The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 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.

Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time. Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander spent all or most of their careers in the dead-ball era, before the home run was a real threat, and pitched while the color line was still in effect, barring some of the game’s most talented players from participating. Sandy Koufax and Tom Seaver pitched when scoring levels were much lower and pitchers held a greater advantage. Koufax and 2015 inductees Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez didn’t sustain their greatness for nearly as long. Greg Maddux didn’t dominate hitters to nearly the same extent.

Clemens, meanwhile, spent 24 years in the majors and racked up a record seven Cy Young awards, not to mention an MVP award. He won 354 games, led his leagues in the Triple Crown categories (wins, strikeouts, and ERA) a total of 16 times, and helped his teams to six pennants and a pair of world championships.

Alas, whatever claim “The Rocket” may have on such an exalted title is clouded by suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs. When those suspicions came to light in the Mitchell Report in 2007, Clemens took the otherwise unprecedented step of challenging the findings during a Congressional hearing, but nearly painted himself into a legal corner; he was subject to a high-profile trial for six counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress. After a mistrial in 2011, he was acquitted on all counts the following year. But despite the verdicts, the specter of PEDs hasn’t left Clemens’ case, even given that in March 2015, he settled the defamation lawsuit filed by former personal trainer Brian McNamee for an unspecified amount.

Amid the ongoing Hall of Fame-related debates over hitters connected to PEDs — most prominently Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa — it’s worth remembering that the chemical arms race involved pitchers as well, leveling the playing field a lot more than some critics of the aforementioned sluggers would admit. The voters certainly haven’t forgotten that when it comes to Clemens, whose share of the vote has approximated that of Bonds. Clemens debuted with 37.6% of the vote in 2013 and only in ’16 began making significant headway, climbing to 45.2% thanks largely to the Hall’s purge of voters more than 10 years removed from covering the game. Like Bonds, he surged above 50% — a historically significant marker towards future election — in 2017, benefiting from voters rethinking their positions in the wake of the election of Bud Selig. The former commissioner’s roles in the late-1980s collusion scandal and in presiding over the proliferation of PEDs within the game dwarf the impact of individual PED users and call into question the so-called “character clause.”

Clemens’ march towards Cooperstown has stalled somewhat in the three years since, as he’s added just 6.9% to reach 61.0%. Whether or not the open letter from Hall of Fame Vice Chairman Joe Morgan pleading with voters not to honor players connected to steroids had an impact, the end result has been time run off the clock. He now has just two more shots to get to 75%, which will require voters changing their minds — something only a dwindling number of voters have been willing to do when it comes to Clemens or Bonds.

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

Batters

If you want a reason why the Houston Astros are still a dangerous team and were just a game away from making the 2020 World Series despite a losing record in the regular season, look no further than the Big Numbers in the lineup. The Astros have a lot in common with their 2019 World Series opponents, the Washington Nationals, in that they’re both teams that have been serious contenders for a numbers of years, have some extremely talented young superstars, and are suffering depth issues due to veteran attrition. Even with the loss (as of now) of Michael Brantley and George Springer, there are still a lot of highlights on the club. And the weak points of the lineup are glaringly obvious.

One of those is left field, which is a good reminder that our Depth Charts today will not be the same as they are three months from now. I would be extremely surprised if Houston started the season with Chas McCormick and/or Ronnie Dawson in left. McCormick projects better than Dawson does, but as long as the team’s still trying to contend in 2021, this is definitely a Too Soon thing. It would be a little odd to give McCormick time playing time so quickly after Kyle Tucker had to fight for years for an extended shot! Nor am I convinced that Myles Straw actually ends up the starter in center next season, though it’s more plausible than the current situation in left. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Bobby Abreu could do just about everything. A five-tool player with dazzling speed, a sweet left-handed stroke, and enough power to win a Home Run Derby, he was also one of the game’s most patient, disciplined hitters, able to wear down a pitcher and unafraid to hit with two strikes. While routinely reaching the traditional seasonal plateaus that tend to get noticed — a .300 batting average (six times), 20 homers (nine times), 30 steals (six times), 100 runs scored and batted in (eight times apiece) — he was nonetheless a stathead favorite for his ability to take a walk (100 or more eight years in a row) and his high on-base percentages (.400 or better eight times). And he was durable, playing 151 games or more in 13 straight seasons. “To me, Bobby’s Tony Gwynn with power,” said Phillies hitting coach Hal McRae in 1999.

