classic: Before this season, teams with the opportunity to sweep a World Series had won Game 4 21 times in 24 attempts.

So Roberts entrusted Game 4 not just to his bullpen, but to his low-leverage guys: Ben Casparius, Daniel Hudson, Landon Knack, and Brent Honeywell. Sure enough, his team lost. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — When Freddie Freeman sprained his right ankle on September 26, the Dodgers had good reason to fear that his injury would be season-ending. Few could have envisioned that Freeman — who somehow managed to return from a six-week injury in a week, and to hobble through the National League Division Series and Championship Series — could play up to his usual high standard, let alone repeatedly etch his name in the record books. In Game 4 of the World Series on Tuesday night, the 35-year-old first baseman did so while providing a sense of déjà vu all over again. With his second two-run first-inning homer into Yankee Stadium’s short porch in as many nights, he put the Dodgers in a position to clinch a championship, though unlike Monday, they weren’t able to hold the Yankees down for nine innings, and lost 11-4.

Freeman’s fourth home run of this World Series came against Luis Gil and followed a one-out Mookie Betts double down the right field line. After Gil fell behind in the count 2-1, he put a belt-high slider on the outer edge of the plate. Freeman connected, launching a low, arcing drive 106.6 mph into the seats and temporarily sucking all the oxygen out of the Yankee Stadium fans as they faced the possibility of a sweep.

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“What if they made the whole pitching staff out of high-leverage relievers?” That line of thinking has infiltrated baseball over the past 15 years, and you can see why. The Dodgers built their team around it, and used it to perfection in the first three games of the World Series. When the Yankees weren’t dealing with three solid starters attacking the lineup in short bursts, they were facing an endless array of pitchers who sit in the upper 90s with venomous breaking balls. No wonder the Yankees only scored seven total runs across those three games.

In Game 4, the Dodgers asked another question: What if you made the whole pitching staff out of swingmen? Dave Roberts and the front office always planned on a bullpen game; they’ve been doing those all October. But this one was a wholly different animal than the efforts against the Padres and Mets, and the Yankees took advantage.

Want an example of how it was different? Ben Casparius drew the start, and Roberts gave him two innings, no questions asked. He was shaky as can be. Three walks, a 105-mph double off the top of the wall in dead center, and a few hard-hit balls besides; he spent the entirety of his two innings of work on the ropes, faced 10 batters, and was lucky to escape having only allowed one run. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Remember Mookie Betts? While much of the focus during the Dodgers’ postseason run has been on the inspiring determination — and sudden World Series heroics — of Freddie Freeman in the wake of his ankle injury, and now Shohei Ohtani’s status given his shoulder scare, the Los Angeles lineup’s other former MVP has put together an impressive October. Shaking free of a multiyear postseason slump, the 32-year-old right fielder has been the Dodgers’ top offensive performer thus far. In Game 3 of the World Series on Monday night, he made significant contributions both at the plate and in the field, helping the Dodgers to a 4-2 victory and a three-games-to-none series lead, and putting them within one win of their second championship since the team traded for him in February 2020.

Dave Roberts hasn’t forgotten Betts. “He’s one of the best players on the planet,” said the Dodgers’ manager after the win. “I’m really excited for the postseason that he’s had on both sides of the baseball.”

Through 14 games and 66 plate appearances, Betts is batting .291/.394/.582. His slugging percentage, four homers, and 159 wRC+ all lead the Dodgers, and his 14 RBI is tied with the Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton and the Mets’ Mark Vientos for the lead among all hitters. On Monday, he went 1-for-4 with a walk and an RBI single while making four putouts in right field. In the box score, that line may look mundane, but if you saw the game unfold, his contributions couldn’t escape notice.

“I know it just looks like a regular baseball game, but it’s a lot of emotions, a lot of preparation,” said a drained Betts after the win. “It takes it out of you, so we’ve got to rest up and be ready to do it again.” Read the rest of this entry »