The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 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 given that he’s maxed out at 16.7% in four years on the ballot, that after receiving a 5.6% jump in this past cycle. Nonetheless, 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?

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 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 thirties 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 »

Before Wednesday, the Atlanta Braves’ winter had been centered around fortifying their bullpen. That strategy made sense — Atlanta’s reliever WAR was just inside the bottom third of baseball last year, so keeping the most important pieces of that bullpen around and adding extra talent around them had to be a priority. The Braves wasted little time in signing Will Smith, arguably the best reliever on the market, to a three-year, $40-million deal, and retained midseason acquisition Chris Martin and 37-year-old Darren O’Day on short-term deals as well. Their focus on keeping the band together applied to other areas of the roster too, as they quickly re-signed catcher Tyler Flowers and outfielder Nick Markakis before bringing in another catcher in free agency by adding Travis d’Arnaud via a two-year, $16-million deal.

An area that had gone untouched was the starting rotation, but as of Wednesday afternoon, that is no longer the case. The Braves signed 35-year-old left-hander Cole Hamels to a one-year, $18-million contract, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

Left-hander Cole Hamels and the Atlanta Braves are in agreement on a one-year, $18 million deal, sources tell ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 4, 2019

Right away, the addition of Hamels brings to mind the upgrade the Braves made to their rotation via free agency last offseason — er, sorry, last June. That’s when Atlanta finally became the team to sign Dallas Keuchel after his extended free agency period, bringing him in on a one-year deal worth $13 million. Keuchel, like Hamels, was a low-velocity veteran southpaw, and after a somewhat rocky first couple of starts, settled in quite nicely down the stretch, earning the chance to start Games 1 and 4 of the NLDS. Read the rest of this entry »

Last season, the Atlanta Braves platooned Brian McCann and Tyler Flowers behind the plate. Neither player was great, but the pair produced more than three wins, which put them in the top 10 for team catching totals. Atlanta had already re-upped Flowers with a one-year deal, but with McCann’s retirement, the club needed a replacement for his half of the duo. Enter Travis d’Arnaud, who agreed to a two-year deal worth $16 million, as first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

The McCann/Flowers combo worked well because the lefty McCann and the righty Flowers could platoon. That won’t be the case next year, as d’Arnaud bats right-handed as well. It should, however, provide more flexibility regarding rest and pitching matchups. Both players hit lefties well and are usable against righties, which means that manager Brian Snitker can decide who plays based on the best matchup with his own pitchers.

Flowers is one of the best framing catchers in baseball. Since 2015, his 77 runs above average are second only to Yasmani Grandal’s 100, though Flowers has 1,300 fewer innings.

But Flowers isn’t necessarily a guy you want to play 140 times. He’ll be 34 years old next year, he’s a poor thrower, and he doesn’t have much of a stick: After a hot April last year, he put up a 73 wRC+ the rest of the way. While the Braves were happy to bring Flowers back at a low salary, they needed another competent catcher to replace McCann.

d’Arnaud fills that void, and at a pretty fair price given his blend of experience and upside. On our Top 50 Free Agents list, Kiley McDaniel projected d’Arnaud would get two years and $14 million. Ben Clemens had this to say about him:

What you think of Travis d’Arnaud’s free agency is entirely a matter of perspective. Is he the player who the Mets released in May? Is he the cleanup hitter for a playoff team? Both are true, but neither paints a complete picture. It goes beyond this year, too: is he the former top prospect who compiled 6.2 WAR in roughly 700 PA in 2014 and 2015, or the injury-prone journeyman who totaled 2.4 WAR in a similar amount of time over the next three seasons, losing his job to a carousel of middling backstops in the process? Again, the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. Put it all together, and d’Arnaud projects as a roughly average player, and average catchers entering their age 31 seasons aren’t typically in high demand. There’s still a whiff of pedigree to him, however, even after his inconsistent career thus far, and plenty of playoff hopefuls could use an average catcher, which means d’Arnaud will likely have his pick of destinations on a small-ish contract.

That d’Arnaud was able to beat the estimates is a testament to a thin catching market. Per our Free Agent Tracker, these were the top talents available this winter:

There weren’t too many full-time starters available. Jason Castro might have been a fit, given his lefty bat and decent projection, but d’Arnaud had more plate appearances last season than Castro the last two years combined. Add in the age difference between d’Arnaud and Castro, and it’s clear why the righty was a compelling option.

While Flowers’ season might have been cause for some concern with the Braves, d’Arnaud played well once he arrived in Tampa Bay. The graph below shows his 100-game rolling wRC+ over the last four seasons:

While d’Arnaud’s numbers in recent seasons don’t leap off the page, he was quite good at the plate in Tampa. Even with an underwhelming 67 wRC+ in September, d’Arnaud posted a 107 wRC+ with Tampa Bay across 92 games and 365 plate appearances, and his contact quality was even better than that. Because he didn’t make it to the Rays until the second week in May, d’Arnaud actually carried a pretty significant workload, playing roughly three-quarters of the time. With Flowers in the fold and no need to play first or designated hitter, d’Arnaud should get a bit more rest and perhaps see some improvement in his numbers.

d’Arnaud framing metrics were pretty good last year, though not as stellar as his early career figures in New York, when he was 41 runs above average. He missed nearly all the 2018 season due to Tommy John surgery, and it is difficult to tell if the decline in framing production stems from recovery, aging, or just random fluctuation. In any case, if d’Arnaud is a league average bat or his framing numbers rebound at all, this contract will be a bargain for Atlanta.

