The Los Angeles Dodgers’ brand is synonymous with superstars. It’s Clayton Kershaw, Mookie Betts, and deadline trades for Max Scherzer. Have a problem that needs a hammer? The Dodgers will bring two hammers, and they’ll have Walker Buehler on standby just in case. Those are the perks of having both one of the shrewdest front offices in baseball and one of the highest payrolls in the sport every year.
It’s funny, then, that Chris Taylor is one of the team’s greatest success stories. Taylor came to the Dodgers as an afterthought, in exchange for Zach Lee, a minor league pitcher who made all of 14 starts in the Seattle system before the team waived him. Six years later, Taylor is again headed to Los Angeles — but this time he’s doing it as a very rich man rather than a career minor leaguer. He and the Dodgers agreed to a four-year contract worth $60 million, as Ken Rosenthal reported. The deal also contains a team option for a fifth year.
All of that stuff I said at the top about the Dodgers and stars? It’s true, but the Los Angeles roster relies on positional versatility to make everything work. Taylor is the poster boy for this style: he played at least 50 innings at second, third, short, left, center, and right last year. Corey Seager injury? Taylor can fill in. Strange lineup with Max Muncy at second and Cody Bellinger at first? Taylor can flip to center — or to third base if Justin Turner needs a breather. Seager is gone, but with Trea Turner as a one-for-one replacement, Taylor will likely continue to get near-everyday playing time without a true home in the field. Read the rest of this entry »
Lots of money flowed ahead of this week’s unofficial lockout deadline, but not all of the moves involved swimming pools of cash. Among the many made were some low-key bullpen additions, usually by contenders, all of which arguably upgraded their respective bullpens. Let’s talk about some of the more interesting ones!
Lorenzen signed a one-year, $6.75 million contract to head to Anaheim, a surprisingly juicy figure for a pitcher with an ERA well in excess of five for the Reds in 2021. As you may have guessed, his peripheral numbers were better. A FIP just over four isn’t going to evoke prime Craig Kimbrel, but it’s a good bit better than the rest of the disasters in Cincy’s bullpen. The drop in strikeout rate was scary, but ZiPS doesn’t think it’s real when looking at the Statcast data, estimating that you ought to have expected him to finish up with 12 more strikeouts than he actually racked up — an impressive number in only 29 innings. Among relievers, that was the second-largest negative deficit, behind only Keynan Middleton of the Mariners. Scouting can also pick up this sort of thing, which is likely one reason the Angels were so willing to drop this amount of money.
The other is that Lorenzen wants to explore being a two-way player more than he got to in recent years. The Angels are apparently happy to grant this wish, given they’re the home of arguably the best (simultaneous) two-way player ever in Shohei Ohtani.
RHP Michael Lorenzen not only wants a shot at being a starting pitcher in 2022, but also wants the opportunity to get regular at-bats as an outfielder. Wants to get on the Ohtani routine. The Rangers, Pirates, Cubs and Giants are all believed to have inquired.
Lorenzen’s .233/.282/.429 line doesn’t scream “spare outfielder,” but one has to remember that his at-bats have been widely scattered, hampering his offensive development. In addition, a healthy chunk of them came as a pinch-hitter, a role in which players hit considerably worse compared to games they start. Read the rest of this entry »
For all of the sound and fury coming from Steve Cohen last week upon being spurned by Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz, the Mets’ owner has put his money where his mouth is since then. After signing a trio of midmarket position players — outfielders Starling Marte and Mark Canha, plus infielder Eduardo Escobar — over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, New York landed a marquee hurler on Monday, agreeing to terms with Max Scherzer on a three-year, $130 million deal.
The contract will pay Scherzer $43.33 million annually for his age 37–39 seasons, marking this as quite a high-risk move. The deal, which includes an opt-out after 2023 as well as a full no-trade clause, is a record-setter, with an average annual value 20% higher than the $36 million per year won by the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole, the previous standard-bearer. And — in a bit that’s sure to be schadenfreude-licious for a certain segment of the Mets’ fan base — while Scherzer is pulling down that massive salary, he’ll also be receiving the first three of seven $15 million deferred payments from the Nationals during the span of his contract with the Mets.
