Apart from retaining both Clayton Kershaw, who signed a a two-year extension, and Hyun-Jin Ryu, who accepted a qualifying offer, the two-time defending NL champion Dodgers have had a quiet offseason thus far. They have several needs to fill, with catcher, second base, and the bullpen being the most glaring, and they’re particularly deep both in starting pitching options and in the outfield.

On that note, ESPN’s Buster Olney reported thusly from Las Vegas this morning:

Meanwhile, FanCred’s Jon Heyman added outfielders Alex Verdugo and Chris Taylor to the mix:

Plus, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal mentioned the Dodgers and Reds discussing Yasiel Puig, that after Cincinnati recently plucked his mentor, hitting coach Turner Ward, away from Los Angeles. Rosenthal later added the name of Homer Bailey to the mix as a potential salary dump in a situation that would figure to involve prospects and a more complicated swap:

And finally, DK Sports’ John Perrotto, who covers the Pirates, noted this:

To varying degrees, all of this makes some sense given the tantalizing rumors that have connected the Dodgers to high-profile players such as Indians starter Corey Kluber, Marlins catcher J.T. Realmuto, and free agent outfielder Bryce Harper. Let’s break out the tools and build a table:

The WAR projections on our Depth Charts page come with some caveats. The oft-injured Hill’s projection is based upon 159 innings, even though he has averaged 134 in his two full seasons with the Dodgers, while Wood’s is based upon just 58 innings in a swingman role, including 26 appearances but just six starts; he’s averaged 152 innings over the past two seasons. Similarly, Stripling is projected for just 68 innings in six starts and 30 relief appearances, while the projection for Verdugo (the Dodgers’ No. 3 prospect and the game’s No. 49 overall according to the fancy board put together by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel) is based upon just 43 plate appearances at the major league level. Prorating Wood to 150 innings yields 1.6 WAR, doing so for Stripling yields 1.8 WAR, and doing so to 300 PA for Verdugo yields 0.5 WAR.

That’s a whole lot of talent and control on the table, and it doesn’t even include their pair of catching prospects, Keibert Ruiz and Will Smith, one of whom could be moved as well. So the Dodgers have a veritable plethora of options as they try to navigate under the $206 million Competitive Balance Tax threshold if they so choose (Cot’s Contracts pegs them at $190 million and counting). One can envision, for example, the inclusion of Kemp in a trade involving Pederson (or, though it’s much less likely, Bellinger, as they’d probably have to be bowled over by an offer to deal the former NL Rookie of the Year), with the Dodgers picking up some portion of his remaining salary. The Indians and Dodgers are known to have discussed Puig in the past, and according to MLB.com’s Jon Morosi, have shown interest in Verdugo as well. In addition to his skill as a player, Puig could also appeal to the Marlins given Miami’s large Cuban population and the team’s recent rebranding to emphasize the city’s heritage; after all, it’s not like [squints at roster] Peter O’Brien is going to put butts in seats.

Meanwhile, the likes of free agents such as second baseman DJ LeMahieu and reliever David Robertson have been connected to the Dodgers as well, so it seems like it is only a matter of time before they commit to a path and light up the transaction wires.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2017 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

A savant in the batter’s box, Manny Ramirez could be an idiot just about everywhere else — sometimes amusingly, sometimes much less so. The Dominican-born slugger, who grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan, stands as one of the greatest hitters of all time, a power-hitting righthanded slugger who spent the better part of his 19 seasons (1993–2011) terrorizing pitchers. A 12-time All-Star, Ramirez bashed 555 home runs and helped the Indians and the Red Sox reach two World Series apiece, adding a record 29 postseason homers along the way. He was the World Series MVP for Boston in 2004, when the club won its first championship in 86 years.

For all of his prowess with the bat, Ramirez’s lapses — Manny Being Manny — both on and off the field are legendary. There was the time in 1997 that he “stole” first base, returning to the bag after a successful steal of second because he thought Jim Thome had fouled off a pitch… the time in 2004 that he inexplicably cut off centerfielder Johnny Damon’s relay throw from about 30 feet away, leading to an inside-the-park home run… the time in 2005 when he disappeared mid-inning to relieve himself inside Fenway Park’s Green Monster… the time in 2008 that he high-fived a fan in mid-play between catching a fly ball and doubling a runner off first… and so much more.

