The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 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 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2015 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.

Wherever Gary Sheffield went, he made noise, both with his bat and his voice. For the better part of two decades, he ranked among the game’s most dangerous hitters, a slugger with a keen batting eye and a penchant for contact that belied his quick, violent swing. For even longer than that, he was one of the game’s most outspoken players, unafraid to speak up when he felt he was being wronged and unwilling to endure a situation that wasn’t to his liking. He was a polarizing player, and hardly one for the faint of heart.

At the plate, Sheffield was viscerally impressive like few others. With his bat twitching back and forth like the tail of a tiger waiting to pounce, he was pure menace in the batter’s box. He won a batting title, launched over 500 home runs — 14 seasons with at least 20 and eight with at least 30 — and put many a third base coach in peril with some of the most terrifying foul balls anyone has ever seen. For as violent as his swing may have been, it was hardly wild; not until his late 30s did he strike out more than 80 times in a season, and in his prime, he walked far more often than he struck out. Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of money flowed ahead of this week’s unofficial lockout deadline, but not all of the moves involved swimming pools of cash. Among the many made were some low-key bullpen additions, usually by contenders, all of which arguably upgraded their respective bullpens. Let’s talk about some of the more interesting ones!

Michael Lorenzen to the Angels

Lorenzen signed a one-year, $6.75 million contract to head to Anaheim, a surprisingly juicy figure for a pitcher with an ERA well in excess of five for the Reds in 2021. As you may have guessed, his peripheral numbers were better. A FIP just over four isn’t going to evoke prime Craig Kimbrel, but it’s a good bit better than the rest of the disasters in Cincy’s bullpen. The drop in strikeout rate was scary, but ZiPS doesn’t think it’s real when looking at the Statcast data, estimating that you ought to have expected him to finish up with 12 more strikeouts than he actually racked up — an impressive number in only 29 innings. Among relievers, that was the second-largest negative deficit, behind only Keynan Middleton of the Mariners. Scouting can also pick up this sort of thing, which is likely one reason the Angels were so willing to drop this amount of money.

The other is that Lorenzen wants to explore being a two-way player more than he got to in recent years. The Angels are apparently happy to grant this wish, given they’re the home of arguably the best (simultaneous) two-way player ever in Shohei Ohtani.

RHP Michael Lorenzen not only wants a shot at being a starting pitcher in 2022, but also wants the opportunity to get regular at-bats as an outfielder. Wants to get on the Ohtani routine. The Rangers, Pirates, Cubs and Giants are all believed to have inquired.

— Joe Doyle (@JoeDoyleMiLB) November 28, 2021

Lorenzen’s .233/.282/.429 line doesn’t scream “spare outfielder,” but one has to remember that his at-bats have been widely scattered, hampering his offensive development. In addition, a healthy chunk of them came as a pinch-hitter, a role in which players hit considerably worse compared to games they start.
Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Player Development Video & Information Trainee

Reports To: Minor League Video Coordinator
Department: Player Development

Position Overview:
The Player Development Video and Information Trainee will provide a service to an Atlanta Braves affiliate through charting live baseball games and providing video and information to Braves coaches, coordinators, and front office personnel. This role manages all aspects of the assigned affiliate’s video, technology, and advance scouting operation and aims to provide an experience that prepares the ideal candidate for a future role in the baseball industry. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the Braves announced the signing of a backup backstop, adding catcher Manny Piña on two-year, $8 million contact. Also included in the agreement is a club option for 2024 valued at $4 million that comes without a buyout. Piña will slide in behind Travis d’Arnaud — who is also signed through 2023 — on Atlanta’s depth chart.

On the surface, the move is a relatively minor one. Piña, the Brewers’ longest-tenured player at the time of his departure, appeared in 75 games last season, making just 52 starts behind the dish as the backup to Omar Narváez. In that time, he was relatively productive, slashing .189/.293/.439 in 208 plate appearances, good for a 95 wRC+. He was also quite solid behind the plate, throwing out 30% of attempted base stealers, notably above the league-average of 25%. This is not a new trait, either: Piña has boasted an above-average ability to control the running game throughout his career, with a 35% caught-stealing rate. He’s also a solid framer, with his numbers really taking a step forward in recent seasons. Since 2019, Piña has been worth +11.6 framing runs above-average, ranking ninth in baseball despite not even catching 1,000 innings in that time. (Tyler Flowers is the only other catcher in the top 10 with fewer than 1,000 innings caught.) Read the rest of this entry »

After a one-year hiatus due to the oddity and non-celebratory feeling of a season truncated by a raging pandemic, we’re bringing back the Elegy series in a streamlined format for a 2021 wrap-up. Think of this as a quick winter preview for each team, discussing the questions that faced each team ahead of the year, how they were answered, and what’s next. Do you like or hate the new format? Let me know in the comments below. We’ve already tackled the AL and NL Central, the NL and the AL West, and the AL East. We wrap up this series for 2021 with the NL East. Read the rest of this entry »

Every series needs a finale, and the postseason managerial (and front office) report card series is no exception. Unlike nearly every movie franchise in history (Lord of the Rings, you’re excused), the last chapter here is the best. Brian Snitker did a tremendous job managing the Braves through this postseason. He started with a tenuous starting pitching unit, lost Charlie Morton, and managed his way through it anyway.

