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. 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.

Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time. Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander spent all or most of their careers in the dead-ball era, before the home run was a real threat, and pitched while the color line was still in effect, barring some of the game’s most talented players from participating. Sandy Koufax and Tom Seaver pitched when scoring levels were much lower and pitchers held a greater advantage. Koufax and 2015 inductees Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez didn’t sustain their greatness for nearly as long. Greg Maddux didn’t dominate hitters to nearly the same extent.

Clemens, meanwhile, spent 24 years in the majors and racked up a record seven Cy Young awards, not to mention an MVP award. He won 354 games, led his leagues in the Triple Crown categories (wins, strikeouts and ERA) a total of 16 times, and helped his teams to six pennants and a pair of world championships.

Alas, whatever claim “The Rocket” may have on such an exalted title is clouded by suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs. When those suspicions came to light in the Mitchell Report in 2007, Clemens took the otherwise unprecedented step of challenging the findings during a Congressional hearing, but nearly painted himself into a legal corner; he was subject to a high-profile trial for six counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress. After a mistrial in 2011, he was acquitted on all counts the following year. But despite the verdicts, the specter of PEDs won’t leave Clemens’ case anytime soon, even given that in March 2015, he settled the defamation lawsuit filed by former personal trainer Brian McNamee for an unspecified amount.

Amid the ongoing Hall of Fame-related debates over hitters connected to PEDs — most prominently Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa — it’s worth remembering that the chemical arms race involved pitchers as well, leveling the playing field a lot more than some critics of the aforementioned sluggers would admit. The voters certainly haven’t forgotten that when it comes to Clemens, whose share of the vote has approximated that of Bonds. Clemens debuted with 37.6% of the vote in 2013 and only in 2016 began making significant headway, climbing to 45.2% thanks largely to the Hall’s purge of voters more than 10 years removed from covering the game. Like Bonds, he surged above 50% — a historically significant marker towards future election — in 2017, benefiting from voters rethinking their positions in the wake of the election of Bud Selig. The former commissioner’s roles in the late-1980s collusion scandal and in presiding over the proliferation of PEDs within the game dwarf the impact of individual PED users and call into question the so-called “character clause.”

Clemens’ march towards Cooperstown stalled somewhat last year even as he climbed 3.2 percentage points to 57.3%. Whether or not the open letter from Hall of Fame Vice Chairman Joe Morgan pleading to voters not to honor players connected to steroids had an impact, the end result was another year run off the clock. He still has a shot at reaching 75% before his eligibility runs out in 2022, but he needs to regain momentum.

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Last year, in all of baseball, the lowest team strikeout rate was 18.7%, and it belonged to the Indians. This is considering only non-pitchers, so as to put the National League on the same level as the American League. Projections, as you know, are by their very nature conservative. And now the 2019 Astros project for a team strikeout rate of 18.4%.

Last year, in all of baseball, the highest team wRC+ was 118, and it belonged to the Dodgers. The second-highest team wRC+ was 111, and it belonged to three different ballclubs. This is considering only non-pitchers, so as to put the NL on the same level as the AL. Projections, as you know, are by their very nature conservative. And now the 2019 Astros project for a team wRC+ of 115.

This is where the Astros stand after having come to a two-year agreement with free-agent Michael Brantley, worth $32 million. It’s not yet official-official, and I guess there’s some chance it all blows up, but I wouldn’t count on that happening. Brantley is good, and he’ll be the Astros’ newest regular.

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. 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.

As much as Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte was a pillar of the Joe Torre-era Yankees dynasty. The tall Texan lefty played such a vital role on 13 pinstriped playoff teams and seven pennant winners — plus another trip to the World Series during his three-year run Houston — that he holds several major postseason records. In fact, no pitcher ever started more potential series clinchers, both in the World Series and the postseason as a whole.

For as important as Pettitte was to the “Core Four” (Williams always gets the short end of the stick on that one) that anchored five championships from 1996 to 2009, he seldom made a case as one of the game’s top pitchers. High win totals driven by excellent offensive support helped him finish in the top five of his leagues’ Cy Young voting four times, but only three times did he place among the top 10 in ERA or WAR, and he never ranked higher than sixth in strikeouts. He made just three All-Star teams.