The move comes as something of a surprise given that Scherzer refused to consider waiving his 10-and-5 rights for a potential deal to the Mets in July. On top of that, the Dodgers, to whom he was ultimately dealt, were presumed to have the inside track on retaining the 37-year-old righty given their status as contenders, their seemingly limitless resources, and a sense of unfinished business after coming up short in their quest to defend their 2020 title. But whether it was because Los Angeles wouldn’t go beyond two years or because Scherzer, who purchased a mansion in Jupiter, Florida in 2020, preferred a return to the East Coast, New York was able to close a deal ahead of the December 1 expiration of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement and the lockout that’s likely to follow.
In the final year of his seven-year, $210 million contract with the Nationals — perhaps the most fully realized free-agent mega-deal to date, featuring two Cy Young awards, two no-hitters, a championship, 39.7 WAR, and probably a curly W on the cap of his Hall of Fame plaque — Scherzer pitched like a man in search of more hardware. In his first nine starts after being dealt to the Dodgers, he posted astounding numbers (0.78 ERA, 1.36 FIP, 36.6% strikeout rate), and on September 12, during that run, he became the 19th pitcher in history to collect 3,000 career strikeouts, doing so while taking a perfect game into the eighth inning. Even after a couple of bumpy starts at the end of the regular season, he finished second in the NL in ERA (2.46), strikeouts (236), strikeout rate (34.1%) and K-BB% (28.8%), third in WAR (5.4), and fourth in FIP (2.96) in 179.1 innings. In the year’s Cy Young voting, he placed third behind Corbin Burnes and Zack Wheeler, receiving six first-place votes.
Even so, those bumpy starts turned out to be an ominous portent of things to come. Scherzer failed to complete five innings in two of his three postseason starts, including the NL Wild Card Game. After closing out the Giants in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the Division Series, he admitted that he was battling arm fatigue, and was able to make only one NLCS start; he could only watch as a similarly gassed Walker Buehler struggled on three days of rest in Game 6 against the Braves. Still, Scherzer’s problem was believed to be nothing more than arm fatigue — understandable given his 128.2-inning workload increase relative to 2020. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Early Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. For an introduction to the ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
The lone holdover from the 2016 Pre-Integration Era Committee ballot, Bill Dahlen was one of the best players of the late-19th and early-20th century. A shortstop for four teams from 1891-1911, he was renowned for his fielding, his ferocious temper — he earned the nickname “Bad Bill,” and was ejected from a total of 70 games as a player and manager — and his carousing, though he was also a very good hitter for his position, especially in his 20s. His 42-game hitting streak from 1894 still stands as the fourth-longest in major league history, and thanks to his prowess on both sides of the ball he ranks 11th in JAWS among shortstops. Dahlen helped the Brooklyn Superbas and New York Giants to two pennants apiece during a six-year span from 1899-1905, but he’s somehow slipped through the cracks historically, to the point that he was SABR’s 2012 Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legend. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Golden Days Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. For an introduction to this year’s ballot, see here, and 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.
“Hodges was the solid anchorman around whom the others revolved. He lent class and dignity and respect to his team and to his profession. As has been written — and rightly so — he had all the attributes of an Eagle Scout. This was quite a man.” — Arthur Daley, New York Times, April 4, 1972
Gil Hodges was a genuinely beloved player in his day and is probably the most popular candidate on the Golden Days ballot. Indeed, he might be the most popular candidate on any ballot. More collective emotion has been spent trying to will Hodges — a 6-foot-2, 210-pound gentle giant — into Cooperstown than any other player. The closest miss, he surpassed 60% three times on the BBWAA ballot, peaking at 63.4% in 1983, his final year of eligibility; outside of currently eligible candidates, he stands as the only one even to cross the 50% threshold without eventually getting elected via the Veterans or Era Committees, an exception of which anyone who’s followed my work for the past two decades is almost certainly aware. What’s more, biographer Danny Peary claims that in 1993, when Ted Williams led the Veterans Committee, he would not allow ailing committee member Roy Campanella to vote by phone; thus, Hodges missed by one vote. He’s never gotten any closer.
Hodges was the Dodgers’ regular first baseman from 1948 through ’61, a span during which he earned All-Star honors eight times and helped his team to six pennants (plus another in 1947, when he was a reserve) and two championships. After returning to New York in 1962 as a reserve on the dismal expansion Mets, he managed the Senators before coming back to Queens and overseeing the ’69 team’s miraculous upset of the Orioles in the World Series. Further managerial success at that level eluded him, as he died of a heart attack on April 2, 1972, two days shy of his 48th birthday. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Golden Days Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. For an introduction to this year’s ballot, see here, and 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.
