Last Sunday’s column led with J.D. Martinez, whose non-quantifiable impact on the Red Sox lineup was widely lauded. Deeply enmeshed in hitting mechanics and theory, the veteran slugger was both a sounding board and lead-by-example influence on several of his teammates. That didn’t go unnoticed by people around the game.
“J.D. rightfully so got credit for doing that,” said Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell, one of three managers I broached the subject with at the Winter Meetings. “It’s an important part of being a teammate — being connected and sharing. A player’s eyes are probably on each other more than they are on the coaches. They have a way to help each other, just as much as coaches do. You want to foster that environment. It’s something all teams should try to do.”
Asked for an example of a positive influence on his own team, Counsell cited Ryan Braun. Responding to that same question, Oakland manager Bob Melvin named a player who may or may not be wearing an A’s uniform next year.
“Jed was the guy last year for us,” Melvin said of now-free-agent Jed Lowrie. “(He) understands mechanics. He understands launch angles and exit velocities. (He) was a nice kind of player/coach for us to help out Bushy (hitting coach Darren Bush) with some of our younger guys.” Read the rest of this entry »
The reason called strikes exist is that, at a certain point, the game wants hitters to get on with it. If we didn’t have called strikes, hitters could, and almost certainly would, let pitch after pitch in the strike zone sail by, content to wait as long as might be necessary for precisely the right one to arrive. How many pitches would it take before you’d start shouting at the hitter to get the bat off his shoulder and just swing already? 10? 20? 100? No need to find out. Baseball doesn’t have a clock; called strikes serve just as well. You get three pitches in the zone. Three pitches you should be able to do something with. Three pitches, then you’re out, and someone else gets to take their turn.
But of course major league pitches in the zone are still extremely hard to hit. Major league hitters, who become major league hitters, at least in part, by demonstrating a consistent ability to make contact with pitches inside the zone, usually whiff on about one out of every six or seven strikes they swing at. Mike Trout missed about one in every 10 last year. So did 2004 Barry Bonds. Even the very best of the very best miss on pitches inside the zone all the time. Which makes it all the more amazing that Michael Brantley, who is admittedly neither Barry Bonds nor Mike Trout, made contact with 97.3% of the pitches he swung at inside the zone last year. Now, he didn’t swing at pitches in the zone all the time; he was discerning, swinging at 65.8% of those pitches, a number that takes a few pages of the leaderboard to click over to. And not all of the contact he made was necessarily good contact. But it was a lot of contact. Indeed, it was, by a fair margin, the best mark in baseball.
When I first learned this particular fact, which was just a few minutes before I started writing this article, I almost immediately asked myself a question about Michael Brantley that I’m afraid may be rather unfair to the man: What happened on the 2.7% of pitches on which he missed?
Let’s go back to September 1, 2018. That was the day the Cleveland Indians were playing the second game of a three game series against the Tampa Bay Rays in Cleveland, and it was a day — the last of only five such days this year — on which Michael Brantley swung and missed at more than one strike in a single game. I’d like to focus on the two he missed that day because they emphasize, I think, the utter improbability of not missing that same kind of pitch far more often. Here’s the first one (with some bonus Francisco Lindor):
That’s a good pitch. Blake Snell has a good slider. But it’s not like that pitch was extraordinarily outside the bounds of what big league hitters have to face every day. What Brantley probably should have done is to lay off of it, because the best he was ever going to be able to do was ground the ball weakly to the left side, or maybe pop it over the third baseman’s head and into left field. But that’s easy to say and very hard to do. When the ball comes out of Snell’s hand, it looks like it might end up somewhere just south of Brantley’s left elbow. Instead it ends up just south of the catcher’s left knee. This is part of what makes baseball hard. This is why only mis-identifying a pitch like this 22 times in a given season is, to me, stunning and worth writing about. Here’s another of those 22 pitches–the second Brantley missed that day (this time with bonus Donaldson content):
Here, you can see Brantley sigh a little bit. I’m not sure, but I imagine that’s because this is the same pitch he missed earlier in the game, from the same pitcher. That sigh is him recognizing that he had a whole three innings to think about what Snell did to him last time and he still wasn’t able to prevent it from happening again. That sigh, probably, is him recognizing that Blake Snell is an excellent major league pitcher and life just happens that way sometimes. And it’s the sigh of a man who’s come rather close to perfection in one particular skill in one particular game and has been reminded, if only for a moment, that actual perfection is probably unattainable.
