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My annual Hall of Fame series is well underway, and now that we’re past the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s time to launch what’s become a yearly tradition at FanGraphs. In the spirit of our annual free agent contract crowdsourcing, we’re inviting registered users to fill out their own virtual Hall of Fame ballots via a cool gizmo that our developer, Sean Dolinar, built a couple of years ago. We’re also going to use this page to lay out a tentative schedule for the remainder of the series.

To participate in the crowdsourcing, you must be signed in, and you may only vote once. While you don’t have to be a Member to do so, this is a good time to mention that buying a Membership does help to fund the development of cool tools like this — and it makes a great holiday gift! To replicate the actual voting process, you may vote for anywhere from zero to 10 players; ballots with more than 10 won’t be counted. You may change your ballot until the deadline, which is December 31, 2020, the same as that of the actual BBWAA voters, who have to scare up a postage stamp and schlep their paper ballot to the mailbox.

The ballot is here and contains all 25 candidates (sorry, no write-ins for those fixated on Pete Rose). We’ve got tables of career stats for hitters and pitchers, if that helps, as well as a checkbox that allows you to see the stats of those already enshrined. As with last year, I’ll write up the crowdsourcing results sometime in early January, when we’re all jonesing for Hall news in advance of the announcement of the official results on January 26. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 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.

At a moment when baseball is so obsessed with velocity, it’s remarkable to remember how recently it was that a pitcher could thrive, year in and year out, despite averaging in the 85-87 mph range with his fastball. Yet thats exactly what Mark Buehrle did over the course of his 16-year career. Listed at 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, the burly Buehrle was the epitome of the crafty lefty, an ultra-durable workhorse who didn’t dominate but who worked quickly, used a variety of pitches — four-seamer, sinker, cutter, curve, changeup — moving a variety of directions to pound the strike zone, and relied on his fielders to make the plays behind him. From 2001-14, he annually reached the 30-start and 200-inning plateaus, and he barely missed on the latter front in his final season.

August Fagerstrom summed up Buehrle so well in his 2016 appreciation that I can’t resist sharing a good chunk:

The way Buehrle succeeded was unique, of course. He got his ground balls, but he wasn’t the best at getting ground balls. He limited walks, but he wasn’t the best a limiting walks. He generated soft contact, but he wasn’t the best at generating soft contact. Buehrle simply avoided damage with his sub-90 mph fastball by throwing strikes while simultaneously avoiding the middle of the plate:

That’s Buehrle’s entire career during the PITCHf/x era, and it’s something of a remarkable graphic. You see Buehrle living on the first-base edge of the zone, making sure to keep his pitches low, while also being able to spot the same pitch on the opposite side of the zone, for the most part avoiding the heart of the plate. Buehrle’s retained the ability to pitch this way until the end; just last year [2015], he led all of baseball in the percentage of pitches located on the horizontal edges of the plate.

Drafted and developed by the White Sox — practically plucked from obscurity, at that — Buehrle spent 12 of his 16 seasons on the South Side, making four All-Star teams and helping Chicago to three postseason appearances, including its 2005 World Series win, which broke the franchise’s 88-year championship drought. While with the White Sox, he became just the second pitcher in franchise history to throw multiple no-hitters, first doing so in 2007 against the Rangers and then adding a perfect game in 2009 against the Rays. After his time in Chicago, he spent a sour season with the newly-rebranded Miami Marlins, and when that predictably melted down spent three years with the Blue Jays, helping them reach the playoffs for the first time in 22 years.

Though Buehrle reached the 200-win plateau in his final season, he was just 36 years old when he hung up his spikes, preventing him from more fully padding his counting stats or framing his case for Cooperstown in the best light. A closer look suggests that beyond the superficial numbers, while he’s the equal or better of several enshrined pitchers according to WAR and JAWS, he’s far off the standards, and doesn’t have the peripheral collection of accomplishments to bolster his candidacy. Like Tim Hudson, he may receive a smattering of support on a ballot that’s hardly crowded, but his candidacy isn’t likely to lack staying power. Read the rest of this entry »

I have the honor of casting a Hall of Fame ballot for the first time this year. Jay Jaffe does as well, each of us having joined the BBWAA in 2010 while colleagues at Baseball Prospectus. A decade later — and in Jay’s case, countless words written on the subject at hand — we are the first FanGraphs writers to be granted voting privileges.