“Bobby was way ahead of his time [with] regards to working pitchers,” said his former manager Larry Bowa when presenting him for induction into the Phillies Wall of Fame in 2019. “In an era when guys were swinging for the fences, Bobby never strayed from his game. Because of his speed, a walk would turn into a double. He was cool under pressure, and always in control of his at-bats. He was the best combination of power, speed, and patience at the plate.” Read the rest of this entry »

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

Lacking the longevity of Mariano Rivera or Trevor Hoffman, Wagner never set any saves records or even led his league once, and his innings total is well below those of every enshrined reliever. Hoffman’s status as the former all-time saves leader helped him get elected in 2018, but Wagner, who created similar value in his career, has major hurdles to surmount. There are, though, fewer hurdles than before: In his fifth year on the ballot, his share of the vote nearly doubled, from 16.7% to 31.7%, the third-largest gain among returning candidates. His advantages over Hoffman — and virtually every other reliever in history when it comes to rate stats — provide a compelling reason to study his career more closely. Given how far he’s come, who wants to bet against Billy Wags?

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2019 election, 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.

As much as Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte was a pillar of the Joe Torre-era Yankees dynasty. The tall Texan lefty played such a vital role on 13 pinstriped playoff teams and seven pennant winners — plus another trip to the World Series during his three-year run with Houston — that he holds several major postseason records. In fact, no pitcher ever started more potential series clinchers, both in the World Series and the postseason as a whole.

For as important as Pettitte was to the “Core Four” (Williams always gets the short end of the stick on that one) that anchored five championships from 1996 to 2009 — and to an Astros team that reached its first World Series in ’05 — he seldom made a case as one of the game’s top pitchers. High win totals driven by excellent offensive support helped him finish in the top five of his leagues’ Cy Young voting four times, but only three times did he place among the top 10 in ERA or WAR, and he never ranked higher than sixth in strikeouts. He made just three All-Star teams.

Indeed, Pettitte was more plow horse than racehorse. A sinker- and cutter-driven groundballer whose pickoff move was legendary, he was a championship-level innings-eater, a grinder (his word) rather than a dominator, a pitcher whose strong work ethic, mental preparation, and focus — visually exemplified by his peering in for the sign from the catcher with eyes barely visible underneath the brim of his cap — compensated for his lack of dazzling stuff. Ten times he made at least 32 starts, a mark that’s tied for seventh in the post-1994 strike era. Within that span, his total of 10 200-inning seasons is tied for fourth, and his 13 seasons of qualifying for the ERA title with an ERA+ of 100 or better is tied for first with two other lefties, Mark Buehrle (a newcomer to this year’s ballot) and CC Sabathia. He had his ups and downs in the postseason, but only once during his 18-year career (2004, when he underwent season-ending elbow surgery) was he unavailable to pitch once his team made the playoffs.

Even given Pettitte’s 256 career wins, he takes a back seat to two other starters on the ballot (Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling) who were better at missing bats and preventing runs, and who also had plenty of postseason success. Both of those pitchers have reasons why voters might exclude them from their ballots even while finding them statistically qualified, and the same is true for Pettitte, who was named in the 2007 Mitchell Report for having used human growth hormone to recover from an elbow injury. Between those dents and dings and the additional presence of both Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina, Pettitte received just 9.9% in his 2019 ballot debut, and even on a less crowded slate, his share only increased to 11.3% last year. He seems unlikely to make much headway towards 75% barring a significant change in the electorate’s attitudes towards PEDs.

About those wins: Regular readers know that I generally avoid dwelling upon pitcher win totals, because in this increasingly specialized era, they owe as much to adequate offensive, defensive, and bullpen support as they do to a pitcher’s own performance. While one needn’t know how many wins Pettitte amassed in a season or a career to appreciate his true value, those totals have affected the popular perception of his career.