I like baseball for a lot of reasons, but one big one is that its challenges are presented in discrete form, pitch by pitch. Pitches lead to plate appearances, plate appearances lead to outs, outs lead to innings, and innings lead to games. We can break the whole thing down into thousands of tiny moments and consider each moment separately. And players have that many more discrete moments in which to fail or succeed. Michael Brantley failed at one particular thing less often, on a rate basis, than any other player in baseball last year. He approached perfection in something that demands unimaginable skill to do well even once. He missed two pitches on September 1st, 2018, and they were fine pitches to miss. That he saw so many others like them this year and did not miss those is something to be proud of.
When Thomas Pannone was featured here in April 2017, I wrote that he was “quietly emerging as a legitimate pitching prospect.” Playing for Cleveland’s High-A affiliate at the time, the Rhode Island-born southpaw hadn’t allowed an earned run in his last 38 innings. Amid negligible fanfare, Pannone was on a roll.
His address and level of notoriety have since changed. Sent to Toronto in the 2017 trade-deadline deal that delivered Joe Smith to Northeast Ohio, Pannone proceeded to test positive for a performance-enhancing substance, prompting a suspension that kept him out of action until this past June. He flew through the minors upon his return. Called up in August, Pannone appeared in 12 games for the Blue Jays— six as a starter — and logged a 4.19 ERA over 43 innings. He picked up four wins, to boot.
As for punch outs, while they aren’t particularly prominent in Pannone’s resume, he did manage to send 29 batters back to the dugout as an official scorer entered a K into a scoresheet. Kevin Kiermaier — the first player to step into the box against him — went down looking on a hook. Read the rest of this entry »
Cleveland made a big trade last week, netting Carlos Santana from the Mariners and Jake Bauers from the Rays, while sending Edwin Encarnacion, Yandy Diaz, Cole Hulser, and a draft pick off to the other two teams in the trade. Jeff Sullivan already covered that trade, which was pretty interesting for Cleveland, slightly interesting for the Rays, and not very interesting for the Mariners, who essentially just moved contracts around and received a draft pick for their trouble. On Friday, Cleveland made another move, trading Yonder Alonso, a one-time Carlos Santana replacement, as Alonso has now been replaced by the guy he replaced. Alonso heads to the White Sox in a deal that figures to help both AL Central clubs this season.
Last season, Yonder Alonso was the discount version of the Carlos Santana who was on Cleveland’s 2016 pennant winner. Sure, Alonso is left-handed, not a switch-hitter, but he can play an adequate first base with a bat that is a little worse than Santana. He required just a $16 million guarantee to go to Cleveland while Santana received $60 million from Philadelphia. Having signed Edwin Encarnacion for $60 million after 2016, the Indians elected to let Santana go and brought in Alonso coming off a career year in Oakland and Seattle. “Career year” is a bit of a misnomer; Alonso hit 20 homers and put up a 147 wRC+ in the first half of 2017 before settling in closer to his career norms with a 114 wRC+ in the second half, much of it with the Mariners.
