The International Players tab on The Board has once again enjoyed a sweeping update, the second such update since the pandemic shifted the international signing calendar back about six months. Rankings and reports for the current class of amateur players set to sign in January 2022 (though that date could be delayed due to the lockout) have been expanded on The Board with help from Kevin Goldstein, while updates and additions to the notable pro players in other markets have been completed with help from Tess Taruskin and Brendan Gawlowski.

CBA/COVID Complications

There are a few factors that could potentially complicate the upcoming signing period. Remember that fallout from the pandemic has already pushed this signing period back six months. When most of the international amateur players on The Board agreed to their deals with teams, they assumed that they’d have put pen to paper by now and perhaps have spent the fall in Florida or Arizona for instructional league. Instead, they haven’t yet signed, and now a lockout may further delay or complicate their coronation. Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday evening’s announcement of the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Early Baseball and Golden Days Era Committee voting results brought a mixture of elation and sadness, as well as some measure of closure. Six candidates were elected to the Hall via the two ballots for long-retired players and managers, including three of its most famous omissions (Early Baseball’s Buck O’Neil, and Golden Days’ Gil Hodges and Minnie Miñoso), two of the three living candidates (Golden Days’ Jim Kaat and Tony Oliva), and a pioneer who stands as the first professional Black player in history (Bud Fowler). But as a bracing reminder of near-misses and the collision between baseball and human mortality, Dick Allen — who died on December 7, 2020, one day before his candidacy would have been considered if not for the coronavirus pandemic — fell a single vote short of election for the second time in a row.

The voting by the two 16-member panels took place on Sunday in Orlando, Florida, where the MLB Winter Meetings would have been held this week if not for their cancellation due to MLB’s decision to lock out the players following the expiration of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (the MiLB portion is still taking place). Each voter was allowed to include up to four of the 10 candidates on their ballot, and the voting was done in secret.

By far the most popular candidate up for election on either ballot was O’Neil, whose career as a player began in 1937 with the Kansas City Monarchs. O’Neil played alongside Hall of Famers such as Satchel Paige, Willard Brown, Bullet Rogan, and Hilton Smith, then managed the Monarchs, but it was his post-career work that elevated him into the pantheon. He was a pioneering scout who connected Ernie Banks to the Cubs and Elston Howard to the Yankees, signed Lou Brock, and scouted Lee Smith. He was the first Black coach in the AL/NL majors. And finally, he was an ambassador for the Negro Leagues, playing an outsized role in raising awareness of Black baseball and in recognizing its greats. O’Neil spent 21 years on the Veterans Committee, offering eyewitness testimony on his cohorts; served as subject and narrator in Ken Burns’ nine-part documentary series Baseball; co-founded the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City; and crusaded for Negro Leagues players deserving election to the Hall. Read the rest of this entry »

Buddy Kennedy came two steps closer to following in his maternal grandfather’s footsteps this year. Splitting his first full professional season between High-A Hillsboro and Double-A Amarillo, the 23-year-old Arizona Diamondbacks infield prospect slashed a robust .290/.384/.523. Moreover, his right-handed stroke produced a 141 wRC+ and 22 home runs in just 406 plate appearances.

Don Money’s career high in home runs, which came in 1977, was 25. Himself a right-handed-hitting infielder, Money made four All-Star teams and put up a 106 wRC+ while playing with the Philadelphia Phillies (1968-72) and the Milwaukee Brewers (1973-83). Like his grandson, his primary position was third base.

A native of Millville, New Jersey — he and Mike Trout attended the same high school — Kennedy was Arizona’s fifth-round pick in the 2017 draft. Well before that time he was receiving sage advice from the family patriarch — advice that continues to this day.

“Ever since I was young he’s given me perspectives that most guys don’t have,” said Kennedy. “He helped teach me about the professional side of the game early on, so that I could go about my business the way I’m supposed to, instead of just going out there and playing without a purpose. He’s a great source. I love him. We sit down to talk baseball every time I get home.” Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Early Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. 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.

