I’ve become increasingly convinced that a lot of the subtle roster construction hacks some teams use to get the most out of their prospects — service time manipulation, extremely restrictive pitcher workload management, drafting by bonus demand rather than picking the best player available — are too cute by half. Sometimes it pays off, but in most cases, players are going to be good, or they’re not. They’re going to stay healthy, or they’re not. And fixating on the externalities is ultimately self-defeating.

Consider Jordan Walker. The St. Louis Cardinals, to their immense credit, brought Walker north from spring training last year. The no. 12 global prospect that offseason, Walker was only 20 at the time, and hadn’t had so much as a sniff at Triple-A. But he was athletic for his 6-foot-5 frame, which promised so much power the question was whether scouts could accurately report it before they ran out of pluses.

Did it matter that the Cardinals had an extremely crowded outfield at the time? No. Did it matter that if Walker lived up to his potential, he’d hit free agency at age 26? No. The only thing that mattered was whether he’d sink or swim. Read the rest of this entry »

No manager defined the era of baseball marked by artificial turf and distant outfield fences as Whitey Herzog did. As the manager of the Royals (1975–79) and Cardinals (1980, ’81–90) — and for a short but impactful period, the latter club’s general manager as well — he assembled and led teams built around pitching, speed, and defense to six division titles, three pennants, and a world championship using an aggressive and exciting brand of baseball: Whiteyball. Gruff but not irascible, Herzog found ways to get the most out of players whose limitations had often prevented them from establishing themselves elsewhere.

“The three things you need to be a good manager,” he told Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite in 1981, “are players, a sense of humor and, most important, a good bullpen. If I’ve got those three things, I assure you I’ll get along with the press and I guarantee you I’ll make the Hall of Fame.”

Herzog was finally elected to the Hall in 2010, an honor long overdue given that he was 20 years removed from the dugout and had never been on a ballot. He passed away on Monday in St. Louis at the age of 92.

Herzog’s career in baseball spanned 45 years, from 1949 until ’94, and included eight years as a major league outfielder (1956–63) plus 13 full seasons and five partial ones as a manager (1973–90) as well as time as a scout, coach, director of player development, and GM — a résumé whose depth spoke to the levels of insight that he brought to the game. He had a keen eye for talent, and one undersold aspect of his career was his pivotal role in building the Mets’ 1969 champions and ’73 pennant winners as their director of player development from 1967–72. If not for an ill-timed remark, he might have succeeded Gil Hodges as Mets manager.

“Whitey was the boldest man in baseball,” wrote Bill James in his essential Guide to Baseball Managers, within which he noted Herzog’s penchant for platoons and odd defenses, reliance upon his benches and bullpens, and his appreciation for speed as an asset on both sides of the ball. James later summarized Herzog’s aggressive approach: “Let’s take charge of this game, let’s make this game as hard as possible for the other team, let’s force the action, put pressure on them, and make them lose.”

Calling him “Our Casey” — in reference to Stengel, who mentored Herzog when he was an outfielder in the Yankees’ chain — in an oft-reprinted 1990 profile, the Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell wrote, “Everybody in baseball says the same three things about Whitey Herzog: He’s the best manager in baseball or else the first name mentioned on a very short list. He’s the most abrasively self-confident and outspoken executive in the sport. And, whether he’s in the middle of a controversy or a pennant race, he seems to have a better time than everybody else.”

Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog was born on November 9, 1931, in New Athens, Illinois, a village about 30 miles southeast of St. Louis. He was the second of three boys born to Edgar and Lietta Herzog; his father worked at the the Mound City Brewery, while his mother worked in a shoe factory. As a youngster, Herzog would sometimes skip school and hitchhike to Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis to watch the Cardinals or the Browns, and to collect batting practice balls to sell or play with. “Relly” — his nickname at the time — played baseball and basketball at New Athens High School; as a left-handed pitcher, first baseman, and outfielder, he earned second-team all-state honors and helped New Athens to the state championship game.

Though he drew interest from nearby colleges, Herzog instead signed with the Yankees in 1949, the same year as Mickey Mantle. He played for five years in the Yankees’ system, interrupted by a 1952-54 stint in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. While stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, he got his first taste of managing, piloting the base’s team to the Fifth Army championship and once beating a Fort Carson, Colorado team managed by Billy Martin.

Though Herzog never played a regular season game for the Yankees, Stengel took a shine to him during the team’s spring rookie camp. During his Hall of Fame induction speech, Herzog attributed the manager’s interest to a belief that he was the grandson of infielder Buck Herzog, a contemporary during Stengel’s playing days. “Casey and I used to sit in the press room during spring training and every night we would have a few pops and talk baseball, amongst other things… For some reason he knew that I was going to be a big-league manager.”

In that speech, Herzog recounted Stengel’s advice for how to deal with the media while managing a bad ballclub:

“You feed them and you drink with them and you stay up all night with them having a few pops. Put them to bed about 4:30 and by the time their deadline comes, they won’t even put the score of the game in.”

Herzog absorbed Stengel’s lessons on strategy as well. “I’ll bet Casey Stengel walked me down the third-base line 75 times a day teaching me that good base running boils down to anticipation and knowledge of the defense… You can steal a lot of runs,” he told the New York Times’ Richard Sandomir in 2010.

During his time in the Yankees’ organization, the towheaded Herzog acquired an indelible nickname based on his resemblance to Yankees pitcher Bob Kuzava, known as “The White Rat.” Various sources credit the observation to a local sportscaster covering the McAlester Rockets, the Class D affiliate with which Herzog started his professional career, and to Johnny Pesky, who coached Herzog with the Denver Bears in 1955.

Stocked in the outfield, in April 1956, the Yankees sent Herzog to the Washington Senators as the player to be named later, completing a seven-player deal centered around pitcher Mickey McDermott and giving the 24-year-old his big league shot. As the regular center fielder for a team that lost 95 games, he hit .245/.302/.337, then spent much of 1957 back in Triple-A, and in early ’58 was sold to the Kansas City A’s. He evolved into a useful platoon outfielder, hitting .268/.383/.384 (109 OPS+) in parts of three seasons for Kansas City and performing similarly in two seasons with the Orioles after being included in a six-player deal in January 1961. Slowed by an inner ear virus in 1963, Herzog played sparingly for the Tigers, then retired as a player. He finished his career with a .257/.354/.365 (97 OPS+) line, 25 homers, and 2.5 bWAR in 634 games.

In 1964, A’s farm director Hank Peters offered Herzog a scouting job at $7,500 a year. “I signed 12 players for $120,000 and seven of them eventually made the major league roster,” Herzog told Sports Illustrated’s Steve Wulf in 1982. “The best was Chuck Dobson, the pitcher. I could have had Don Sutton for $16,000, but Charlie Finley wouldn’t give me the money.”

After serving as a coach in 1965 under managers Mel McGaha and Haywood Sullivan, Herzog quit when Finley wouldn’t offer him more money, either. “You can take your damn mule and make him your coach,” he told the notoriously miserly owner.

Thanks to a recommendation from former Cardinals GM Bing Devine, who knew Herzog from the St. Louis area, he spent 1966 as the Mets’ third base coach under manager Wes Westrum. While his own contemporary estimate of the position’s value was comically inflated (“A good third-base coach can win 16 or 17 games a season for his club,” he told the New York Times in 1966), he had distilled Stengel’s advice, explaining, “When a base runner has a chance to score, you’ve got to remember that the percentage is with him. It’s like being a gambler — you’ll force the other side to make either a perfect play or a damaging mistake.”