The Braves are off to a strong start this winter. They’ve solved their catching problem early on with Flowers and d’Arnaud and revamped their bullpen with the signings of Chris Martin and Will Smith.

They shouldn’t stop there. The team has yet to replace Josh Donaldson or his production at third base, they still need a starting outfielder and to push Nick Markakis to a part-time role. The Braves also need to augment their rotation. While Mike Soroka, Mike Foltynewicz, and Max Fried are decent options and Sean Newcomb, Bryse Wilson, Kyle Wright, and Touki Touissant provide depth, the club needs to replace the quality innings thrown by Dallas Keuchel and Julio Teherán. The Braves have decisively patched up the small holes on their squad: Now they must address the bigger issues.

If re-signing Darren O’Day (on November 8) and then signing Will Smith (on November 15) wasn’t enough to persuade you that the Atlanta Braves are determined to ensure that a middling bullpen doesn’t hold them back in next year’s NL East competition, yesterday’s agreement with 33-year-old Chris Martin should be enough evidence to convince you that Alex Anthopoulos is taking 2020 seriously.

In one sense, it’s not a great sign for Atlanta that Anthopoulos feels he has to spend this heavily on his bullpen, rather than taking a run at a front-line starting pitcher to pair with Mike Soroka, or another big bat to help put an already-strong offense over the top (their .332 wOBA last year was third-best in the National League but behind both Los Angeles and, perhaps more importantly, Washington).

Signing Martin for two years and $14 million, as the Braves have just done, puts the 2020 Atlanta payroll at an estimated $119 million, which despite ranking solidly in the bottom third of National League clubs, is right around the upper limit of what ownership has been comfortable spending in recent years. Ideally, at least from a payroll perspective, a few more of the Braves’ recently-vaunted young pitchers would have transformed into quality bullpen arms (and not in the Sean Newcomb way), thereby freeing up dollars for other parts of the roster. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like only last week, I was jamming 14 Will Smith movies into a single paragraph of free agent hype, taking an obvious joke well past its logical conclusion. What would I do when Will Smith actually signed? Use the same movie jokes again? I wasn’t too worried about it. Free agents take months to sign! The Giants had made Smith a qualifying offer. No less a reliever than Craig Kimbrel had languished on the vine until after the amateur draft in similar circumstances. The same jokes could be funny again in a few months.

Well, the joke’s on me, because Smith signed a three-year, $40 million contract with the Braves yesterday. What follows is a level-head, straightforward analysis of that transaction. Just know that, if it weren’t so close in time, I’d probably have written another article of movie names.

The Braves fit a classic archetype of team that looks for free agent help. Their young core gelled impressively in 2019. Ronald Acuña Jr. and Ozzie Albies keyed the offense, while Mike Soroka, Max Fried, and Mike Foltynewicz provided the starting pitching. The team had veteran help, of course: Freddie Freeman chipped in his usual stellar offense, Josh Donaldson was superb in a bounce back year, and Dallas Keuchel provided much-needed innings on his own one-year deal.

They also have payroll room. With Donaldson and Keuchel re-entering free agency, they only had $100 million in expected commitments for 2020 before the Smith signing. With Acuña and Albies signed long-term to (some would say exceedingly) team-friendly contracts, it makes perfect sense to spend on the rest of the roster, maximizing their playoff chances while they have a strong foundation to build from. Read the rest of this entry »

Up against a deadline to either accept or refuse San Francisco’s qualifying offer, free agent reliever Will Smith signed a three-year, $40 million pact with the Atlanta Braves. Smith’s deal with Atlanta will pay him $13 million in each of the next three seasons, with the Braves retaining a club option for either a fourth season at $13 million or a $1 million buyout.

Now two seasons into his return from Tommy John surgery, Smith’s 2.66 ERA and 2.71 FIP to along with 3.2 WAR in 118 and a third innings in 2018-2019 firmly established him as the best free agent reliever available this winter. While on paper Aroldis Chapman electing to stay with the Yankees could have established a better negotiating environment for Smith, teams just aren’t in love with closers the way they were 10 or 15 years ago. Being in the next tier of relievers down from his fellow left-hander, and with the loss of a draft pick attached, Smith was unlikely to do much better; his deal exceeds Kiley McDaniel’s three year and $36 million estimate as part of our Top 50 Free Agents list, as well as the crowd’s median projection of three years and $30 million.

The Braves entered 2019 as a serious contender, but one with a bullpen problem. In our 2019 Positional Power Rankings, Atlanta’s pen ranked 18th in baseball. The team’s relief issues never reached the same level of notoriety as those of their division rivals in DC, but Atlanta’s corps was 20th in baseball in WAR over the first half of the season, prompting them to trade prospects Joey Wentz and Kolby Allard for Shane Greene and Chris Martin, respectively. Also acquired at the deadline was another member of the Giants’ bullpen, Mark Melancon.