I’m sharing my ballot in this column, but before doing so, it’s only appropriate that I tip my hat to my fellow first-time voter. As most everyone reading this knows, Jay’s JAWS system is invaluable when assessing Hall of Fame credentials, as is his must-read Cooperstown Casebook. Given his extensive research and analysis, there may not be a greater authority on the subject.

That being said, the question of what defines a Hall of Famer is inherently subjective. Following Ryan Thibodaux’s Ballot Tracker will tell you as much. With barely over a dozen made public, we’ve already seen ballots with 10 checkmarks, while others have been left blank. As a “Big Hall” guy, I’m clearly not in accord with the latter camp.

Jay and I disagree on at least one player. Barring an earth-shaking surprise, Omar Vizquel won’t get his vote. Conversely, the iconic-yet-polarizing shortstop was a no-brainer for me. The first names I checked on my ballot were Vizquel and Scott Rolen. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s often said that there are no bad one-year deals, and the Braves have made a particular habit of using them to augment their young rotations — a habit that predates Alex Anthopoulos’ arrival as their general manager. After a season in which they fell one win short of their first trip to the World Series since 1999 despite a rotation thinned out by major injuries, the Braves have been been aggressive in pursuing that short-term approach. After signing Drew Smyly to a one-year contract last week, they’ve inked Charlie Morton to a one-year, $15 million deal, the same amount of money he would have been paid in 2021 had the Rays not declined his option in late October. Though a quirk of timing caused him to miss inclusion in our Top 50 Free Agents list, he’s the first major free agent to come off the board.

Morton, who turned 37 on November 12, is coming off a regular season in which he was limited to nine starts and 38 innings due to a bout of shoulder inflammation that sidelined him for three weeks in August. The Rays kept him on a short leash, but as the postseason reminded the baseball world, that’s how they roll. Morton pitched more than five innings just once (5.2 on August 4 against the Red Sox), and he topped 90 pitches just three times, maxing out at 94. He was used similarly in the postseason, and looked quite good, particularly in a pair of scoreless starts against the Astros in the ALCS; he threw five innings and 96 pitches in Game 2, then an ultra-efficient 5.2 innings while allowing just two hits on 66 pitches in Game 7. His removal while cruising along in that latter game foreshadowed manager Kevin Cash’s ill-fated decision to pull Blake Snell in Game 6 of the World Series, though in Morton’s case things turned out in the Rays’ favor. His lone postseason dud came in Game 3, when the Dodgers roughed him up for five runs in 4.1 innings.

Read the rest of this entry »

The legend of Steve Dalkowski is well known. Arguably the most famous player to never reach the big leagues, the Connecticut-born left-hander is said to have thrown harder than anyone alive… and he had little idea where the ball was going. Pitching primarily in the Baltimore Orioles organization, Dalkowski walked 1,236 batters — and fanned 1,324 — in 956 minor-league innings. His star-crossed career, which spanned the 1957-1965 seasons, inspired the “Bull Durham” character Nuke LaLoosh.

Dalkowski died this past April, and a handful of months later a biography of his roller-coaster baseball life was published: Dalko: The Untold Story of Baseball’s Fastest Pitcher, by Bill Dembski, Alex Thomas, and Brian Vikander. In late October, Vikander — a longtime pitching coach with expertise in both biomechanics and mental skills — was a guest on Justin McGuire’s always-insightful Baseball by the Book podcast. What I heard prompted this interview, which was conducted over the phone last week.

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David Laurila: How hard did Steve Dalkowski throw?