A year later, Herzog was promoted, becoming the director of player development. While in that capacity, the team drafted a couple of key contributors to the 1973 pennant winners in Jon Matlack (the 1972 NL Rookie of the Year) and John Milner, and Herzog helped advance the careers of players such as Nolan Ryan, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry, and Wayne Garrett, all of whom contributed to the ’69 champions, plus Amos Otis and Ken Singleton, both of whom would attain stardom after being traded away. He even managed several of those players on the Mets’ 1967 Florida Instructional League team. During the Mets’ 1969 victory party, Hodges thanked Herzog, telling him, “For three years, whenever I called you for what I needed, you got me the right players.”

Herzog was viewed as the heir apparent to Hodges, but after the sudden death of the Mets manager from a heart attack on April 2, 1972, things didn’t unfold as expected. Mets chairman M. Donald Grant — whose name would later become mud in Queens for trading Tom Seaver — not only bypassed Herzog in favor of Yogi Berra, but also ordered him not to attend Hodges’ funeral “just so there wouldn’t be speculation that I’d be hired as the new manager,” Herzog told author Peter Golenbock. The chairman bore a grudge after word had gotten back that Herzog had once said, “M. Donald Grant doesn’t know beans about baseball!”

Herzog soon received his first major league managerial posting by resigning from the Mets in November 1972 to accept a three-year contract to manage the Rangers, replacing Ted Williams, who had advised Herzog of his pending retirement and suggested he throw his hat in the ring. The 40-year-old Herzog took over a team that had gone 54-100 in the strike-shortened season, its first since moving from Washington, D.C. to Arlington, Texas. Immediately tapping his reserve of humor, he suggested at his introductory press conference that he might also coach third base, “But if they hit like they did last year, I won’t have anything to do over there.”

As chronicled in Mike Shropshire’s hilarious account of the mid-1970s Rangers, Seasons in Hell, Herzog had to draw from that wellspring to endure the frustrations of a team in transition from veterans to youngsters — and one with a meddlesome owner, Bob Short. After drafting Houston high school pitcher David Clyde with the first pick in 1973, Short insisted that the 18-year-old lefty begin his professional career in the majors in order milk his potential as a gate attraction. The move took place over Herzog’s objections, and while it initially worked — Clyde won his debut despite walking seven in five innings — he wore out in August and finished with a 5.01 ERA.

By that point, he was no longer Herzog’s problem. Short coveted Martin, who by then had managed both the Twins and Tigers to division titles and was still on the job in Detroit; at one point he told Herzog, “I’d fire my grandmother to hire Billy Martin.” When the Tigers fired Martin on September 2, allegedly for ordering his pitchers to throw loaded-up pitches at Cleveland in protest of the umpires not ejecting Gaylord Perry for doing the same thing, Short made his move, firing Herzog, whose team was 47-91, and hiring Martin. “I thought I was hired to build more for next year than to win this year,” said Herzog at his exit interview. “I guessed wrong and I got fired.”

Declining a job in player development with the Rangers, Herzog spent most of 1974 as the Angels’ third base coach, serving as interim manager for four games between the firing of Bobby Winkles and the hiring of Dick Williams. He remained on staff into the 1975 season, until Royals GM Joe Burke reached out in late July, needing a manager after firing Jack McKeon, who had guided the 1969 expansion team to 88 wins in ’73 and had them at 50-46 thus far in ’75. As GM in Texas, Burke had hired Herzog, then resigned when he was fired; here he hired him again.

The Royals had drafted and developed an impressive core of young players centered around 22-year-old third baseman George Brett, 24-year-old righty Dennis Leonard, and 25-year-old righty Steve Busby, with astute acquisitions from elsewhere such as the 28-year-old Otis, a center fielder, 26-year-old first baseman John Mayberry, and 29-year-old left fielder Hal McRae. Within a few weeks, Herzog moved Brett from sixth to third in the batting order and replaced aging second baseman Cookie Rojas with 24-year-old Frank White, a light hitter but a slick fielder and a speedster who emerged as an exemplar of Whiteyball. The team went 41-25 on Herzog’s watch, finishing second in the AL West, then won three straight division titles — the franchise’s first taste of success — from 1976–78 by going 90-72, 102-60, and 92-70. With Herzog emphasizing a speed-and-defense style of play well suited to Kauffman Stadium’s artificial turf, Brett won his first of three batting titles (edging out McRae) and made his first of 13 All-Star teams in 1976; White won his first of eight gold Gloves in ’77 and made his first of five All-Star appearances in ’78; McRae became one of the first star designated hitters; and Leonard developed into a Cy Young contender and staff workhorse. (Busby, alas, was never the same after becoming the first active pitcher to undergo rotator cuff surgery in 1976.)

Unfortunately, the Royals lost three straight ALCS to the Yankees, the first two of which took place with Martin — who got himself fired in Texas so as to make himself available to the Yankees — at the helm and were decided in the ninth inning of winner-take-all Game 5s. They lost in 1976 when closer Mark Littell served up a walk-off home run to Chris Chambliss, and in ’77 after Herzog benched Mayberry, who had shown up late and in no condition to play, then dropped a pop-up that led to an unearned run in a Game 4 defeat. “The man couldn’t even talk, and I knew what was wrong… It must have been a hell of a party,” Herzog wrote in The White Rat, his 1987 memoir. In Game 5, Herzog started John Wathan at first base over the protests of other players, who believed Mayberry still gave the team the best chance to win; Wathan and reserve Pete LaCock went hitless, and then a faltering Leonard, Larry Gura, and Littell surrendered three runs in the ninth in Game 5, turning a 3-2 lead into a 5-3 defeat.

Blaming Mayberry — who after finishing as runner-up in the 1975 AL MVP voting had turned in two below-average seasons — for the defeat, that winter Herzog demanded the first baseman be traded. He was eventually sold to the Blue Jays just before the 1978 season opened in order to make room for phenom Clint Hurdle. With Hurdle and fellow rookies Willie Wilson, a left fielder, and shortstop U L Washington getting regular play, the Royals outlasted the Angels and Rangers in a three-way race, but fell to the Yankees in a four-game ALCS.

The Royals declined to 85 wins in 1979 as Herzog clashed with Burke over personnel moves and owner Ewing Kauffman over never having been offered more than a one-year contract. Meanwhile, some veterans resented Herzog’s handling of the Mayberry situation. Fired after the season ended, Herzog criticized Burke for not doing so sooner as a means of sparking the team.

Herzog started the 1980 season at home. At one point he was rumored to be replacing Red Sox manager Don Zimmer, but no call came until the 18-33 Cardinals fired manager Ken Boyer on June 8. Herzog signed a contract through 1982 and said at his introductory presser, “I’m gonna take this dang team and run it like I think it should be run.” The Cardinals went 38-35 on his watch before Herzog was promoted to GM, replacing John Claiborne, with Red Schoendienst stepping into the dugout on an interim basis. “I can do more for the Cardinals as GM than as field manager,” said Herzog of the promotion.