One of three brothers who spent time in the majors, Boyer spent the bulk of his 15-year career (1955-69) vying with Hall of Famers Eddie Mathews and Ron Santo for recognition as the NL’s top third baseman. An outstanding all-around player with good power, speed, and an excellent glove — but comparatively little flash, for he was all business – Boyer earned All-Star honors in seven seasons and won five Gold Gloves, all of them during his initial 11-year run with the Cardinals. In 1964, he took home NL MVP honors while helping St. Louis to its first championship in 18 years.
Boyer was born on May 20, 1931 in Liberty, Missouri, the third-oldest son in a family of 14 (!) children. He was nearly four years younger than Cloyd Boyer, who pitched in the majors from 1949-52 and ’55, and nearly six years older than Clete Boyer, also a third baseman from 1955-57 and ’59-71; four other brothers (Wayne, Lynn, Len, and Ron) played in the minors. The Cardinals signed Ken as a pitcher in 1949, paying him a $6,000 bonus. While his pitching results weren’t awful, he took his strong arm to third base when the need presented itself on his Class D Hamilton Cardinals team; he hit .342, slugged .575, and showed off outstanding defense.
Boyer’s progress to the majors was interrupted by a two-year stint in the Army during the Korean War; he didn’t play at all in 1952 or ’53. Upon returning, the 23-year-old Boyer put in a strong season at Double-A Houston in 1954, then made the Cardinals out of spring training the following year, and even homered in his major leagued debut, a two-run shot off the Cubs’ Paul Minner that trimmed an eighth-inning lead to 14-4. That was the first of 18 homers Boyer hit as a rookie while batting .264/.311/.425 (94 OPS+); he also stole 22 bases but was caught a league-high 17 times.
Boyer came into his own in 1956, batting .306/.347/.494 (124 OPS+) with 26 homers and making his first All-Star team. It was the first year of a nine-season run across which Boyer would hit a combined .299/.364/.491 (124 OPS+) while averaging 25 homers and 6.1 WAR; seven times, he ranked among the NL’s top 10 in WAR while doing so five times apiece in batting average and on-base percentage, and four times in slugging percentage. Boyer set career highs in home runs (32), slugging percentage (.570) and OPS+ (144) in 1960, then followed that up with highs in WAR (8.0), AVG, and OBP while hitting .329/.397/.533 (136 OPS+) in ’61. He made the All-Star team every year from 1959-64, including the twice-a-summer version of the event in the first four of those seasons.
The Cardinals were not a very good team for the first leg of Boyer’s career; from 1954-59, they cracked .500 just once. With Boyer absorbing the lessons of Stan Musial and helping to pass them along to a younger core — first baseman Bill White, second baseman Julian Javier, center fielder Curt Flood, and later catcher Tim McCarver — the team began trending in the right direction. The Cardinals went 86-68 in 1960, and continued to improve, particularly as right-hander Bob Gibson emerged as a star. After going 93-69 and finishing second to the Dodgers in 1963 — a six-game deficit, their smallest since ’49 — they matched that record and won the pennant the following year, spurred by the mid-June acquisition of left fielder Lou Brock; they beat out a Phillies team that closed September with 10 straight losses. Boyer hit .295/.365/.489 while driving in a league-high 119 runs. In a case of the writers rewarding the top player on a winning team with the MVP award, he took home the trophy, though his 6.1 WAR ranked 10th, well behind Willie Mays (11.0), Santo (8.9), Phillies rookie Dick Allen (8.8), Frank Robinson (7.9) et al.
Though Boyer hit just .222/.241/.481 in the seven-game World Series against the Yankees and his brother Clete, he came up big by supplying all the scoring via a grand slam off Al Downing in the Cardinals’ 4-3 win in Game 4. Additionally, he went 3-for-4 with a double and a homer in the Cardinals’ 7-5 win in Game 7. His brother also homered, to date the only time that’s happened in World Series play.
