COOPERSTOWN, NY — “I took pride in playing second base, a position that keeps you in every play and demands toughness, but my bat was always my ticket,” said Jeff Kent during his Hall of Fame induction speech on Sunday. “I learned a long time ago from Tommy Lasorda, one of the best motivators in the game, a simple truth that I lived by my whole career: The money lies in the RBIs.”

Kent’s philosophy cut straight to the heart of a decades-long culture war within baseball, one that helps to explain why the slugging second baseman spent 10 years on the writers’ ballot without coming close to the necessary 75% needed for election, but sailed in on his first appearance on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee last December. Hardly the darling of statheads — he ranks 22nd in JAWS at his position, for example, and only twice ranked among his league’s top 10 in Baseball Reference WAR — his prickly persona sometimes rubbed teammates and media the wrong way, but his candidacy resonated for Era Committee voters. Chockfull of executives and Hall of Fame players, the handpicked panel was more familiar with old-school measures and more inclined to reward his reputation for being free of performance-enhancing drugs, in contrast to statistically superior longtime teammate and fellow Era Committee candidate Barry Bonds, who was not elected. “Most home runs by a second baseman” played better than “most home runs all-time” thanks to the absence of a theoretical asterisk.

Along with Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones, Kent was inducted in front of an estimated crowd of 12,000 on a sunny Sunday afternoon at the Clark Sports Center. Including this year’s three inductees, a record 60 living Hall of Famers were onstage, but their audience was comparatively sparse, well short of the estimated 30,000 who showed up last year for the inductions of Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia, Billy Wagner, and the late Dick Allen and Dave Parker.

All weekend long, comparisons between last year’s Induction Weekend and this one were inescapable and inevitable. Throngs of colorfully outfitted fans of the Mariners, Yankees, Astros, Phillies, and Pirates filled the streets of Cooperstown in 2025, the town was abuzz, and thanks to the timely new Yakyu Baseball exhibit — dedicated to the interchange between American and Japanese baseball — the Hall itself was packed with visitors. While a sizable contingent of Puerto Rican fans turned out for Beltrán, the streets were scarcely populated and decidedly less colorful this year. The Hall had new displays devoted to Tom Seaver memorabilia and the 50th anniversary of Rick Monday’s rescue of an American flag that was about to be set ablaze at Dodger Stadium, but this year brought no new marquee exhibit, and the Clark Sports Center field had a lot more visible, unoccupied grass.

Chalk that up to the particularities and peculiarities of this year’s class. Few Hall of Famers in any year have the international appeal of the iconic Suzuki, who came within one vote of unanimous election and addressed the omission with grace and humor in his speech. And whether they were first-year, 10th-year, or Era Committee honorees, each of the other four Class of 2025 members took unique roads to Cooperstown. They or surviving family members told gripping stories of the obstacles they surmounted.

By contrast, this year’s class of inductees lacked such universal appeal and didn’t capture fans’ imagination in the same way — at least not enough to plan a weekend trip to Cooperstown during high season. Some of the obstacles they surmounted to get elected owed to conduct that made them polarizing figures, even if it wasn’t viewed as disqualifying. Far from immortality, Beltrán, Jones, and Kent proved themselves all too human during their playing careers. Most notably, Beltrán, a nine-time All-Star, three-time Gold Glove winner, and one of just eight players with at least 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases, was the only player identified by name in commissioner Rob Manfred’s 2019 report on the Astros’ illegal electronic sign-stealing efforts. That exposure cost Beltrán his post as the manager of the Mets before he could even fill out a lineup card. Even as the ninth-ranked center fielder in JAWS, he wasn’t elected until his fourth ballot.

Jones reached the majors as a teenager, and went on to win 10 Gold Gloves while bopping 434 home runs and helping the Braves to 10 straight playoff appearances during his career. He ranks 11th in JAWS among center fielders, but declined rapidly in his 30s due to lax conditioning; done after his age-35 season, he finished with just 1,933 hits, fewer than any other post-1960 player elected by the writers. He disappeared from the majors after being arrested on a domestic battery charge in December 2012. (He pleaded guilty to a lesser disorderly conduct charge.) He received just 7.3% of the vote in his first ballot appearance in 2018, and needed nine years to gain entry from the writers.