Indeed, Pettitte was more plow horse than racehorse. A sinker- and cutter-driven groundballer whose pickoff move was legendary, he was a championship-level innings-eater, a grinder (his word) rather than a dominator, a pitcher whose strong work ethic, mental preparation, and focus — visually exemplified by his peering in for the sign from the catcher with eyes barely visible underneath the brim of his cap — compensated for his lack of dazzling stuff. Ten times he made at least 32 starts, a mark that’s tied for seventh in the post-1994 strike era. His total of 10 200-inning seasons is tied for fourth in that same span, and his 12 seasons of qualifying for the ERA title with an ERA+ of 100 or better is tied for second. He had his ups and downs in the postseason, but only once during his 18-year career (2004, when he underwent season-ending elbow surgery) was he unavailable to pitch once his team made the playoffs.

On a ballot with two multi-Cy Young winners (Roger Clemens and Roy Halladay) as well as two other starters (Mike Mussina and Curt Schilling) who were better at preventing runs and racking up strikeouts — and also had plenty of postseason success — Pettitte would appear to be a long shot for Cooperstown. And that’s before factoring in his 2007 inclusion in the Mitchell Report for having used human growth hormone to recover from an elbow injury. Thanks to his championship rings and his high win total, he’ll probably receive enough support to persist on the ballot nonetheless.

About those wins: Regular readers know that I generally avoid dwelling upon pitcher win totals, because in this increasingly specialized era, they owe as much to adequate offensive, defensive, and bullpen support as they do to a pitcher’s own performance. While one needn’t know how many wins Pettitte amassed in a season or a career to appreciate his true value, those totals have affected the popular perception of his career.

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On the surface, Thursday’s trade that sent left-handed pitcher Alex Claudio from Texas to Milwaukee in exchange for a competitive balance pick seemed relatively innocuous. A rebuilding team sent a middle reliever to a competitive team that needed one in exchange for an asset — in this case, a draft pick — with a maturation timeline that better fits that of the rebuilding club. But this trade also might tell us a little more about how the Brewers think about pitching, and help us to calibrate the way we think about draft prospects, particularly advanced college relievers.

But first, let’s talk about Claudio, who is entering his first year of arbitration and will be under team control for three more. Kiley and I posited in the Brewers prospect list’s System Overview (it’s at the bottom) that Milwaukee seems drawn to pitching curiosities. This is, of course, our subjective opinion, but the list of Brewers draftees and minor leaguers who have weird deliveries or unique release points has grown to the point where it seems to be an organizational focus or, at least, an organizational experiment. And Claudio, for those who have not been lucky enough to see him pitch for Texas over the last few years, looks like this:

It’s not easy to make big league hitters look goofy under normal circumstances, let alone when you only throw 86 mph. It’s clear the bizarre nature of Claudio’s delivery plays a role in his success. For context, here’s how Claudio’s release point looks on paper when given some context. Here I’ve compared Claudio’s release point to a lefty with a pretty generic delivery.

The proliferation of Trackman at the minor league and college levels enables teams to measure things like release point, and identify players who are bizarre or unique in this regard. Extension probably factors into this, as well, and I think adding that could enable us or teams to plot release points in three dimensions, and learn even more about what helps stuff play beyond just velocity and movement.

Claudio is also effective because he’s a rare reliever with plus-plus command. He’s walked just 4.5% of hitters during each of his three years in the big leagues and, when he misses, he misses down. His ability to dump sinkers and changeups into the bottom part of the strike zone or just beneath it and almost never, ever miss up in the zone is remarkable, and it’s a huge part of why Claudio has been able to induce ground balls at a 60% clip in the big leagues.

Teams have begun to think about pitching like wine and cheese. They’re more concerned about how pitches pair together rather than just evaluating each pitch’s quality in a vacuum. A general rule of thumb is that sinking fastballs pair well with changeups because they have similarly shaped movement, sinking and running toward the pitcher’s arm side. And again, Claudio is a great example of this, with his fastball and changeup movement overlapping exactly.

