The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Carlos Beltrán was the quintessential five-tool player, a switch-hitting center fielder who harnessed his physical talents and became a superstar. Aided by a high baseball IQ that was essentially his sixth tool, he spent 20 seasons in the majors, making nine All-Star teams, winning three Gold Gloves, helping five different franchises reach the playoffs, and putting together some of the most dominant stretches in postseason history once he got there. At the end of his career, he helped the Astros win a championship.

Drafted out of Puerto Rico by the Royals, Beltrán didn’t truly thrive until he was traded away. He spent the heart of his career in New York, first with the Mets — on what was at the time the largest free-agent contract in team history — and later the Yankees. He endured his ups and downs in the Big Apple and elsewhere, including his share of injuries. Had he not missed substantial portions of three seasons, he might well have reached 3,000 hits, but even as it is, he put up impressive, Cooperstown-caliber career numbers. Not only is he one of just eight players with 300 homers and 300 stolen bases, but he also owns the highest stolen base success rate (86.4%) of any player with at least 200 attempts.

Alas, two years after Beltrán’s career ended, he was identified as the player at the center of the biggest baseball scandal in a generation: the Astros’ illegal use of video replay to steal opponents’ signs in 2017 and ’18. He was “the godfather of the whole program” in the words of Tom Koch-Weser, the team’s director of advance information, and the only player identified in commissioner Rob Manfred’s January 2020 report. But between that report and additional reporting by the Wall Street Journal, it seems apparent that the whole team, including manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, was well aware of the system and didn’t stop him or his co-conspirators. In that light, it’s worth wondering about the easy narrative that has left Beltrán holding the bag; Hinch hardly had to break stride in getting another managerial job once his suspension ended. While Beltrán was not disciplined by the league, the fallout cost him his job as manager of the Mets before he could even oversee a game, and he has yet to get another opportunity.

Will Beltrán’s involvement in sign stealing cost him a berth in Cooperstown, the way allegations concerning performance-enhancing drugs have for a handful of players with otherwise Hallworthy numbers? At the very least it appears likely to keep him from getting elected this year. What remains to be seen is whether voters treat him like Rafael Palmeiro and banish him for a big mistake (a positive PED test) in the final season of an otherwise impressive career, or like Roberto Alomar and withhold the honor of first-ballot induction for an out-of-character incident (spitting at an umpire) before giving him his due. Read the rest of this entry »

The 40-man roster deadline led to the usual squall of transaction activity, with teams turning over portions of their rosters in an effort to make room for the incoming crop of young rookies. Often, teams with an overflow of viable big leaguers will try to get back what they can for some of those players via trade, but because we’re talking about guys straddling the line between major league viability and Triple-A, those trades tend not to be big enough to warrant an entire post.

Here we’ve endeavored to cover and analyze the moves made by each team, division by division. Readers can view this as the start of list season, as the players covered in this miniseries tend to be prospects who will get big league time in the next year. We’ll spend more time discussing players who we think need scouting updates or who we haven’t written about in the past. If you want additional detail on some of the more famous names you find below, pop over to The Board for a more thorough report.

The Future Value grades littered throughout these posts may be different than those on the 2022 in-season prospect lists on The Board to reflect our updated opinions and may be subject to change during the offseason. New to our thinking on this subject and wondering what the FVs mean? Here’s a quick rundown. Note that because we’re talking about close-to-the-majors prospects across this entire exercise, the time and risk component is less present here and these FVs are what we think the players are right now. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2016 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance over collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a hard slider learned from teammate Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 800 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2014 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Jeff Kent took a long time to find a home. Drafted by the Blue Jays in 1989, he passed through the hands of three teams that didn’t quite realize the value of what they had. Not until a trade to the Giants in November 1996 — prior to his age-29 season — did he really settle in. Once he did, he established himself as a standout complement to Barry Bonds, helping the Giants become perennial contenders and spending more than a decade as a middle-of-the-lineup force.