Kent, a five-time All-Star and former MVP, didn’t do anything that rose to the level of either classmate’s transgressions, but in March 2002 he broke a bone in his left wrist, which he initially claimed happened while washing his truck. It soon surfaced through eyewitness accounts that he had crashed doing wheelies while riding his motorcycle, in violation of his contract. As scandals go, it was comparatively quaint; the incident became the butt of jokes, but the Giants showed leniency. Kent wound up missing just four games and turned in a season to rival his MVP-winning one from two years earlier while helping the Giants reach their first World Series since 1989.

Beyond that, during his 18-year career with the Blue Jays, Mets, Cleveland, the Giants, Astros, and Dodgers, Kent could be off-putting. “I had a habit of running my mouth,” he said in his speech regarding his early years with the Mets. At the tail end of his career, he also openly criticized what he perceived to be a lack of professionalism from his young Dodgers teammates. By his own account, he had more physical confrontations with Bonds than just the famous dugout blowup in 2002, though even in the aftermath of that incident he claimed, “We have a good relationship. We have a working relationship that I think works well on the field… I think if you guys [the media] try to create a dysfunctional relationship, that’s a farce too, because that’s not true.”

In a refreshing development, the now-58-year-old Kent has not shied from publicly displaying his emotions and his gratitude in connection with his election. That willingness to break character made his the most interesting speech of Sunday. “I’ll try not to cry now, but it’s coming, no doubt,” he said as he began his speech. A minute later, he was struggling to retain his composure as he recounted the story of his father, a Southern California police officer, promising to buy him a pickup truck if he earned a college scholarship — one he still has in his garage “as a reminder that some of the simplest things can change the entire direction of your life.”

“Standing on this stage reminds me why different people come and connect to this game,” he continued. “For some it’s a shared passion, a time spent with family and friends, for others it’s an opportunity. For me it was just a simple plan of a college education and a better way of life for my family.”

During a post-induction media session, the San Francisco Standard’s John Shea identified five times since the announcement of his election at which Kent has cried publicly. Kent didn’t dispute the count or the characterization of his softer side. “I don’t think I’m mad as much as I used to be,” he said. “You know, when you play this game, you have to play with a little hatred — I use that word lightly. People call it cockiness, or arrogance, or confidence. They call it so much, but you have to play this game with a chip on the shoulder.”

“I’m not mad any more, maybe that’s why,” he continued. “I’m a deflector, and I think I’ve deflected so much that now I have to reason with it and appreciate it,” he said, referring to the publicity and plaudits coming his way since being elected, and experiencing all of that in front of his family, from whom he spared that chip-on-the-shoulder attitude.

Kent did mention Bonds once in his speech, calling him “one of the most talented players this game has ever seen” without delving into the two stars’ conflicts. Nonetheless, his frequent repetition of phrases like “playing the game the right way” couldn’t be read as anything other than veiled references to the PED-linked players who overshadowed him during his career and on ballots, particularly when he spoke of the late Ryne Sandberg, who was a vocal critic of such players and who served on the 2023 Era Committee that rejected Bonds.

Back to the RBIs. Kent singled out former Mets teammate Eddie Murray’s counseling him that the key to staying cool in bases-loaded situations was to focus on getting the runner home from third base. “That lesson of keeping things simple stayed with me forever,” he said. Kent drove in 100 or more runs eight times during a high-offense era, in part because he hit behind Bonds as the slugger set records for bases on balls, intentional and otherwise. Yet, Kent only ranked among his league’s top 10 in a slash stat five times — twice apiece in batting average and slugging percentage, and once in on-base percentage. He was a prolific home run hitter for a middle infielder, clubbing 377 total and 351 as a second baseman, but his modest on-base percentages and subpar defensive metrics limited his value. Still, while his JAWS is below 13 of the other 20 enshrined second basemen, he’s third out of 10 among those elected by committees.

The 49-year-old Jones followed Kent by beginning with a nod to the giants at his position. “I feel like a rookie today surrounded by all these amazing Hall of Famers behind me,” he said. “There are so many guys here that I loved to watch play, and I’m happy to be here with them today. I never got to see Willie Mays play, so Ken Griffey [Jr.] was my guy. I wanted to be like him. For me and Carlos to join Griffey, Willie, and these other great center fielders in the Hall of Fame, it’s hard to put into words.”