We know what Claudio is at this point. He’s going to be a good middle relief option whose WAR production will likely hover around 1.0, perhaps maxing out close to the 1.7 WAR he netted in 2017. Based on how we map WAR to the 20-80 scouting scale, Milwaukee got a 40-45 FV player for the next three years. Mapping Claudio’s WAR production to the scouting scale helps us make an apples to apples comparison in situations where we otherwise would not be able to, as in this instance, where Claudio was traded, straight up, for a draft pick.

The competitive balance pick Texas received from Milwaukee is going to be close to the 40th overall selection in the draft, give or take a few spots depending on how free agent compensation picks shake out ahead of that selection. As you can see from our last several years of MLB Draft evaluations (here’s 2018), that 40th overall range is typically right about where the 45 FV and 40 FV tiers blend together, which is akin to Claudio’s value when he’s placed on the 20-80 scale. In short, based on how we think about relievers and how we expected draft prospects in the late first and early second round to pan out, this seems like a fair, logical trade for both teams.

In every draft there are a few college pitchers who seem like they could pitch in a big league relief role right away. It’s almost never a plan teams actually enact for various reasons, but this trade also gives us an idea of where that type of prospect would go in a draft. It would take a confluence of variables for such a selection to be made (a team with a relief need, a very seller-friendly or completely barren reliever trade market that forces that team to turn to the draft, and a specific type of prospect) but this part of the draft is where the drop-off in potential ceiling could lead teams to focus on other traits, like proximity and risk. In other words, the Brewers seem to have told us who they’d take in June if given the choice between this theoretical college arm and, say, a high school hitter whose career is much harder to predict.

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 2014 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. 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.

Jeff Kent took a long time to find a home. Drafted by the Blue Jays in 1989, he passed through the hands of three teams who didn’t quite realize the value of what they had. Not until a trade to the Giants in November 1996 — prior to his age-29 season — did he really settle in. Once he did, he established himself as a standout complement to Barry Bonds, helping the Giants become perennial contenders and spending more than a decade as a middle-of-the-lineup force.

Despite his late-arriving stardom and a prickly personality that sometimes rubbed teammates and media the wrong way, Kent earned All-Star honors five times, won an MVP award, and helped four different franchises reach the playoffs a total of seven times. His resumé gives him a claim as the best-hitting second baseman of the post-1960 expansion era — not an iron-clad one, but not one that’s easily dismissed. For starters, he holds the all-time record for most home runs by a second baseman with 351. That’s 74 more than Ryne Sandberg, 85 more than Joe Morgan, and 86 more than Rogers Hornsby — all Hall of Famers, and in Hornsby’s case, one from before the expansion era (note that I’m not counting homers hit while playing other positions). Among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances in their career who spent at least half their time at second base, only Hornsby (.577) has a higher slugging percentage than Kent’s .500. From that latter set, only Hornsby (1.010) and another pre-expansion Hall of Famer, Charlie Gehringer (.884), have a higher OPS.

Offense isn’t everything for a second baseman, however, and in a Hall of Fame discussion, it needs to be set in its proper context, particularly given the high-scoring era in which Kent played. Taking the measure of all facets of his game, he appears to have a weaker case with regards to advanced statistics than to traditional ones. On a crowded ballot chockfull of candidates with stronger cases on both fronts, he has struggled to gain support, topping out at 16.7% in 2017, his fourth year on the ballot.

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Around this time last December, the Phillies reached a three-year agreement with free agent Carlos Santana. The contract included a fourth-year club option, and it was worth a total of $60 million. Santana was headed into his age-32 season, and between the ages of 29 and 31, he’d been worth 8.2 WAR, with a wRC+ of 117. Because of the qualifying offer Santana had attached, the Phillies lost their second-round draft pick, along with half a million dollars in international bonus-pool money. The Phillies thought it was a great deal at the time. Santana turned into a salary dump.

Now, this time this December, the Phillies have reached a three-year agreement with free agent Andrew McCutchen. The contract includes a fourth-year club option, and it’s worth a total of $50 million. McCutchen is headed into his age-32 season, and between the ages of 29-31, he’s been worth 7.4 WAR, with a wRC+ of 116. There is no qualifying-offer penalty to consider here, as McCutchen was traded last summer. The Phillies presumably think this is a great deal at the time.