Despite his late-arriving stardom and a prickly personality that sometimes rubbed teammates and media the wrong way, Kent earned All-Star honors five times, won an MVP award, and helped four different franchises reach the playoffs a total of seven times. His resumé gives him a claim as the best-hitting second baseman of the post-1960 expansion era — not an iron-clad one, but not one that’s easily dismissed. For starters, he holds the all-time record for most home runs by a second baseman with 351. That’s 74 more than Ryne Sandberg, 85 more than Joe Morgan, and 86 more than Rogers Hornsby — all Hall of Famers, and in Hornsby’s case, one from before the expansion era (note that I’m not counting homers hit while playing other positions). Among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances in their career who spent at least half their time at second base, only Hornsby (.577) has a higher slugging percentage than Kent’s .500. From that latter set, only Hornsby (1.010) and another pre-expansion Hall of Famer, Charlie Gehringer (.884), have a higher OPS than Kent (.855). Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros capped off a dominant postseason run with a World Series title that showed off a well-rounded and star-studded organization. They won with great starting pitching, great relief pitching, powerful hitting, and excellent defense. This wasn’t a case of a few guys getting hot and carrying a moribund offense, or a heroic member of the rotation piling up innings that no one counted on. The team stacked with good players up and down the roster simply deployed them as expected, and got a parade for its trouble.

It’s funny, in that context, to note that one of the best offenses in baseball had a clear hole at first base. Yuli Gurriel, the longtime incumbent at the position, had an abysmal year, compiling a .242/.288/.360 batting line that represented his second-worst performance in the majors (and his second poor showing in three years). The Astros scored runs at a gaudy clip despite his decline, but they didn’t bury their heads in the sand about Gurriel; they traded for Trey Mancini at the deadline to shore up their first-base options.

Bad news: Mancini wasn’t very good either. He and Gurriel combined to rack up -1.4 WAR with Houston. Yeesh. By the time the playoffs rolled around, the Astros were using unheralded rookie David Hensley as a right-handed DH in lieu of Mancini. It worked well enough to win, but it was a strange look for a team already punting on offense at catcher. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not sure if you know this about me, but there are two things that I’ve always loved to do. First, I like to make things about me, even if the connection is tenuous. Second, I like to go over my own past decisions and see if there’s anything I can learn from them, hopefully without being too self-serving. I have great news – well, for me at least. Two free agent signings last week – Robert Suarez to the Padres and Rafael Montero to the Astros – have given me an opportunity to do both.

Of course, I don’t want to give either player short shrift. Both are excellent in their own right, late-inning relievers coming off of effective 2022 seasons and high-leverage postseason work. Egotistical as I am, I can’t completely ignore them and only talk about myself. As a compromise, I’ll start by profiling each player and their new contract. From there, we’ll move on to discussing why neither was on my Top 50 Free Agents ranking, and what I think I did wrong in making the list. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros inexplicably jettisoned General Manager James Click six days after winning the World Series. Jim Crane, whose reputation isn’t exactly stellar, offered Click just a one-year deal to remain in Houston — a veritable slap in the face given what the team had just accomplished. For all intents and purposes, the owner’s offer was an invitation to vamoose. Crane wanted Click gone.

With rumors of his dismissal rampant, Click fielded a barrage of questions regarding his future when he met with the media during this week’s GM meetings in Las Vegas. Not wanting to beat what was essentially a dead horse, I asked the highly-successful executive about something entirely different: Which position will be most affected by the forthcoming limitations on defensive shifts?

“My gut reaction would be second base,” replied Click. “You could make a credible case for any of the four infield positions, but I also don’t know how much it’s going to really change the game. We’ll still see teams shift as much as they can within the rules. We’ll see shortstops almost directly behind second base, or second basemen directly behind the bag. So the question becomes: ‘How much do those few feet really change the batter’s approach, and the result?’ That said, I do think we’re going to need more athleticism at all positions. Any time you’re not able to position a guy exactly where the ball is most likely to go, you’re going to have to be able to move a little more to get to those balls.” Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t hard to see this coming. Despite taking over their jobs in the wake of the team’s sign-stealing scandal and leading the Astros to the AL’s best record since then, with a 2020 trip to the ALCS, a ’21 pennant and ’22 World Series win to boot, general manager James Click and manager Dusty Baker were both working without contracts beyond this season. Normally, such successful leaders are offered extensions well before their deals expire, but Astros owner Jim Crane refused the courtesy, sending both into the postseason as lame ducks. Both Click’s three-year deal and Baker’s one-year deal officially expired on October 31, before the final out of the team’s World Series triumph. Amid the celebration, Crane said he’d address the matter the following week, and while Baker agreed to return via a one-year deal, Click rejected a one-year offer, ending his tenure atop Houston’s front office.