“You can go 0-for-4 and still impact the game by taking away singles and extra-base hits. I worked hard on my routes and a preparation. I wanted to be the best center fielder,” said Jones.

The first player from the tiny island of Curaçao to be elected to the Hall of Fame paid tribute to Hensley Meulens, the first Curaçao native to reach the majors, and listed more than a dozen of the countrymen who have followed, including current major leaguers Ozzie Albies, Kenley Jansen, and Ceddanne Rafaela. He spoke of his father, Henry Jones, a legendary amateur player who caught and played center field for Curaçao’s national team in the 1960s and ’70s, and who passed away 10 years ago:

“He showed me how to work hard and play for what it takes to become a successful baseball player and a great person. Because he played center field, I wanted to be a center fielder, and he passed down every bit of knowledge [of] the game to me, like how to read balls off the bat. He hit me fly balls from foul pole to foul pole every time in Curaçao so I could track balls down, because the ocean breeze made tracking balls very difficult on the island.”

Jones also paid tribute to the other seven Hall of Famers from the 1990s and 2000s Braves teams on which he starred, namely manager Bobby Cox, general manager John Schuerholz, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Fred McGriff, and “my brother from another mother,” Chipper Jones, who debuted on the 2018 ballot alongside Andruw and “pushed for me, for my induction, for many years.”

While Chipper was one of four players elected on that 2018 ballot, Andruw nearly lost his eligibility; his 7.3% share now stands as the lowest of any player elected by the writers since the five-year waiting period was instituted in 1954. “A lot of my friends that follow the percentages closer than I did were like, ‘Hey, you’re barely hanging there,’” said Jones in his post-induction media session. “I was just happy to hang in there, [happy] that the writers kept me on the ballot. Getting in after nine years — I didn’t say I had to be the first ballot, I didn’t say I had to be the sixth year, the seventh year, or the last year, or get voted in by the Veterans Committee. I’m in the Hall of Fame now, so that’s all that matters.”

Like Jones, the 49-year-old Beltrán felt as though he were back at the beginning of his career on Sunday, opening his speech by saying, “This is the closest thing to my first at-bat in the big leagues, where I felt excited to be here but at the same time I felt very nervous. These guys really make me nervous,” he said, gesturing to the Hall of Famers behind him.

While Beltrán did not directly address the sign-stealing scandal during Sunday’s speech, it wasn’t far out of mind, particularly as the text on his plaque mentioned his “20-year career that ended in 2017 as World Series champion.” He thanked commissioner Manfred in his speech, as well as the voters: “To the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, I want to say thank you for making me a Hall of Famer… And for those that didn’t [vote for me] — that saw things different — I want to say also thank you. I appreciate your perspective. If baseball has really taught me something, I want to say is that I hope in life, we continue to measure ourselves by the same standard we have used to measure others.”

Beltrán did address the sign-stealing scheme earlier in the week during a Zoom session with reporters, saying, “[T]he fact that I’m the only player mentioned — I don’t know, it’s kind of weird. Sometimes it still gives me a bad taste in my mouth.” Later, he added, “I know that as a team we got together to do what we did, but I’ve got to tell you that this was not like one player’s idea.”

In that session, Beltrán added that after seeing Houston general manager Jeff Luhnow, manager A.J. Hinch, and bench coach-turned-Boston-manager Alex Cora lose their jobs, he knew he couldn’t last as Mets manager. “I feel like [Manfred] mentioning Carlos Beltrán in the report, that was my suspension.”

With Carlos Mendoza recently fired, Beltrán may yet get his shot to manage the Mets, for whom he’s currently a special assistant to president of baseball operations David Stearns. Within his speech, he explained his choice to wear a Mets cap on his plaque:

“Every organization shapes your career. New York shaped my life. It was here where I experienced my greatest success and some of my greatest challenges. Playing for the Mets made me a better man and a better leader. Many of the most meaningful relationships that I was able to build in my career, I did it wearing a Mets uniform. So the Mets cap, what it represents to me is growth and it represents a place where I became the best version of myself.”

Elsewhere in his speech, Beltrán saluted his fellow Puerto Rican Hall of Famers, as well as his mentors, such as Royals legend George Brett (“who taught me that greatness is built long before anybody is watching”), Astros teammates Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio, who taught him the importance of playing with pain, and Giants legends Mays and Willie McCovey, with whom he would talk baseball as often as possible during his two months with San Francisco in 2011. As Puerto Rican flags waved, he delivered substantial passages of his speech in Spanish, harkening to his influential role in mandating the presence of translators in every major league clubhouse.