Beneath those often comic lapses was an intense work ethic, apparent as far back as his high school days, that allowed Ramirez’s talent to flourish. But there was also a darker side, one that, particularly after he left the Indians, went beyond the litany of late arrivals to spring training, questionable absences due to injury (particularly for the All-Star Game), and near-annual trade requests. Most notably, there was his shoving match with 64-year-old Red Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick in 2008, which prefigured Ramirez’s trade to the Dodgers that summer, and a charge of misdemeanor domestic violence/battery in 2011 after his wife told an emergency operator that her husband had slapped her face, causing her to hit her head against the headboard of the bed. (That domestic violence charge was later dropped after his wife refused to testify.) Interspersed with those two incidents were a pair of suspensions for performance-enhancing drug use, the second of which ran him out of the majors.

For all of the handwringing about PED-tinged candidates on the Hall of Fame ballot over the past decade, Ramirez is the first star with actual suspensions on his record to gain eligibility since Rafael Palmeiro in 2011. Like Palmeiro, Ramirez has numbers that would otherwise make his enshrinement a lock. In his 2017 ballot debut, he received 23.8% — a higher share than Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa, players who were never suspended — from an electorate that appeared to be in the midst of softening its hardline stance against PED users, but dipped to 22.0% in 2018. He won’t get into Cooperstown anytime soon, but he won’t fall off the ballot anytime soon, either.

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. It was initially adapted from The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books, and then revised for SI.com last year. 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’ Hi-A affiliate. By mid-August, he blazed through the Carolina League, the Double-A Southern League, and the Triple-A International League, and debuted for the defending world champion Braves. By October 20, with just 31 regular season games under his belt, he was a household name, not only the youngest player ever to homer in a World Series game — breaking Mickey Mantle’s record — but doing so twice at Yankee Stadium.

Jones was no flash in the pan. The Braves didn’t win the 1996 World Series, and he didn’t win the 1997 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 1991-2005 (all but the 1994 strike season). From 1998-2007, Jones won 10 straight Gold Gloves, more than any center fielder except Willie Mays.

By the end of 2006, Jones had tallied 342 homers and 1,556 hits. He looked bound for a berth in Cooperstown, but after a subpar final season in Atlanta and a departure for Los Angeles in free agency, he fell apart so completely that the Dodgers bought out his contract, a rarity in baseball. He spent the next four years with three different teams before heading to Japan at age 35, and while he hoped for a return to the majors, he couldn’t find a deal to his liking after either the 2014 or 2015 seasons. He retired before his 39th birthday, and thanks to his rapid descent, barely survived his first year on the Hall of Fame ballot.

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Before the 2018 season, two previously big-spending teams had plans to drop below the luxury tax threshold and reset their tax rates. The first, the Yankees, nonetheless had a successful season, winning 100 games en route to a Wild Card win and Division Series berth. The other, the Dodgers, had a more successful season, making it to the World Series for the second consecutive year before succumbing to the Red Sox (themselves big spenders) and Ryan Madson. In both cases, however, we have teams with young talent that look to be contenders for years to come, so the conventional thinking going into 2018 was that both franchises would drop below the tax limit for one year to reset their rates and then be active in what was long thought to be one of the most coveted free agent class of the decade.

So though the Dodgers have already accomplished their major offseason business – inking Clayton Kershaw to a contract extension, thereby avoiding the lefty ace hitting free agency – many expected them to return to something more closely resembling their 2017 ways, when the team spent a whopping $290 million between payroll and taxes.

But earlier this month, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times, reported that may not actually be in the offing.

. . .

This post is part of a series concerning the 2019 Today’s Game Era Committee ballot, covering executives, managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in Las Vegas on December 9. Use the tool above to read the introduction and other installments. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com and Baseball Prospectus. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Kirk Gibson’s walkoff home run off Dennis Eckersley may be the year’s most enduring highlight, but Orel Hershiser owned 1988 the way Babe Ruth owned 1927, or Roger Maris 1961, or Denny McLain 1968. That year, the Dodgers’ wiry righty set a still-standing record with 59 consecutive scoreless innings, surpassing that of Don Drysdale. After his 23 wins, 15 complete games, eight shutouts, 267 innings, and 7.2 WAR all led the NL, he won MVP honors in both the NLCS and World Series while helping a banged-up Dodgers squad upset the heavily favored Mets and A’s. Not only was he the unanimous winner of the NL Cy Young Award, he netted the year’s Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year and Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year awards, as well. It was a very good year.