Frankly, under such circumstances, a single-year offer is an insult, particularly for an organization’s highest-ranking baseball official, the person who is supposed to be the architect of the team. At this point in his storied career, the 73-year-old Baker may be fine with going year to year, but Crane had to know that the 44-year-old Click, who spent 14 years in the Rays’ front office but had never served as a GM before being hired in February 2020, would decline such an offer. With no current GM openings, the parting of the ways may mean that Click spends part or all of 2023 as some team’s special advisor or vice president, not unlike what Alex Anthopoulos did with the Dodgers between his runs as general manager with the Blue Jays and Braves. It does seem likely that by this time next year, Click will get to execute his vision via the security of a long-term deal.

Click inherited a roster that had been put together by predecessor Jeff Luhnow, who was suspended for a year by Rob Manfred as well as fired by Crane when the commissioner issued his report detailing the Astros’ illegal sign-stealing activities in January 2020. Maintaining and augmenting that roster over the past three seasons was no small task given the departures of stars Gerrit Cole, George Springer, and Carlos Correa via free agency. While Click was able to do so largely with players who entered the organization on Luhnow’s watch, it still takes the right judgment to decide that rookie Jeremy Peña, with zero major league experience, was ready to fill Correa’s shoes as of Opening Day, or that Framber Valdez. Cristian Javier, and Luis Garcia could replace the likes of Zack Greinke and Wade Miley. That Click did so with Crane — a demanding boss whose background is with his air-freight logistics business, not in a baseball front office — nosing his way into the operations side post-Luhnow shouldn’t be held against him. Read the rest of this entry »

After coming up short in 2021, the Astros are back on top of the sport with their second championship in six years. Come playoff time, Houston consistently executed its gameplan better than any other team. This year, dominance came in the form of historically effective relief pitching and timely hitting. On the whole, the Astros’ hitting wasn’t strikingly better than any other team, but when given the chance to put up enough for their bullpen to hold it down, they did that with no problem.

That last part is what has lingered in my head for the past week or so. Over the last six years, it feels as if Houston’s hitters have figured it out in big moments while other teams have stumbled. Even in this year’s tournament, when there was dominant pitching across the board, Astros hitters made the most of mistakes. And Houston could rely on a large group of guys, including but not limited to Jeremy Peña, Alex Bregman, Yordan Alvarez, and Kyle Tucker. Compare that to teams like the Yankees and Phillies, who had to rely on just a few players throughout.

But why is that? How can Houston get timely production from any guy in the lineup while others can’t overcome their holes? I still haven’t gotten close to a definitive answer, but I think I’m making progress on a reason why. Read the rest of this entry »

Dusty Baker is on the outside no longer. On Saturday night, the manager with the highest win total of any skipper never to pilot a World Series winner shed that distinction, as the Astros secured their championship by beating the Phillies, 4–1, in Game 6 at Minute Maid Park. After managing for 25 seasons — 12 of them with at least 90 wins — and reaching the World Series two other times (2002 and ’21), the 73-year-old Baker finally won one:

We are crying. ? #WorldSeries pic.twitter.com/DnUQ67bz25

— MLB (@MLB) November 6, 2022

Not that he hadn’t already tasted champagne as the All-Star left fielder of the 1981 Dodgers. That makes him one of seven men to win championships as a player and manager during the division play era (1969 onward), and one of 22 overall, not counting player-managers.

Saturday’s victory made Baker the oldest manager to win a World Series, but he viewed the significance of his accomplishment differently. “I don’t think about being the oldest,” he told reporters after the victory. “I don’t think about my age. But I do think about being the third Black manager with Dave Roberts and my good friend Cito Gaston, who was responsible really for me as a kid when I first signed with the Braves.”

In a game that’s all too lacking in diversity at the leadership levels, Baker has remained mindful of his status. Prior to Game 6, he said, “I do know that there’s certain pressure from a lot of people that are pulling for me, especially people of color. And that part I do feel. I hear it every day… and so I feel that I’ve been chosen for this.”