Alonso was a bit out of place in Cleveland as an everyday player. In his breakout season in Oakland, only 15% of his plate appearances came against left-handers; that figure jumped to 24% in Cleveland. Alonso has a career wRC+ of 80 against lefties in his career, including a dreadful 64 wRC+ last season. If Alonso had half as many plate appearances against lefties last year, and had hit closer to his career average against them, he would have been worth about half a win more last year. The White Sox might be able to get more value out of Alonso next year by aggressively platooning him. Read the rest of this entry »
What type of hitter did the Cleveland Indians get when they acquired Jake Bauers as part of yesterday’s three-team trade with Seattle and Tampa Bay? From a biographical perspective, the answer is a 23-year-old left-handed-hitting first baseman who came into this year ranked fourth in the Tampa Bay system. He made his big-league debut in June and went on to post a .700 OPS, with 11 home runs, in 388 plate appearances. Bauers played his maiden season as a 22-year-old, not turning 23 until the month of October.
From a self-assessment perspective, Bauer is a hitter who knows who he is, and needs to stay true to those elements in order to be successful. The newest member of the Indians organization explained what those elements are when the Rays visited Fenway Park this past August.
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Bauers on his keep-it-natural swing: “My swing has just kind of been natural. Any time I went to a hitting coach growing up, the only thing they’d say is, ‘Don’t change anything.’ Beyond that, there have maybe been little tweaks here and there, but mostly it’s been about doing my work and staying right.
“I have to keep my swing and just let it happen. I have to trust that the natural path of my swing is going to take over — that by doing what comes natural, everything will take care of itself.
“When I’m trying to hit the ball in the air — trying to hit for launch angle — my swing tends to get long and loopy and I end up not getting the result I want. Everything will get out of sync. My hips will go early. My hands will drag behind and then try to catch up. I’ll end up pulling off to where I can’t reach the outside pitch and I’m getting jammed on the inside pitch.” Read the rest of this entry »
The major-league phase of Thursday’s Rule 5 Draft began with its annual roll call of clubs confirming the number of players currently on their 40-man rosters and ended with a total of 14 players being added to new big-league clubs. Dan Szymborski offered ZiPS projections here for the players taken earlier today. Below are brief scouting reports on the players selected, with some notes provided by Kiley McDaniel.
But, first: Our annual refresher on the Rule 5 Draft’s complex rules. Players who signed their first pro contract at age 18 or younger are eligible for selection after five years of minor-league service if their parent club has not yet added them to the team’s 40-man roster. For players who signed at age 19 or older, the timeline is four years. Teams with the worst win/loss record from the previous season pick first, and those that select a player must not only (a) pay said player’s former club $100,000, but also (b) keep the player on their 25-man active roster throughout the entirety of the following season (with a couple of exceptions, mostly involving the disabled list). If a selected player doesn’t make his new team’s active roster, he is offered back to his former team for half of the initial fee. After the player’s first year on the roster, he can be optioned back to the minor leagues.
These rules typically limit the talent pool to middle-relief prospects or position players with one-dimensional skillsets, though sometimes it involves more talented prospects who aren’t remotely ready for the majors. This creates an environment where selections are made based more on fit and team need than just talent, but teams find solid big-league role players in the Rule 5 every year and occasionally scoop up an eventual star. Let’s dive into the scouting reports on this year’s group.
First Round
1. Baltimore Orioles Richie Martin, SS (from A’s) – Martin was a 2015 first rounder out of the University of Florida, drafted as an athletic shortstop with some pop who was still raw as a baseball player. Martin had really struggled to hit in pro ball until 2018, when he repeated Double-A and slashed .300/.368/.439.
He has average raw power but hits the ball on the ground too often to get to any of it in games. Houston has been adept at altering their players’ swings, so perhaps the new Orioles regime can coax more in-game pop from Martin, who is a perfectly fine defensive shortstop. He should compete with incumbent Orioles Breyvic Valera and Jonathan Villar, as well as fellow Rule 5 acquisition Drew Jackson, for middle infield playing time. But unless there’s a significant swing change here, Martin really only projects as a middle infield utility man.