Though they had the league’s most potent offense in 1980, the Cardinals were awful at run prevention, and not fast enough for Herzog’s tastes given Busch Stadium’s turf and cavernous dimensions (414 feet to center field, 330 down the lines). In his two winters as GM, he would reshape the roster to suit his preferences, and thereafter push the team’s GMs in that direction. His clubs weren’t always successful, particularly on the pitching side (they were perennially near the bottom in strikeout rate), but his offenses were dynamic and entertaining — and, as Joe Sheehan pointed out in his newsletter tribute to Herzog, driven by high on-base percentages, which weren’t appreciated in that era the way they are today.

Also underappreciated was Herzog’s successful pursuit of the platoon advantage. He generally had at least four switch-hitters in the lineup, with five in 1985 and sometimes six in ’87. Via Baseball Reference, his offenses (including the Royals and Rangers) had the platoon advantage 68.7% of the time during his career, the highest of anybody with at least 600 games managed during the 1973–90 window (Gene Mauch and Davey Johnson both had about 65%). The major league average over that span was 58.7%, putting Herzog at 119 in Platoon%+ — a stat B-Ref’s Adam Darowski and Kenny Jackelen helped to realize for this nugget (thanks, gents).

At the December 1980 Winter Meetings, Herzog went on a legendary spree. On December 7, he signed free agent catcher Darrell Porter, who had bolstered the Royals during his Kansas City tenure by making two All-Star teams (plus a third in 1980). On December 8, he and McKeon — “Trader Jack,” now the Padres’ GM — swung an 11-player deal in which the Cardinals acquired ace reliever Rollie Fingers and catcher/first baseman Gene Tenace. On December 9, he traded Leon Durham, Ken Reitz, and a player to be named later to the Cubs in exchange for another ace reliever, Bruce Sutter. Dealing from strength, he flipped Fingers to the Brewers along with pitcher Pete Vuckovich and catcher Ted Simmons in exchange for a four-player package that included pitcher Dave LaPoint. He’d clashed with Simmons, believing he could no longer control the running game and would serve the team better at first base, though that would have meant moving three-time Gold Glove winner Keith Hernandez to the outfield.

Not all of those deals panned out; the Milwaukee one gave the Brewers both the 1981 and ’82 AL Cy Young winners in Fingers and Vuckovich, with LaPoint the only one of the four newcomers whose long-term contribution with St. Louis was substantial. But the Cardinals were a better team for his efforts. With Herzog returning to the dugout in a dual manager/GM role, they compiled the NL East’s best record in 1981 at 59-43, but in the strike-torn season missed the playoffs by finishing second in both the pre- and post-strike halves. Despite a 7-2 closing run in the second half, they wound up half a game (yes) behind the Expos.

Herzog not only remained active that offseason but had even more success with his trades. In October he dealt reliever Bob Sykes to the Yankees for switch-hitting minor league outfielder Willie McGee. Sykes never pitched in the majors again while McGee would go on to win two batting titles and an MVP award for St. Louis. In November Herzog traded away pitchers Silvio Martinez and Lary Sorensen (from the Brewers trade) in a three-team deal that yielded outfielder Lonnie Smith. At the Winter Meetings, he traded outfielder Sixto Lezcano (another from the Brewers deal) and two-time All-Star shortstop Garry Templeton to McKeon’s Padres as part of a six-player deal that brought All-Star shortstop Ozzie Smith to the Cardinals. Though still just 25 years old, Templeton had worn out his welcome in St. Louis; Herzog suspended him without pay for three weeks after he gave hometown fans the finger and grabbed his crotch after they booed him for not running out a dropped third strike. Earlier, Templeton had complained about being too tired to play day games after night games. The suspension was lifted after Templeton agreed to see a psychiatrist, was diagnosed with depression, and was given medication, but the bridge was burnt. “Templeton doesn’t want to play in St. Louis, he doesn’t want to play on artificial turf, he doesn’t want to play in Montreal, he doesn’t want to play in Houston, he doesn’t want to play in the rain,” Herzog said. “The other 80 games, he’s all right.” Templeton made one more All-Star team in a career that lasted another decade, while Smith made 14 as a Cardinal, becoming a St. Louis icon and a Hall of Famer.

Herzog stepped down as GM just as the 1982 season began, but the team he built flourished, winning 92 games and the NL East, their first success since the advent of division play in 1969. The offense’s 67 homers ranked last in the NL, with only Porter and George Hendrick reaching double digits, but their 200 steals led the league; eight players reached double digits, with Lonnie Smith’s 68 propelling him to a second-place finish in the NL MVP voting. Ozzie Smith made his second All-Star team, McGee finished third in the NL Rookie of the Year race, and Sutter third in the NL Cy Young race. In their first playoff appearance since 1968, the team swept the Braves in the NLCS, then beat the Brewers — featuring Vuckovich and Simmons (Fingers was injured and missed the series) — in a seven-game World Series. Porter became the second player to win both LCS and World Series MVP honors in the same season.

The Cardinals receded to 79 wins in 1983. On June 15, GM Joe McDonald traded Hernandez to the Mets for pitchers Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey. As a baseball move, this one was lopsided in favor of New York, but Herzog and Hernandez hadn’t gotten along, and the manager was already aware of the first baseman’s cocaine usage. During the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials, Hernandez confessed that he used cocaine with teammates Joaquin Andujar, Lonnie Smith (who voluntarily entered rehab in mid-1983), and Sorenson. That year, Herzog estimated that 11 of his Cardinals players were “heavy users” in the early ’80s and said he believed cocaine had cost him a championship with the Royals.

After a mediocre 1984, the Cardinals won 101 games in ’85 despite having just one player reach 20 homers: first baseman Jack Clark, acquired from the Giants in February in exchange for LaPoint, outfielder David Green (another player from the Brewers deal), and two other players. The team’s 87 homers ranked second to last in the NL, but St. Louis again led with 314 steals, with rookie left fielder Vince Coleman stealing an NL-high 110; the Cardinals led in scoring as well while ranking second in run prevention. McGee won the NL batting title and MVP honors, hitting .353/.384/.503 (147 OPS+) with 18 triples and 56 steals, while Andujar and newly acquired lefty John Tudor each notched 21 wins and respectively placed fourth and second in the Cy Young voting behind Dwight Gooden.

The 1985 season marked the first in which the two championship series were expanded from best-of-five to best-of-seven. Facing the Dodgers, the Cardinals lost the first two games in Los Angeles, and lost Coleman to a fractured left leg in a bizarre mishap with Busch Stadium’s automatic tarp. St. Louis nonetheless stormed back to win in six thanks to some late-inning heroics. In Game 5, switch-hitting Ozzie Smith — who to that point had never homered off a righty in over 3,000 career plate appearances — hit a walk-off solo homer off Dodgers closer Tom Niedenfuer to push the Cardinals to a three-games-to-two lead. In Game 6 back in L.A., the Dodgers carried a 5-4 lead into the ninth, but the Cardinals put two on base against Niedenfuer. With two outs and runners on second and third, Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda bypassed the opportunity to intentionally walk the right-handed Clark (.281/.393/.502, 149 OPS+ that year) and summon a lefty to face lefty Andy Van Slyke (.259/.335/.439, 116 OPS+) or force Herzog to go to his bench to gain the platoon advantage. Instead, Niedenfuer faced Clark, who drilled his first pitch for a three-run homer that proved decisive.