Induction Weekend’s festivities weren’t confined to Sunday. Friday evening featured a cocktail party to celebrate this year’s winner of the BBWAA Career Excellence Award, Paul Hoynes, the beat reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer since 1983. The party takes place on the back porch of the Hotel Otesaga, where new and returning Hall of Famers and their immediate families stay for the weekend — and where entry to everyone else is by invitation only, with signs explicitly warning, “NO AUTOGRAPHS.” The porch opens up onto a breathtaking vista starring Lake Otsego, a view that never gets old.

Saturday’s Hall of Fame Awards Presentation, conducted at the Glimmerglass Festival Theater about eight miles outside of Cooperstown, honored Hoynes as well as broadcaster Joe Buck, the recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award; Monday, for the golden anniversary of his notable rescue effort; and Bill White, winner of the Buck O’Neil Award. The last of those, which is presented no more than once every three years, honors “an individual whose extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball’s positive impact on society, broadened the game’s appeal, and whose character, integrity and dignity are comparable to the qualities exhibited by O’Neil.”

The choice of White for that honor was particularly resonant, at least to this scribe. Though he was an eight-time All-Star and seven-time Gold Glove winner at first base during his 13-year playing career, White didn’t accrue the kind of numbers that themselves typically drive election. He did start for the Cardinals’ 1964 World Series winners, and while with that organization, he made an impact by speaking on the record about the shoddy treatment of the team’s Black players, including Curt Flood and Bob Gibson, as well as himself. His exposure to those players’ not being invited to a St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce’s “Salute to Baseball” breakfast held in a segregated hotel led the Cardinals to press for integrated lodging for spring training, a trend that spread to other teams training in segregated Florida.

White followed his impressive career with pioneering roles as a broadcaster and executive. In 1971, he began an 18-year run calling Yankees games and working for national networks, one that made him the first full-time Black play-by-play broadcaster in any sport. After retiring from broadcasting, he spent five years (1989–94) as president of the National League, making him the first Black person to assume such a post and the highest-ranking Black executive in any sport at the time. As a candidate for election on the 2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee for Managers/Executives/Umpires ballot, he fell two votes short.

“This award is meaningful, because when I grew up, I never imagined a life in baseball,” White said in a prerecorded video accepting his award. “Baseball was a way to earn money for medical school. But signing a contract with the New York Giants put me on a different path. Rooming with Willie Mays helped me become a better baseball player. I played with and against some of the greats of the game. Some of the best years of my life were as a broadcast partner with ‘Scooter,’ Phil Rizzuto. We had a lot of fun, and I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. I was so happy to see him elected to the Hall of Fame. And finally, the years I spent as president of the National League and on the Hall of Fame board were amazing. During my time at the National League, we added a couple of new teams and I helped contribute to the game’s growth, and I want to thank the board for this honor.”

During Saturday night’s cocktail party in the Hall of Fame plaque gallery — the highlight of my Induction Weekend every year, an event that’s like watching a childhood baseball card collection come to life — I summoned the courage to introduce myself to the 92-year-old White, who was holding court in the Hall’s lobby. After congratulating him, I expressed my hope he still might be elected to the Hall proper. He thanked me and said words to the effect that he was more than satisfied with this honor. “I used to run this place, you know,” he said, referring to his presence on the board of directors starting in 2000.

Somehow, his dealing with that less-than-perfect outcome felt like a metaphor for the entire weekend. This year’s induction festivities may not have been everybody’s favorite celebration or celebrants, but it wasn’t hard to find something to take from each of their roads to Cooperstown.

