The Arizona Diamondbacks front office isn’t afraid to make marquee “challenge trades,” deals that are consummated in a place of competitive neutrality rather than between one “buyer” and one “seller,” swaps that have more to do with player fit, or the opportunity to move a player at the peak of their trade value in exchange for one you ordinarily wouldn’t be able to acquire. They did it when they sent Jazz Chisholm Jr. to Miami for Zac Gallen and pulled off a version of it when they acquired Starling Marte from Pittsburgh. Christmas Eve Eve brought the latest example, with Arizona sending outfielder Daulton Varsho to the Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for left fielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and catcher Gabriel Moreno. Varsho and Moreno probably aren’t names casual baseball fans know. In fact, I’d wager the culture is more familiar with Gurriel’s wavy, meringue-like locks than the two cornerstones of this trade, as Varsho has come of age in relative obscurity near the basement of a loaded NL West, and Moreno (though no longer rookie eligible due to days on the active roster) spent most of 2022 gestating in Buffalo. Instead, this is a blockbuster for the nerds and hardcore seamheads, a deal that fortifies a contending team’s lineup while giving the other club a rare opportunity to acquire a recently graduated top prospect and field a young, high-ceiling’d roster that might be able to slay the blue and brown dragons in its division if most of the youngsters pan out as hoped.

As of now, Varsho is the most accomplished and successful player in the trade. A former top 100 prospect himself, 2022 was Varsho’s third big league season, but the first in which he played the entire slate at the big league level. He had a career year, slashing .235/.302/.443 with 27 homers, 53 total extra-base hits, and 16 steals in 22 attempts, all while playing several positions, including some center field and catcher. Even with the low batting average and on-base percentage, Varsho’s season was good for a whopping 4.6 WAR, placing him 26th among all position players in baseball. A huge chunk of that WAR total comes from Varsho’s defensive metrics, as Statcast has him evaluated as having been worth 18 Outs Above Average in the outfield, sixth in all of baseball in 2022 and first among everyday outfielders.

It’s wise to take defensive metrics with a grain of salt. Even for a relatively fleet-footed player, such a superlative performance was surprising given Varsho’s catching background and prospect evaluation, which projected him to an outfield corner in the event that he couldn’t stick behind the plate. If he were truly an elite right fielder and plus center fielder (his OAA were split pretty evenly between the two positions), why wasn’t he just being deployed as an outfielder throughout his career? Part of the reason Varsho’s statistical performance is in its own stratosphere is the sheer number of opportunities rated “three star” and above he had throughout the 2022 season. He ranked no lower than 15th in all of baseball in opportunities to make three-, four-, and five-star plays on defense. But he did make those plays, all at a rate near the top of the big league leaderboards, including every single three-star play he was tasked with, a great distance from the rest of his peers when you combine raw opportunity and rate of success. Read the rest of this entry »

Tyler Black could follow in his father’s footsteps, but that’s not the path he’s pursuing. What the 22-year-old Toronto native wants to do is to play in the big leagues — a goal that is very much within his reach. Drafted 33rd overall in 2019 out of Wright State University, Black is an on-base machine who ranks No. 12 on our recently-released Milwaukee Brewers Top Prospects list.

The road not being taken is related to the youngster’s dream. His father is former TSN and CTV broadcaster Rod Black, whose three-plus decades behind the microphone had him calling games in a variety of sports, including baseball (one of his on-air partners was World Series hero Joe Carter). I asked the infielder/outfielder if he ever envisions himself describing the action on a diamond, court, or even a sheet of ice.

“Maybe when I’m done playing,” Black told me during his stint in the Arizona Fall League. “I’ve never really thought about it seriously, but I can say that it was definitely great growing up around sports. My dad used to announce Blue Jays games, Toronto Raptors games — pretty much everything — so I was always around ballparks, and around athletes. That kind of put me into the game.”

