The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. 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.

In my previous multi-candidate roundup, I paired two lefties who haven’t gotten much traction on Hall of Fame ballots thus far in Andy Pettitte and Mark Buehrle. As a means of completing my coverage of the major candidates before the December 31 voting deadline, it made sense to group them into a single overview and invite readers wishing to (re)familiarize themselves with the specifics of their cases to check out last year’s profiles. Today, I’m doing the same for a pair of elite hitters who would already be enshrined if not for their links to performance-enhancing drugs: Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez.

Like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, both sluggers have transgressions that predate the introduction of drug testing and penalties in 2004. Via The New York Times (Ramirez) and Sports Illustrated (Rodriguez), both reportedly failed the supposedly anonymous 2003 survey test that determined whether such testing would be introduced. Had they not pressed their luck further, both might already be in Cooperstown alongside 2022 honoree David Ortiz, who reportedly failed the survey test, too. Alas, Ramirez was actually suspended twice, in 2009 and ’11; the latter ended his major league career, though he traveled the globe making comeback attempts. Rodriguez was suspended only once, but it was for the entire 2014 season due to his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal and his scorched-earth attempt to evade punishment.

Ramirez debuted with 23.8% on the 2017 ballot and only last year topped 30%. Rodriguez debuted with 34.3% in 2022 but barely inched up in ’23. Given that Bonds and Clemens topped out in the 65–66% range in 2022 and then were passed over by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee the following year, nobody should be holding their breaths for these two to get elected anytime soon. Read the rest of this entry »

Many transactions were obscured by the Ohtani-mania of the past week, perhaps none more than the always unheralded glove-first catcher signings. No one represents this category better than Austin Hedges, who MLB.com’s sources say returned to Cleveland on a one-year, $4 million pact after departing for Pittsburgh last offseason and winning a World Series ring with Texas. Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Astros finalized their deal — a two-year, $12 million contract — with Victor Caratini, whose own defensive skills have taken a huge leap forward the past two seasons. Each will serve as a backup to an exciting young catcher, hopefully furthering their respective development trajectories in the process.

Let’s start with Hedges. At this point, what you see is what you get with the 31-year-old veteran. His framing was as good as ever this past season, saving his clubs an estimated 16.9 runs per our FRM metric, good for second best in the majors. It’s his fourth season saving at least 12.5 runs, though his 2023 total came in fewer innings than all but one of the rest of the top-ten framers (Jason Delay, who ranked eighth). Baseball Savant sees a similar halo sitting atop Hedges’ catcher’s mask, with sterling framing and blocking more than making up for a merely average arm. Neither Savant nor FRM has him as a below-average framer (save for a small-sample 2016) in any individual season, and Savant has never cast him as a below-average blocker. Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Melvin feels that the San Francisco Giants could use more star power. Hearing the team’s new manager say as much when he met with the media in Nashville earlier this week prompted a question from yours truly. Prefacing it by pointing out that the San Diego Padres team he led last year had no shortage of it, I asked the veteran skipper if it is possible to have too much “star power.”

“Not necessarily,” replied Melvin, whose 2023 Padres underachieved to the tune of an 82-80 record. “It just depends on the makeup. Look, the year before we went to the NLCS in my first year there. Last year was a disappointing season, but I don’t think there’s anything to make of it being a poor year because there was too much star power. They have some really good players there, it just didn’t work out as well.

“I am big on incorporating,” Melvin added. “I think everybody needs a role and everybody needs to feel they’re a part of it. That makes for a much better clubhouse. Everybody feels they’re important. There’s an enthusiasm to that. I think there’s a place for both.”

Scott Harris largely agrees with Melvin. When the subject of impact free agents such as Shohei Ohtani came up, I asked Detroit’s President of Baseball Operations the same question that I’d asked his San Francisco contemporary. Read the rest of this entry »

Dave Dombrowski has had a highly successful career as a top-level front-office executive. Now the President of Baseball Operations for the Philadelphia Phillies, the 67-year-old Western Michigan University graduate’s resume includes World Series titles with the Florida Marlins and the Boston Red Sox, while nine other teams he’s constructed have reached the postseason before falling short. His current club has played October baseball in each of the past two seasons.

As Detroit sports fans know all too well, five of Dombrowski’s not-quite campaigns came with the Tigers from 2006-2014. Moreover, the majority of those disappointments are notable for a particular reason: a lack of reliable back-end bullpen arms torpedoed multiple opportunities to take home a title.

(Tigers fans wanting to avoid angst might want to skip the next two paragraphs.)

In Game 4 of the 2006 World Series, Fernando Rodney and Joel Zumaya combined to allow three late-inning runs in a 5-4 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. In 2011 the Tigers twice lost ALCS games in which the Texas Rangers scored four runs in the 11th inning, Two years later, five Detroit relievers combined to cough up a 5-1 eighth-inning lead in ALCS Game 2 against the Boston Red Sox, ruining a Max Scherzer start and depriving the Tabbies of what would have been a 2-0 series lead. That year’s Game 7 was even more painful. A 2-1 seventh-inning lead, this in another well-pitched Scherzer start, turned into a 5-2 loss when Jose Veras gave up a grand slam to Shane Victorino. Read the rest of this entry »

José Ramírez is the definition of a set-it-and-forget-it player, and I mean that at least a little bit literally. Neither we nor our friends over at Baseball Prospectus published a single article that focused on him during a 2023 season when, for the fourth time in a row, he finished in the top 10 in the AL MVP voting. He turned out to have a very interesting season, and not just because he was, as always, excellent.