Vic Harris

Vic Harris was a feisty and feared player, a high-average, left-handed spray-hitting left fielder with only moderate power who nonetheless stood out during his playing career, mainly from 1923 to ’43, and primarily with the powerhouse Homestead Grays. He made an even bigger mark as a manager. With his max-effort style setting an example for his players, he piloted the Grays to seven pennants (some sources count an eighth) in a 12-season span (1937-48) in the second Negro National League, a mark unparalleled in the major Negro Leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Early Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. For Jay Jaffe’s introduction to the ballot, see here.

Buck O’Neil

“Among the luminaries on the KayCees team is John O’Neil, who has been acclaimed as the finest fielding and hitting first baseman in Negro baseball.” – The Evening News, Harrisburg Pennsylvania, July 1941

In February of 2006, the Special Committee on the Negro Leagues convened to consider 39 candidates from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black baseball for induction into the Hall of Fame, a final ballot selected from an initial group of 94; Buck O’Neil was among those finalists. But when the Committee announced the results of their work, O’Neil wasn’t one of the 17 players and executives elected. O’Neil never got to experience a Major League debut, as his Negro Leagues playing career was ending just as Major League Baseball was integrating. After serving as both a first baseman and manager with the Kansas City Monarchs, he worked as a scout and became the first African-American coach in MLB. In later years, he gained admiration as one of the game’s greatest ambassadors and storytellers.

“God’s been good to me. They didn’t think Buck was good enough to be in the Hall of Fame. That’s the way they thought about it and that’s the way it is, so we’re going to live with that. Just keep loving old Buck. Don’t weep for Buck. No, man, be happy, be thankful,” he told The Kansas City Star in 1995. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, we published an update to our 2022 Draft rankings. Today, I pushed 2023 and 2024 to The Board, with the small 2024 group consisting almost entirely of our highly-ranked, unsigned 2021 high schoolers.

The most significant takeaway from the 2023 class is its projected strength at the top. There’s currently only one 50 FV prospect in the 2022 class, but already three atop the 2023 group: Ole Miss shortstop Jacob Gonzalez, Wake Forest third baseman Brock Wilken, and LSU outfielder Dylan Crews. That’s more than has been typical for a class that’s still a year and a half away from draft day. Gonzalez has special bat-to-ball skills and can play a premium position, Wilken already has 70-grade raw power and rare athleticism for a corner defender, and Crews performed in the SEC and reinforced confidence in the huge tools that made him famous as a high schooler.

This group may eventually be joined by more prospects. Most of the college players who will be eligible in 2023 are still teenagers right now, and some of them have not even had the opportunity to play consistently as they are coming off freshman seasons at big, talent-rich programs. With a couple of obviously excellent prospects already in place at the top of the class, and so much of the rest of it still in a magmatic stage of development, the 2023 draft has a shot to be pretty special up top. Read the rest of this entry »

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ brand is synonymous with superstars. It’s Clayton Kershaw, Mookie Betts, and deadline trades for Max Scherzer. Have a problem that needs a hammer? The Dodgers will bring two hammers, and they’ll have Walker Buehler on standby just in case. Those are the perks of having both one of the shrewdest front offices in baseball and one of the highest payrolls in the sport every year.

It’s funny, then, that Chris Taylor is one of the team’s greatest success stories. Taylor came to the Dodgers as an afterthought, in exchange for Zach Lee, a minor league pitcher who made all of 14 starts in the Seattle system before the team waived him. Six years later, Taylor is again headed to Los Angeles — but this time he’s doing it as a very rich man rather than a career minor leaguer. He and the Dodgers agreed to a four-year contract worth $60 million, as Ken Rosenthal reported. The deal also contains a team option for a fifth year.

All of that stuff I said at the top about the Dodgers and stars? It’s true, but the Los Angeles roster relies on positional versatility to make everything work. Taylor is the poster boy for this style: he played at least 50 innings at second, third, short, left, center, and right last year. Corey Seager injury? Taylor can fill in. Strange lineup with Max Muncy at second and Cody Bellinger at first? Taylor can flip to center — or to third base if Justin Turner needs a breather. Seager is gone, but with Trea Turner as a one-for-one replacement, Taylor will likely continue to get near-everyday playing time without a true home in the field. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rays and Marlins love making trades. They’ve now combined for four trades this year, though this one is the most consequential. The terms are simple: Miami gets Joey Wendle and Tampa Bay gets Kameron Misner. That’s it!