2. Kansas City Royals Sam McWilliams, RHP (from Rays) – McWilliams was an overslot eighth rounder in 2014 and was traded from Philadelphia to Arizona for Jeremy Hellickson in the fall of 2015. He was then sent from Arizona to Tampa Bay as one of the players to be named later in the three-team trade that sent Steven Souza to Arizona. McWilliams is pretty raw for a 23-year-old. He spent two years in the Midwest League and posted a 5.02 ERA at Double-A when the Rays pushed him there after the trade.
He has a big fastball, sitting mostly 93-94 but topping out at 97. He’ll flash an occasional plus slider but it’s a rather inconsistent pitch. The industry thought McWilliams had a chance to grow into a backend rotation arm because his stuff is quite good, but he has a much better chance of sticking as a reliever right now.
3. Chicago White Sox (Traded to Rangers) Jordan Romano, RHP (from Blue Jays) – Romano is a 25-year-old righty who spent 2018 at Double-A. He’s a strike-throwing righty with a fastball in the 91-93 range and he has an average slider and changeup, both of which reside in the 80-84 range. His command is advanced enough that both of his secondaries play up a little bit. He likely profiles as a fifth starter or rotation depth, but the Rangers current pitching situation is quite precarious and Romano may just end up sticking around to eat innings with the hope that he sticks as a backend starter or swingman when they’re competitive once again.
4. Miami Marlins Riley Ferrell, RHP (from Astros)- Ferrell was a dominant college closer at TCU and was consistently 93-97 with a plus slider there. He continued to pitch well in pro ball until a shoulder aneurysm derailed his 2016 season. Ferrell needed surgery that transplanted a vein from his groin into his shoulder in order to repair it, and the industry worried at the time that the injury threatened his career. His stuff is back and Ferrell is at least a big league ready middle reliever with a chance to be a set-up man.
5. Detroit Tigers Reed Garrett, RHP (from Rangers)
Garrett’s velo spiked when he moved to the bullpen in 2017 and he now sits in the mid-90s, touches 99 and has two good breaking balls, including a curveball that has a plus-plus spin rate. He also has an average changeup. He’s a fair bet to carve out a bullpen role on a rebuilding Tigers team.
6. San Diego Padres
No Pick (full 40-man)
7. Cincinnati Reds Connor Joe, 3B (from Dodgers) – The Reds will be Joe’s fourth team in two years as he has been shuttled around from Pittsburgh (which drafted him) to Atlanta (for Sean Rodriguez) to the Dodgers (for cash) during that time. Now 26, Joe spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. He’s a swing changer who began lifting the ball more once he joined Los Angeles. Joe is limited on defense to first and third base, and he’s not very good at third. He has seen a little bit of time in the outfield corners and realistically projects as a four-corners bench bat who provides patience and newfound in-game pop.
8. Texas Rangers (Traded to Royals) Chris Ellis, RHP (from Cardinals)- Ellis, 26, spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. One could argue he has simply been lost amid St. Louis’ surfeit of upper-level pitching but his stuff — a low-90s sinker up to 94 and an average slider — did not compel us to include him in our Cardinals farm system write up. The Royals took Brad Keller, who has a similar kind of repertoire but better pure stuff, and got more out of him than I anticipated, so perhaps that will happen with Ellis.
9. San Francisco Giants Travis Bergen, LHP (from Blue Jays)- Bergen looked like a lefty specialist in college but the Blue Jays have normalized the way he strides toward home, and his delivery has become more platoon-neutral in pro ball. He has a fringy, low-90s fastball but has two good secondaries in his upper-70s curveball and tumbling mid-80s change. So long as he pitches heavily off of those two offerings, he could lock down a bullpen role.