Brian Vikander: “In my opinion, he threw over 110 mph. I base that on a couple of things. The first is that there’s not one individual — not one — who has ever come forward and said that he was not the hardest thrower, the biggest arm, in the history of baseball. You’ve got guys who saw ‘Rapid Robert’ Feller, Ryne Duren, Rex Barney, Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax…and everybody says it was Dalko. You can debate 2-10 in any fashion that you want, but he’s No. 1. Hall of Famers said it. Earl Weaver said it. Pat Gillick said it.”

Laurila: A lot of people reading this are going to think, “That’s anecdotal; where is the proof?” They’re going to doubt that Dalkowski ever threw that hard.

Vikander: “Well, right now we’ve got 108.1 on Nolan Ryan’s release point on a fastball, so we’re asking people, credibly, to give us two miles an hour. That’s not that big a stretch. I went down to ASMI, in Birmingham, Alabama — they are the consultants for Major League Baseball on all things kinematic in the sequencing and energy production for arms — and spent a few days. I was with seven PhDs from MIT, and they were all telling me that I don’t know what I’m talking about. But then on the third day, everybody came around. They said, ‘That theory that you have proposed, Brian, doesn’t guarantee anything, but it does put forward the possibility that this guy could have been in that rare air and actually done it.’ Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Kansas City Royals.

Batters

The Royals are not a dreadful team. They likely won’t lose 100 games or find themselves setting any horrifying, ineptitude-based records like when the 2019 Orioles allowed 75% of the home runs hit in baseball history. But they’re a phenomenally uninspiring club and like most Royals squads since owner Ewing Kauffman passed away in 1993, one that looks forever stuck in the limbo between not really being close to contending and only half-heartedly rebuilding. The Royals briefly broke the wheel in the mid-2010s when the players acquired in return for Zack Greinke, late 2000s prospects, and a few reclamation projects all peaked simultaneously, but they never had a plan to sustain winning beyond those amazing highlights. Since the strike in 1994, the Royals have a .441 winning percentage, the worst in baseball and the third-worst since Dayton Moore replaced Allard Baird as the general manager.

As such, the Royals have several talented veterans, none of whom are remotely likely to be in Kansas City the next time the team is good. It’s not a great sign for a rebuilding club when the offensive players with the most projected WAR remaining in their careers are largely the oldest ones. Adalberto Mondesi is the exception at age-25, at the top of the team with 19.6 estimated wins remaining, followed by Whit Merrifield, Jorge Soler, Salvador Perez, and Franchy Cordero. If you’re keeping score, that’s a 32-year-old outfielder, a 31-year-old injury-prone catcher, a late-20s designated hitter, and a player who last had 200 plate appearances in a season in 2017. Bobby Witt Jr. is the only position player under 25 with a mean projection of five wins in the majors in his entire career. Only Lucius Fox and MJ Melendez even project above replacement level. Read the rest of this entry »

Here at FanGraphs, we devote a lot of time to analyzing baseball. I flatter myself to think that our analysis, in some cases, helps shape the way you consume the sport. Measured in that way, however, we fall far short of the influence that your local broadcast of choice exerts. We may grace your brainwaves for a handful of minutes every day, but every time you watch a game on TV, the announcers are granted three hours to shape your view and enjoyment of the sport.

In fact, I would venture that no one group contributes more to your enjoyment and understanding of baseball than your most frequently-viewed broadcast crew. Despite that, it has been over four years since we last compiled a ranking of broadcast groups. Starting yesterday and continuing until tomorrow, we will post a series of surveys, one for each major league franchise. We will then use the results of these surveys to compile a comprehensive fan-based ranking of all television broadcast crews.

When you peruse the section for your team or teams of choice, you will find a link to a poll. That poll covers three categories, as well as an overall ranking. In addition, there is a separate space for any additional comments you would like to make. The eventual ranking of broadcast teams will be quantitative, but I will include relevant comments from this section in my writing of those rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Atlanta Braves.