The so-called “I-70” World Series pitted the Cardinals against the Royals, now managed by Dick Howser and still featuring Brett, White, Wilson, McRae, and Dan Quisenberry in prominent roles as well as young starters Bret Saberhagen and Danny Jackson. The Cardinals won the first two games on the road, and after losing Game 3, took Game 4 as well, with Tudor notching his second victory of the series. Jackson’s five-hitter in Game 5 staved off elimination and sent the series back to Kansas City. With the Cardinals’ Danny Cox and the Royals’ Charlie Leibrandt both pitching masterfully, Game 6 remained scoreless until the eighth, when St. Louis scratched out a run on two singles and a walk. The Cardinals took that lead into the bottom of the ninth when all hell broke loose.

Pinch-hitter Jorge Orta led off by hitting a slow bouncer to the right side of the infield, where a charging Clark fielded the ball cleanly and threw to pitcher Todd Worrell covering first. The throw beat Orta, who tripped over the base, but umpire Don Denkinger called him safe. Replays showed he was out, but with no challenge system in place, Herzog argued to no avail.

Another single, a forceout at third, a passed ball, and an intentional walk loaded the bases, and then ex-Cardinal Dane Iorg singled home pinch-runner Onix Concepcion with the winning run, sending the series to Game 7. Realizing Denkinger would work the plate in the final game, Herzog sounded beaten already, saying beforehand, “We got about as much chance of winning as a monkey.” Pitching on three days of rest for the fourth time that month, Tudor was chased in the third inning after allowing five runs, and both Herzog and Andujar were ejected for arguing balls and strikes. Saberhagen went the distance for a five-hit shutout and an 11-0 win.

Disliking the abuse Denkinger took for missing the call, Herzog later made his peace with the umpire. In 2005, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Cardinals’ pennant, he invited Denkinger to speak at a fundraiser benefitting his charitable foundation.

With Clark limited to 65 games due to a torn ligament in his right thumb, the Cardinals slipped to 79-82 in 1986 thanks to an offense that was the NL’s worst. Both he and the team came back strong in 1987 as he hit 35 homers and led the NL in walks, OBP, SLG, and OPS+, but he severely sprained his right ankle on September 9 and was limited to a few pinch-hitting appearances thereafter. The Cardinals won 95 games and the NL East, then overcame a three-games-to-two deficit to defeat the Giants in a seven-game NLCS, but Clark pinch-hit once and was left off the roster for the World Series against the Twins.

Under Tom Kelly in his first full season as manager, the Twins had gone just 85-77 before upsetting the 98-win Tigers in the ALCS, but in addition to not having to face Clark, the Twins had one other advantage: the Metrodome, where they had gone 56-25 as their fans’ high-decibel cheering unnerved opponents, and where they would play four of the series’ seven games, since home field advantage alternated between leagues rather than depending upon won-loss records. The home team won every game of the series, with the Twins outscoring the Cardinals 33-12 at the Metrodome — and only Game 7 was close. After the Cardinals scored two runs off Frank Viola in the second inning, the Twins chipped away, going ahead for good in the sixth and winning 4-2.

That was the Cardinals’ last gasp at greatness under Herzog. For the third time during his tenure, they followed a pennant with a sub-.500 season, this time 76-86 and a fifth-place finish, their worst since 1978. They rebounded to 86 wins in 1989, but when the team started the ’90 season 33-47, a disgusted Herzog resigned.

He never managed again. Long friendly with Angels owners Gene and Jackie Autry, he returned to Anaheim as senior vice president and director of player personnel in September 1991. But while he thought he’d have complete control of baseball operations, he instead wound up in a power struggle with Dan O’Brien, the senior VP of baseball operations. It was an odd situation, particularly with Herzog given license to work primarily from his home in suburban St. Louis. The Angels went 72-90 in 1992, then 71-91 in ’93. In mid-September 1993, Herzog convinced the Autrys to fire O’Brien, thus consolidating his authority. But while his ability to spot talent remained intact — mainly in the form of not trading away the likes of Jim Edmonds, Tim Salmon, and other youngsters the Angels were developing — he was constrained by a budget cut, and had fallen behind the times in his dealing with his players and their agents, alienating them with his abrasive negotiating tactics. He resigned in mid-January 1994.

Following the 1996 season, Herzog rejected an offer to manage the Red Sox; the team instead turned to Jimy Williams.

Herzog finished his managerial career with a 1281-1125 record and a .532 winning percentage. He ranked 25th in managerial wins when he retired, which may help to explain why he wasn’t considered for Cooperstown until the 2010 Veterans Committee Managers and Umpires ballot. Up for election alongside contemporaries Johnson, Kelly, Martin, and Mauch as well as older candidates, and with both Lasorda and Dick Williams sitting on the committee, he received 14 of 16 votes. Umpire Doug Harvey, who received 15, was elected as well.

In the end, Herzog’s legacy went well beyond wins and losses. In the era of big hair and plastic grass, his teams were of their time, but like Stengel and contemporary Earl Weaver, he was well ahead of the curve, masterful in assimilating information and deploying it to his advantage. Long before the age of analytics, his hand-colored defensive charts were the stuff of legend. He understood his players’ strengths and how to place them in positions to succeed, the most timeless of qualities when it comes to managing a ballclub.

Welcome to another edition of Five Things, where I highlight some strange and amusing happenings from the last week. We’re getting into the rhythm of the season now; 20 games in, you start to get a feel for how watching your team will feel this year. Are they going to be exasperating? Do they look like a fun group? Have a few new players completely changed the vibe from last year? Are they hitting so many homers that they had to make a new dong bong homer hose?

That’s part of the fun of watching baseball, in my opinion. Playoff odds are one thing, but how you feel watching your guys get from point A to point B matters a lot more in the long run. If you’re reading this article, I’m willing to bet that you’re watching dozens of hours of baseball throughout the year – perhaps even hundreds. The playoffs for your team might last 15 hours of game time. The little things are the point, and there were some great little things this week. As always, I’d like to thank Zach Lowe, whose basketball column inspired this one in both name and content. Let’s get going.
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I feel pretty confident in saying that I wasn’t alone in my excitement about the Cardinals starting the year with Victor Scott II on the roster. Good center field defense is incredibly fun. Stolen bases are incredibly fun. Scott stole 94 bases in the minors last year and looks like he might be a truly special defender thanks to his blazing footspeed (first in the majors, narrowly ahead of Trea Turner). Sure, he’d only gotten as far as Double-A, but injuries made his call-up at least defensible, and I wanted to see what he could do.

The results are now in: Scott isn’t ready for the majors just yet. The Cardinals have played 19 games, and Scott has appeared in all of them, three times as a defensive replacement, including yesterday. He’s racked up 62 plate appearances. He’s been quite bad in those plate appearances. That’s no knock on Scott, just to be clear. He’s a 23-year-old entering his third professional season. He’s only on the squad in the first place because a number of things went wrong higher up the depth chart. But the way the Cards have managed his playing time is so strange that I feel compelled to look into what’s gone wrong and why nothing has changed.

Scott’s speed has been exactly as advertised — he’s swiped two bags without getting caught — but the rest of his game hasn’t worked. He’s hitting a ghastly .089/.145/.143, good for a -15 wRC+ that’s comfortably last in baseball. He hasn’t made up for it with otherworldly defense; it’s too early for these metrics to stabilize, but every advanced system thinks he’s been below average. Statcast credits it to his below-average reaction time, which makes sense given how fast he is underway. Read the rest of this entry »

Lance Lynn is my favorite player in baseball; I find it easier to just admit this up front and let readers view my work through that lens, instead of going through the trouble of trying to obfuscate this very obvious truth.