10. Toronto Blue Jays Elvis Luciano, RHP (from Royals)- Luciano turns 19 in February and was the youngest player selected in the Rule 5 by a pretty wide margin. He was acquired by Kansas City in the trade that sent Jon Jay to Arizona. Though he’ll touch 96, Luciano’s fastball sits in the 90-94 range and he has scattershot command of it, especially late in starts. His frame is less projectable than the typical teenager so there may not be much more velo coming as he ages, but he has arm strength and an above-average breaking ball, so there’s a chance he makes the Jays roster in a relief role. He has no. 4 starter upside if his below-average changeup and command progress. If he makes the opening day roster, he’ll be the first player born in the 2000s to play in the big leagues.
11. New York Mets Kyle Dowdy, RHP (from Indians)
Dowdy’s nomadic college career took him from Hawaii to Orange Coast College and finally to Houston, where he redshirted for a year due to injury. He was drafted by Detroit and then included as a throw-in in the Leonys Martin trade to Cleveland. He’s a reliever with a four-pitch mix headlined by an above-average curveball that pairs pretty well with a fastball that lives in the top part of the strike zone but doesn’t really spin. He also has a mid-80s slider and changeup that are fringy and exist to give hitters a little different look. He could stick in the Mets bullpen.
12. Minnesota Twins
No Pick (full 40-man)
13. Philadelphia Phillies (Traded to Orioles) Drew Jackson, SS (from Dodgers)- Jackson is a plus runner with a plus-plus arm and average defensive hands and actions at shortstop. He’s not a great hitter but the Dodgers were at least able to cleanse Jackson of the Stanford swing and incorporate more lift into his cut. He had a 55% ground ball rate with Seattle in 2016 but that mark was 40% with Los Angeles last year. He also started seeing reps in center field last season. He projects as a multi-positional utility man.
14. Los Angeles Angels
No Pick (team passed)
15. Arizona Diamondbacks Nick Green, RHP (from Yankees)- Green has the highest present ranking on The Board as a 45 FV, and we think he’s a near-ready backend starter. Arizona lacks pitching depth, so Green has a pretty solid chance to make the club out of spring training. He induces a lot of ground balls (65% GB% in 2018) with a low-90s sinker and also has a plus curveball.
16. Washington Nationals
No Pick (team passed)
17. Pittsburgh Pirates
No Pick (team passed)
18. St. Louis Cardinals
No Pick (full 40-man)
19. Seattle Mariners Brandon Brennan, RHP (from Rockies)- Brennan is a 27-year-old reliever with a mid-90s sinker that will touch 97. He has an average slider that relies heavily on it’s velocity more than movement to be effective. The real bat-misser here is the changeup, which has more than 10 mph of separation from Brennan’s fastball and dying fade.
20. Atlanta Braves
No Pick (team passed)
21. Tampa Bay Rays
No Pick (full 40-man)
22. Colorado Rockies
No Pick (team passed)
23. Cleveland Indians
No Pick (team passed)
24. Los Angeles Dodgers
No Pick (full 40-man)
25. Chicago Cubs
No Pick (team passed)
26. Milwaukee Brewers
No Pick (team passed)
27. Oakland Athletics
No Pick (team passed)
28. New York Yankees
No Pick (full 40-man)
29. Houston Astros
No Pick (team passed)
30. Boston Red Sox
No Pick (team passed)
Second Round
San Francisco Giants Drew Ferguson, OF- Ferguson is a hitterish tweener outfielder with a good combination of bat-to-ball skills and plate discipline. He has a very short, compact stroke that enables him to punch lines drives to his pull side and he’s tough to beat with velocity. Ferguson doesn’t really run well enough to play center field and lacks the power for a corner, so his likely ceiling is that of a bench outfielder.
One of the jokes floating around the winter meetings this week in Las Vegas has been that activity has been low because Jerry Dipoto has been sick. As it turns out, the Mariners went so far as to take Dipoto to a local hospital for observation. That means the Mariners have understandably been operating at less than 100%. But that still didn’t preclude a meetings-closing three-way swap, which Dipoto at least partially engineered from his hospital bed. It is only ever so barely a three-way trade, as opposed to being two separate trades, but allow me to put this together for you.