The parallels are spelled out right there. If you feel like being negative, you could accuse the Phillies of making the same mistake two years in a row. Yet for a variety of little reasons, McCutchen seems like a more suitable get. This isn’t a bargain — McCutchen’s getting paid real money. But how this can work out is more clear, as McCutchen returns to Pennsylvania.

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The Braves winning the NL East wasn’t really that big a surprise, as the questions surrounding the team generally centered on “when” rather than “if.” Perhaps a year ahead of schedule, 2018 saw some of the team’s prospect dividend started paying off richly.

The Setup

Tanking may be what the cool kids do when they rebuild these days, but back in 2014, it wasn’t quite as de rigueur as it is now. Atlanta was unusually aggressive about trading their players with value, even those who were still young, must notably Jason Heyward and Andrelton Simmons, who were traded after their age-24 and age-25 seasons respectively.

But they didn’t trade all of them. Staying in Atlanta was Freddie Freeman, who signed an eight-year, $135 million contract before the 2014 season, a deal that looks like it’ll be excellent right until the very end, which is a relative rarity for nine-figure deals with players on the easy end of the defensive spectrum.

Also remaining was Julio Teheran, who the Braves signed to a very reasonable six-year, $32.4 million contract with an option that would keep him in Atlanta through 2020. The team’s unofficial stance was that Teheran would anchor the rotation throughout the rebuilding process, though I also felt he might have been traded if his post-2014 performances had been more impressive.

In terms of competing in 2018, I’m still of the mind that this past season’s success caught the organization somewhat by surprise. If they had thought they were positioned to win 90 games, Atlanta’s biggest offseason signing probably wouldn’t have been Anibal Sanchez. Even the team’s trade involving big-in-2011 names, which sent Matt Kemp to the Dodgers for Adrian Gonzalez, Scott Kazmir, Brandon McCarthy, Charlie Culberson, and cash, was mostly about competitive balance tax implications. Gonzalez and Kazmir didn’t play a single game for the Braves; McCarthy was basically replacement level and retired by the end of the season; only Culberson was really left to contribute much to the team.

The Projection

While ZiPS was a big believer in both the Braves and Phillies in the long-term, the computer generally saw 2018 as a “too soon” kind of thing. ZiPS projected them well enough that I listed the Braves (and the Phillies) in the top two in a piece on stealth contenders in 2018. (The less said about the last two teams, the better!) ZiPS projected them for a 79-83 record in the final, official projection going into 2018, with a 1-in-7 chance of making the playoffs.

The Results

The team didn’t come out of the gate roaring, but they took most of their early series, and eventually took the divisional lead for the first time in early May after winning two out of three against the Phillies and sweeping the rapidly fading Mets. The team traded first with the Phillies over the next few months, never falling to second by more than a few games, before seizing first place for good in August.

Oddly enough, the Braves initially got to first without their eventual NL Rookie of the Year and best prospect, phenom Ronald Acuña, who was recalled at the end of April. Instead, it was some of the surprisingly good veterans, like Nick Markakis, Kurt Suzuki, and Ryan Flaherty, with wRC+s of 144, 136, and 126 respectively, leading the charge when they caught first place.

Markakis went on to make his first All-Star Game at age 34, long after anyone had considered him anything but a stopgap option in the outfield. It was not to last, with Markakis hitting .258/.332/.369 with only four homers after the midseason break. But the addition of Acuña to the roster more than compensated for the drop off; he was just as good as adding a Manny Machado or a Bryce Harper.

ZiPS already saw Acuña as a three-win player coming into 2018, hitting a perfectly respectable .269/.321/.425, a damn good line for a 20-year-old who would also be fully capable of playing centerfield if not for the existence of Ender Inciarte.

He was better than that. Reminiscent of Trout getting ZiPS best ever rookie projection and still eviscerating it by July, Acuña’s cromulent projected 101 wRC+ was mocked and beaten by the actual 143 he put up. For a time in July, when Acuña had slumped to a .249/.304/.438 line and missed significant time with a leg injury, it looked like Washington’s explosive Juan Soto would capture the Rookie of the Year award. But Acuña hit .322/.403/.625 while Atlanta put away the rest of the NL East and he won the award in a walk, taking 27 of the 30 first-place votes.