Legendary Blue Jays broadcaster Jerry Howarth, who was alongside Tom Cheek when the latter emoted “Touch ’Em All Joe!” — a moment that will forever live in Canadian baseball lore — is among those who reached out after Rod Black’s son was drafted by the Brewers. 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 2018 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Content warning: This piece contains details about alleged domestic violence and sexual harassment. The content may be difficult to read and emotionally upsetting.

In the eyes of many, Omar Vizquel was the successor to Ozzie Smith when it came to dazzling defense. Thanks to the increased prevalence of highlight footage on the internet and on cable shows such as ESPN’s SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight, the diminutive Venezuelan shortstop’s barehanded grabs, diving stops, and daily acrobatics were seen by far more viewers than Smith’s ever were. Vizquel made up for having a less-than-prototypically-strong arm with incredibly soft hands and a knack for advantageous positioning. Such was the perception of his prowess at the position that he took home 11 Gold Gloves, more than any shortstop this side of Smith, who won 13.

Vizquel’s offense was at least superficially akin to Smith’s: He was a singles-slapping switch-hitter in lineups full of bigger bats and, at his best, a capable table-setter who got on base often enough to score 80, 90, or even 100 runs in some seasons. His ability to move the runner over with a sacrifice bunt or a productive out delighted purists, and he could steal a base, too. While he lacked power, he dealt in volume, piling up more hits (2,877) than all but four players who spent the majority of their careers at shortstop and are now in the Hall of Fame: Derek Jeter (3,465), Honus Wagner (3,420), Cal Ripken Jr. (3,184), and Robin Yount (3,142). Vizquel is second only to Jeter using the strict as-shortstop splits, which we don’t have for Wagner (though we do know the Flying Dutchman spent 31% of his defensive innings at other positions). During his 11-year run in Cleveland (1994–2004), Vizquel helped his team to six playoff appearances and two pennants.

To some, that has made Vizquel an easy call for the Hall of Fame, but by WAR and JAWS, his case isn’t nearly as strong as it is on the traditional merits. Even before he reached the ballot, his candidacy had become a point of friction between old-school and new-school thinkers, as though he were this generation’s Jack Morris. For the first three years of his candidacy, it appeared as though he was well on his way to Cooperstown nonetheless, with showings of 37.0% in 2018, 42.8% in ’19, and 52.6% in ’20. 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 2021 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.

At a moment when baseball is so obsessed with velocity, it’s remarkable to remember how recently it was that a pitcher could thrive, year in and year out, despite averaging in the 85–87 mph range with his fastball. Yet that’s exactly what Mark Buehrle did over the course of his 16-year career. Listed at 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, the burly Buehrle was the epitome of the crafty lefty, an ultra-durable workhorse who didn’t dominate but who worked quickly, used a variety of pitches — four-seamer, sinker, cutter, curve, changeup — moving a variety of directions to pound the strike zone, and relied on his fielders to make the plays behind him. From 2001 to ’14, he annually reached the 30-start and 200-inning plateaus, and he barely missed on the latter front in his final season.

August Fagerstrom summed up Buehrle so well in his 2016 appreciation that I can’t resist sharing a good chunk:

The way Buehrle succeeded was unique, of course. He got his ground balls, but he wasn’t the best at getting ground balls. He limited walks, but he wasn’t the best a limiting walks. He generated soft contact, but he wasn’t the best at generating soft contact. Buehrle simply avoided damage with his sub-90 mph fastball by throwing strikes while simultaneously avoiding the middle of the plate:

That’s Buehrle’s entire career during the PITCHf/x era, and it’s something of a remarkable graphic. You see Buehrle living on the first-base edge of the zone, making sure to keep his pitches low, while also being able to spot the same pitch on the opposite side of the zone, for the most part avoiding the heart of the plate. Buehrle’s retained the ability to pitch this way until the end; just last year [2015], he led all of baseball in the percentage of pitches located on the horizontal edges of the plate.

