The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been expanded and updated. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Don Mattingly was the golden child of the Great Yankees Dark Age. He debuted in September 1982, the year after the team finished a stretch of four World Series appearances in six seasons, and retired in 1995 after finally reaching the postseason — a year too early for the franchise’s run of six pennants and four titles in eight years under Joe Torre.

A lefty-swinging first baseman with a sweet stroke, “Donnie Baseball” was both an outstanding hitter and a slick fielder at his peak. He made six straight All-Star teams from 1984 to ’89 and won a batting title, an MVP award, and nine Gold Gloves. Along the way, he battled with owner George Steinbrenner even while becoming the standard bearer of the pinstripes, the team captain, and something of a cultural icon. Alas, a back injury sapped his power, not only shortening his peak, but also bringing his career to a premature end at age 34. At its root, the problem was that Mattingly was so driven to succeed that he overworked himself in the batting cage.

“Donnie was one of the hardest workers I had ever seen and played with. He would go in the cage before batting practice and take batting practice. And after batting practice was over, he’d take batting practice,” former teammate Ron Guidry said for a 2022 MLB Network documentary, Donnie Baseball (for which this scribe was also interviewed).

“I should have learned quicker to not to beat my body up, and if I did less, I could perform better,” said Mattingly for the same documentary.

Mattingly debuted on the 2001 Hall of Fame ballot, the last one before I began my own annual reviews, but it was quickly clear that he didn’t have the raw numbers or the support of enough voters to gain entry to Cooperstown. After receiving 28.2% his first time around, he dipped to 20.3% in 2002, spent most of the remainder of his 15-year run in the teens, and was in single digits by the end. What’s more, in two appearances on the Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot in 2018 and ’20, he failed to reach the threshold to have his actual share reported; in the latter year, he and 2026 ballot-mate Dale Murphy received no more than three of 16 votes (18.8%). Yet on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball ballot, up against the PED-linked Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Rafael Palmeiro — the first two of whom are on this year’s ballot as well — Mattingly shot to 50%, the highest share of anyone besides Fred McGriff, the lone player elected by that panel.

Prior to that vote, I wrote that Mattingly’s best hope for a Hall of Fame berth involved building on his early managerial success, though even in that department he had a long way to go. Since then, his managerial career — three division titles in five seasons with the Dodgers, and seven mostly fruitless seasons with the Marlins interrupted by a playoff appearance and NL Manager of the Year honors in 2020 — has stalled out. He stepped down after the 2022 season and spent the past three years serving as the Blue Jays’ bench coach under John Schneider. After finally reaching the World Series for the first time in his professional career this year, he stepped down earlier this week. Given how often his candidacy (and that of Murphy) has been recycled while statistically stronger candidates from this pool such as Dwight Evans and Lou Whitaker have been bypassed for ballot appearances, it’s apparent that the Hall would like to harness the wholesome charm of his career while sticking it to PED-linked players such as Bonds and Clemens. To these eyes, Mattingly’s numbers aren’t nearly strong enough to justify that.

Mattingly was born on April 20, 1961 in Evansville, Indiana, the youngest of five children of Bill (a mailman) and Mary Mattingly. He honed his baseball skills at a young age, playing Whiffle ball in the backyard with his brothers and other kids three or four years older. It was in that yard that he learned to hit to the opposite field, because anyone who hit the tree hanging over the field on the first base side was out, while hitting the family garage in left field was a home run. “I think about it now being a dad, how many times that Whiffle ball hit that metal of the house. I wonder what my mom and dad were thinking,” he said in a 2002 Yankeeography episode on him for the YES Network.

In addition to his ability to go oppo, Mattingly was ambidextrous. In Little League, he switch-pitched occasionally, throwing three innings righty and three more lefty. At Reitz Memorial High School, he was a three-sport star, starting at quarterback and point guard while splitting time between the outfield and pitching. He helped Reitz Memorial to a 59-game winning streak that included a state championship in his junior year, earning him a spot in Sports Illustrated’s July 16, 1979 “Faces in the Crowd” feature.

By the time of the 1979 draft, Mattingly had committed to attend Indiana State University on a scholarship, but the Yankees chose him in the 19th round, and he surprised his family by deciding to sign for a $23,000 bonus. He began his professional career at Low-A Oneonta, where he hit .349/.444/.488; the next year, he batted .358/.422/.498 with nine home runs and 105 RBI at A-level Greensboro. While his lack of speed and power concerned the Yankees to the point that they considered moving him to second base because of his ability to throw right-handed, he topped .300 at every stop in the minors with good plate discipline and outstanding contact skills, even if he never exceeded 10 homers.

Mattingly was called up for a cup of coffee in September 1982, making his debut on September 8 as a defensive replacement in left field. He made one start and six appearances off the bench, mainly in left, and went 2-for-12, though it took him until October 1 to collect his first hit, a single off Red Sox righty Steve Crawford. While he broke camp with the Yankees the following spring, he played in just four games — starting two of them, one in right field and one at first — before being sent back to Triple-A Columbus; Ken Griffey was New York’s primary first baseman that season. Recalled in late June after Bobby Murcer retired, Mattingly split his time between the outfield (48 games, including one in center) and first base (42 games), batting a thin .283/.333/.409 (107 OPS+) with four home runs, the first of which he hit off Red Sox lefty John Tudor to Fenway Park’s short right field on June 24. He even made one appearance as a lefty-throwing second baseman during the August 18 completion of the infamous George Brett “Pine Tar Game.”

While manager Yogi Berra initially planned to use Mattingly to back up first base and both outfield corners in 1984, he won the starting first base job in spring training and emerged as a bona fide star, thanks in part to the help of hitting coach Lou Piniella, who taught him to keep his weight back and to apply backspin to the ball. From a 2021 interview with colleague David Laurila:

“More than anything, Lou Piniella had a huge impact on me going from a guy that was hitting doubles to a guy that was hitting doubles and homers. It was really nothing more than basically learning how to backspin the ball. I’d been more of a top-hand guy that hit a lot of topspin balls in the gap; I thought I hit them really well, they just didn’t go out. I’d always be kind of surprised, because I felt like I crushed it. Then I learned to use the bottom hand, and shorten my route, which unleashed more power.”