Hampered by back problems, Boyer slipped to a 91 OPS and 1.8 WAR in 1965, his age-34 season, after which he was traded to the Mets for pitcher Al Jackson and third baseman Charley Smith. Boyer rebounded to a 101 OPS+ and 2.9 WAR, albeit on a 95-loss team going nowhere. The following July, he was traded to the White Sox, who were running first in what wound up as a thrilling four-team race that went down to the season’s final day. The White Sox were managed by Eddie Stanky, who had been at the helm when Boyer broke in with the Cardinals. Though Boyer didn’t play badly, he appeared in just 67 games for the team before being released in May 1968. He was picked up by the Dodgers, spending the remainder of that season and the next with them.
After his playing days were done, Boyer managed in the minors, then took over the Cardinals from early 1978 to early ’80; in his one full season (1979), he guided the team to an 86-76 record and a third-place finish. While he moved into a scouting role and was slated to manage the team’s Triple-A Louisville affiliate in 1982, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on September 7 of that year, at age 52.
Boyer never got much traction in the BBWAA voting, either before or after his death. From 1975-79, he maxed out at 4.7%, and was bumped off the ballot when the Five Percent rule was put in place in 1980. He was one of 11 players who had his eligibility restored in 1985, only five of whom cleared the bar and remained on the ballot, along with Allen, Flood, Santo, and Vada Pinson. He remained on the ballot through 1994, topping out at 25.5% in ’88, nowhere near enough for election. Neither did he fare well via the expanded Veterans Committee in the 2003, ’05, and ’07 elections, maxing out at 18.8% in the middle of those years. Similarly, on both the 2012 and ’15 Golden Era ballots, he finished below the threshold where they announce the actual vote totals so as not to embarrass anyone.
All of which is to say that within this Golden Days group, Boyer might feel like ballast, here to round out a ballot without having much chance at getting elected. That’s a shame, because he was damn good. For the 1956-64 period, he ranked sixth among all position players in value:
That’s a pretty good group! Of course the comparison is manicured perfectly to Boyer’s best years, but even if I expand the range to cover the full extent of his career, he’s ninth on the list, in similar company (Kaline, Clemente, and Banks passes him), and one spot ahead of Santo. Boyer was a better fielder than Santo (via Total Zone, +73 runs to +21), and a better baserunner (+19 runs to -34, including double play avoidance), though not as good a hitter (116 OPS+ to 125).
Even having lost time to military service, Boyer ranks 14th among third basemen in JAWS, just 1.4 points below the standard, with a seven-year peak that ranks ninth, 3.2 points above the standard. At a position that’s grossly underrepresented — there are just 15 enshrined third basemen, not including Negro League players, compared to 20 second basemen, 23 shortstops, and 27 right fielders — that should be good enough for Cooperstown.
If I had a ballot for this group, Boyer would be one of my four choices. I don’t expect that enough voters will see it that way, but I do appreciate that he’s being kept in the conversation, and will get his due someday.
A switch-hitting shortstop in the majors for 14 seasons (1959-72), mostly with the Dodgers, Wills is generally credited with reviving the art of the stolen base, a particularly useful tactic in the run-parched environment of Dodger Stadium in the early-to-mid 1960s. The electrifying Wills led the league in steals every year from 1960-65, setting a since-broken major league record with 104 in ’62 — a performance that helped him earn NL MVP honors — while playing a significant role on three Dodgers world championship teams.
Born on October 2, 1932 in Washington, DC, Wills starred in three sports at Cardozo High School, earning all-city honors in all three, and drew particular interest from colleges as a quarterback and safety, but “baseball was my true love,” as he later said. The Dodgers, on the hunt for Black players in the wake of Jackie Robinson’s breakthrough, signed him in the summer of 1950 for a bonus of just $500, far short of the $6,000 Wills and his family envisioned.
Wills toiled in the minors for parts of nine seasons (1951-59), twice leaving the Dodgers’ organization via conditional deals; he spent 1957 playing for the Reds’ Triple-A affiliate, the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League, and went to spring training with the Tigers in ’59. The turning point for Wills actually came in 1958, after the Dodgers reclaimed him from the Reds, when Triple-A Spokane Indians manager Bobby Bragan encouraged the righty-swinging Wills to learn to switch-hit, moving him even closer to first base.
With Hall of Famer Pee Wee Reese having retired after the 1958 season, the Dodgers’ first in Los Angeles, the team was in search of a shortstop. With neither Don Zimmer nor Bob Lillis panning out, and with Wills batting a sizzling .313/.387/.391 with 25 steals at Spokane, he was called up in early June. By early July, he was the regular. While his .260/.298/.298 (55 OPS+) showing was subpar, it still represented an upgrade over the even weaker performance of Zimmer, and he sizzled in September (.345/.382/.405) as the Dodgers won a three-way pennant race over the Giants and Braves, beating the latter twice in a best-of-three tiebreaker series at season’s end. Wills started all six World Series games as the Dodgers beat the White Sox.