One of the things that drew me to the big man in the first place was his reliability. Lynn had been many things over his long and venerable big league career: A four-seam specialist, a sinkerballer, an ace, an innings eater, an underrated gem, a star, a national hero. But he’d never been bad before.

In 2023, Lynn still threw 183 2/3 innings, but he gave up about 183 2/3 home runs over that span. Not really, but the actual number — 44 — was so high I invoked the late Jose Lima when I wrote up Lynn’s signing in November. On a scale from zero to things you don’t want, it’s not what you want. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the triumphant return of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, the longest-named column in baseball. Rogers Hornsby famously stared out his window all winter waiting for baseball to return. I can’t claim to have done the same, but I’m still overjoyed it’s back, and what better way to celebrate than by talking about some weird and delightful things that caught my eye while I soaked in baseball’s opening week? As always, this column is inspired by Zach Lowe’s basketball column of a similar name, which I read religiously.

1. Non-Elite Defenders Making Elite Defensive Plays
Great defenders make great plays. I’m sure you can picture Nolan Arenado making a do-or-die barehanded throw or Kevin Kiermaier tracking down a line drive at a full sprint. That’s why those guys are such storied defenders; they make the exceptional seem expected. There are plenty of other players in baseball, though, and many of them make the exceptional seem, well, exceptional. When someone you wouldn’t expect turns in a web gem, it feels all the better, and this week had a ton of them.

There’s the Juan Soto throw, of course:

That was brilliant, and it came at the perfect time. Plenty has already been written about it, but that doesn’t make it less impressive. Soto is at best an average outfielder and likely worse than that, and his arm is one of the weaker parts of his game. But he’s capable of brilliance out there from time to time, particularly when accuracy matters, and this one delivered.

But there were so many more! How about Brett Baty doing his best Arenado (or Ke’Bryan Hayes, shout out to the real best third base defender) impression on a tough grounder:

That’s phenomenal work. The combination of a weakly hit ball and fast runner meant that Baty had to make every instant count. Any wasted movement on a gather or pivot would’ve made Matt Vierling safe. This wasn’t your normal plant your feet and make a strong throw kind of out; Baty was either going to fire off balance or eat the ball. Check out his footwork, courtesy of the always-excellent SNY camera crew:

That throw came against his momentum and with his left leg completely airborne. As an added bonus, fellow lightly regarded defender Pete Alonso received the throw perfectly. Baty was a top prospect because of his hitting. If he keeps making plays like this, we might have to tear up that old scouting report.

Speaking of prospects who aren’t known for their fielding, Jordan Walker was one of the worst outfield defenders in baseball last year – understandable for a 21-year-old learning a new position in the major leagues. He’s fast and has a powerful throwing arm, so the building blocks are there, but the numbers don’t lie: He was out of his element in the outfield.

Maybe this year is different, though:

Simply put, that’s a great play. Jackson Merrill’s liner was headed toward the gap, which meant that Walker had to come in almost perpendicular to the ball to make a play. A bad step early in the route likely would’ve left him high and dry. But he got it right and turned a double into an out.

These guys won’t always make the right plays. In fact, they often won’t. That only makes it more fun when they nail it. Even bad major league defenders are capable of brilliance. Stars – they’re absolutely nothing like us!

2. Location, Location, Location
Pop ups are death for hitters. Infield pop ups are particularly so. Every other type of hit has some chance of finding a hole, but the combination of short distance and long hangtime mean that if you hit the ball straight up and it doesn’t go far, you’re going to be out. Batters hit .006/.006/.006 on infield fly balls from 2021 through 2023 – 12,583 pop ups led to 74 hits. You generally need some wild wind, a collision, or perhaps an overzealous pitcher trying to field for himself to have any shot at a hit. Mostly, though, it just turns into an out.

So far, 2024 has had other ideas. In the first five days of games, two infield pop ups turned into singles. One even turned into a double. It’s silly season for bad contact, in other words. It all started with Eddie Rosario:

That’s one of the hardest-hit infield pop ups of the year, one of only two hit at 95 mph or harder. That meant that the Reds had all day to camp under it, but unfortunately for them, it was a windy day in Cincinnati on Saturday. Gameday reported 17 mph winds from right to left, and you can see Santiago Espinal and Christian Encarnacion-Strand struggle to track the ball. If your infield pop up is going to drop, that’s a common way for it to happen.

Another unlikely but possible option is to hit the ball extremely softly, as Matt Carpenter demonstrated on April Fool’s Day:

That was a pop up, but it didn’t go very far up. With the infield playing at medium depth and Graham Pauley guarding third base after an earlier bunt single (yeah, Carpenter had quite a day), there was just no time to get to it. Maybe Matt Waldron could have made a play, but pitchers generally stay out of the way on balls like those for good reason. Even then, it would have required going over the mound and making a running basket catch. Sometimes, your pop ups just land in the exact right spot.

But wait, there’s one more. This one was a real doozy by René Pinto, also on April 1:

This one is the last pop up hit archetype: a Trop ball. There’s no wind in Tampa Bay’s domed stadium, but there is a blindingly white roof. White, conveniently enough, is the color of a baseball. So when you really sky one, as the Rays catcher did here, things can get dicey.

How easy of a play was this? In some ways, it was phenomenally easy. After all, five different fielders had time to converge on the ball, and Corey Seager easily could have made it there if he weren’t covering third. That ball hung in the air for more than six seconds, plenty of time for everyone to judge it. It didn’t carry very far, and there was no pitcher’s mound to stumble on.

Leaguewide, hits like this are the least likely of any pop up to land. Even at the Trop, batters are hitting only .011/.011/.011 on them in the Statcast era. But in other ways, it’s not a probability but a binary. This was Jonah Heim’s ball, but he just plain couldn’t see it:

From there, it was academic. And the Rangers’ diligence in heading for the ball meant that no one was covering second, so Pinto got to jog an extra 90 feet with no one stopping him. That might be the slowest home to first time on an in-play double that I’ve ever seen. That screenshot up above was only a few seconds before the ball landed, and Pinto was still near home plate.

In the long run, these things will even out. Most infield fly balls get caught. But sometimes things get really weird – and weirdness can be sublime. Naturally, Yandy Díaz smoked the next pitch for a 331-foot frozen rope – and made the last out of the game. What a sport.

3. Oneil Cruz Is Chaotic, and Good
I watched Saturday’s Pirates-Marlins tilt closely to write about Jared Jones, but my eyes kept straying. Catch a Pittsburgh game, and I’m pretty sure you’ll feel the same way. Oneil Cruz isn’t always the best player on the field. Sometimes, in fact, he’s a hindrance for Pittsburgh’s chances. But one thing you can never say is that he’s boring.

When Cruz is on the basepaths, his speed means trouble. For who? It’s not always clear, because he’s aggressive to a fault. When he’s on third base and the ball is hit on the ground, you better believe he’s going home:

I think that was a good decision, but it’s close. A perfect throw from Josh Bell probably gets him there; Bell had already thrown out Michael A. Taylor at the plate on a similar play earlier in the game, for example. But the throw wasn’t quite perfect, and Christian Bethancourt couldn’t corral it anyway. Cruz would have been safe even if Bethancourt caught it cleanly, but the ball rolled to the backstop to bring in another run.