Mattingly hit .343/.381/.537 with 23 home runs and 110 RBI, leading the league in batting average, hits (207), and doubles (44), ranking second in OPS+ (156) and fifth in WAR (6.3), and beginning his All-Star run. He matched that year’s 156 OPS+ in 1985, accompanying it with 35 homers, a league-high 145 RBI, and 6.4 WAR (fifth in the AL) en route to the AL MVP award. The Yankees won 97 games that year, their most ever during his 14-year career, but they finished two games behind the Blue Jays in the AL East standings.

Mattingly was even better offensively in 1986, leading the league in hits (238), doubles (53), slugging percentage (.573) and OPS+ (161), and placing second in batting average (.352, just behind Wade Boggs’ .357), third in WAR (7.2, behind Boggs and Jesse Barfield), and fifth in on-base percentage. His numbers took a dip the following year when he missed nearly three weeks due to a back injury that was rumored to have been sustained while wrestling teammate Bob Shirley in the clubhouse; Mattingly denied that was the cause, saying that he believed he suffered the injury fielding grounders during batting practice. Though he was diagnosed with two protruding discs, he actually hit better after returning (.336/.371/.601 with 24 homers) than before (.311/.390/.485 with six homers). His overall numbers that year, though they were down, were still impressive, as he batted .327/.378/.559 (146 OPS+) with 30 homers, 115 RBI, and 5.1 WAR. That post-injury stretch included his tying a major league record by hitting home runs in eight consecutive games on July 8–18, interrupted by the All-Star break.

Though Mattingly was not quite as productive from 1987 to ’89 (.313/.360/.498 for a 136 OPS+ and an average of 4.3 WAR) as he’d been in the three years prior (.340/.382/.560, 158 OPS+, and an average of 6.7 WAR), he remained an All-Star-caliber player, but that still wasn’t enough to help the Yankees get over the hump. They won an average of 91 games from 1983 to ’87, with the aforementioned peak of 97, but always finished at least two games out of first place in AL East, and generally more than that. As the team slipped to 85–76 in 1988, Mattingly caught flak from Steinbrenner over his relatively high salary — he’d signed a three-year, $6.7 million contract the previous offseason — and inability to produce a championship singlehandedly. The Boss called him “the most unproductive .300 hitter in baseball,” a ridiculous notion given that over his first four full seasons, Mattingly’s .560 slugging percentage and 483 RBI — the industry’s shorthand for productivity during that era — had both led the majors.

Mattingly didn’t take the criticism lying down, telling reporters, “There’s no respect. They give you money and that’s it. That’s as far as it goes. They think money is respect. Call us babies, call us whatever you want. If you don’t treat me with respect, I don’t want to work for you.” He added, “It’s hard to come to the ballpark when you’re not having any fun… This is the first season I’ve had to fight myself to play the game every day.”

Mattingly continued his All-Star-level play through 1989, but back troubles limited him to a total of 41 home runs in ’88–89. For the 1984–89 period, the six full seasons of his prime, he hit a combined .327/.372/.530 for a 147 OPS+, averaging 27 homers and 5.5 WAR; in that timespan, only Boggs, Rickey Henderson, Cal Ripken Jr., Ozzie Smith, Alan Trammell, and Tim Raines were more valuable.

Unfortunately, Mattingly’s career began going downhill just as he signed a five-year, $19.3 million extension in April 1990. He hit just 14 homers and slugged .370 in 1990–91, missing seven weeks of the former season due to further back troubles. In the spring of 1991, he was named team captain, filling what had been a void for two seasons following Guidry’s retirement. Even so, he was famously benched for one game in August and fined $250 because his hair was long enough to touch his collar, violating a team rule. At that point, he told reporters that he had quietly asked general manager Gene Michael, who at this point was running the organization in the absence of the suspended Steinbrenner, for a trade in June, but was rebuffed. Upon being benched, a defiant Mattingly said, “Maybe I don’t belong in the organization anymore,” called Michael’s enforcement of the hair policy “petty,” and added, “He wants an organization that will be puppets for him and do what he wants.”

Contrary to popular assumption, the hair incident didn’t occur until after a similar situation was lampooned on The Simpsons’ baseball-themed “Homer At the Bat” episode in which Mattingly guest-starred:

In Donnie Baseball, Mattingly admitted that he’d never seen the full episode and had only viewed the clip once or twice — an offense right up there with McGriff’s admission that he’d never seen the Tom Emanski’s Baseball Defensive Drills video commercial that gained him such notoriety.

Mattingly escaped his two-year funk but was never again a true offensive force, hitting .292/.345/.422 for a 110 OPS+ with an average of 11 home runs and 1.9 WAR from 1992 to ’95. However, he did stick around long enough to experience the beginning of the Yankees’ competitive revival, first with an AL-best 70–43 record in the strike-shortened 1994 season and then a Wild Card berth via a 79–65 record in ’95. In a bittersweet coda, he hit .417/.440/.708 in a losing cause during the 1995 Division Series against Piniella’s Mariners, his lone taste of postseason play during his final days as a player.

After eight years away from the game, Mattingly returned as a coach for the Yankees in 2004 under Torre. When Torre and the Yankees parted ways after the 2007 season, he was a finalist to take the reins, but general manager Brian Cashman instead chose Joe Girardi, with the backing of Steinbrenner and his sons, Hank and Hal. The spurned Mattingly followed Torre to the Dodgers, spending one season as hitting coach and two as bench coach before taking over as manager himself. Though he guided the Dodgers to a .551 winning percentage in five years and won three straight NL West titles from 2013 to ’15, the team lost three out of four postseason series on his watch. He left the Dodgers after a 92-win 2015 season, which allowed president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, who had taken over the previous year, to get a fresh start with a new manager, Dave Roberts. Things have worked out just fine on that front; the Dodgers couldn’t get over the NLCS hump during the Torre and Mattingly years, but they’ve since been to the World Series five times, winning three, including the past two.