Drafted and developed by the White Sox — practically plucked from obscurity, at that — Buehrle spent 12 of his 16 seasons on the South Side, making four All-Star teams and helping Chicago to three postseason appearances, including its 2005 World Series win, which broke the franchise’s 88-year championship drought. While with the White Sox, he became just the second pitcher in franchise history to throw multiple no-hitters, first doing so in 2007 against the Rangers and then adding a perfect game in ’09 against the Rays. After his time in Chicago, he spent a sour season with the newly-rebranded Miami Marlins, and when that predictably melted down, spent three years with the Blue Jays, helping them reach the playoffs for the first time in 22 years.

Though Buehrle reached the 200-win plateau in his final season, he was just 36 years old when he hung up his spikes, preventing him from more fully padding his counting stats or framing his case for Cooperstown in the best light. A closer look beyond the superficial numbers suggests that, while he’s the equal or better of several enshrined pitchers according to WAR and JAWS, he’s far off the standards. Like fellow lefty and ballot-mate Andy Pettitte, the boost that he gets from S-JAWS — a workload-adjusted version of starting pitcher JAWS that I introduced last year — doesn’t improve his case enough to sway me. He’s received a smattering of support, but his drop from 11% in 2021 to 5.8% last year shows that his candidacy is on life support. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Kiermaier is a Toronto Blue Jay. If that sounds like old news, it’s because it is, but now, after four days spent in limbo (a dangerous activity for those recovering from hip surgery), we finally have the contract details to prove it. The deal is for one year and $9 million, which pushes the Blue Jays payroll over the first luxury tax threshold of $233 million – a threshold they have never crossed before.

Pending further moves, Kiermaier figures to take over center field duties from George Springer, while Springer replaces Teoscar Hernández in right. This represents a significant offensive downgrade for Toronto – Hernández is one of the top 30 hitters in the majors, and Kiermaier is… not – but with Kiermaier in center and Springer moving to a corner, the Jays hope to field one of the better defensive outfields in baseball. Springer was worth 1 Out Above Average in 86 center field games last season, with above-average arm strength and outfielder jump. He figures to be an excellent protector in right. Kiermaier, for his part, is one of the most talented gloves of his generation. He ranks first among active center fielders in career DRS and UZR, and his 71 Outs Above Average lead all outfielders since the stat was introduced in 2016.

And as impressive as his career totals already are, Kiermaier isn’t exactly slowing down. Entering his age-33 season, he’s yet to show worrisome signs of decline in the field. We can’t read too much into his defensive metrics from last season (he only played 60 games), but his sprint speed was elite and his arm continues to be one of the strongest in the league. He was worth just 1 OAA, but his Statcast outfielder jump metrics were all in line with the year before, when he ranked in the 97th percentile for outfielder jump and 98th percentile for OAA:

Read the rest of this entry »

When I read today’s ZiPS projections for the Blue Jays, I was struck by one clear weakness: starting pitching depth. The team boasts an impressive lineup across the board, with Lourdes Gurriel Jr. the closest thing to a weak spot. Toronto also has two borderline aces in Alek Manoah and Kevin Gausman.

That sounds great, but the fourth and fifth starters are projected for a combined 1.7 WAR, which is wildly uninspiring. That hardly seems like a smart plan for a presumptive playoff team, but the Jays are no dummies. Those projections are now outdated — sorry Dan! — because Chris Bassitt is headed north on a three-year, $63 million deal, as Jeff Passan first reported.

Bassitt isn’t the best pitcher to reach free agency this season, but he’s squarely in the top tier. I ranked him 14th among the top 50 free agents this offseason, with only four pitchers ahead of him. Rational observers could certainly differ on that; he’s at the head of a large pack of starters who I think will deliver roughly equivalent value over the next few years. But the general point holds: he’s the kind of pitcher that you probably don’t want starting your first game of the playoffs but that you’d be ecstatic to have as a third starter. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and today’s team is the Toronto Blue Jays.