Last night, my wife’s friend Paula texted me to make sure I’d seen the below play. Paula moved back home to Minneapolis from Brooklyn a few years ago, and we head out to visit her each summer. We do jigsaw puzzles and go to Minnesota State Fair together. It is a lovely tradition. Paula is more of a basketball fan than a baseball fan, but sometimes she’ll reach out to me when the Twins do something surprising. It’s a sweet way of trying to connect with someone who’s important to her dear friend. Last night, however, she just needed to share what she’d seen, because, frankly, it was bit hard to believe. Here are the Royals turning a swinging bunt into a Little League home run via three errors and at least that many terrible decisions:

If you’ve seen this play, you have thoughts. You can’t help but have thoughts. That’s why Paula sent me the video in the first place. When you watch something like this, the thoughts start bubbling up inside you so rapidly that if you don’t find a safe place to vent them, your brain will explode. This play is the baseball equivalent of microwaving a potato. So let’s get to some thoughts.

1. Poor Seth Lugo.
Let us spare a thought today for Seth Lugo, who got dinged with an error and three unearned runs. This would not be Lugo’s finest outing. He would go on to give up six more runs, all of them earned, which means that both his ERA and his RA9 WAR took a beating. After starting his night like this, it’s hard to blame him. But I hold that Seth Lugo was nigh blameless on this play. I avow it with vigor. As such, please find below a list of things that Seth Lugo did right on this pitch:

• He got Carson Benge to chase a two-strike fastball that was a good six inches above the zone.
• He induced contact so weak that Statcast measured the ball as traveling 0 feet in the air with an indeterminate exit velocity.
• He sprang off the mound like a cat who knows how to field groundballs.
• He fielded the ball cleanly. Seriously, form this pure would make your Little League coach break down and cry:

• He made a quick, off-balance throw to first base. That throw was perfectly fine.
• Yeah, you heard me. It was a good throw. It bounced about 12 feet from the bag, giving Jac Caglianone plenty of time to adjust and catch the ball. It would have been easier to field had it been a foot or two farther to Caglianone’s right, but it was by no means offline. I understand that when the ball bounces, the first baseman is absolved from all blame, so the error has to go to Lugo, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be honest with ourselves.
• Yup, we’re still on the throw. I realize this bullet point and the last bullet point should be sub-bullet points, but I don’t want to format them that way, and more importantly, I don’t know how to format them that way. Point is, the throw was good! I watched it zoomed in on super slow-motion, so I can tell you that the throw actually brushed the tip of Caglianone’s glove. You could reasonably argue that Lugo should’ve eaten this ball, but his throw was more or less on target and it got there in plenty of time to beat the runner. Good throw. Do your worst, haters.
• When everything went pear-shaped, Lugo hustled back behind home plate to back up the play. That’s just good fundamental baseball in the midst of one of the least fundamentally-sound plays you’ll ever see.
• He tried to prevent the third error of the play. If you watch the video, you’ll see Lugo shouting and pointing, trying to get Nick Loftin to throw the ball to third base rather than home. I don’t know if that was necessarily the right call, but it certainly couldn’t have gone any worse than the throw to home.
• He kept his composure and ended the inning on the very next pitch. Sure, everything kept falling apart for him the rest of the night, but for at least one more moment, Lugo put his head down and retired the batter in front of him.

2. Poor Jac Caglianone.
I feel bad for Lugo because he did pretty much everything right here. I feel bad for Jac Caglianone for the opposite reason. While I stand by my assessment of Lugo’s throw, I don’t mean to say that it was an easy play for Caglianone. It was a tough throw to field cleanly. But he still made a couple tactical errors. He would have been better served waiting back for the hop rather than trying to stretch and pick this ball. He absolutely should have prioritized knocking the ball down over going for a clean catch. But regardless of who was to blame, everybody who’s ever played baseball knows what it’s like to have to turn around and chase down a ball that you failed to catch. It’s a lonely feeling, even when you’re being observed by 32,734 screeching New Yorkers. It can make you do some things you’ll regret. Speaking of which…

3. Where was Caglianone trying to throw the ball?
I’m not just asking for me. I’m asking for everyone on the internet too:

This ball traveled right between third base and home plate. In fact, it went right toward Lugo, backing up like a champ, except 10 feet over his head. Maybe Caglianone was trying to decide between third base and home plate, and he split the difference? Maybe this is just the major league translation of Caglianone’s 6.4 BB/9 as a collegiate pitcher. The most likely answer, though, is that Cags had no idea where he was throwing this ball either.

4. Or maybe Seth Lugo is a sleeper agent.
Hear me out. Lugo spent seven years with the Mets, and five more years in their minor league system. Maybe he engineered this play on purpose. Maybe Lugo has spent the past four years pitching well for the Padres and the Royals as part of a long-term mole operation, waiting all that time for this moment when he could hand the Mets a game on a silver platter. All it takes is one properly-timed, improperly-placed throw, plus six more earned runs. Will the Mets still lose the game? Of course they will.