Mattingly in turn became manager of the Marlins and spent seven years at the helm before deciding to leave; perpetually stuck in rebuilding mode, Miami won at just a .430 clip on his watch, and lost 93 or more games four times. Mattingly did pilot the team into the postseason for just the third time in franchise history during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, when the Marlins went 31–29 and then swept the Cubs in the Wild Card Series before bowing to the Braves in the Division Series. For four of those seasons (2017–21), he worked under CEO Derek Jeter, with whom he had briefly played in 1995 and later coached. For his career, Mattingly is 889–950 (.483) as a manager.

…

Because he retired at age 34, Mattingly wound up with rather light career totals, both traditional and advanced, giving himself an outside shot at Cooperstown. In the post-1960 expansion era, only one position player has retired at 34 and reached the Hall of Fame: Ron Santo, whose election came 37 years after his retirement, via the 2012 Veterans Committee ballot (and, alas, posthumously). Of the position players whose final year was at age 35, Johnny Bench and Kirby Puckett were first-ballot Hall of Famers thanks in large part to their connections to multiple championship teams, but Richie Ashburn and Bill Mazeroski had to wait decades for election by the VC. A contemporary of Mattingly’s, Ryne Sandberg, retired at 34 but, after sitting out one season, returned to play two more and was then elected by the writers in 2005.

In terms of advanced statistics, Mattingly’s 42.4 career WAR is 23.6 WAR below the standard and ranks 45th in career WAR among first basemen, below all but two of the 25 enshrined non-Negro Leaguers, Jim Bottomley and High Pockets Kelly. He’s over 10 wins below McGriff (52.6), below a couple of Yankees first basemen who have followed in his wake but made no dent in the Hall voting, namely Jason Giambi and Mark Teixeira (both 50.5), and he’s nearly two wins below first-time Era Committee candidate Carlos Delgado (44.4). Mattingly’s 35.8 peak WAR is 6.2 wins below the standard and ranks 34th at the position, below 20 of the 25 enshrinees, and his 39.1 JAWS ranks 40th, one spot above the recently elected Gil Hodges and ahead of only two of the other 25. He’s seven spots below McGriff (44.3 JAWS) and even further behind Mark McGwire, Keith Hernandez, John Olerud, and Will Clark, all of whom were bypassed for this ballot.

Mattingly received 28.2% of the BBWAA vote in his debut, but within two years, his support dwindled to less than half that; over his final 13 years on the ballot, he cracked 15% just twice, and fell below 10% three times. He was one of three candidates grandfathered into the Hall’s 2014 decision to truncate candidacies from 15 years to 10; he was heading into his 15th and final year of eligibility at the time and received just 9.1% of the vote, a gain of 0.9 points from the year before. Trammell, who was in his 14th year at that point, received 25.1% but surged to 40.9% the next year, and was elected by the Modern Baseball Era Committee two years later. Lee Smith, who was in his 13th year, inched upwards from 30.2% that year to 34.2% in his final year, and was elected on the 2019 Today’s Game ballot.

Three years ago, I wrote that it seemed highly unlikely that Mattingly would follow that pair into Cooperstown. After he received 50% of the vote on the 2023 ballot, and after Dave Parker was elected last year despite a JAWS of just 38.7, I’m a bit less sure of that given the Hall’s knack for engineering voting panels that appear to tilt toward (or away from) certain candidates. Parker at least had the traditional stats reflecting a complete career (2,712 hit, 339 homers). Murphy, who’s also on this ballot, has a hit total in line with Mattingly’s (2,111) in about 1,300 more plate appearances, not to mention nearly twice the home runs (398) and higher career/peak/JAWS (46.5/41.2/43.9) from a career largely spent at up-the-middle positions. For as much respect as I have for Mattingly, I simply don’t see any justification to vote for him on this ballot. I know that sounds harsh, but his peak was too short, and his career too incomplete, for him to be a sensible pick. Yes, he might have made it to the Hall of Fame had he remained healthy, but the line for players about whom that can be said stretches from Yankee Stadium to Cooperstown — and if he’s going to get elected thanks in part to his managerial career à la Torre, he’s got an uphill battle at this point.

The champagne and tears have barely dried in the wake of this year’s instant-classic World Series, but election season is already upon us. On Monday, the National Baseball Hall of Fame officially unveiled the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot, an eight-man slate covering players who made their greatest impact on the game from 1980 to the present and whose eligibility on the BBWAA ballot has lapsed. For the second year in a row, the Hall stole its own thunder, as an article in the Winter 2025 volume of its bimonthly Memories and Dreams magazine revealed the identities of the eight candidates prior to the official announcement. The mix includes some — but not all — of the controversial characters who have slipped off the writers’ ballot in recent years, including Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, as well as a couple surprises. This cycle also marks the first application of a new rule that could shape future elections.

Assembled by the Historical Overview Committee, an 11-person group of senior BBWAA members, the ballot includes Bonds, Clemens, and fellow holdovers Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy, as well as newcomers Carlos Delgado, Jeff Kent, Gary Sheffield, and Fernando Valenzuela. As with any Hall election, this one requires 75% from the voters to gain entry. In this case, the panel — whose members won’t be revealed until much closer to election time — will consist of Hall of Famers, executives, and media members/historians, each of whom may tab up to three candidates when they meet on Sunday, December 7, at the Winter Meetings in Orlando. Anyone elected will be inducted alongside those elected by the BBWAA (whose own ballot will be released on November 17) on July 26, 2026 in Cooperstown. In the weeks before that, I’ll cover each candidate’s case in depth here at FanGraphs.