Finding a home atop the batting order midway through the 1960 season, Wills used his skills as a bunter and base thief to ignite Los Angeles’ offense. He hit .295/.342/.331 while stealing a league-high 50 bases in 62 attempts, good for 2.5 WAR. After stealing 35 bases the following year while making his first All-Star team, Wills swiped a whopping 104 — a mark that stood until it was broken by Lou Brock in 1974 — in 117 attempts in 1962. He surpassed Ty Cobb’s single-season record of 96 in the Dodgers’ 156th game, the same number Cobb needed in 1915 (his Tigers played two tie games), satisfying commissioner Ford C. Frick’s ruling on whether his feat would count as the major league record.
The frequent running took a physical toll on Wills, amplified by opposing groundskeepers adding sand to the clay around first base to make traction more difficult. Still, he hit .299/.347/.373 with 10 triples and 130 runs scored; including his 19 baserunning runs (the highest single-season total in B-Ref’s database) and average-ish defense that nonetheless earned him a Gold Glove, he finished with 6.0 WAR, good for fourth in the league. His performance was such a unique throwback that he beat out heavy-hitters like NL home run and WAR leader Willie Mays and teammate Tommy Davis (.346/.374/.535, 230 hits, 27 homers, 153 RBI) to win the NL MVP award.
Alas, the Dodgers lost the pennant via a playoff versus the Giants — which did enable Wills to set a still-standing record of 165 games played in a regular season — but they would win the World Series in 1963 and ’65, with Wills hitting for a career-best 112 OPS+ (on a .302/.355/.349 line) in the former year and stealing 94 bases in the latter before making a stellar showing (.367/.387.467) against the Twins (starring Golden Days ballot-mates Jim Kaat and Tony Oliva) in the Fall Classic.
Wills made five All-Star teams from 1961-66, but he fell out of favor with his sinking batting averages and on-base percentages, not to mention his going AWOL to play banjo with Don Ho and Sammy Davis Jr. during the Dodgers’ post-1966 World Series trip to Japan to play a exhibition games. With Walter O’Malley already in a foul mood due to the sudden retirement of Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers’ owner ordered general manager Buzzie Bavasi to trade Wills.
Bavasi complied, sending Wills to the Pirates, for whom he had two very good seasons, hitting for a 98 OPS+, stealing 81 bases, and totaling 7.8 WAR. Drafted away by the Expos in the expansion draft in late 1968, he became increasingly unhappy to the point of briefly retiring in early June, but was soon dealt back to the Dodgers along with future pinch-hitting legend Manny Mota in exchange for Ron Fairly and Paul Popovich. He stuck around until 1972, the year that Bill Russell emerged as the regular shortstop and the first piece in place for what would become the game’s longest-running infield.
Wills retired with 586 steals, 21 more than any other player from 1920-72; today, his total ranks 20th all-time. Though he ranked among the league’s top 10 in stolen base percentage eight times from 1960-68, by modern standards his career 73.8% success rate is nothing special. Even so, he was 55 runs above average on the basepaths and another 21 above average in double play avoidance; his combined total for the aforementioned 1920-72 period ranked second only to Luis Aparicio, and overall it’s still 22nd.
For all of that, Wills’ batting line was pretty unremarkable even given the adjustments for his low-scoring environment; his 88 OPS+ is one point ahead of that of Ozzie Smith, but he was merely average defensively, no small accomplishment for a 14-year career at a premium defensive position, but no wizard. Even accounting for his baserunning, he dented the WAR leaderboard only in 1962. He ranks just 48th at the position in JAWS, below every enshrined shortstop as well as current BBWAA candidate Omar Vizquel; Carlos Correa (34.2) will pass him next year. Even giving Wills a subjectively sizable bonus for restoring the stolen base to prominence, and for the level of excitement and entertainment he must have created with his speed and small-ball skills — an aspect that’s not very well captured in WAR — I just don’t see where he’s a strong enough candidate for election.