Normally at FanGraphs, we try to tell you why the trade might make sense for both sides, and which way we would lean if we had to choose a winner. If we’re feeling feisty, we might throw in a joke or two, perhaps a Dick Monfort burn if Dan Szymborski is in the driver’s seat. Today, though, the two of us had wildly different views of who won this trade. So without further ado, here are Brendan’s (Marlins) and Ben’s (Rays) thoughts on which side got the best of the other in this very Floridian trade.

Brendan’s Take

Ben probably isn’t the first analyst to pan a deal where Miami sought to improve the big league club, but I can’t find much recent precedent. That the Fighting Jeters beefed up at all seems sufficient cause for celebration. MLB is at its best when teams put their top product on the field, and the Marlins often fail to clear that low threshold. But between the Avisaíl García signing, the Sandy Alcantara extension, the Jacob Stallings trade, and now the Wendle deal, the Marlins have the swagger of… well, not a contender exactly, but at least an upright major league team. Read the rest of this entry »

With Major League Baseball’s current collective bargaining agreement (CBA) set to expire at 11:59 p.m. Eastern tonight, the owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) are currently meeting in Dallas to exchange various proposals in an attempt to reach a deal. Unfortunately, media reports suggest that no new agreement is imminent, meaning that the sport is facing the very real possibility that it will experience its first work stoppage since the infamous players’ strike of 1994-95.

While it is certainly possible that tonight’s deadline could pass without triggering a labor stoppage — indeed, the two sides can elect to continue to negotiate with the existing CBA governing the sport in the interim — MLB commissioner Rob Manfred seemed to suggest prior to Thanksgiving that the owners will lock out the players if no agreement is reached this evening.

Consequently, this post explores the various options available to the MLBPA should the owners implement a lockout at midnight tonight as anticipated. Along the way, I will borrow from a similar post I wrote back in 2016 during the last CBA negotiations. While that labor-stoppage primer ultimately proved to be unnecessary, barring a miraculous turn of events in the coming hours, it would appear that fans are unlikely to be so lucky this time around. (Meanwhile, for anyone looking to understand the basis for the current dispute between the owners and players, this preview from a couple weeks ago may prove helpful.)

First, some basic legal background. A lockout is a legally sanctioned tool in which management (in this case, team owners) announces that it will refuse to allow its unionized employees (presently, the players) to work until an ongoing labor dispute is resolved. This means that the players will not be paid, or allowed to report to work, until a new CBA has been agreed to. In the interim, there will be no major-league free-agent signings, trades, or games played. A lockout is thus the ownership equivalent of a strike by the players. Read the rest of this entry »

Few people probably anticipated the kind of spending frenzy we’ve seen this offseason leading up to a likely lockout. Nobody assumed the Rangers would be leading the way. They’ve now committed over $500 million in salary in the last 48 hours, with the biggest chunk of that coming on Monday afternoon in the form of a 10-year, $325 million deal for shortstop Corey Seager, who finished second in our top 50 free agent rankings. The deal includes a $5 million bonus and no opt-outs.

(A quick note before we move on: When you get into these numbers, state taxes make a difference. Playing in Texas and the AL West, Seager will play nearly two-thirds of his games in tax-free states. The Dodgers, who play nearly two-thirds of their games in the state with the highest tax rate in the country, could have offered $350 million and still not matched the Rangers in overall money.)

In Seager, the Rangers get a face-of-the-franchise–level talent — when he’s healthy, which has been depressingly rare of late. He missed more than a third of the 2021 season due to an errant pitch breaking a bone in his hand, lost nearly three weeks of the ’19 season to a hamstring strain, and was absent for the majority of of the ’18 season due to Tommy John and hip surgeries.

That said, the healthy version of Seager (and to be far, the broken hand was an accident) has shown that he’s capable of seasons worthy of MVP votes and is the best offensive shortstop on the market, and yes, that includes Carlos Correa, No. 1 in our top 50. Seager’s power is a seemingly underrated aspect of his game that every bit matches Correa’s in terms of exit velocities, and the former’s pure hit tool exceeds the latter’s, who is ultimately the better overall player thanks to his incredible defensive prowess. Read the rest of this entry »