This is the fourth ballot since the Hall of Fame reconfigured its Era Committee system into a triennial format in April 2022, after a bumper crop of six honorees was elected by the Early Baseball and Golden Days Era Committees the previous December. The current format splits the pool of potential candidates into two timeframes: those who made their greatest impact on the game before 1980 (Classic Baseball Era), including Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black players, and those who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present day (Contemporary Baseball Era). The Contemporary group is further split into two ballots, one for players whose eligibility on BBWAA ballots has lapsed (Fred McGriff was elected in December 2022), and one for managers, executives, and umpires (Jim Leyland was elected in December 2023). Non-players from the Classic timeframe are lumped in with players, which doesn’t guarantee representation on the final ballot. Read the rest of this entry »

The end of an era is coming to Los Angeles. On Thursday at Dodger Stadium, Clayton Kershaw announced that he will retire at the end of this season, and thus will make the final regular season home start of his career on Friday night. The news isn’t exactly a surprise, given that the 37-year-old lefty has been working more or less year-to-year while occasionally musing about retirement since his three-year, $39 million contract expired after the 2021 season. When Kershaw notched his 3,000th strikeout on July 2, it was generally understood as the final major milestone of his illustrious 18-year career that will one day be celebrated in Cooperstown. Just days later, commissioner Rob Manfred named him to the NL All-Star team as a “Legend Pick.”

On Thursday morning, Kershaw sent a group text to his teammates, telling them of his decision to retire. Teammates Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy both revealed that the pitcher had told them of his plans about a month ago, but swore them to secrecy. On Thursday afternoon, the Dodger released a statement regarding the iconic southpaw’s impending announcement.

pic.twitter.com/Y3wehQaONJ

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) September 18, 2025

At his press conference, Kershaw expressed measures of gratitude and relief, his voice occasionally cracking as he thanked the organization and his family. He said that he and his wife Ellen had been discussing his retirement all year. “Usually we wait until the offseason to make a final call, but almost going into this season, we kinda knew this was going to be it,” he said. “So [I] didn’t want to say anything in case I changed my mind, but over the course of the season, how grateful I am to have been healthy and out on the mound, being able to pitch, I think it just made it obvious that this was a good sending-off point.”

With 222 career victories, 3,039 strikeouts, 11 All-Star selections, five ERA titles, three Cy Young Awards (2011, ’13, ’14), an MVP award (2014), a Pitching Triple Crown (2011), a no-hitter (June 18, 2014), and two World Series rings (2020 and ’24), Kershaw is a surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer who will be eligible for election on the 2031 BBWAA ballot. He is 20th all-time in S-JAWS, second among active pitchers behind Justin Verlander, who has one more point (66.1 to Kershaw’s 65.1) in about 700 more career innings. Kershaw’s 2.54 ERA is the lowest of any integration-era pitcher with at least 2,500 innings:

Adjusted for ballpark and league scoring levels, Kershaw’s ERA- is the lowest using those same parameters, barely nosing out Martínez:

If you’re wondering about the rankings of another three-time Cy Young-winning Dodgers lefty, Sandy Koufax pitched to a 2.76 ERA and 75 ERA- in 2,324 1/3 innings; at a 2,000-inning cutoff, he would rank fourth in ERA and seventh in ERA-. Kershaw is tied with outfielder Zack Wheat and shortstop Bill Russell for the most seasons played with the Dodgers (18), and he holds the franchise records for strikeouts and pitching WAR (78.7 fWAR, 77.6 bWAR) while ranking second in wins only to Don Sutton (233).

After reaching free agency following the 2021, ’22 and ’23 seasons, Kershaw mulled the possibility of leaving the Dodgers to sign with the Rangers, his hometown team. But between his various offseason rehabilitation programs, the 2021–22 owners’ lockout, and the Rangers’ financial uncertainty regarding their cable television deal, staying with the team that drafted him out of Highland Park High School with the seventh pick in 2006 — a round that accounts for eight Cy Youngs between Kershaw, 10th pick Tim Lincecum, and 11th pick Max Scherzer — always made more sense. When he reported to Camelback Ranch in February, Kershaw admitted that he may have previously undervalued the possibility of spending his entire career with the Dodgers:

“I don’t think I put enough merit on it at times, what it means to be able to be in one organization for your entire career. You look at people throughout all of sports that have been able to do that, and it is special, it is. I don’t want to lose sight of that. Getting to be here for my whole career, however long that is, is definitely a goal.”

It’s been an amazing run in Los Angeles. Kershaw first turned heads during spring training in 2008. In a March 9 Grapefruit League game against the Red Sox, 10 days short of his 20th birthday, he threw a curveball that buckled the knees of Sean Casey and awed broadcaster Vin Scully, whose nickname for that big-bending pitch stuck: “Ohhh, what a curve ball! Holy mackerel! He just broke off Public Enemy Number One. Look at this thing! It’s up there, it’s right there, and Casey is history.”

Kershaw began that season at Double-A Jacksonville, making 11 starts before being called up to debut against the Cardinals on May 25, 2008. In his prime, he pumped his fastball in the mid-90s — it averaged 95.0 mph in his rookie season, and was still at 94.3 mph as of 2015 — but that famous curveball and its similarly devastating cousin, his slider, are the pitches that have earned him a spot in the pantheon. According to Baseball Savant — which covers the entirety of his career via PITCHf/x and Statcast — batters have hit .145 and slugged .216 with a 36.5% whiff rate against his curve, and hit .183 and slugged .292 with a 38.8% whiff rate against his slider; the former was strike three 753 times, the latter a jaw-dropping 1,332 times.

Though he flirted with adding a changeup here and there, and over the past three seasons has dabbled with an effective splitter, Kershaw’s three-pitch combination, coming from an extremely over-the-top arm slot (62 degrees as of 2020, the first year of Statcast’s measurements in that area, and 56 degrees as of this season), with a familiar hesitation at the top of his delivery, was enough to befuddle batters. His .211 batting average allowed is the second lowest at the 2,500-inning cutoff since integration, nestled between Nolan Ryan (.204) and Martínez (.214), while his 65 OPS+ allowed is second to Martínez’s 61, ahead of Clemens’ third-ranked 68. That dominance drove his success, and that of the Dodgers, for the better part of the past two decades. If the team holds on to win the NL West this season, it will be its 14th division title in his 18 seasons, and its 15th playoff berth.