As noted, this is almost just two independent trades, both involving the Indians. The only thing that really links them together is the $5 million the Rays are paying, which is ending up with the Mariners. This is half a bad-contract swap, and half an interesting-young-player swap. But since it’s all pushed together as one, we can look at this on a team-by-team basis. Might as well start with the Mariners.
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.
It’s not a secret that Cleveland, expected to coast to another division title in 2019, has been shopping its top starters in an attempt to get back multiple players who will help them down the line. Corey Kluber has a great reputation and performance to match, with two Cy Young awards and a third-place finish this season. His contract will pay him $17 million next year, with a $17.5 million option in 2020 and an $18 million option in 2021. If he is traded, those options must both be picked up at once after the 2019 season. Trevor Bauer, coming off a breakout, six-win campaign in 2018, will likely receive around $11 million in arbitration next season, with a decent raise expected in 2020 before he can become a free agent. The final trade candidate is likely no longer one, as Cleveland and Carlos Carrasco have come to terms on a contract extension.
Next season was to be the first of Carrasco’s two option years in a contract he signed right as the 2015 season was getting underway. Without a new contract, Carrasco would have been eligible for free agency after the 2020 season. Under the terms of this new deal, Carrasco will be under contract through at least 2022 with a club option for 2023.
Carlos Carrasco's new contract, per source: 2019: $9.75M 2020: $10.25M 2021: $12M 2022: $12M 2023: $14M club option or a $3M buyout
This guarantees Carrasco the $10.25 million he would have gotten in 2020, then adds $27 million more in guarantees including the buyout in 2023. Two extra years at $27 million might not seem like much for a pitcher of Carrasco’s caliber. Since he signed his first extension in 2015, his 18.2 WAR is seventh among all starters. His back-to-back five-win campaigns puts him in company with only Kluber, Chris Sale, Max Scherzer, and Luis Severino. Getting two additional seasons from an ace-level performer for what a single season of Patrick Corbin will cost feels like a bargain. If he were a free agent right now, he’d probably get more than double the $44 million he’s set to receive. Read the rest of this entry »
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 2018 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.
In the eyes of many, Omar Vizquel was the successor to Ozzie Smith when it came to dazzling defense. Thanks to the increased prevalence of highlight footage on the internet and cable shows such as ESPN’s SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight, the diminutive Venezuelan shortstop’s barehanded grabs, diving stops, and daily acrobatics were seen by far more viewers than Smith’s ever were. Vizquel made up for having a less-than-prototypically-strong arm with incredibly soft hands and a knack for advantageous positioning. Such was the perception of his prowess at the position that he took home 11 Gold Gloves, more than any shortstop this side of Smith, who won 13.
Vizquel’s offense was at least superficially akin to Smith’s: he was a singles-slapping switch-hitter in lineups full of bigger bats, and at his best, a capable table-setter who got on base often enough to score 80, 90, or even 100 runs in some seasons. His ability to move the runner over with a sacrifice bunt or a productive out delighted purists, and he could steal a base, too. While he lacked power, he dealt in volume, piling up more hits (2,877) than all but four shortstops, each in the Hall of Fame or heading there: Derek Jeter (3,465), Honus Wagner (3,420), Cal Ripken (3,184), and Robin Yount (3,142). During his 11-year run in Cleveland (1994-2004), he helped the Indians to six playoff appearances and two pennants.
To some, that makes Vizquel an easy call for the Hall of Fame. In his ballot debut last year, he received 37.0% of the vote, a level of support that doesn’t indicate a fast track to Cooperstown but more often than not suggests eventual enshrinement. These eyes aren’t so sure it’s merited. By WAR and JAWS, Vizquel’s case isn’t nearly as strong as it is on the traditional merits. His candidacy has already become a point of friction between old-school and new-school thinkers, and only promises to be more of the same, not unlike that of Jack Morris.