As the manager who took over the Astros amid the fallout from their illegal electronic sign stealing, Baker was an inspired if counterintuitive choice. A commanding presence in the clubhouse and with the media, he helped deflect attention away from an owner who shirked responsibility and a squad whose star players seemed to go through the motions in apologizing for their roles in the scandal before swiftly pivoting to an us-against-everyone rallying cry. Though hardly averse to the use of sabermetrics in decision-making, Baker also brought a warmth and humanity to an organization whose commitment to analytics under general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch had often been described as dehumanizing even before the trash can banging scheme came to light.

Only five players remain from the 2017 squad whose World Series victory over the Dodgers was subsequently tainted by the revelations of their sign stealing: Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Yuli Gurriel, Lance McCullers Jr., and Justin Verlander. The combination of their minimal contrition and Major League Baseball’s decision not to discipline them (particularly the hitters) for their participation has made them villains in the eyes of many fans, booed everywhere but Houston. Baker indicated his belief that such treatment galvanized the team:

“The boos and the jeers that we got all over the country, it bothered these guys, but it also motivated them at the same time. And it wasn’t an us against the world thing. It was more of a come together even closer type thing.”

Perhaps, but anger toward the 2017 group — and anyone else in an Astros uniform — for what McCullers frankly termed “the whole cheating scandal” still runs deep. On social media, seemingly minor matters that arose during this World Series, such as Aledmys Díaz leaning into a pitch, Martín Maldonado using a grandfathered Albert Pujols bat, and Framber Valdez removing his glove on the mound and rubbing his hands together were taken as evidence that they were still cheating, somehow. On the one hand, the paranoia is quite silly, particularly as the Phillies didn’t seem to get too worked up about such matters. On the other hand, this is the price that the Astros and MLB must continue to pay for what transpired… and what didn’t. For many fans, Baker’s victory is the most, if not the only, palatable way to accept the Astros’ championship.

In winning the World Series, Baker has almost certainly secured himself a spot in the Hall of Fame. His resumé might have been enough without a championship, as he ranks fourth in playoff appearances (12, a product of the Wild Card era but also a reminder of his routine success), ninth in victories (2,093), 10th in games managed (3,884), and 15th in games above .500 (303). Wilbert Robinson (1902, ’14–31) and Al Lopez (1951–69), each of whom won two pennants but lost twice in the Fall Classic, are already enshrined, as is every manager with at least 2,000 wins save for Baker and the recently un-retired Bruce Bochy, who has a spot awaiting him given his three World Series wins:

From a childhood in Riverside and Sacramento through a 19-year career as a major league outfielder with the Braves, Dodgers, Giants, and A’s, and then a quarter-century as a manager, Baker’s road to Cooperstown has been a long one. As the only manager ever to guide five franchises to division titles (the Giants, Cubs, Reds, Nationals, and Astros), he already had an achievement that set him apart from his peers, albeit one that he didn’t quite feel was cause for celebration. “I don’t really think nothing, other than why was I on so many different teams,” he told reporters as the playoffs began last year. “I’m serious. I feel fortunate to have gotten that many jobs, but I feel unfortunate that I shouldn’t have lost jobs when I was winning.”

Indeed, as I’ve noted before, at three of his previous four stops, Baker departed after seasons with at least 90 wins and postseason berths. In 2002, he won 95 games in guiding the Giants to their first World Series since 1989; it was the fourth time in six years his team had topped 90 wins, and third with a playoff berth. Yet the Giants didn’t offer him a contract after the 2002 World Series due to his strained relationship with managing partner Peter Magowan, and Baker landed with the Cubs. He nearly took them back to the World Series in his first season, only to be derailed by the Steve Bartman play and the Cubs’ sudden unraveling; by his fourth season in Chicago (2006), the team was 66–96 and in need of a new direction. The Cubs let his contract expire, the only time he left a losing team.