Kershaw’s announcement comes at a time when he has begun to scuffle a bit; over his last three starts, he’s yielded 10 runs and walked nine in 13 2/3 innings, and he hasn’t lasted six innings since his August 15 start against the Padres — a memorable outing in which he helped the Dodgers halt a four-game losing streak and reclaim a share of first place in the NL West. Even so, he has generally pitched well this season despite working with a fastball that has averaged just 89 mph, topping 90 only a handful of times per start.

After undergoing a pair of offseason surgeries — one to repair the torn meniscus in his left knee, the other to remove a bone spur and repair a ruptured plantar plate in his left foot — Kershaw didn’t make his season debut until May 17. But aside from a start skipped just before the All-Star break, he’s taken the ball on turn, though almost always with five or six days of rest. In 102 innings, he’s pitched to a 3.53 ERA and 3.59 FIP, offsetting a career-low 17% strikeout rate by holding batters to a 4.1% barrel rate and generally avoiding the long ball. The solo homer he allowed to the Padres’ Ramón Laureano in that August 15 outing is the only one he’s served up in his last 60 1/3 innings dating back to July 2. That was the night he struck out Vinny Capra of the White Sox with the 100th and final pitch of his night — a slider on the outside edge of the plate, naturally — to give him an even 3,000 for his career.

That strikeout made Kershaw the 20th pitcher to reach 3,000 but just the fourth left-hander, after Steve Carlton, Randy Johnson, and CC Sabathia. While Kershaw was the fourth-fastest pitcher to reach the milestone in terms of innings pitched, getting there turned into quite a slog due to his injuries, which have prevented him from making 30 starts in any season since 2015 and sent him to the injured list at least once in every season since.

Kershaw finished the 2021 season, his age-33 campaign, needing just 330 strikeouts to reach 3,000, which based on his 2019–21 performances looked doable across a pair of 25-start seasons. While he pitched his way onto the NL All-Star teams in both 2022 and ’23, with ERAs of 2.28 and 2.46, he totaled just 46 starts and 274 strikeouts in that span, leaving him 56 strikeouts shy of the magic mark. With last season bracketed by his recovery from November 2023 surgery to repair the glenohumeral ligaments and capsule of his left shoulder on one side, and the aforementioned left leg surgeries on the other, he made just seven starts totaling 30 innings, with just 24 strikeouts. He was not on the active roster during the Dodgers’ run to a championship, and at the team’s victory parade in Los Angeles, he exclaimed, “I didn’t have anything to do with this championship, but it feels like I have the best feeling in the world — that I get to celebrate with you guys!”

As for what comes next for Kershaw after Friday’s start, it’s not yet clear. Barring an injury, he will almost certainly be on the postseason roster, but unlike the past two Octobers, the Dodgers are headed toward the playoffs with their best starters healthy and effective. Indeed, since the All-Star break, the Dodgers have the majors’ best rotation in terms of both ERA (3.27) and FIP (2.99); the latter mark is nearly three-quarters of a run better than that of the second-ranked Phillies (3.70). Every starter but Kershaw is missing bats galore:

There’s no question that Glasnow, Snell, and Yamamoto will start for the Dodgers this October, and all signs point to Ohtani being the fourth. The team has kept the two-way superstar on a short leash in his first season back from his second UCL reconstruction surgery; only twice has he reached the five-inning mark or gone past 70 pitches. Though the Dodgers have considered the possibility of using Ohtani in relief à la the 2023 World Baseball Classic championship game, that prospect is complicated by the fact that removing him would cost the team its designated hitter spot — thus requiring Ohtani to play the outfield in order to remain in the game, something he hasn’t done since 2021. Manager Dave Roberts all but shut that alternative scenario down earlier this week, saying in part, “[T]o think that now it’s feasible for a guy that’s just coming off what he’s done last year, or didn’t do last year, to then now put him in a role that’s very, very unique… You potentially could be taking on risk, and we’ve come this far, certainly with the kid gloves and managing.”

As for the other two starters, Sheehan has been brilliant lately but may face an innings cap given in his first year back from Tommy John surgery. Both he and Kershaw could be used as multi-inning relievers, possibly able to go three or four innings after a starter goes five or six, which would help to mitigate a bullpen that’s been torched for a 5.43 ERA this month. “I feel that there’s a place for him on our postseason roster,” Roberts said of Kershaw on Thursday. “I don’t know what role, but I think that the bottom line is, I trust him. And so, for me, the postseason is about players you trust.”

The postseason has often been a fraught subject when it comes to Kershaw. His 4.49 ERA in October is nearly two full runs higher than his regular season mark, and his 3.81 postseason FIP nearly one run higher than his regular season one (2.85), with his home run rate almost doubling, from 0.74 to 1.39. At times he’s been let down by his offenses and his bullpens, as is the case for just about every starting pitcher given enough opportunities. At times he’s been let down by his managers; think Don Mattingly leaving him in to allow eight seventh-inning runs in the 2014 Division Series opener against the Cardinals. At times he’s been let down by his opponents’ skullduggery and his own hubris; in the wake of commissioner Rob Manfred’s investigation into the Astros’ 2017 sign-stealing scheme, Kershaw expressed regret in early 2020 that he didn’t heed warnings to change signs with a runner on second base in Game 5 of the World Series, during which he allowed six runs. And of course, at times Kershaw has been let down by his own failing body; he retired just one out of eight Diamondbacks in the Division Series opener in 2023 while pitching through the shoulder issues that led him to undergo surgery less than a month later.