Not every voter has felt that way. Wills debuted on the 1978 ballot with 30.3% of the vote, a share that portends a reasonable chance of eventual election. By 1981, he climbed to 40.6%, but then things took a turn. The Mariners named him as their manager on August 4, 1980, to take over for the fired Darrell Johnson. Wills’ lack of experience — he had passed up a chance to manage in the minors at Bavasi’s encouragement, though had managed in Mexican winter leagues for a few years — quickly showed. Not only did the Mariners go 20-38 in the remainder of that season and start the next one 6-18, but he made “unconscionable strategic mistakes, third-grade, sandlot mistakes. And he compounded his mistakes by claiming to know all or by blaming somebody else,” to use the description of Steve Rudman of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. His brief tenure was a veritable fiasco.
It turns out Wills had a bigger problem: cocaine. Accounts vary as to whether it was the spring of 1980 before he was hired, or the following spring, after a longtime romantic relationship ended with his partner running off with another ballplayer to whom he’d introduced her during the 1980-81 offseason. After being fired, he spiraled downward, freebasing cocaine, drinking daily, and covering his windows with blankets. He had already left a rehab program prematurely when in December 1983 he was arrested for driving a car reported as stolen, and possessing an estimated $7 worth of cocaine. Both charges were eventually dismissed, and Wills eventually cleaned up, with former Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe and executive Fred Claire both playing parts in getting him help. He returned to baseball as an instructor (I spotted him tutoring Dodgers neophytes in bunting in Dodgertown in the springs of both 1989 and 2003, and at an Ogden Raptors game in 2010).
Electorally, the damage was done as far as the writers were concerned. Wills spent 15 years on the BBWAA ballot but didn’t even reach 30% after 1981, and only intermittently broke 25%. He topped out at 40% on the expanded Veterans Committee ballots in 2007, but receded to 23.4% two years later and wasn’t included on the 2012 Golden Era ballot. He did receive 56.3% on the 2015 one, however, placing him fourth behind Allen, Oliva, and Kaat, and so it’s fair to say that he’s got some momentum coming into this ballot. Again, I think he’s far from the best choice available, but if Harold Bainescan get elected by a 16-member committee, so can Wills, who at least left a bigger mark on baseball history. We’ll see.
In the first notable signing of the offseason, the Dodgers and left-handed starting pitcher Andrew Heaney reportedly agreed to terms on one-year, $8.5 million contact. Though Heaney was not listed on our top 50 free agent rankings, Joel Sherman of the New York Postreported on Sunday that he had quickly generated a hot market. Multiple teams were interested in the southpaw; in Sherman’s words, they were hoping to find the “next Robbie Ray.”
There are some similarities. Like Heaney, Ray signed quickly last winter, inking a one-year, $8 million pact with the Blue Jays on November 7. In Toronto, he found the strike zone for the first time in his career and turned in a Cy Young-caliber season (he’s one of the AL’s three finalists) with a 2.84 ERA, 3.69 FIP and 3.9 WAR in 193.1 innings pitched. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal also likened the contract to Ray’s deal from last offseason, if only because the general premise (an attempt at fixing a broken pitcher) and terms (Heaney signed for just $500,000 more than Ray) are quite similar.
That’s where the similarities between the two hurlers end. Heaney had a rough 2021 season, but the issues facing the two pitchers could not be more different. Ray struggled to harness his excellent stuff; Heaney, on the other hand, posted a 7.3% walk rate in 2021, a tick above his career-average into this past year (6.5%). While both pitchers flashed the potential for much more upside than their results had shown, how the Blue Jays fixed Ray and how the Dodgers will have to fix Heaney will deviate significantly. Read the rest of this entry »
When Freddie Freeman clutched the throw from Dansby Swanson to secure the final out of this year’s World Series, the 2021 Braves instantly matched the total number of championships won by the franchise from 1991-99, a span during which a core laden with future Hall of Famers won five pennants but lost four World Series. That this year’s Cinderella team stands with that dynasty — yes, I’m using that word to describe even a non-contiguous run — in total championships is a reminder of one of current third base coach Ron Washington’s famous catchphrases: “That’s the way baseball go.”
Indeed, the game does not always distribute its rewards evenly or justly, and sometimes the player or team that’s streaking or simply lucky is the one that wins, particularly in a short series, where injuries and hot hands can have a disproportionate effect. Suffice it to say that if NLCS MVP Eddie Rosario were a true-talent .383/.456/.617 hitter, he would not have been available at the trade deadline in exchange for a sack of Pablo Sandoval’s laundry.