In 2008, Baker took over the Reds; after back-to-back, sub-.500 finishes, his team won 91 games and the NL Central in 2010, its first postseason berth since 1995. Following another sub-.500 season, he won 97 games and another NL Central title in 2012, but after 90 wins and a Wild Card berth in ’13, he was fired nonetheless. It took him two years to land another managerial job, and despite leading the Nationals to back-to-back NL East titles and seasons of 95 and 97 wins, the team let his contract lapse.

In 2019, Baker got as far as a second interview for the Phillies opening that went to Joe Girardi, whose team didn’t make the playoffs in either of the next two seasons. Girardi was fired after a 22–29 start in early June, but Rob Thomson guided them on an unlikely run that took them all the way to Game 6.

One team’s second choice is another team’s skipper, so it’s fortunate for the Astros that the then-70-year-old Baker was available when owner Jim Crane needed to make a quick but credible hiring to replace Hinch just a couple of weeks before pitchers and catchers reported for the 2020 season.

As we all know, the world shut down and the season was delayed by nearly four months. With Verlander lost to a forearm strain (he would eventually need Tommy John surgery), and Altuve, Bregman and Gurriel considerably less productive than before (ahem), the Astros went just 29–31 under Baker during the pandemic-shortened season. Even so, they finished second in a weak AL West and made the expanded playoffs as the sixth seed. There they caught fire, sweeping the Twins in the Wild Card Series, beating the A’s in a four-game Division Series, and taking the Rays to seven games in the ALCS before falling. Houston won 95 games last year, then knocked off the White Sox and Red Sox before losing to the Braves in a six-game World Series. This year, the Astros won an AL-high 106 games, then swept both the Mariners and Yankees to reach the World Series again.

Despite falling behind by losing Games 1 and 3, the Astros came back to subdued the Phillies by winning three straight; the first two of those came at Citizens Bank Park, where Philadelphia had gone 6–0 during the postseason to that point. Beginning with a combined no-hitter started by Cristian Javier, the Astros held the Phillies to three runs and nine hits over their final three games, a .101/.223/.180 showing.

In losing the aforementioned games, Baker drew criticism for sticking too long with the struggling Verlander and McCullers; the pair combined to allow 12 runs in 9.1 innings, and a quicker hook might have given the Astros a better shot at winning. Yet the Astros allowed just six runs (five earned) in the 44.2 innings thrown by their other pitchers in the World Series, and the team as a whole posted a 2.29 ERA over the course of the postseason. Baker rarely called a wrong number when it came to his bullpen, which pitched to an 0.83 ERA in 54.1 innings for the postseason. The Astros went 11–2 during their march to the championship, including 5–1 in one-run games. Baker may not have run the team flawlessly, but it’s hard to find much fault with his performance.

This was a very different team from the won that one in 2017, as well as a reminder that the criticisms that were so easy to levy at Baker a decade or two ago no longer apply. Young pitchers thriving on his watch and handled with care? The 28-year-old Valdez (1.44 ERA in 25 innings) and 25-year-old Javier (0.71 ERA in 12.2 innings) were the team’s two best starters in October and November, and maxed out at 104 and 97 pitches, respectively; they helped compensate for Verlander and McCullers both posting ERAs above 5.00. Young position players getting playing time? Hello, Jeremy Peña, the first rookie position player to win World Series MVP honors, and at 25 years and 45 days old, the youngest position player to do so. Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker are less than a year older than Peña, and both are already grizzled veterans, with three postseasons of regular play under their belts. Sacrifice bunts? Nine all season, four by the light-hitting Maldonado, and just two in the postseason, one of which — the bunt by Peña in ALCS Game 3 — was part of a daring sequence where only an insurance run was at stake.

I suspect the baseball world outside Houston will remain salty when it comes to the Astros so long as Altuve and Bregman wear the blue and orange, and perhaps so long as Crane owns the team, given his longstanding reputation for avoiding accountability. Crane hardly seems like a delight to work for, and it has not escaped notice that neither Baker, who entered the season on a one-year contract, nor general manager James Click, who is in the final year of a three-year deal, have contracts for 2023. Neither is a lock to return, though it’s believed that Baker will receive an extension offer, and that he wants to continue his career. “I’ve always said if I win one, I want to win two,” he said. Even if the rest of the baseball world may prefer another team wear the crown, it’s very hard to wish anything but the best for Dusty.