Batters

How do you get to the playoffs easily with only one dependable starter? Pummeling the league into submission with your offense is a good place to start. The Dodgers led the National League in runs scored, but the Braves finished only a single run behind them. Marcell Ozuna’s one-year contract turned out to be one of the best moves of the winter. Unable to maintain the level of his 2017 breakout the last couple of years, he went out and topped even that season, hitting .338/.431/.636 and earning two-thirds of a Triple Crown by finishing third in batting average while leading the league in homers and RBIs. Sure, it wouldn’t have been quite the same in a 60-game season, though one could argue that batting average is harder to lead in over a short year due to being a volatile qualitative measure.

Atlanta now faces the challenge of replacing Ozuna’s production. That won’t happen in full, but newly minted NL MVP Freddie Freeman returns, as does the Ronald Acuña Jr./Ozzie Albies tandem, a pair of young stars that can quite literally match up with any such coupling in MLB history. Freeman did as much to push his Hall of Fame case forward as you can in 60 games and passed the halfway mark to 3,000 hits; he’ll likely finish in the 2,500-hit range, something he’ll likely need with around 400 home runs as a first baseman. By the time he retires, ZiPS projects him to have the fourth-most WAR for a 21st-century first baseman with around 60, but that’s not slam-dunk territory.

Acuña’s a superstar, and one has to remember that the top comp in his cohort is the young, dynamic Jose Canseco, not the plodding slugger the latter was late in his career. In a way, it feels almost fitting to have him comped to the first 40/40 hitter. Technically, Acuña has the talent to be the first 50/50 hitter someday, but there’s always that issue that the better a player hits, the more resistant managers become to letting them run the bases aggressively. Even Rickey Henderson’s attempts dropped over time! Read the rest of this entry »

Here at FanGraphs, we devote a lot of time to analyzing baseball. I flatter myself to think that our analysis, in some cases, helps shape the way you consume the sport. Measured in that way, however, we fall far short of the influence that your local broadcast of choice exerts. We may grace your brainwaves for a handful of minutes every day, but every time you watch a game on TV, the announcers are granted three hours to shape your view and enjoyment of the sport.

In fact, I would venture that no one group contributes more to your enjoyment and understanding of baseball than your most frequently-viewed broadcast crew. Despite that, it has been over four years since we last compiled a ranking of broadcast groups. Over the course of the next three days, we will post a series of surveys, one for each major league franchise. We will then use the results of these surveys to compile a comprehensive fan-based ranking of all television broadcast crews.

When you peruse the section for your team or teams of choice, you will find a link to a poll. That poll covers three categories, as well as an overall ranking. In addition, there is a separate space for any additional comments you would like to make. The eventual ranking of broadcast teams will be quantitative, but I will include relevant comments from this section in my writing of those rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

Why was Greg Maddux as good as he was? In the opinion of longtime pitching instructor Brian Vikander, the biggest reason is that Maddux took baseball-is-a-chess-match to whole new level. Moreover, he did so in much the same manner as that with which Boris Spassky tackled the likes of Bobby Fischer.

That Vikander and I happened upon that particular subject is somewhat ironic. When we spoke earlier this week, it was to discuss his assertion that Steve Dalkowski threw 110 mph. Vikander is the co-author of a book about the legendary left-hander, who along with having extraordinary velocity was the antithesis of Maddux when it came to command. “Dalko” walked 1,236 batters in 956 minor league innings.

(We’ll hear from Vikander on Dalkowski and velocity in the coming week.)

“A big part of pitching is preventing on-time contact,” said Vikander, whose three-plus decades of experience includes working with Tom House and a plethora of professional hurlers. “Maddux was able to take all of the components — pitch selection, sequencing, location, and movement — and put them together to do that. It wasn’t any different than a Grandmaster in chess; it was like Boris Spassky. Most people don’t understand how that unusual opening would be used in a World Title game. Bobby Fischer did, but there aren’t many who are capable of that level of thinking.”

Vikander cited Miguel Cabrera as an example of a hitter capable of thinking along with pitchers in grandmaster fashion. He offered Ted Williams, with whom he’d conversed with over the years, as second example. In Vikander’s view, it’s that ability which separates “the truly great ones” from mere mortals. Read the rest of this entry »