The postseason didn’t go quite as well for the Braves; the team was shutout in the first two games in Dodger Stadium by Hyun-Jin Ryu and Clayton Kershaw. After the bullpen failed to hold the line in Game 4, a two-run single by David Freese in the sixth and a three-run homer by Manny Machado in the seventh ended Atlanta’s season.

What Comes Next?

While it would have been fun to knock off the reigning NL champions in the NLDS, this also wasn’t a team fighting against a closing window; rather they were still in the process of opening one.

The inability to sign international prospects and the declared free agency of Kevin Maitan and others as a result of the Braves playing with fire vis-à-vis the international signing rules was an enormous loss. But hiring Alex Anthopoulos to run the team was still a silver lining.

Anthopoulos, since joining the Braves in November 2017, has focused on staying the course and even if it wasn’t one he personally set, he’s served as a terrific caretaker of Atlanta’s rebuild, electing not to carelessly fritter away long-term value to improve the Braves in the moment.

That’s not to say the team stood-pat in 2018. They did make significant moves, most notably picking up Kevin Gausman and Darren O’Day from the Baltimore Orioles, pickups that weren’t just about 2018. And they did it without giving up any of the crown jewels.

People are sometimes too quick to trade prospects who aren’t a great roster fit. Even if you don’t have an immediate slot for a Luiz Gohara or a Mike Soroka full-time, trading them now costs you the ability to trade them for a player who might be even more crucial later.

This winter, the Braves are blessed with both financial and roster flexibility, and are arguably one of the teams least constrained by various issues. They’ve already made their first move, bringing in Josh Donaldson for 2019, a move that is both win-now and will not block Austin Riley long-term. Atlanta doesn’t appear to be in on Bryce Harper, but they have the ability to go after just about anyone else. And with a team on the rise, they could be a real lure for free agents (as they were for Donaldson).

ZiPS Projection – Ronald Acuña

We’ve already spent a lot of digital ink on the merits of Atlanta’s young outfielder, so let’s just dump some projections on you; it’s almost fanservice at this point.

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 2017 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. 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.

A savant in the batter’s box, Manny Ramirez could be an idiot just about everywhere else — sometimes amusingly, sometimes much less so. The Dominican-born slugger, who grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan, stands as one of the greatest hitters of all time, a power-hitting righthanded slugger who spent the better part of his 19 seasons (1993–2011) terrorizing pitchers. A 12-time All-Star, Ramirez bashed 555 home runs and helped the Indians and the Red Sox reach two World Series apiece, adding a record 29 postseason homers along the way. He was the World Series MVP for Boston in 2004, when the club won its first championship in 86 years.

For all of his prowess with the bat, Ramirez’s lapses — Manny Being Manny — both on and off the field are legendary. There was the time in 1997 that he “stole” first base, returning to the bag after a successful steal of second because he thought Jim Thome had fouled off a pitch… the time in 2004 that he inexplicably cut off centerfielder Johnny Damon’s relay throw from about 30 feet away, leading to an inside-the-park home run… the time in 2005 when he disappeared mid-inning to relieve himself inside Fenway Park’s Green Monster… the time in 2008 that he high-fived a fan in mid-play between catching a fly ball and doubling a runner off first… and so much more.

Beneath those often comic lapses was an intense work ethic, apparent as far back as his high school days, that allowed Ramirez’s talent to flourish. But there was also a darker side, one that, particularly after he left the Indians, went beyond the litany of late arrivals to spring training, questionable absences due to injury (particularly for the All-Star Game), and near-annual trade requests. Most notably, there was his shoving match with 64-year-old Red Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick in 2008, which prefigured Ramirez’s trade to the Dodgers that summer, and a charge of misdemeanor domestic violence/battery in 2011 after his wife told an emergency operator that her husband had slapped her face, causing her to hit her head against the headboard of the bed. (That domestic violence charge was later dropped after his wife refused to testify.) Interspersed with those two incidents were a pair of suspensions for performance-enhancing drug use, the second of which ran him out of the majors.