In the long run, pressure like that tends to pay off, at least in my opinion. Taylor would have been out at first if Cruz didn’t go for it, and the difference between second and third with two outs (Cruz stays) and first and third with two outs (Cruz tries for home and makes an out) isn’t particularly huge. Sure, it’s a chaotic play, but it’s a positive for the Pirates.

Cruz’s defense is a work in progress, but no one can doubt his tools. Sometimes he’ll make a mess of a play that should be easy:

I’m not in love with his decision to stay back on that ball, but Jesús Sánchez is slow enough that it all should have worked out anyway. But staying back meant Cruz had to crow hop and fire a laser to first. He has a huge arm, but it’s not the most accurate, as you can see here. A different setup would have made that play far easier.

On the other hand, sometimes he’ll make a mess out of a play, only to recover because of that cannon arm. This is definitely not how Tom Emanski would teach it:

Cruz handcuffed himself on the initial attempt; instead of being able to make a clean backhanded pick, he got stuck with the ball coming straight at him and flubbed the scoop. For most players, that would be the end of the play, even with a catcher running. But Cruz has a get out of jail free card: He can pick the ball up barehanded and then unleash havoc. The NL Central has a ton of big shortstop arms: Masyn Winn set the tracked record for an infield assist at the Futures Game last summer, and Elly De La Cruz is no slouch. But Cruz might have them both beat when he can set his feet and get into one. Even flat-footed, that throw got on Connor Joe in a hurry.

This game had a ton of Cruz action; not every Pirates game is like that. I watched Monday’s Pirates-Nats tilt hoping for an encore, but Cruz held onto a ball rather than attempt to turn an outrageous double play and was restrained on the basepaths. At the plate, he’s striking out so much that hard contact is barely keeping him on the right side of a 100 wRC+. His trajectory in the majors is still extremely uncertain. Still, I’m going to keep tuning in and hoping for some excitement. You never know what will happen next when Cruz is on the field.

4. The White Sox Get Feisty
It’s going to be a rough season on the south side. The White Sox are a bad team, they don’t have any obvious reinforcements in sight, and they got swept in the season-opening series against the Tigers. The Braves were due up next – after treating the White Sox like a de facto farm system over the winter – and Atlanta romped to a 9-0 rain-shortened victory Monday.

Tuesday promised more of the same. The temperature at game time was a miserable 44 degrees. Remarkably, 12,300 courageous fans showed up, but not all of them were there for the home team. After all, rooting for a club that seems likely to get battered by the best team in baseball on a frigid Tuesday night doesn’t sound particularly appealing, so a meaningful percentage of the audience was audibly cheering for Atlanta. Things were looking grim, in other words.

Something funny happened, though. The White Sox and their fans made a game out of it. Garrett Crochet spun an absolute gem in his second start of the season: seven innings, eight strikeouts, one walk, and one lone run on a Marcell Ozuna homer. When pinch hitter Paul DeJong smacked a solo shot of his own, it gave Chicago a 2-1 lead with only two frames left to play.

That set the stage for an explosive finish. Almost immediately, Atlanta threatened again. Jarred Kelenic worked a one-out walk in the top of the eighth, bringing Ronald Acuña Jr. to the plate. “MVP! MVP!” The Atlanta fans in attendance made their presence known as Acuña worked a walk to put the tying run in scoring position.

But Chicago’s fans, few though they might be, weren’t going quietly. They drowned out the MVP chant in a series of boos, then started a “Let’s go White Sox” cheer as a counter. After a sleepy start, the game suddenly had some juice.

Michael Kopech came in to relieve John Brebbia after that walk, and he promptly walked Ozzie Albies to load the bases. But Yoán Moncada turned a slick double play to keep the Pale Hose out in front. The dugout loved it:

The Sox tacked on an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth, and it turned out they needed it. Kopech had a tough time closing things out. Ozuna smashed his second solo shot to cut the lead to 3-2 before Kopech walked Michael Harris II after an extended plate appearance in which Harris fouled off a string of high fastballs and spit on a low slider. Orlando Arcia wouldn’t go down quietly, either. Kopech again missed with the one slider he threw, and Arcia eventually slapped a cutter through the infield to put the tying run in scoring position for the second inning in a row.

Was this fated to be a crushing loss? Kopech couldn’t find the zone against Travis d’Arnaud, falling behind 3-1 with four straight elevated fastballs. The slider was totally gone; perhaps the adrenaline that came with the potential for his first big league save was too much. The crowd and players were rowdy now, treating this early April game like one with huge implications. Boos rained down after not particularly close pitches got called balls. Braves fans tried to start their own cheers but got repeatedly drowned out by the Sox faithful.

With Acuña on deck, walking d’Arnaud was unacceptable. Kopech tickled the strike zone on 3-1, which brought it all down to a full count pitch. He hit his spot perfectly, and d’Arnaud could only pop it up:

The crowd roared. The lights dimmed as fireworks went off. Kopech looked relieved more than excited as the team celebrated around him. For a day, at least, Chicago’s best was enough to hold off the best team in baseball.

This isn’t how the year will go for the White Sox. They’re headed straight into a rebuild with an unpopular ownership and front office group. I’m not sure that the fans will be able to muster up the same excitement for a July tilt against the Pirates. For a day, though, the atmosphere felt electric and the underdogs came up big. What a magical sport that lets us find moments of excitement even in seasons of despair.

5. Nolan Jones Tries To Do Too Much
Nolan Jones is one of my favorite young players to watch. He’s what you’d get if you took a garden variety power hitting outfielder and stapled a bazooka to his right arm. His outfield defense is below average if you ignore his throws, but you can’t ignore throws. Statcast has him in the 100th percentile for arm strength and runs saved with his arm; in other words, he’s a highlight reel waiting to happen when he picks the ball up. He had 19 outfield assists last year in less than 800 innings, leading baseball while playing 500 fewer innings than second place Lane Thomas.

This year, things haven’t gone quite so well. Jones already has more errors than he did in all of last season. One sequence against the Cubs summed up what I think is going wrong. Everyone knows Jones has a cannon, and so when Christopher Morel singled to left, Ian Happ wasn’t thinking about trying to score from second base:

That’s just smart baserunning. There’s no point in testing the best arm in the game when he’s running toward the ball from a shallow starting position. Only, did you see what happened out in left? Let’s zoom in:

Jones planned to come up firing. He absolutely didn’t need to; as we saw, Happ had already slammed on the brakes. But if you have the best arm in the game, every play probably feels like a chance to throw someone out, the old “every problem looks like a nail to a hammer” issue. He tried to make an infield-style scoop on the run and paid for it. That’s a particularly big error given the game state and location on the field; there’s no one backing Jones up there, and with only one out, it’s not *that* valuable to keep the runner at third anyway.

The ball rolled all the way to the wall, which was bad enough. Happ and trail runner Seiya Suzuki both scored easily. But Jones compounded the error. Let’s see what happened next from Morel’s perspective:

Like Happ, Morel slammed on the brakes as he got to third. After all, Jones has a huge arm and there’s still only one out, so trying to squeeze in the last 90 feet doesn’t make that much sense. Even with his eyes on the play the whole time, he decelerated to a stop. But Jones overcooked his relay throw:

I’m not quite clear about what happened there. That was a situation for a lollipop; the play was over, and all he had to do was return the ball to the infield. Maybe he got a bad grip on the ball, maybe he slipped as he was throwing it, but he just spiked it into the ground and Ryan McMahon couldn’t handle the wild carom.