While his postseason heroics never reached the level of a Gibson or a Madison Bumgarner, Kershaw has had some shining moments in October. He made a dominant pair of starts against the Braves in the 2013 Division Series, allowing one earned run in 13 innings. He came out of the bullpen on one day of rest to record a two-out save in Game 5 of the 2016 Division Series against the Nationals, after closer Kenley Jansen had thrown 2 1/3 innings; Kershaw followed that with seven shutout innings against the Cubs in Game 2 of the NLCS. He struck out 11 while allowing one run and three hits in seven innings against the Astros in the 2017 World Series opener at Dodger Stadium, where Houston’s notorious trash cans were out of reach. He spun eight shutout innings with 13 strikeouts against the Brewers in the 2020 NL Wild Card Series clincher, and authored two gutty wins in that year’s World Series against the Rays, the second of which, in Game 5, came after Tampa Bay’s bizarre walk-off win in Game 4 and set up the Dodgers’ chance to clinch.

Regarding Kershaw’s career, one other blemish can’t escape mention. Twice in the past three seasons, he has upstaged the Dodgers’ annual LGBTQ Pride Night, and it’s cost him some amount of goodwill. In 2023, he publicly pressured the Dodgers to rescind an invitation to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a drag troupe that describes itself as a “leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns.”

The Dodgers at first heeded the calls of Kershaw and others to disinvite the Sisters, only to reverse course after they received backlash for canceling on them. But Kershaw’s comments did force the team to accelerate its announcement of its Christian Faith and Family Day, for which the pitcher served as the primary organizer. “This has nothing to do with the LGBTQ community or Pride or anything like that,” he said at the time. “This is simply a group that was making fun of a religion — that I don’t agree with.”

It might have been easier for some to overlook Kershaw’s reaction to the Sisters as an isolated incident had it not been for this year’s Dodgers Pride Night on June 13, when Kershaw altered his cap, which featured the team’s interlocking LA filled in with the colors of the rainbow. On it, he wrote “Gen. 9:12-16,” an Old Testament verse that, as Michael Elizondo at True Blue LA notes, has been “frequently used by homophobic Christians to denounce the LGBT community as their appropriation of the rainbow is allegedly blasphemous.” On a night meant to celebrate diversity, Kershaw instead chose a message of defiance and intolerance.

Particularly in these politically polarizing times, with LGBTQ+ rights under daily attack by the Trump administration, Kershaw’s move was divisive and disappointing, but it went unchallenged on the Dodgers beat even as the photo of him wearing the altered hat went viral. As best I can tell, he’s never publicly commented on the matter, so if a picture is worth a thousand words, he’s left that image to be his statement on the subject without offering any alternative interpretations. Three months later, the cap controversy was still being referred to on social media as news of Kershaw’s retirement announcement began to circulate.

Kershaw is not without his imperfections, his impact in the game not without complication. Inarguably, he has defined one of the most fruitful eras in Dodgers history while carving his own niche, not only as one of the best pitchers of his generation, but of all time. His public persona has been marked by his charitable foundation, Kershaw’s Challenge, which according to its web page has raised $23 million “to support at-risk children and families around the globe,” as well as his comments denouncing racial injustice in June 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Yet it also carries with it his Pride Night remarks and protest at a moment of profound vulnerability for the LGBTQ+ community. To appreciate Kershaw’s immense legacy is to view him in his totality, the greatness, the disappointments, and everything in between, all taken together.

As both a player and a manager, Davey Johnson was a standout and a man ahead of the curve. In a 13-season playing career that spanned from 1965 to ’78, primarily as a second baseman with the Orioles and Braves, he made four All-Star teams, won three Gold Gloves, played in three World Series, and set a home run record. In a 17-season managerial career that stretched from 1984 to 2013, covered five different teams, and included a decade-long hiatus, Johnson won six division titles, one Wild Card berth, a championship, and two Manager of the Year awards. He’s indelibly linked to the Mets, first for making the final out in their 1969 upset of the Orioles and then for piloting their ’86 juggernaut to a World Series win at the peak of a six-season run.

Johnson had a knack for turning around losing teams, and for connecting with his players. Decades before the analytical revolution took hold in baseball, he was a pioneer in the use of personal computers by managers, at a time when the machines were still a novelty. Drawing upon his offseason studies at Trinity University — from which he earned a B.S. in mathematics — and Johns Hopkins, as well as his experience playing for Earl Weaver with the Orioles, he was renowned for using statistical databases to figure out probabilities and optimize his lineup and bullpen matchups.

Johnson, who last worked in baseball as a consultant for the Nationals in 2014, died on Friday in Sarasota, Florida following a long illness. He was 82 years old. Read the rest of this entry »

For a good chunk of this season, a third MVP award for Aaron Judge looked inevitable. As late as May 21, he still had a batting average above .400 (.402/.491/.755, good for a 236 wRC+). As late as July 25, he had played every game and was on pace for 58 homers. And as late as August 6, he still had a slugging percentage above .700 (.339/.446/.702).

Unfortunately, a right flexor strain suffered while attempting to throw a runner out at the plate on July 22 sent Judge to the injured list a few day later. While he spent only the minimum 10 days on the IL, his bat cooled off, and now he’s neck-and-neck with Cal Raleigh in the AL MVP race. But even if he doesn’t win, the 33-year-old Judge has done something very impressive. In just his 10th major league season, he’s surpassed the JAWS standard for right fielders, which is to say that he’s got a higher score (58.5) than the average enshrinee at the position (56.0).

With that distinction, Judge joins Mike Trout and Mookie Betts among active players to reach the JAWS standard at their positions by the time they fulfilled the Hall of Fame’s 10-year eligibility requirement (playing in parts of 10 seasons, not accruing 10 years of service time). That’s the province of legends; among position players whose careers crossed into the 21st century, the only others to attain that distinction are Jeff Bagwell, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Rickey Henderson, Mike Piazza, Albert Pujols, Cal Ripken Jr., and Alex Rodriguez. That makes Judge an apt choice to lead off the third and final installment of this year’s annual Hall of Fame progress series (pitchers and catchers are here, infielders here). Note that unless otherwise indicated, all WAR figures within refer to the Baseball Reference version, and all statistics are through September 1. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a big season for Manny Machado — a revival, as I termed it in June. After being hampered by tennis elbow in 2022 and ’23, then limited to DH duty in early ’24 while recovering from surgery to repair the extensor tendon in that troublesome right elbow, he’s played in all 132 games for the Padres, who ended the weekend tied for first place in the NL West with the Dodgers.