For all of the handwringing about PED-tinged candidates on the Hall of Fame ballot over the past decade, Ramirez is the first star with actual suspensions on his record to gain eligibility since Rafael Palmeiro in 2011. Like Palmeiro, Ramirez has numbers that would otherwise make his enshrinement a lock. In his 2017 ballot debut, he received 23.8% — a higher share than Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa, players who were never suspended — from an electorate that appeared to be in the midst of softening its hardline stance against PED users, but dipped to 22.0% in 2018. He won’t get into Cooperstown anytime soon, but he won’t fall off the ballot anytime soon, either.

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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 2015 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. 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.

Wherever Gary Sheffield went, he made noise, both with his bat and his voice. For the better part of two decades, he ranked among the game’s most dangerous hitters, a slugger with a keen batting eye and a penchant for contact that belied his quick, violent swing. For even longer than that, he was one of the game’s most outspoken players, unafraid to speak up when he felt he was being wronged and unwilling to endure a situation that wasn’t to his liking. He was a polarizing player, and hardly one for the faint of heart.

At the plate, Sheffield was viscerally impressive like few others. With his bat twitching back and forth like the tail of a tiger waiting to pounce, he was pure menace in the batter’s box. He won a batting title, launched over 500 home runs — 14 seasons with at least 20 and eight with at least 30 — and put many a third base coach in peril with some of the most terrifying foul balls anyone has ever seen. For as violent as his swing may have been, it was hardly wild; not until his late thirties did he strike out more than 80 times in a season, and in his prime, he walked far more often than he struck out.

Off the field, Bill James once referred to Sheffield as “an urban legend in his own mind.” Sheffield found controversy before he ever reached the majors through his connection to his uncle, Dwight Gooden. He was drafted and developed by the Brewers, who had no idea how to handle such a volatile player and wound up doing far more harm than good. Small wonder then that from the time he was sent down midway through his rookie season after being accused of faking an injury, he was mistrustful of team management and wanted out. And when he wanted out — of Milwaukee, Los Angeles, or New York — he let you know it, and if a bridge had to burn, so be it; it was Festivus every day for Sheffield, who was always willing to air his grievances.

Later in his career, Sheffield became entangled in the BALCO performance enhancing drug scandal through his relationship with Barry Bonds — a relationship that by all accounts crumbled before he found himself in even deeper water. For all of the drama that surrounded Sheffield, and for all of his rage and outrageousness, he never burned out the way his uncle did, nor did he have trouble finding work.

Even in the context of the high-scoring era in which he played, Sheffield’s offensive numbers look to be Hall of Fame caliber, but voters have found plenty of reasons to overlook him, whether it’s his tangential connection to PEDs, his gift for finding controversy, his poor defensive metrics, or the crowd on the ballot. In his 2015 debut, he received just 11.7% of the vote, and in three years since, he’s actually lost a bit of ground, getting 11.1% in 2018. At this point, he’s more likely to fall off the ballot before his eligibility window expires than he is to reach 75% — a fate that, I must admit, surprises me.

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Some of the weakest bonds in existence are those between fans and their favorite teams’ players. Those relationships are much like the concept of momentum in sports: valid and real, until the next event. Fans love players until they dislike them, and fans hate players until they can cheer them. Everything is superficial. Teams only like fans because of their money. Fans only like players because of their success. Rare is the fan who’s willing to be patient; affection lasts only right up to a slump.

Nathan Eovaldi is a hero in Boston. He’s a hero because of what he did in the playoffs, and he was so sensational he’s remembered most fondly for how he pitched in a loss. Now, granted, the World Series is permanent, so it can never be taken away. Eovaldi was a part of that winning roster. But as the future goes, nothing’s forever. Red Sox fans could turn on Eovaldi. Any fans could turn on anyone. That’s just a part of the experience. So much of how we feel about sports carries an unwritten “for now.”

But for the next few months, there are no games. There are no opportunities for performance to slide. After the World Series, Eovaldi became a free agent, pursued by at least half the league. On Thursday, Eovaldi has agreed to re-sign with the Red Sox, for four years and $67.5 million. In so doing, Eovaldi only further lifted his local status. He was already considered a hero. Now he’s a hero who didn’t want to leave. What will happen in 2019 is very much up in the air, yet 2018 is what dreams are made of.

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