This feels to me like a clear case of Jones trying to do too much. He appears to be pressing, trying to throw the world out after last year’s phenomenal performance. But part of having a huge arm is knowing when you don’t need to use it. That experience comes with time, and I’m confident that he’ll figure it out, but his aggression has hurt the Rockies so far. Oh, and those other errors? Sometimes you just miss one:

Blaze Alexander is on the bubble to break camp with the Arizona Diamondbacks. His spring showing suggests he deserves the opportunity to do so. In 52 Cactus League plate appearances, the 24-year-old infield prospect has slashed .420/.442/.640 with seven extra-base hits and five stolen bases in as many attempts. Moreover, he’s continued to show promise since being taken in the 11th round of the 2018 draft out of IMG Academy. That he’s mostly flown under the radar while doing so is starting to change.

“I hope that’s the case,” Alexander told me in mid-March. “I mean, I’ve been putting on a pretty good performance this spring, so I definitely think I’m opening some eyes. That said, I obviously need to transfer it over to the regular season.”

The likelihood of his doing so in the big leagues was improved on Friday when the D-Backs released Elvis Andrus, a notable roster move given that the 15-year veteran had been inked to a free agent contract as a potential backup for Geraldo Perdomo. As it now stands, there is a good chance that Alexander — “a viable defensive shortstop with a huge arm… [who] hits for enough power” in the words of Eric Longenhagen — will be filling that role.

Hitting for power isn’t one of Alexander’s aims, nor is it part of his process. While he does possess pop — his ledger includes 30 home runs in 734 plate appearances over the past two minor-league seasons — his M.O. is bullets, not blasts. Read the rest of this entry »

Daulton Varsho’s last two seasons were directionally different than his first two seasons.The left-handed-hitting outfielder put up a pedestrian 37.8% pull rate in 2020-2021, and in 2022-2023 that number climbed to a lofty 52.6%. Apprised of the marked jump by colleague Davy Andrews prior to my recent visit to Toronto Blue Jays camp, I asked Varsho if it was spurred by a purposeful change of approach. He claimed that it wasn’t.

“I think it’s just how teams are pitching me,” said Varsho, whose pull rate in the two-year span was the highest among qualified hitters. “You don’t want to force the ball to any certain field — it has to sort of naturally happen — and I’ve been getting pounded in. You also have to figure out the changeup away and righties throwing sliders in. You don’t really want to force those to left-center or left field, because they end up being fly outs.”

Davy had also informed me that Varsho’s pull-side results have been far better than his opposite-field results, which came as anything but news to the 27-year-old Marshfield, Wisconsin native. My mentioning it elicited a matter-of-fact response.

“That’s where success happens,” said Varsho. “It’s where my swing is the most successful, and where I can do the most damage.”

It’s no secret that catching pitches out front and driving them in the air goes a long way toward producing power numbers, and not only has Varsho gone yard 47 times over the past two campaigns, just one of the blasts was to the opposite field. My asking if he’s made a concerted effort to lift the ball led to the following exchange: Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I took a projection-driven two-part look at the trouble spots on National League and American League contenders. The exercise — a sibling of my annual pre-trade deadline Replacement Level Killers series — primarily highlighted clubs in the middle of the table, based on our Playoff Odds, with many of the best teams, such as the Braves and Dodgers, going completely unmentioned.

In that regard, the exercise worked as I had intended, focusing on the teams and spots where a marginal addition from outside the organization or even a modest breakout from within it could have a sizable impact on their chances of making the postseason. To be considered contenders, teams needed Playoff Odds of at least 25%, and roughly speaking, all but one of those mentioned fell in the range of 80-85 wins. Under the 12-team playoff format, that certainly counts as contention once you consider that two of last year’s NL Wild Card teams, the Diamondbacks and Marlins, qualified with just 84 wins, nosing out the 83-win Cubs and the 82-win Padres and Reds. At each position, I highlighted the two lowest-ranked teams from within that subset, so long as they projected to produce less than 2.0 WAR, after an adjustment: I applied a 20% reduction to counter the general tendency to overestimate playing time at this point in the season. In other words instead of having a total of 1,000 WAR projected across the 30 teams, and 57% of that (570 WAR) allocated to position players, our Depth Chart values currently add up to about 682 WAR, an inflation of about 20%.

Because the mid-table teams almost invariably had some glaring weakness, seven teams escaped scrutiny. The Braves (98.5% odds), Dodgers (94.6%), and Cardinals (53.5%) — three of the NL’s top four teams by those odds, each favored to win their respective divisions — were absent from the Senior Circuit roundup, while the Yankees (75.6%), Rays (62.5%), Orioles (50.6%) and Rangers (36.3%) missed out on the fun in the Junior Circuit piece. Only one of the top four NL teams showed up with trouble spots (the Phillies at 58.5%), but the AL distribution was more haphazard, in that the Astros (86.8%), Twins (64.9%), Mariners (58.6%), and Blue Jays (47.4%) each had at least one representative within my roundup.

In response to the feedback I received, I thought it would be worthwhile to do one more roundup in this format, this time limiting it to those otherwise unexamined teams and going only one layer deep at each position. I couldn’t quite call this “The Weakest Spots Among the Powerhouses” or “… Among the Top Contenders,” hence the title. Note that not every position had a team fall below the threshold, though I do mention the lowest-ranked ones in passing for those spots. It’s worth keeping in mind the tendency for even the game’s top prospects to have fairly tepid projections based upon limited minor league data and a higher risk of being farmed out if they start slowly; those players don’t always hit the ground running. For team totals, I’ve cited the adjusted WARs, but where I reference individual player projections I’ve stuck to the published figures.

Catcher

Rays (21st, 1.9 adjusted WAR)

My AL roundup contained only the Red Sox catchers, and while I’m not sure what happened since I composed the list to move the Rays from right at the 2.0 minimum to below it, here we are. Since landing on last summer’s Replacement Level Killers list, they’ve basically turned over their tandem, with René Pinto and Alex Jackson replacing Christian Bethancourt and Francisco Mejía. The 27-year-old Pinto did the bulk of the catching in the second half, hitting .252/.267/.456 (98 wRC+) in 105 PA, with an eye-watering 34-to-2 strikeout-to-walk ratio. It’s true that he hits the ball hard, but the Rays seem to like him more for his defense than his offense — or, more specifically, his framing, which was 1.7 runs above average by our framing metric and two above by that of Statcast. Meanwhile, the latter system rated him at seven runs below average in blocking and one below in caught stealing.

The 28-year-old Jackson didn’t play in the majors last year, and he owns a .141/.243/.227 line and 48.1% strikeout rate in 185 PA in the majors, mostly from 2021. Nonetheless, he tore up Triple-A (.284/.347/.556 with 16 homers in 248 PA) with the Brewers and Rays’ affiliates before being sidelined by a shoulder injury. Defensively, he’s been a bit below average in framing but is otherwise average-ish. The 28-year-old Mejía, back in the organization on a minor league deal after a brief odyssey with the Angels, probably has his work cut out to regain a share of his old job. He hit just .227/.258/.400 (80 wRC+) last year and hasn’t come close to fulfilling the promise he showed at the plate in the minors.

First Base

Yankees (17th, 1.4 WAR)

Anthony Rizzo got off to a hot start in 2023, hitting for a 146 wRC+ through May 28, when he collided with Fernando Tatis Jr. and missed his next three games due to what the Yankees called a neck injury. Upon returning, he hit for just a 43 wRC+ over the next two months before the team shut him down with post-concussion symptoms; he didn’t play again, and finished at .244/.328/.378 (100 wRC+). The 34-year-old Rizzo is said to be healthy now, but he projects for just a .238/.332/.426 line, a 111 wRC+ — right at the major league average for first basemen last year — and 1.3 WAR, which won’t be a huge help to the Yankees lineup. The most likely backup is DJ LeMahieu, who’s slated to be the starting third baseman and who’s coming off his second 101 wRC+ in three years, though he did post a 129 wRC+ after the All-Star break compared to a 77 before, when he was still dealing with the effects of a right big toe injury. Oswaldo Cabrera, a switch-hitting utilityman who was very good in a late-2022 stint and terrible last year, is another alternative for first.

Second Base

Oddly enough — or perhaps fittingly, as we are talking about good clubs — none of these teams has a second base situation that falls below the threshold. Orioles second basemen project to rank 14th in the majors with an adjusted 2.4 WAR, the lowest mark from among this group, but that’s with 20-year-old Jackson Holliday, the no. 1 prospect on our Top 100 list, 25-year-old Jordan Westburg, and 29-year-old Ramón Urías projected to account for most of the playing time, with all projecting to be average or better — which particularly for Holliday would be no small achievement, even with his pedigree. Note that this is Baltimore’s only appearance within this exercise, even though the team has a lower projected value at the first base and DH slots than it does at second base; the O’s just don’t stand out relative to their competition’s weaknesses.

Shortstop

Braves (24th, 1.6 WAR)

The Braves project to be the majors’ top team, but they do have their weaknesses, and this is one. After letting Dansby Swanson depart as a free agent, they turned shortstop duties over to Orlando Arcia, who had spent five and a half seasons with diminishing returns in Milwaukee, plus another season and a half as a utilityman for Atlanta, playing a grand total of 24 innings at shortstop. The team nonetheless signed him to a three-year, $7.3 million extension — practically peanuts — and he handled the position reasonably well, hitting .264/.321/.420 (99 wRC+) with a career-high 2.3 WAR despite a mixed bag of defensive metrics. Given that he netted just 0.2 WAR from 2018–22, the projection systems are understandably skeptical he can sustain such production; if he can’t, who knows what kind of magic pixie dust the Braves can sprinkle on backups Luis Guillorme and David Fletcher to try and turn them into league-average regulars.

Third Base

Here’s another spot where none of these teams falls below the threshold, with the Dodgers (15th at 2.1 WAR) the lowest ranked. Neither Max Muncy’s fielding at third base nor his low batting averages are pretty, but he’s a disciplined hitter who can absolutely crush the ball and justify his spot in the lineup; last year, he matched his career high of 36 homers while netting 2.9 WAR. Chris Taylor and the freshly re-signed Enrique Hernández are around for those times when Muncy’s banged up or the team could use more defensive support.

Left Field

Dodgers (21st, 1.4 WAR)

This is the NL West juggernaut’s weakest spot, even after taking steps to address it. Newcomer Teoscar Hernández, who joined the fold on a one-year, $23.5 million deal, hits the ball very hard… when he makes contact. In 2023 he posted an average exit velocity of 91.3 mph (80th percentile), a 13.8% barrel rate (88th percentile), and a 49.4% hard-hit rate (90th percentile). The problem was that he struck out 31.1% of the time opposite a 5.6% walk rate, so he hit an uninspiring .258/.305/.435 (105 wRC+). To be fair, he did say he had trouble seeing the ball at the Mariners’ T-Mobile Park, where he slugged just .380, so it’s hardly out of the question that a change of scenery could drive a rebound for the 31-year-old slugger. The aforementioned Taylor and Enrique Hernández will see time here as well, but both are a few years removed from their best work. Taylor rebounded from a bad season and a slow first half to hit .237/.326/.420 (104 wRC+) but struck out 32.6% of the time himself, while Hernández perked up after returning to Los Angeles, posting a 59 wRC+ with the Red Sox and a 96 wRC+ with the Dodgers.

Center Field

One more where everybody is above the threshold, with the Rays (19th at 2.1 adjusted WAR) the lowest ranked among those here, based primarily on the projections’ skepticism that Jose Siri can repeat last year’s extreme performance. (See Davy Andrews’ piece on Tromps Per Womp.)

Right Field

Cardinals (14th, 1.8 WAR)

Given his plus-plus raw power, few people doubted Jordan Walker’s offensive ability, hence his no. 12 ranking on last year’s Top 100 Prospects list. At age 21, with no Triple-A experience, he made the Cardinals out of spring training and immediately reeled off a 12-game hitting streak. But when the league quickly adjusted, he struggled briefly and was sent to Memphis to work on his approach, particularly so he could elevate the ball with greater consistency. Even with a 46.9% groundball rate, he finished at a respectable .276/.342/.445 (116 wRC+), but his defense was another matter. Blocked by Nolan Arenado at third base, he moved to the outfield and was absolutely brutal according to the metrics (-16 DRS, -12 RAA, -11.8 UZR), and the visuals weren’t much better, even with the occasional impressive play. Thus he netted just 0.2 WAR. He does project to improve to 1.6 WAR, with Dylan Carlson getting time in right field as well — presumably when the Cardinals mercifully slot Walker at DH — and I’d bet that Walker far outhits the 116 wRC+ for which he’s projected.

Designated Hitter

Rangers (13th, 1.2 WAR)

With all but the Dodgers and Yankees projected to produce less than 2.0 WAR out of the DH spot (that’s after adjustment), this category is shooting fish in a barrel, and with the Cardinals and Rangers virtually tied, I’m focusing on the defending champions. This is hardly a bad situation, not only because Texas ranks among the upper half of the 30 teams, but also because about half the playing time projects to go to 22-year-old Wyatt Langford, who was chosen fourth in last year’s draft and rocketed through four levels to reach Triple-A, hitting .360/.480/.677 (190 wRC+) with 10 homers in 200 PA along the way. He just placed second only to Holliday on our Top 100 list as “perhaps the most complete hitter in the minors.” The problem is that he’s a 30-grade defender, with the speed for center field but a fringe-average arm and a poor feel for outfield play in general, at least at this stage; meanwhile, the outfield of Evan Carter, Leody Taveras, and Adolis García features strong defenders at all three spots. Langford could make the roster out of spring training, but it’s not a guarantee. With the possible exception of Corey Seager, who’s working his way back from January hernia surgery, no other Ranger projects to have much impact at this spot, hence the middling ranking.

When the Cardinals signed Brandon Crawford to a one-year, $2 million deal earlier this week, the first thing that popped into my mind was a two-word hashtag. I figured it wouldn’t be long before the Giants’ social media accounts would send out the same thing they always post in response to the departure of a franchise icon: #ForeverGiant.

Of course, #ForeverGiant is a public relations gimmick, a way for the organization to soften the blow for fans who are sad to see one of their favorite players retire or, worse, wearing another team’s uniform. Yet in the case of Crawford, who grew up a Giants fan in the Bay Area and who became the franchise’s all-time leader in games played at shortstop, those two words actually rang true. They weren’t a ploy; they were a promise.

That’s why Crawford’s leaving San Francisco is sad for many Giants fans and weird for the rest of us. But moving on from something and getting over it are not the same thing. It was time for the Giants to move on from Crawford, to let him go somewhere else, even if it wasn’t an easy decision. Read the rest of this entry »