Hershiser never equaled those heights again, but who could? Still, he showed incredible tenacity in an 18-year major-league career (1983-2000) bifurcated by a 1990 shoulder injury, ranking as the NL’s most valuable pitcher for a six-year stretch (1984-89) before his injury and reinventing himself after a groundbreaking surgery by Dr. Frank Jobe, best known for his innovation in saving Tommy John’s career. Hershiser actually won more games and pitched in more World Series after the injury than before (105 and two, compared to 99 and one), living up to the nickname “The Bulldog,” which manager Tommy Lasorda had originally bestowed upon him as a rookie to inspire him to pitch more aggressively.

Drafted by the Dodgers in the 17th round out of Bowling Green in 1979, Hershiser made his major \[league debut on September 1, 1983. After pitching eight games in relief that year and spending most of the first three months of the 1984 season in the bullpen, he tossed a complete game against the Cubs on June 29, allowing one run and setting off a 33.2-inning scoreless streak that included three complete-game shutouts, two of them two-hit, nine-strikeout efforts. He finished third in the league with a 2.66 ERA in 189.2 innings, and came in third in the NL Rookie of the Year vote behind Dwight Gooden and Juan Samuel. Armed with a new split-fingered fastball to complement a sinker that would become legendary, he made even bigger waves by going 19-3 with a 2.03 ERA (again third in the league) and finishing third in the Cy Young vote (Gooden won that, too).

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I decided while working on the Top 50 Free Agents post that it would make sense to also write up the top trade target on the market. Since new Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen said the team plans to compete in 2019, it seems like Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard are unlikely to be dealt — or, at least not during the offseason. That points to J.T. Realmuto as the clear top trade target in the league (and No. 24 in July’s Trade Value Rankings) — and that’s before nearly half the questions in my chat on Wednesday were asking me how much it would cost for various teams to trade for Realmuto.

I could approach this from an insider-y perspective and tell you what teams are telling me the price probably is, but that approach is limited in a few ways. First off, I’m not sure anyone really knows what the price is: the Marlins have turned down strong offers for a year now and still seem inclined to try to extend Realmuto, even thoughhis agent said he’s not having it. Since Miami has this one major asset left to move in its rebuild, they may act irrationally, but the market pieces may be falling into place for someone to pay a price that justified this delay.

If forced to succinctly describe the current state of catching in the major leagues, I would say it sucks. I’ll let Mike Petriello to provide some details and point you to the positional leaderboard, but if you just tried to predict which catchers would be worth two-plus wins and remain at catcher primarily for the next five seasons, how many would you have? Realmuto is one, and if you think Willson Contreras and Gary Sanchez may play a lot more first base or get hurt or be inconsistent in this span, it’s possible that there isn’t another one. Being charitable, there’s just a handful, and they all cost a lot or aren’t available.

Putting all of this together, Realmuto offers the age-28 and age-29 seasons of the best long- and short-term catcher in the game, and he’ll cost between $15 million and $20 million for those seasons, depending on how his arbitration salaries work out. You have him long enough to make two runs at a title and get a comp pick at the end, an exclusive negotiating window for an extension, a non-risky length of a deal, and cheap enough salaries that any team can afford it.

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Less than a week ago, Clayton Kershaw had to worry about every single pitch he was throwing in the World Series. And then after he threw most of those pitches well, but some of those pitches not well enough, he had to worry about the future of his career. Kershaw had to decide whether to opt out of his existing contract, which promised him $65 million over the next two years. If you’ve stayed in touch with baseball at all this week, you knew Kershaw and the Dodgers had moved the decision point to Friday. Decision’s been made. Kershaw will stay in LA, and he’s effectively getting a one-year extension.