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As one of the market’s top position players, George Springer is expected to draw heavy interest this winter, and already there have been reports of the Mets and Blue Jays expressing just that. The 31-year-old center fielder is coming off a strong season; not surprisingly, on Wednesday he was among the four free agents who declined qualifying offers from their 2020 teams, along with Trevor Bauer, DJ LeMahieu, and J.T. Realmuto. Springer, however, could be the winter’s only free agent besides Realmuto to land a contract of at least $100 million.

Springer got off to such a slow start in 2020 that he was hitting .194/.331/.388 as late as September 2nd while pulling the ball an astronomical, out-of-character 51.3% of the time. But while the Astros struggled down the stretch, he finished strong with nine homers and a .703 slugging percentage in his final 23 games and 100 plate appearances. Overall, he hit .265/.359/.540 with 14 homers and finished in virtual ties for ninth in the AL in both wRC+ (146) and WAR (1.9). Given the shortened season, he couldn’t approach the career highs he set in either homers (39) or WAR (6.5) in 2019, and while the same turned out to be true about his wRC+ (156), the difference wasn’t nearly so large as it appeared to be given that season’s raw rate stats (.292/.383/.591):

Springer hit more fly balls than grounders for the first time in his career in 2020, and his final pull rate of 48.0% was 7.7 percentage points above last year’s mark and eight points above his career mark. His average launch angle increased significantly, but his expected batting average and slugging percentage were more or less unchanged from 2019. The hits just didn’t fall in to the same extent: His .259 BABIP was a career low and placed him in the bottom quintile among qualified hitters. Still, his September hot streak suggests he ironed things out, and his 146 wRC+ was five points above his career mark. Plus, he struck out a career-low 17.1% of the time, lest anyone think that his gains in that area — which started to show up in 2017, after he’d struck out 26.0% of the time in his first three seasons — were simply a product of the Astros’ sign-stealing shenanigans. Read the rest of this entry »

In the least shocking development of the offseason thus far, the Red Sox have rehired Alex Cora to manage the team. Not only did the move to bring back the previously suspended skipper appear to be inevitable, but news of it leaked onto Twitter just 22 minutes after Decision Desk HQ became the first verified outfit to call the presidential election in favor of Joe Biden. This was a Hall of Fame-caliber Friday news dump, designed to minimize the attention paid to a transaction that’s clearly defiant, if not cynical.

Put it this way: I’m no Jon Heyman when it comes to the inside baseball of Major League Baseball, but I tweeted a week ago that the Red Sox not rehiring Cora to manage would be an even bigger shock than the White Sox’s strange rehiring of Tony La Russa, who hasn’t managed since 2011. Unlike the situation in Chicago, where owner Jerry Reinsdorf appears to have unilaterally decided to bring back an old crony without interviewing other candidates (or at least announcing that they had done so), the Red Sox were reported to have interviewed several MLB coaches including Mike Bell (Twins), Don Kelly (Pirates), Carlos Mendoza (Yankees), James Rowson (Marlins), Skip Schumaker (Padres), Luis Urueta (Diamondbacks), and Will Venable (Cubs). But despite that crowded field — which grew to “at least nine candidates” who received first-round interviews — it’s fair to wonder the extent to which this was an ownership-driven decision. Read the rest of this entry »

As a long, likely-bleak offseason began late last week, many teams opted out of the final year of players’ contracts, often with the seeming goal of beginning this winter with as little committed money on the books as possible. Tampa Bay will not bring back Charlie Morton, one of baseball’s best starting pitchers. Cleveland will not bring back Brad Hand, one of baseball’s best relievers. Some teams will use the money saved on these unexercised club options to pursue other free agents they feel will provide more value; many are likely to simply pocket the savings as a means of recouping what they say the COVID-19 pandemic cost them. The bar for players hoping to land any kind of guaranteed money this offseason appears to be quite high; in the eyes of the Houston Astros, left-handed reliever Brooks Raley cleared it.

Raley’s $2 million club option (he’ll make just a $250,000 salary in the minors) for the 2021 season isn’t close to the double-digit price tag that Morton or Hand’s would have cost their clubs, but the specific figure in play here doesn’t feel as important as the fact that Houston was willing to pay Raley in the first place. His numbers this season — a 4.95 ERA and 3.94 FIP in 20 innings — aren’t anything special. Other relievers with similarly-priced club options and perfectly good 2020 production, such as Javy Guerra and Darren O’Day, were turned loose by their respective clubs. In a depressed spending environment, the prices for high-leverage relievers this winter could turn out to be low. For Houston to commit to Raley before free agency even begins shows the team must see something valuable in him.