5. Advertisements on the pitcher’s mound are a blight on the game.
The beauty of the playing field is one of the best things about baseball. That feeling of walking through the tunnel and emerging into a green cathedral is what makes even non-baseball fans keep coming back to the ballpark (well, that and the soft serve in the little souvenir helmets). Every square inch of the stadium is covered in advertisements. They put advertisements on the players’ jerseys. They put advertisements on the players’ heads. They will soon find a way to put advertisements on the players’ faces. That garish black gash on the back of the mound, the focal point of the entire field, is a slap in the face to anyone who cares about baseball.

6. Create your own luck?
While we’re complaining about the advertisements, let’s also note that the company advertising on the back of the mound has an ad behind home plate as well. I’d never heard of this company before, but everything I can find about them on the internet makes them sound like they treat their customers abysmally. But also, they seem to have repurposed the mantra of the villain in Titanic and made it their slogan. So that’s a choice.

7. Poor Keith Hernandez.
Hernandez was in the booth for SNY last night. It must be a unique form of torture for arguably the greatest defensive first baseman of all time, a guy who is constantly harping on the need for good fundamentals, to watch a play like this. Here are the two things Hernandez said during this debacle. He said, “Ohhhhh.” Then he said, “Oh my God.” He wasn’t wrong.

8. Poor Some Other Guy.
The broadcast booth always houses a couple people whom we never see. Producers, researchers, stat people, I don’t know who they are. But they’re there to help out the people who narrate the game for us, and they normally keep quiet. Keeping quiet is part of the job. On this play, though, right when Loftin’s throw went awry, just before that “Ohhhhh” was forcibly torn from Hernandez’s thorax and/or soul, somebody else in the broadcast booth couldn’t help himself. He shouted, “Oh my—” and then remembered himself and cut the exclamation short. Who could blame him? (I suppose it’s possible that this was Hernandez himself, that he had his mic muted but could still be heard through play-by-play guy Gary Cohen’s microphone. But either way, this exclamation was not meant for public consumption.)

9. Poor Tyler Tolbert.
Statcast makes these cool diagrams where they track the movement of the ball and every player on the field. The moment I saw this play, I thought about the movement tracker. I tried to picture what it would look like in my mind’s eye. How far would the center fielder move on a play like this? Who ended up moving the most? I borrowed this one from Anthony DiComo’s MLB.com article about the play:

It’s a lot to take in. Caglianone ran every which way. Right fielder Tyler Tolbert hilariously ended up with the ball about 40 feet from home plate. Do you know how wrong things have to go for a tapper back to the pitcher to end up with your right fielder in foul territory, right near home plate, and in possession of the ball? Tolbert picked up the ball barehanded on the run like a third baseman charging a bunt. And then he realized it was too late. It was all over. There was nothing left to do but turn the ball over to the proper authorities and make the 200-foot jog back out to his natural habitat.

10. Poor Carter Jensen.
You know who moved the least? Catcher Carter Jensen. The rookie just had to stand there like a Walmart greeter as the Mets whipped by him. He stepped out in front of the plate when Benge tapped the ball back to Lugo. He moved to the left side of the plate when Caglianone’s throw went rogue. He stepped even farther out to give Loftin a clear throwing lane outside the base path. When Loftin decided that clear throwing lanes are for suckers and threw the ball directly at the runner, Jensen trotted 15 feet over toward the right side, then retreated back to home plate. But he never made it more than a step or two onto the grass in any direction. This whole play was an elaborate form of bear-baiting, and Jensen was the bear, staked to home plate, beset on all sides by jubilant Mets, with nothing to do but watch helplessly as wild throws zipped by him in every direction.

There’s an idiom that gets thrown around in soccer that I wish we would adopt here: talismanic. A talismanic player is particularly important to his team, especially for intangible reasons. Sometimes the club’s talisman is the best player on the squad, but not always. He’s the captain who marshals the defense, or the creative passer who ties the team’s attack together, or a veteran forward who always seems to find the crucial late goal.