With Greene, Melancon, and Luke Jackson all returning in 2020, the addition of Smith gives the Braves a deeper group than when they started the 2019 season. It would make sense for Smith to get first dibs on save opportunities, but if fellow lefty Sean Newcomb is given a chance to start in 2020, the team may very well decide they’re better served leaving Smith in a more flexible role that allows him to be used tactically against left-handed hitters.

The loss of Smith, when added to the plethora of relievers traded in July, leaves the Giants with a rather thin bullpen. However, that team has 99 more pressing problems than holding late-inning leads to worry about. We’ll have more on the Smith signing up on the site soon.

Not a lot of people know this, but every baseball diamond is carefully balanced on a fulcrum and tilts in the direction of chaos. A ball is misplayed, a runner trips over a base, a swarm of wasps is unleashed from within a rolled-up tarp. A cat or squirrel runs onto the field in a precocious moment of levity that only later do we realize is the start of an ancient curse (this happens quite often in baseball). Whatever occurs in the game slants the playing field in a new direction, which is why baseball, a very normal, very boring activity, is always quietly teetering on the verge of going quite wild.

Your toughest opponent isn’t an eerily calm Mike Trout or a possibly rabid Max Scherzer; it’s the sheer volume of variables that can scatter even the most strategic and well-laid plans. You can stare at a spreadsheet until your brain melts before yelling “Aha!” with an index finger in the air, believing you’ve uncovered the formula to prevent strained hamstrings, but there’s no accounting for the back-up catcher tapping into some as-yet untapped power, or one of the teams recreating the musical “Stomp” only for it to be revealed that this is actually a highly technical form of cheating.

To possess the agility to evade poor luck and the skill to barrel through outside factors to achieve a moment of perfect balance in this silly game is the rarest of accomplishments. But on September 13, 2007, Martín Prado would do so.

I don’t know enough about how science works to say whether what happened during his at-bat was in line with or against physics. But what we do know is that what happened never happened again, and after a casual amount of research, we can say that it probably never happened before, either. And in baseball, that alone makes it an exceptional anomaly. This is a sport that loves to repeat itself, and having existed for so long, everything we see appears to be a repetition to the last time it happened.

Not this one. Read the rest of this entry »

In part four of a six-part series — the AL East, AL Central, and AL West pieces have been published — I’ll be highlighting each team’s most notable free agents and how it could fill the resulting void on the roster. A player’s rank on our recently released Top 50 Free Agents list, along with Kiley McDaniel’s contract estimates from that exercise, are listed where relevant. In some cases, the team already has a capable replacement ready to step in. In others, it’s clear the team will either attempt to re-sign their player or look to the trade or free agent markets for help. The remaining cases are somewhere in between, with in-house candidates who might be the answer, but aren’t such obvious everyday players to keep the team from shopping around for better options.

Here’s a look at the National League East.

Atlanta Braves | Depth Chart | Payroll

Josh Donaldson, 3B
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 4
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 3 years, $71M

The Braves didn’t waste much time identifying Donaldson as their preferred third baseman for 2019 and inked him to a one-year, $23 million deal last November. A year later, Austin Riley is ready to step in at the hot corner while Donaldson, who will turn 34 next month, is expected to land a multi-year deal in the range of $20-$25 million per season.

As great a fit as he is in Atlanta, Donaldson will likely get better offers elsewhere with the Braves expected to prioritize starting pitching and catching. That doesn’t rule out a return, especially if the team can fill their biggest needs without breaking the bank. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Don Mattingly

See here for a more in-depth profile dating to Mattingly’s time on the BBWAA ballot.

Don Mattingly was the golden child of the Great Yankees Dark Age. He debuted in September 1982, the year after the team finished a stretch of four World Series appearances in six seasons, and retired in 1995, having finally reached the postseason but nonetheless departing a year too early for their run of six pennants and four titles in eight years. A lefty-swinging first baseman with a sweet stroke, “Donnie Baseball” was both an outstanding hitter and a slick fielder at his peak. He made six straight All-Star teams from 1984-89, and won a batting title, an MVP award, and nine Gold Gloves. Alas, a back injury sapped his power, not only shortening his peak but also bringing his career to a premature end at age 34.

Born in 1961 in Evansville, Indiana, Mattingly was not only naturally talented when it came to baseball, but was also ambidextrous. In Little League, he switch-pitched occasionally, throwing three innings righty and three more lefty. By the time of the 1979 draft, he had committed to attend Indiana State University on a scholarship, but the Yankees chose him in the 19th round, and he surprised his family by deciding to sign for a $23,000 bonus. Early in his minor league tenure, his lack of speed and power concerned the organization to the point that they considered moving him to second base because of his ability to throw right-handed. Even so, Mattingly clearly demonstrated he could hit, topping .300 at every stop in the minors with good plate discipline and outstanding contact skills, even if he never exceeded 10 homers. Read the rest of this entry »