This is not intended to slight the Braves, who were clearly a better team than their full-season .547 winning percentage — lower among World Series winners than all but the 2014 Giants (.543), 2000 Yankees (.540), 1987 Twins (.525), and 2006 Cardinals (.516) — indicated. From the point of the trade deadline, when they were 51-54 (.486) but had reassembled their outfield on the fly with Rosario, Adam Duvall, Joc Pederson, and future World Series MVP Jorge Soler, they went 37-19 (.661), outplaying every team in the majors but the white-hot Dodgers (.772) and Giants (.729). In the postseason, they knocked off the 95-win Brewers, 106-win Dodgers, and 95-win Astros by going a combined 11-5 and never facing an elimination game themselves. Read the rest of this entry »
After a one-year hiatus due to the oddity and non-celebratory feeling of a season truncated by a raging pandemic, we’re bringing back the Elegy series in a streamlined format for a 2021 wrap-up. Think of this as a quick winter preview for each team, discussing the questions that faced each team ahead of the year, how they were answered, and what’s next. Do you like or hate the new format? Let me know in the comments below. We’ve already tackled the AL and NL Central, as well as the AL East. Today, we’ll consider the NL West.
San Francisco Giants (107-55)
The Big Question
Could a low-key winter get the Giants on pace with the Dodgers and Padres? 2020 was the fourth consecutive losing season for San Francisco, and the division’s two best teams were extremely active in the offseason. It wasn’t the kind of doom and gloom it appeared to be for the Rockies and Diamondbacks, both of which ZiPS pegged for under 70 wins, but the Giants’ offseason seemed like it was geared more towards enjoyable respectability than elite status. The offense was solid in 2020 as new manager Gabe Kapler showed a real knack for using the expanded rosters to weaponize role-player talent, but it was also the oldest lineup in baseball. I was personally optimistic about the team’s reconstructed rotation, but there were a lot of moving parts to get the offense and pitching both clicking.
How It Went
Suffice it to say, it went really well, with the Giants outperforming ZiPS by more wins than any other team in the history of the projections. Outperforming projections by more than 30 wins is a rare feat, and the Giants did in the most difficult way, like climbing Mt. Everest in a pair of gym shorts and a tank top. Generally speaking, the teams that crush expectations have a lot of high-variance players, often extremely young talent with upside but an uncertain short-term outlook or guys with an injury history. But this wasn’t the case with the Giants; a bunch of 30-to-35-year-old veterans are the easiest type of player to project. Of the 20 teams that outperformed their ZiPS by the most wins (going back to 2005), the Giants were the only team that ZiPS had with tighter projection bands than the average team.
While there was one colossal breakout season from a young player (more below), San Francisco’s astounding 2021 season was built on shocking seasons from established veterans coupled with a solid bullpen built on a shoestring budget, a feat California teams all seem to have an odd affinity for managing. Brandon Crawford had his best season at age 34. Buster Posey and Evan Longoria thought it was 2012 or 2013. Darin Ruf, a journeyman role player who looked to be wrapping up his career in Korea, had a 143 OPS+. Read the rest of this entry »
Ryan Ward has emerged as an intriguing sleeper in the Los Angeles Dodgers system. Unranked coming into the season, the 23-year-old, left-handed-hitting outfielder swatted an eye-opening 27 home runs and logged a .278/.352/.524 slash line with the Great Lakes Loons. His long-ball total was second-highest in the High-A Central, and his 135 wRC+ was tied for third-best in the circuit. A Milbury, Massachusetts native who attended Bryant University, he was the Dodgers’ eighth-round pick in the 2019 draft.
Ward discussed his development — including the mechanical adjustment that has helped jumpstart his career — toward the tail end of the Loons’ season.
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David Laurila: Let’s start with your background. You grew up in Central Massachusetts.
Ryan Ward: “I come from a really small town. I graduated high school with something like 80 kids in my class. We were in a low division — Division-5 baseball — and I started playing varsity my eighth-grade year. I was a catcher and also played third base here and there. I kept building on that throughout high school but didn’t really get many college looks because I didn’t play travel ball and wasn’t really in showcases. I basically just played high school baseball and [American] Legion ball. I did a couple of high-school showcases, but never really got college attention until Bryant came around.”