We don’t really have a word for this kind of player in baseball. We have club icons, cult heroes, and players with veteran presence, but referring to a player as a talisman implies actual mystical powers that only the team and its fans can truly see.

If any baseball player of the past 20 years is his club’s talisman, surely it’s Salvador Perez. Read the rest of this entry »

Like many of you, Lilo & Stitch taught me that, “‘Ohana means family,” and Hawaiian Bros, like many businesses, boasts that it has a familial relationship with its employees and customers. But that didn’t stop the fast casual restaurant chain from making a business decision to walk back a promise to its most loyal customers.

At the beginning of the season, Hawaiian Bros announced a Plates for Plates promotion in conjunction with the Royals. Anytime the Royals “plated” six or more runs during a home game, HB Rewards members would be eligible for a free Classic Plate Lunch, redeemable the following day at participating locations. But by May 6, the Kansas City-based restaurant had issued a statement to its rewards members, announcing a change to the Plates for Plates promotion. Now when the Royals score six or more runs at Kauffman Stadium, members of the loyalty program can receive a free Classic Plate Lunch only with the purchase of a Plate Lunch. It’s still a good deal, but going from a no-purchase-necessary perk to one that requires spending a minimum of $12 is a sizable downgrade.

So what prompted the change? In their first 17 home games, the Royals reached the six-run scoring threshold eight times. To start 2025, Kansas City hit the six-run mark just three times over the same number of home games. The promotion’s cashing in at more than twice the rate it would have just one season prior is reason enough for the company to reevaluate, but the Royals amplified the issue for those running the corporate fraternity of Polynesian food by scoring six-plus runs in five consecutive home games from April 21 to April 26.

At this early stage of the season, it is fair to wonder if Hawaiian Bros perhaps overreacted to a hot performance during a soft part of the schedule. Maybe this year’s slate of opponents was less competitive than last year. The Guardians, Orioles, Twins, Rockies, Astros, and White Sox made up the early part of the home schedule in 2025, while this year, the Royals faced the Twins, Brewers, White Sox, Orioles, Angels, and Guardians. Some overlapping opponents and similar vibes across both years, but for the sake of thoroughness, I calculated a weighted ERA- to compare the overall quality of pitching faced in the early going each season. In 2025, that number came in at 103, and in 2026, it was 104, making for a very similar strength of opponent in the visiting dugout. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) In Baseball This Week. This column isn’t running every week this year, which means the title is more of a suggestion than a rule. There are some plays from last week, some plays from this week, and future editions will probably break that convention even a little more. I can’t imagine that’s all that big of a deal. After all, “I Liked” is a bigger part of why I enjoy writing this series than “This Week.” So sit back, relax, and check out some of the most delightful baseball happenings of the second half of April. And of course, thanks again to Zach Lowe of The Ringer, the progenitor of the “X Things I Liked This Week” format and my inspiration for this column.

1. Inevitability
If you tune into a baseball broadcast with a runner on third base and less than two outs, you’re liable to hear a discussion of an “undefendable play.” That play is some variation on a safety squeeze: The batter bunts, the runner gets down the line as far as he can safely and waits to see where the bunt is headed before committing, and the defense has very little hope of making a tag play in time. Batters have attempted 24 of these bunts in 2026, and defenders have only retired the lead runner four times. Safety squeezes were equally hard to stop in 2025, this hilarious double play notwithstanding. But maybe they’re even better than those success rates would imply. Maybe there’s some kind of supernatural force that makes safety squeezes work. How else do you explain this nonsense?

Taylor Walls is the most prolific safety squeeze bunter in baseball, and he tried it in extras against the Pirates last week:

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Nathan Lukes was 28 years old and in his ninth professional season when he made his MLB debut with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2023. He almost didn’t make it that far. Life down on the farm isn’t exactly a bed of roses, and that was especially true prior to conditions — financial and otherwise — improving via a collective bargaining agreement that essentially coincided with his reaching the bigs. A few years earlier, Lukes almost walked away.

“It’s been a journey,” Lukes said of his path, which began when Cleveland selected him in the seventh round of the 2015 draft out of Cal State Sacramento. “Five games into my career — this was in short-season ball — I broke my hamate and was out for the rest of the year. The next year, I started in Low-A, and halfway through I got traded to Tampa Bay at the deadline. I stayed with the Rays until my minor-league contract was up, then signed here [in November 2021].