Along the way, Machado has collected some milestones. He clubbed his 350th home run, a two-run shot off the Giants’ Robbie Ray, on June 5, and he collected his 2,000th hit, an infield single off the Diamondbacks’ Zac Gallen, on July 7, the day after his 33rd birthday. By industry convention, based on a player’s age on June 30 of that season, Machado became just the 12th player to reach both milestones in his age-32 season or earlier, joining Hall of Famers Henry Aaron, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Ken Griffey Jr., Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Mel Ott, and Frank Robinson, future Hall of Famers Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols, and cautionary tale Alex Rodriguez. That makes him an apt choice to lead off this installment of my annual Hall of Fame progress series; I checked on pitchers and catchers last week, and will cover outfielders and unicorns next week. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, my colleague Jay Jaffe touched a bit on Jacob deGrom and his Hall of Fame case. Since the world can always use more sentences describing how awesome deGrom is, and because I’m fascinated by how his Hall of Fame case will look to voters sometime in the mid-2030s, I decided to dig a little more into his future candidacy and reasonable expectations for what the end of his career can add to his record. I also wanted to explore what deGrom’s case means for 2010s/2020s Hall of Fame starting pitcher representation more broadly.

This has been a concern of mine for a while, and I talked a bit about it last year in the context of Chris Sale’s marvelous comeback season. This piece has stuck with me as it was one of those rare articles in which the act of writing it changed my opinion somewhat. At the start, my thought process was “with a less than 50% chance of finishing with 200 wins, Sale probably won’t be in the Hall of Fame, and may be too borderline for even me.” But then I projected the rest of the league, and for the first time ever in ZiPS, not a single pitcher who hadn’t already passed 200 wins was projected to have a 50% chance of reaching that milestone. So, perhaps Sale should get to Cooperstown even if he falls short of that threshold, because if the writers don’t vote for him on the grounds that he didn’t get to 200 wins, how could we justifiably elect any future starting pitcher?

When I wrote last year’s piece, there were only 11 pitchers between 100 and 200 wins, a shockingly tiny number. And of those 11, only one is in a better position to win 200 games now than he was then: Sonny Gray, who has added 12 wins and is having a fairly typical season by his standards. As far as the other 10 are concerned… Gerrit Cole is out until well into 2026 due to elbow surgery, and Sale has missed a bunch of time this year from injuries. Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson have both since retired, Johnny Cueto has all but officially done the same, and Carlos Carrasco and Dallas Keuchel are in the minors and, for the purposes of this exercise, might as well be retired. Wade Miley has one win this season and is currently out with forearm pain in his comeback from Tommy John surgery. Yu Darvish, who didn’t make his season debut until July, has moved only two wins closer to 200 in his age-38 season. As a Baltimore native, I’m not psychologically prepared to talk about Charlie Morton’s progress.

The good news is eight new pitchers have joined the 100-win club this season, but none of them look to be on a path to 200 wins right now.

Of these eight, only Nola projects with a 50% chance to get to even 150 wins. While it’s theoretically possible for most of the eight to get to 200 wins, it would require an unusually robust late-career surge. During the Wild Card era, only 10 pitchers have amassed 90 wins after their age-34 season, and almost all of them were in the early part of the era; pitcher workloads have continued to drop, and starting pitchers get fewer decisions than ever.

ZiPS projects only four other pitchers to have a 50% shot at reaching 150 wins: Tarik Skubal, Garrett Crochet, George Kirby, and Paul Skenes.

Rewind ZiPS a decade, and it gave 17 active pitchers a 50% chance to win 200 games. Nine eventually did hit that milestone, and Cueto, the only member of the other eight who is still technically active, isn’t going to do it.

So, let’s run the ZiPS projections for the remainder of deGrom’s contract with the Rangers, beginning in 2026 and running through 2028 — assuming Texas picks up his club option for that season. ZiPS was really worried about his health entering the season, for very obvious reasons, and while he just missed his most recent scheduled start due to shoulder fatigue, the injury is not believed to be a long-term issue. His projected workloads in future seasons have increased now that he’s stayed mostly healthy in 2025.

Give deGrom the 21 projected wins for 2026-28 and a couple September wins this year, and that gets him to 123 for his career. In his piece, Jay brought up Sandy Koufax while discussing deGrom, and I think it’s an apt comparison.

Koufax’s peak was more concentrated and more impactful in individual seasons than deGrom’s, but as I said about Johan Santana when he was on the Hall of Fame ballot, if your best years are being mentioned in conversation with those of Koufax, you must have been a dynamite pitcher. To me, from a pure dominance perspective, Peak deGrom isn’t that far behind Peak Koufax; certainly, the gap isn’t wide enough to keep deGrom out of Cooperstown considering pretty much everyone views Koufax as a no-doubt, inner-circle Hall of Famer.

Of course, it’s an inauspicious sign for deGrom that I’m using Santana as the other not-quite-Koufax comp, given that Santana went one-and-done on the ballot. But I’m hopeful that time is on deGrom’s side here. Santana was knocked off the ballot in the 2018 election, and the demographics of BBWAA members who stick around long enough to earn a Hall of Fame vote have changed a lot over the last decade. In fact, the BBWAA didn’t open up membership to internet-based writers — a group that tends to be more versed in analytics — until after the 2007 season, and many of these stathead members couldn’t vote when Santana was eligible. That will be different by the time deGrom hits the ballot in roughly eight or so years.