As always, these rankings are a reflection of the tactical decisions a manager made during the playoffs. I’m not considering roster moves or off-field decisions around keeping players ready to contribute — Kevin Cash and the Rays are the best example of this, but the Giants deserve mention here as well. This is just on-field moves — pinch hitting and lineup choices, pitching decisions, and the like. Read the rest of this entry »

When Freddie Freeman clutched the throw from Dansby Swanson to secure the final out of this year’s World Series, the 2021 Braves instantly matched the total number of championships won by the franchise from 1991-99, a span during which a core laden with future Hall of Famers won five pennants but lost four World Series. That this year’s Cinderella team stands with that dynasty — yes, I’m using that word to describe even a non-contiguous run — in total championships is a reminder of one of current third base coach Ron Washington’s famous catchphrases: “That’s the way baseball go.”

Indeed, the game does not always distribute its rewards evenly or justly, and sometimes the player or team that’s streaking or simply lucky is the one that wins, particularly in a short series, where injuries and hot hands can have a disproportionate effect. Suffice it to say that if NLCS MVP Eddie Rosario were a true-talent .383/.456/.617 hitter, he would not have been available at the trade deadline in exchange for a sack of Pablo Sandoval’s laundry.

This is not intended to slight the Braves, who were clearly a better team than their full-season .547 winning percentage — lower among World Series winners than all but the 2014 Giants (.543), 2000 Yankees (.540), 1987 Twins (.525), and 2006 Cardinals (.516) — indicated. From the point of the trade deadline, when they were 51-54 (.486) but had reassembled their outfield on the fly with Rosario, Adam Duvall, Joc Pederson, and future World Series MVP Jorge Soler, they went 37-19 (.661), outplaying every team in the majors but the white-hot Dodgers (.772) and Giants (.729). In the postseason, they knocked off the 95-win Brewers, 106-win Dodgers, and 95-win Astros by going a combined 11-5 and never facing an elimination game themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlanta Braves ended the 2021 season with a bang on Tuesday night, crushing the Houston Astros in a seven-run rout that rarely felt even as close as the eventual score. Atlanta had failed to make the World Series in any of their last 12 playoff appearances since being swept by the Yankees in 1999. But as they always say, the 13th time’s the charm, and the Braves took home the big trophy in front of a disappointed Minute Maid crowd.

The post-Milwaukee period was a tough one for the Braves, as they spent most of the 1970s and 80s fighting with Cleveland and San Diego for the unofficial title of the league’s most moribund franchise. They were more or less a Ted Turner-driven sideshow that existed to fill up hours on TBS between reruns of Alice and The Andy Griffith Show. They hit it big in the worst-to-first 1991 season, and even with a lengthy rebuilding phase in the mid-2010s, they’ve won the second-most games in baseball since the start of that season, behind only the New York Yankees. Despite impressive feats like dominating the top of the NL East for over a decade, one thing always marred their legacy: the lack of World Series victories. For all their dominance — the Braves won 100 games on four occasions in the 1990s and had chances at two more if not for the 1994 strike — they only emerged with a single World Series win in 1995.

It’s not entirely fair to count World Series titles in light of baseball’s greatly expanded modern playoffs, but life is rarely known for playing fair. The team that won Game 6 in 2021 is a very different one from that which won Game 6 in 1995. These Braves were not a dominating team, but rather one that wasn’t a heavy favorite to win the division and lost their franchise player, Ronald Acuña Jr., halfway through the season with a torn ACL. The 1995 team had Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz in their primes. This one had to throw two consecutive bullpen games in the World Series because the broken leg Charlie Morton suffered in Game 1 reduced them to a two-man rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

“Doing the little things right” is an overused cliché in baseball. In its yearning for sacrifice bunts, productive outs, and pitching to contact, it’s one that doesn’t typically go well with the analytical thinking common to this website. But there’s still no better characterization for what Martín Maldonado did in the fifth inning of Game 5 than that very cliché. He did the little things right; in fact, what he did was rather ingenious.

In the early portion of Sunday night’s back-and-forth affair, the Astros erased a four-run deficit but found themselves behind yet again after Freddie Freeman went yard in the bottom of the third. Just two innings later, though, they would take the lead for good. Their half of the fifth went like this: A single by Carlos Correa, a strikeout of Yordan Alvarez, a single by Yuli Gurriel, and then a groundout by Kyle Tucker. With two outs, that left runners on second and third for Alex Bregman, who had been moved down in the order as a result of recent struggles. A.J. Minter and the Braves wanted no part of him nonetheless, not with Maldonado on deck; he seemed like the best matchup by far.

Even in retrospect, the Braves would clearly make the same move again. Maldonado is a career .212/.290/.348 hitter, and over 426 plate appearances with the Astros this season, all three legs of the slash were even worse than that: .172/.272/.300. This postseason, he’s been invisible offensively: .114/.184/.114. Put simply, he is not a threat at the plate. But in the highest-leverage moment of a World Series elimination game, he came through. With the bases now loaded after the intentional free pass, Maldonado walked. Read the rest of this entry »