“It was getting to the point where it was almost time to think about hanging it up,” continued Lukes, whom the Blue Jays placed on the IL with a hamstring strain prior to yesterday’s game. “But then, in 2023, they put me on the 40-man roster. Pretty much as long I had that 40-man ticket, I was going to keep running with it.”

The now-31-year-old outfielder didn’t feel that he had stalled out developmentally when he pondered calling it a career — “I always felt that I could play in the big leagues” — but he did recognize that there is more to life than baseball. Lukes and his wife had a child in 2021, and as he explained. “Family changes things.” While his financial situation had improved somewhat thanks to minor-league free agency, he was “going to play the 2022 season, and after that, probably just be a dad.”

“You weren’t getting rich,” I said to Lukes in our spring training conversation. “No,” he replied. “I was getting poor. My wife was working at the time, which helped… actually, it didn’t just help, it kept us running. At the lower levels, I was bringing home six thousand dollars a year after taxes, so I was making a thousand dollars a month. The most I ever made on a minor-league contract was $15,000. You can’t really do too much with that.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Kansas City Royals. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the sixth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, the Detroit Tigers signed rookie shortstop Kevin McGonigle to an eight-year, $150 million contract extension, keeping him under team control through 2034. When McGonigle was going through the draft process, quite a few observers — including me — saw a heady, left-handed-hitting second baseman with average size but a polished, punchy bat, noted that he is from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and thought, “Maybe he’ll be the next Chase Utley.”

As big as the hype around McGonigle has become, that’s still a lofty comp. Utley played 16 years in the majors, made six All-Star teams, produced 61.5 WAR (including five straight seven-win seasons), and appeared in three World Series, winning one. If McGonigle ends up doing all that, I think everyone walks away happy. But after just 17 major league games, McGonigle guaranteed that he would out-earn his childhood hero, who pocketed a mere $125.6 million across his decorated career. Read the rest of this entry »

First things first, I need you to divorce yourself from the notion of marrying strictly for love. Because that’s not how it worked for Evelyn Hugo.

Oh wait. That’s right, some of you probably don’t know who Evelyn Hugo is. Imagine Elizabeth Taylor, Rita Hayworth, and Ava Gardener all rolled into one, and now, in her twilight years, she’s sitting for a longform, tell-all interview spanning her entire career — every marriage, every movie, every divorce. That’s the premise of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, a novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

None of Hugo’s marriages are fairytale romances. For her, they entail more practical considerations. Sometimes love is a factor, but it’s never the sole focus, and rarely the primary concern. Nevertheless, each marriage plays a distinct role in Hugo’s story, in the creation of her final, self-actualized form. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to a new season of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) In Baseball This Week. After a slow, veteran-who-signed-late-this-spring style warmup to the year, it’s time for another dive into the little details that catch my eye each week. It’s the perfect time of year for it. Beautiful weather, early-season optimism, overheard conversations about who should bat third and who’s a bum – it all fuses together to make this one of my favorite parts of the baseball calendar. And even though the WBC whetted my appetite for the spectacular somewhat, there’s really no replacing major league games for the sheer variety of entertainment. I’m sure that Zach Lowe of The Ringer, whose old NBA column format I’ve borrowed, would say the same thing about the basketball regular season. Let’s talk baseball.

1. Ricochets
If you share my baseball consumption habits, it might seem like every weekday offers a Royals game, a Guardians game, or a Royals-Guardians game. And I love it! I’ll take any excuse to watch Maikel Garcia continue his ascent from contact hitter to do-it-all superstar, a kind of modern-day José Ramírez. And I get to watch the actual José Ramírez too? And Bobby Witt Jr.? And Steven Kwan, Vinnie Pasquantino, Bo Naylor, and old favorite Michael Wacha? Both of these teams are sneaky fun, and their series this week didn’t disappoint. Witt might be having a slow start on offense, but he’s still a defensive genius:

Lots of shortstops – pretty much every other shortstop, even – would get only one out, somewhere, on that play. But two?! Ludicrous. When Garcia’s lunging attempt caromed toward Witt, he turned from interested observer to protagonist so smoothly that it looked like he was planning on doing it the whole time. It started with his feet. Instead of charging the ricochet, Witt timed his steps to hop to a stop and get his body in as good a throwing position as he could:

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