The Astros were already demonstrating their belief in Raley when they used him rather aggressively during this year’s surprisingly deep playoff run. In the ALCS alone, Raley pitched in four games, holding the Rays without a run across three innings while striking out six and walking two. That usage — particularly in close games — was reflective of just how thin the Astros had become at the back of their bullpen, but it also showed how fond Houston had grown of Raley in his short time with the team.

If this year’s postseason was the first you’d ever heard of Raley, you probably aren’t alone. And if you got curious and looked him up, you may have been surprised to learn just how long he’s been around. The 32-year-old lefty was a sixth-round pick of the Chicago Cubs in 2009; he pitched sparingly for them in 2012-13 before being placed on waivers. His run on the waiver wire saw him shuttled to the Twins and then the Angels, but neither found a home for Raley on their big league roster. Lacking interest from MLB squads, Raley answered a call from the Korean Baseball Organization’s Lotte Giants, who offered him a rotation spot he never relinquished. From 2015-19, Raley started 151 games with the Giants, proving to be a durable, if not necessarily dominant, starter. Read the rest of this entry »

Brad Keller had a boffo season for the Kansas City Royals, and his slider was a big reason why. Buoyed largely by its improvement, the 25-year-old right-hander logged a 2.47 ERA and a 3.43 FIP over nine starts covering 54-and-two-thirds innings. Five times, Keller worked five or more scoreless frames, a complete-game shutout in mid-September serving as his shining-star effort.

Helped by pitching coach Cal Eldred, he jumpstarted his career by developing more depth during his pandemic-forced downtime.

“We made some adjustments during the shutdown,” Keller told me following the completion of the season. “Between spring training and spring training 2.0 we made some mechanical adjustments that allowed my arm to become more athletic, if that makes sense. That’s kind of a weird way to put it, but whenever I would throw my slider in the past, I’d almost block my arm out. We were like, ‘OK, we don’t do that on a fastball, we don’t do that on anything else, so let’s do that same thing on the slider.” Basically, I needed to start throwing my slider just like I throw my fastball.”

The adjustment took time to bear fruit. Initially, the pitch wasn’t breaking at all. As Keller put it, “the very first one almost took the catcher’s head off,” as it was devoid of downward movement. Diligence, accompanied by a Rapsodo and an Edgertronic, eventually did the trick. Once mundane, his slider morphed into a monster.

“With the help of analytics, it became like my fastball for a longer time toward the plate,” explained Keller. “The spin went up. It became sharper, and as a result I started getting some silly swings-and-misses on it.” Read the rest of this entry »

Tom House and Dusty Baker go way back. They were Atlanta Braves teammates from 1971-1975, and before that they roomed together in the minor leagues. Their bond remains as strong as ever. Just last week the Houston Astros manager tapped into the renowned pitching guru’s expertise — albeit for reasons you might not expect. Baker consulted with House because his second baseman was battling a serious case of the yips.

“We kind of have this troubleshooting thing,” divulged House, who is often referred to as the father of modern pitching mechanics. “When Dusty runs across something he’s not quite sure about, or if I have a question about something that I don’t have access to… we’ve maintained a pretty solid communication relationship since way back when.”

What’s shared between the old friends follows the Vegas Rule, but while anything Jose Altuve specific would thus remain in-house, an overview of the phenomenon qualifies as fair game. I asked what causes a player to suddenly not be able to throw a baseball with any degree of accuracy.

“It’s when the conscious mind and the subconscious mind have a disconnect,” explained House, who has a Ph.D. in sports psychology. “Basically, it’s what they call a double-bind — you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Your brain won’t allow your arm to throw properly, because it doesn’t want to suffer the consequences of throwing the ball. It happens with catchers all the time. Steve Sax is famous because he couldn’t throw from second base. With golf, it’s putting the ball into the hole.”

Interestingly, an attack of the yips — or, as House prefers to call them “the creature” — rarely inflicts duffers. Read the rest of this entry »