Batters

When you look at Toronto’s lineup, there isn’t much to complain about. ZiPS disagrees with Steamer on some of the individual players, but the overs and unders are pretty even, meaning that ZiPS thinks this will be as potent a run-scoring squad as Steamer does. Among the most notable projections? Many of the worries ZiPS had about Matt Chapman were resolved in 2022, while my system is a bit concerned about Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s output after his Statcast data dropped back down to its 2020 levels. It’s still the projection of an All-Star first baseman, but it’s distinctly behind last year’s and certainly well off 2021’s elite performance.

Still, there are a couple of things to gripe about. Slowly transitioning George Springer to right field is a good idea given his age, and with Kevin Kiermaier signed, they’re at least moving him for an excellent defensive center fielder. Kiermaier has his own injury concerns, but there’s nothing keeping Springer from getting plenty of time in center as the Plan B. I think Springer is moving because the Jays have an option and the team is considering his health, as he’s actually held up very well defensively out there. But left field still projects as a “meh” position. ZiPS has never been a Gurriel fan, and the system agrees with Statcast that his 2022 batting average was a bit inflated; the loss of power is also very concerning. I’d love to see the Jays take a stab at a better option here, though players have been coming off the board quickly. Read the rest of this entry »

For the most part, projection systems fall in line with public perceptions of players. Yordan Alvarez is going to be very good next season, but Raimel Tapia won’t be. Shohei Ohtani is the eighth wonder of the world, and so on. But once in a while, they produce a head-scratcher that becomes the subject of debate. This leads to a lot of takes, some of them good but many of them bad. The worst are variations of “Projection X thinks poorly of Player Y, whom I like, and therefore it must be illegitimate.” They’re sometimes funny to read, though they’re mostly annoying because they stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of what projection systems are trying to achieve.

Let’s cut to the chase. The reason I’m writing about this is because Steamer projects Alek Manoah, who placed third in Cy Young voting and served as the Blue Jays’ ace, to put up a 4.09 ERA next season. That seems outlandish, even with the knowledge that projection systems are conservative by design. Manoah isn’t just a one-season wonder. His excellence extends back to his rookie campaign in 2021, and his sophomore effort seemed like a natural progression. The narrative is there: A great starter blossoms into a phenomenal one. Asserting that Manoah will go from an ERA in the low 2.00s to one in the low 4.00s is more or less a rebuke of it.

Of course, Steamer doesn’t think Manoah will land precisely on a 4.09 ERA – more on that later – but considering it’s the expected middle outcome, the shock is understandable. And while I’m not here to endorse it, I do want to point out that it’s not an indication the system is broken, or holds a grudge against your favorite player. You have your reasons, and so does Steamer. 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 »

It can be difficult to find the thing you didn’t realize you needed until you didn’t have it when it counted, or to offload it when you realized you had more of it than you could use. That thing, in this case: production from the catcher position.

Catchers are unlike infielders or outfielders, in that you can only one can play at a time. Or rather, two catchers can play at once, if one slides over to first base or DH, in which case the thing that makes them so special — the ability to slap on some plastic padding and soak up foul tips and 58-foot curveballs five nights a week — essentially goes to waste.

Consider Oakland’s situation; after developing Sean Murphy into one of the top catchers in the game, the A’s landed former top-10 pick Shea Langeliers in the Matt Olson trade. Langeliers reached the majors this year and hit fairly well, but not so well that he’s an ideal DH, which is where he made most of his starts on account of being blocked by Murphy.

Or how about the Blue Jays, who have not one but three starter-quality catchers? Alejandro Kirk emerged as a star in 2022, and Danny Jansen put up 2.6 WAR and a 140 wRC+ in just 72 games. That left Gabriel Moreno, one of the top prospects in baseball, even more blocked than Langeliers when he emerged as big league-ready late this season.

It makes sense, therefore, that trade rumors swirl around both Oakland and Toronto, as both teams could stand to cash in their surfeit of backstops for help elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »