The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2020 election, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

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

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

The Los Angeles Dodgers and right-hander Joe Kelly did a whole bunch of paperwork just to end up back in business together. In November, the Dodgers declined a one-year, $9.5 million option on Kelly, buying the right-hander out for $1 million and sending him into free agency. This week, the two parties agreed to terms on another contract, reportedly for one year and $8 million. Nobody likes to take a pay cut, but for Kelly, who was born in Anaheim, that’s $9 million in his pocket to stay put instead of $9.5 million – ultimately a pretty friendly outcome after the option decision didn’t go his way.

If you’ve tuned in to the postseason in the last decade, you’re probably familiar with the work of Kelly, who started a World Series game for the Cardinals in 2013, earned his first ring with the Red Sox with a dominant October in 2018, and pitched for the Dodgers in four of the last five postseasons, winning his second World Series in 2020. He helped set up a pair of future Hall of Fame closers in their only World Series seasons (so far) two years apart in Craig Kimbrel and Kenley Jansen. Since the start of his career, the only pitchers with more postseason appearances than Kelly’s 41 are Jansen, Ryan Pressly, and Aroldis Chapman:

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. It was initially written for The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books, and subsequently adapted for SI.com and then FanGraphs. 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.

It happened so quickly. Freshly anointed the game’s top prospect by Baseball America in the spring of 1996, the soon-to-be-19-year-old Andruw Jones was sent to play for the Durham Bulls, the Braves’ High-A affiliate. By mid-August, he blazed through the Carolina League, the Double-A Southern League, and the Triple-A International League, then debuted for the defending world champions. By October 20, with just 31 regular-season games under his belt, he was a household name, having become the youngest player ever to homer in a World Series game, breaking Mickey Mantle’s record — and doing so twice at Yankee Stadium to boot.

Jones was no flash in the pan. The Braves didn’t win the 1996 World Series, and he didn’t win the ’97 NL Rookie of the Year award, but along with Chipper Jones (no relation) and the big three of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, he became a pillar of a franchise that won a remarkable 14 NL East titles from 1991 to 2005 (all but the 1994 strike season). From 1998 to 2007, Jones won 10 straight Gold Gloves, more than any center fielder except Willie Mays. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 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. 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 — he had 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.

Bill James once referred to Sheffield as “an urban legend in his own mind.” Off the field, he found controversy before he ever reached the majors through his connection to his uncle, Dwight Gooden. He was drafted and developed by the Brewers, who had no idea how to handle such a volatile player and wound up doing far more harm than good. Small wonder then that from the time he was sent down midway through his rookie season after being accused of faking an injury, he was mistrustful of team management and wanted out. And when he wanted out — of Milwaukee, Los Angeles, or New York — he let everyone know it, and if a bridge had to burn, so be it; it was Festivus every day for Sheffield, who was always willing to air his grievances.

Later in his career, Sheffield became entangled in the BALCO performance enhancing drug scandal through his relationship with Barry Bonds — a relationship that by all accounts crumbled before he found himself in even deeper water. For all of the drama that surrounded Sheffield, and for all of his rage and outrageousness, he never burned out the way his uncle did, nor did he have trouble finding work.

Even in the context of the high-scoring era in which he played, Sheffield’s offensive numbers look to be Hall of Fame caliber, but voters have found plenty of reasons to overlook him, whether it’s his tangential connection to PEDs, his gift for finding controversy, his poor defensive metrics, or the crowd on the ballot. In his 2015 debut, he received just 11.7% of the vote, and over the next four years, he gained barely any ground. But from 2019 to ’21, he jumped from 13.6% to 30.5% to 40.6%, with the fifth-largest and third-largest gains on the ’20 and ’21 ballots. After repeating with the same percentage in 2022, he jumped to 55% in ’23, with the cycle’s fourth-largest gain. His share of the vote is now larger than any player who’s been linked to PEDs via BALCO, the Mitchell Report, or a suspension except for Bonds or Roger Clemens. Still, as he enters his final year of eligibility on the writers’ ballot, he’ll need a Larry Walker-like jump to get to 75%. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, it’s best not to mess with a good thing. So say the Dodgers, who according to ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel have re-signed right fielder Jason Heyward to a one-year, $9 million contract.

In his first year with the Dodgers, Heyward appeared in 124 games, 98 of them starts, and hit .269/.340/.473 in 377 plate appearances. That’s a 121 wRC+! That’s 14th out of the 45 players who primarily played right field last year and managed 300 or more plate appearances, just a tick behind Adolis García, and ahead of Nick Castellanos, Lars Nootbaar, Fernando Tatis Jr., and George Springer.

The separating factor is that all 98 of Heyward’s starts came against right-handed pitchers last year. You might say that $9 million is a lot to pay for a platoon corner outfielder. Poppycock! The Dodgers, who have harvested the infinite galactic power of the cosmos, overpaying? The Dodgers, stuffed to the point of bursting with Guggenheim Partners’ limitless lucre, overpaying? Who cares? Surely not I. To them, $9 million is a pittance, spent here on a crucial roster player; otherwise it might have been spent on a medium-leverage relief pitcher, or caviar, or some other frivolity.

The Heyward-Dodgers reunion is exciting not just because a good team returns a productive player, but also because of how well this player fits with this team. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I covered the American League half of the flurry of transactional activity that occurred as a result of the 40-man roster and non-tender deadlines. Is any one move here as impactful as signing a Yoshinobu Yamamoto or a Matt Chapman? No, but when your favorite team experiences a rash of injuries in June, whether or not they have the depth to scrap and compete is often dictated by the people and processes that surround this day. Below are my thoughts on the National League, with some quick scouting snippets on most of the added players and thoughts about roster construction where I had something to say.

Arizona Diamondbacks

The Diamondbacks lone addition was lefty Blake Walston, a former $2.5 million high school signee who, despite being young for his class and physically projectable as an amateur, has seen his fastball velocity plateau and slightly decline since he signed. He’s had fits and starts where he’s thrown harder, but for the most part, Walston’s fastball still sits 89-92 mph and his performance peripherals took a nosedive in 2023, though part of that was likely because of the PCL hitting environment. The lanky 22-year-old is still a fair long-term prospect because of his age and what one could reasonably hope will still be late-arriving physicality, but for now, I’d consider him at the very back of Arizona’s 40-man starting pitching depth chart. Read the rest of this entry »

My September 10 Sunday Notes column included Chris Antonetti addressing his team’s 2023 offensive struggles. According to Cleveland’s President of Baseball Operations, “The problem isn’t power, the problem is that we need to score more runs.” While I don’t necessarily disagree with the exec’s opinion, it is nonetheless true that the Guardians hit the fewest home runs of any team and finished fourth from the bottom in runs scored. Moreover, they finished 76-86 after going 92-70 in 2022.

I revisited the issue, at least in part, during this month’s GM meetings. I asked Antonetti’s second in command, Mike Chernoff, if the club needs to reassess some of its philosophies going forward.

“If you rewind the clock one year, we felt like we massively outperformed industry expectations,” Cleveland’s General Manager told me “We won 92 games with the youngest team in baseball. This year, we again had the youngest team in baseball. We hit a few unfortunate and untimely injuries with some of our starting pitching, but at the same time we transitioned three young starters in [Gavin] Williams, [Tanner] Bibee, and [Logan] Allen to the major-league team. We just didn’t perform as well offensively. So we don’t feel like wholesale changes are necessary. We feel like we have a really strong foundation off of which to continue building, but we also don’t have a lot of room for error as a small-market team.”

Industry expectations are one thing, in-house projection systems are another. With that in mind, I asked Chernoff if the 2022 Guardians outperformed their own projections, and if the 2023 club underperformed them. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series covering the 2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Managers/Executives/Umpires ballot, covering candidates in those categories who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present. For an introduction to the ballot, see here. The eight candidates will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in Nashville on December 3, and anyone receiving at least 75% of the vote from the 16 committee members will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 21, 2024, along with any candidates elected by the BBWAA.

Davey Johnson

Like Billy Martin before him, albeit with far less drinking and drama, Davey Johnson was renowned for his ability to turn teams around. He posted a winning record in his first full season at four of his five managerial stops and took four of the five franchises that he managed to the playoffs at least once. But after six-plus seasons managing the Mets, he never lasted even three full seasons in any other job and never replicated the success he had in piloting the 1986 Mets to 108 wins and a World Series victory. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers provided some clarity with regards to their decimated rotation on Friday, though perhaps not in the most reassuring manner. First, the team reportedly declined Lance Lynn’s $18 million option, and then Clayton Kershaw announced via Instagram that he had undergone shoulder surgery that morning, with hopes of a return to play “at some point next summer.” As if that didn’t raise enough questions, the three-time Cy Young winner and future Hall of Famer did nothing to tip his hand regarding whether he’d seek a return to the Dodgers.

When we last saw the 35-year-old Kershaw in action, he was leaving the mound after retiring just one of the eight Diamondbacks he faced in the Division Series opener. Because the Dodgers were swept in the best-of-five series, he didn’t get a chance to take another turn, though manager Dave Roberts had planned to send him out for Game 4 had the team extended the series. Asked in the immediate aftermath of the team’s elimination what would come next for him, Kershaw responded cryptically, saying, “I don’t know how to answer that right now.”

Kershaw’s inability to articulate his plans at the time was understandable, in part because for the third year in a row he was headed towards free agency, with a chance to leave the only organization he’s known since being drafted out of Highland Park High School in Dallas in 2006. In the past two winters, he had given some consideration to pitching closer to home with the Rangers, but chose to return to the Dodgers after the 2021 season, signing a one-year, $17 million contract after the lockout ended in March ’22, and then re-upping for one year and $20 million last December. Though he missed the 2021 postseason due to forearm discomfort, Kershaw didn’t have any health-related question marks hanging over his head by the time he re-signed either of those deals. This time, he’s in uncharted territory. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers and Max Muncy clearly believe they have a pretty good thing going. Since retooling his swing after being cast off by the A’s, the late-blooming slugger has been a key middle-of-the-lineup component on six straight playoff teams, and part of three pennant winners including their 2020 championship squad. Within the past four years, the Dodgers have inked Muncy to three contract extensions, the latest of which — announced on Thursday — is a two-year, $24 million deal with a club option for a third season, potentially keeping Muncy in the fold through 2026.

Muncy, who turned 33 on August 25, is coming off a season in which he hit .212/.333/.475 and matched his career high with 36 homers, three of them grand slams. The batting average wasn’t pretty (though it was at least above the Mendoza Line) and his 26.4% strikeout rate was his highest since 2018, but his 14.7% walk rate and considerable power helped to make up for it. Amid some ups and downs, his 118 wRC+ was 18 points short of his career mark but still ranked eighth among regular third basemen.

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