By then, it’ll be nearly 20 years of writers seeing starter workloads change, and maybe voters will have figured out how to account for the fact that the role of a starting pitcher is very different in the 2020s than it was in the 1990s, let alone in the days of Old Hoss Radbourn. The trio of former Cy Young winners in their 40s — Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Zack Greinke — will likely be in Cooperstown by the time deGrom hits the ballot. Clayton Kershaw is only three months older than deGrom, but considering the Dodgers icon debuted six years earlier, it feels all but guaranteed that he will be the first of the two to retire, meaning he will also enter the Hall before deGrom becomes eligible. If that happens, Kershaw will be the last of his kind to be voted in by the writers, setting the stage for a new standard for starters to make it to Cooperstown. That is, unless Kershaw is to be the last-to-debut Hall of Fame starting pitcher.

I can’t imagine that will be the case, but it is true that over the next decade, the BBWAA has some interesting philosophical questions to answer about the nature of starting pitcher greatness. I’m not sure what those answers will be, but I do know that deGrom will be instrumental in determining them.

Last week, Kenley Jansen did his best to make life harder for his former team. Pitching for the Angels against the Dodgers in Anaheim, the 37-year-old closer secured the final three outs in a 7-4 victory on Monday, August 11. He gave up the go-ahead run in the ninth inning of a tied game on Tuesday by allowing a breathtaking solo homer to Shohei Ohtani, but the Angels came back, tying the score in the bottom of the ninth and winning in the 10th. On Wednesday, Jansen secured a sweep for the Angels by retiring Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Will Smith in order. The loss knocked the Dodgers out of first place for the first time since August 27.

That the Dodgers have retaken the top spot doesn’t detract from what’s been a banner season for Jansen. Pitching for the sub-.500 Angels — his third team in four years since departing the Dodgers in free agency — he’s posted a 2.68 ERA, his lowest mark since 2021. While his 24.6% strikeout rate is a career low and his 4.01 FIP is just off a career high, he’s notched 23 saves in 24 attempts and is now fourth all-time at 470, eight saves shy of Lee Smith’s 478, which stood as the major league record from late 1997 until Trevor Hoffman surpassed it in late 2006. Smith and Hoffman are now in the Hall of Fame, and Jansen has solidified his position as the next reliever due for serious consideration for Cooperstown. Not only does he have a legitimate shot at becoming the third pitcher to reach 500 saves following Hoffman (who finished with 601) and Mariano Rivera (603), but he’s closing in on 2025 enshrinee Billy Wagner’s no. 6 ranking in Reliever JAWS (R-JAWS).

Admittedly, relief pitching is a strange place to start my annual Hall of Fame progress series, but for reasons that will soon become apparent, opening this rundown with the starting pitchers made less sense, and when I began writing this roundup, Jansen’s jump in JAWS surprised me as much as that of any player. At the end of 2023, Jansen was tied for 14th with Craig Kimbrel, but he climbed to 10th by the end of ’24 and is now seventh, closing in on Wagner. So we’re beginning here; in this batch, I’ll get to the starters and catchers as well. Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics are through Monday, August 18. Read the rest of this entry »

At the outset of Sunday’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown, chairman of the board Jane Forbes Clark invoked the words of 2005 honoree Ryne Sandberg, who was not among the 52 returning Hall of Famers onstage for the festivities:

“As I have said many times before, the National Baseball Hall of Fame is an extraordinary place, and no one has described our game and what the Hall of Fame means better than Ryne Sandberg, Chicago Cubs legend and member of the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2005,” began Clark. “During his induction speech, he said, ‘The reason I am here, they tell me, is that I played the game a certain way, that I played the game the way it was supposed to be played. I don’t know about that, but I do know this: I had too much respect for the game to play it any other way. And if there is a single reason I am here today, it is because of one word: Respect.'”

As she continued, Clark’s voice audibly cracked, but she pushed through. “There is not a man seated behind me this afternoon who didn’t play the game the same way Ryno did. It is that respect, character, sportsmanship, integrity, and excellence that leads to just one percent of those that have ever played major league baseball to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.”

Her message — which referenced the Hall’s own voting rules, the so-called “character clause” — was evergreen, but the absence of Sandberg, who had attended the last two induction ceremonies, was conspicuous. So was Clark’s display of emotion, and now we know why. Sandberg, who was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer in January 2024, died on Monday at age 65. Read the rest of this entry »

COOPERSTOWN, NY — During his 19-year major league career, Ichiro Suzuki rarely spoke English in public unless it was to express his thoughts about the temperature in Kansas City in August as it pertained to certain rodents. On Sunday in Cooperstown, however, he flawlessly delivered his 19-minute Hall of Fame induction speech in his second language, showing off his sly sense of humor while speaking about the professionalism, respect, and love for the fans that drove his career. “Today, I am feeling something I thought I would never feel again. I am a rookie,” he began, referring to his first seasons with the Orix Blue Wave in 1992 and the Seattle Mariners in 2001. “But please, I am 51 years old now. Easy on the hazing. I don’t need to wear a Hooters uniform again,” he quipped to the 52 returning Hall of Famers, four fellow entrants in the Class of 2025, and the estimated 30,000 people who attended the ceremony at the Clark Sports Center.

“The first two times, it was easier to manage my emotions because my goal was always clear: to play professionally at the highest level,” continued Suzuki. “This time is so different, because I could never imagine as a kid in Japan that my play would lead me to a sacred baseball land that I didn’t even know was here. People often measure me by my records: 3,000 hits, 10 gold gloves, 10 seasons of 200 hits. Not bad, eh?

“But the truth is, without baseball, you would say this guy is such a dumbass. I have bad teammates, right, Bob Costas?”

Elsewhere, Suzuki poked fun at having fallen one vote short of becoming just the second Hall candidate elected unanimously: “Three thousand hits or 262 hits in one season are achievements recognized by the writers. Well… all but one. And by the way, the offer for that writer to have dinner at my home has now expired.” On a more serious note, he advised distinguishing between dreams and goals: “Dreams are not always realistic, but goals can be possible if you think deeply about how to reach them. Dreaming is fun, but goals are difficult and challenging… If you are serious about it, you must think critically about what is necessary to achieve it.” Read the rest of this entry »