Kershaw breakdown: $31M in 2019, ‘20 and ‘21, plus $1M each for 24 starts, 26 starts, 28 starts, 30 starts. Also gets $1.5M for Cy Young, $500K for second- or third-place finish.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 2, 2018

Instead of two years and $65 million, Kershaw’s contract has been reworked to three years and $93 million, with some achievable bonuses. This doesn’t guarantee that Kershaw will stay with the Dodgers for the rest of his life, but it’s a major step in that direction, since when this is over Kershaw will be approaching 34 years old. This was the clearest opportunity for Kershaw to leave. The opportunity wasn’t seized, and while I have no specific rooting interest, I’m rather pleased about that.

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The popularity of baseball is oft-discussed and yet somewhat difficult to measure. We can look at everything from attendance to jersey sales to commercials to revenue and yet fail to reach any real conclusions due to the constantly changing ways in which people consume media and celebrate fandom.

Another measure is television viewership and ratings. Determining the number of people who have enough interest to watch the sport on television should be a relatively good measure of popularity, although even those measures need context to make any sense. On one hand, local television ratings remain strong during the season, indicating relatively widespread support for the game. On the other hand, the ratings for this season’s World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers were not good.

Consider a couple of headlines. Like Boston-LA World Series Struck Out Looking for Fox from the LA Times and like The 2018 World Series was Good for the Red Sox–and Bad for Baseball from The Atlantic. Even commissioner Rob Manfred acknowledged disappointment with the ratings after the first few games.

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For the second straight year, the Dodgers’ season has ended in a World Series appearance but not a World Series victory. While the Red Sox’ four-games-to-one win might show up in history as something of a blowout, the Dodgers were one key hit away from victory in Game One. If they’d also held onto a fifth-inning lead in Game Two and an eighth-inning lead in Game Four, we’d be talking about a great Dodgers team finally winning it all.

It didn’t happen that way, though — and it wasn’t because the Red Sox wanted it more or because the Dodgers’ analytics failed them. Sometimes baseball happens. It happened to the Dodgers, and in the end, the more deserving team won.

Win or lose, the Dodgers were going to face a lot of questions this offseason. Here are the four most-pressing questions in need of an answer.

Bring Back Clayton Kershaw?

Clayton Kershaw could make the decision easy for everyone by not opting out of the two years and $65 million he has left on his contract. There are plenty of concerns with Kershaw: his velocity has declined and he’s relying on his slider more than ever. The future Hall of Famer will begin next season at 31 years old, hardly an elder, but certainly past his prime. Despite those concerns, Kershaw started 31 games in 2018 and pitched 191.1 innings, including the postseason. His ERA and FIP, including the playoffs, were 2.96, and 3.31, respectively. Those are both very good numbers along with his 3.6 WAR from the regular season. Among pending free-agent pitchers, only Patrick Corbin had a better season — and Kershaw showed he could still get outs at a high rate with declining velocity.

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In Game Five of the World Series on Sunday night, behind a stifling seven-inning, three-hit effort from David Price — on three days of rest, even — and a pair of home runs by Steve Pearce, the Red Sox completed their dismantling of the Dodgers with a 5-1 victory and a four-games-to-one Series win. Like the other games in the series, this one was close for a while. Ultimately, though, the Red Sox pulled away late, with the Dodgers unable to produce a run beyond David Freese’s leadoff homer in the bottom of the first inning. On top of their franchise-record 108 wins, the Red Sox went 11-3 in the postseason, losing just one game in each round of the playoffs. They’ll take their place among the most dominant championship teams of recent vintage, and have a claim as the best in franchise history.

To these eyes, the World Series turned on eight factors, areas that set the Red Sox apart from the Dodgers in what was, at times, a fairly close series that will nonetheless look rather lopsided in the history books.

Two-Out Damage

Continuing what they did against the Astros in the ALCS, the Red Sox scored the majority of their runs against the Dodgers with two outs. In fact, the totals and rates in the two rounds match up almost exactly: 18 out of 29 runs scored against Houston (62.0%) and 18 of 28 against Los Angeles (64.3%). In the World Series they hit .242/.347/.484 in 72 plate appearances with two outs and put up video-game numbers — .471/.609/.882 in 23 PA — with two outs and runners in scoring position. Their OPS in that latter situation set a World Series record:

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