In June of 2022, Ramírez injured the ulnar collateral ligament in his right thumb. To the surprise of the Cleveland coaching staff, he decided to play through significant pain and postpone surgery until the offseason. Despite seeing his power drop off dramatically, he ended the season with a 141 wRC+ and 6.4 WAR. He finally had the surgery in November and came into the 2023 season healthy, but he got off to a slow start and finished with a 123 wRC+. It was his worst showing since 2019, when a broken hamate bone ended his season prematurely. (As an aside, if you’re desperate for for reassurance that Mike Trout will bounce back from his hamate injury, look no further than Ramírez, who immediately returned to superstardom in 2020.) 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 week’s 40-man roster deadline was less eventful than usual (we only had one trade on deadline day), but as always, a number of young players became big leaguers in a certain sense, and teams had no choice but to indicate what they think of lots of fringe prospects who they either did or did not choose to roster. This day of clerical activity is the culmination of the efforts of the players themselves, the people in player development who have helped turn them into big leaguers, and the scouting and decision-making portions of each org that put their stamp of approval on the prospects. 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. I’m more focused on analyzing roster depth, fit and flexibility in this space than on scouting players (especially when they’re star prospects you already know well). I’ll have a separate post on the National League. Read the rest of this entry »

Mental Performance Coach

Location: Goodyear, Arizona, United States

Primary Purpose
The Arizona-based Mental Performance Coach will be tasked with helping to ensure and enhance the overall well-being of the Cleveland Guardians Players in all areas related to Mental Performance and Wellness including, but not limited to personality, motivation, self-awareness, dealing with failure, transitions (professional, developmental, and cultural), recovery from injury, energy management and mental discipline. In addition, the Mental Performance Coach will provide training to the staff and coaches in the aforementioned areas and will act as a mental health ambassador for referrals and continuity of care in the mental health space.

Responsibilities & Duties

• Collaborate daily with the Mental Performance team, Director, and Coordinator.
• Triage/assess/treatment plan for athletes who need mental performance support in Arizona and remotely.
• Act as mental health ambassadors to support players and staff who need mental health referrals.
• Provide support to players in Goodyear, AZ during physical rehab programming.
• Refine injury rehab mental skills and mental health curriculum/programming.
• Provide in-person support to players in Goodyear, AZ, and support referral process for players outside of Goodyear, AZ.
• Provide consultation to field coaches and support staff regarding the Mental Performance of players.
• Collaborate with coaches, S&C, Sports Medicine, and Sports Science to clarify goals and support athletes.
• Be able to both work independently in the service provisions of the job and in close collaboration with inter and intra-team dynamics.
• Communicate daily with other Organization Coordinators to develop interdisciplinary plans for players.
• Adhere to the AASP code of ethics.
• Adhere to Cleveland Guardians Policies and Procedures.
• Act as a role model within and outside the Cleveland Guardians Organization
• Demonstrate flexible and efficient time management and ability to prioritize workload.
• Meet Sport Psychology and Mental Performance productivity standards.

Education & Experience Requirements and Preference

The Cleveland Guardians are committed to developing and maintaining an environment that embraces all forms of diversity to enrich our core values, enhance our competitive position, strengthen our impact within our community, and foster a greater sense of belonging for our employees.

In this spirit, we know studies have shown that people from historically underserved groups – including women and people of color – are less likely to apply for jobs unless they believe they meet every one of the qualifications as described in a job description. We are most interested in finding the best candidate for the job and understand that candidate may bring certain skills and experiences to the role that are not listed above, but that would add tremendous value to our organization. We would encourage you to apply, even if you don’t believe you meet every one of our qualifications described.

• A Graduate-level degree in Sport/Performance Psychology or similar discipline.
• A Minimum of 4 (four) years of relevant (postgraduate) mental performance experience working with elite & and multicultural performers/players.
• Extensive interest and experience in providing mental performance and psycho-educational programming.
• Familiarity and interest in triaging, and understanding the mental health/wellness continuum (mental health first aid training, graduate-level coursework, etc.).
• Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC®) via the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP).
• Ability to adapt interventions to athletes and coaches of various backgrounds.
• Capacity to travel up to 30 days a year.
• Willingness and capacity to develop strong relationships with players and coaches.
• Demonstrated success with applied experience, intervention skills, superior awareness of maintaining appropriate boundaries, and capacity to work with high levels of confidentiality in both a flexible way as required by a team environment and one that respects individual privacy.
• Excellent written, communication, and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Experience

We are looking for a variety of skill sets. If you have demonstrated experience with any of the following, you may be who we are looking for to join our team.

• Bilingual English and Spanish.
• Previous experience working in an interdisciplinary high-performance environment.
• Working knowledge of the mental side of baseball.

Organizational Requirements

• Reads, speaks, comprehends, and communicates English effectively in all communications.
• Represents the Cleveland Guardians in a positive fashion to all business partners and the general public.
• Ability to develop and maintain successful working relationships with members of the Front Office.
• Ability to act according to organizational values and service excellence at all times.
• Ability to work with diverse populations and have a demonstrated commitment to social justice.
• Ability to walk, sit, or stand for an entire shift.
• Ability to work extended days and hours, including holidays and weekends.
• Ability to move throughout all areas and levels of the Ballpark.
• Ability to work in a diverse and changing environment.
• Occasional physical activity such as lifting and carrying boxes up to 25 lbs.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Cleveland Guardians.

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.

Hank Peters

In a career that spanned over four decades, from 1946 to ’91, Hank Peters helped lay the groundwork for two powerhouses: the mid-1970s A’s as an executive with their Kansas City forerunners, and the mid-1990s Cleveland squad as the team’s president and general manager from ’87-91. In between those stints, he served as the general manager of the Orioles from 1975 to ’87, navigating the dawn of free agency and making key trades that helped the team win at least 90 games six times, highlighted by a pennant in ’79 and a championship in ’83.

Peters wasn’t particularly colorful, but he was meticulous without being overbearing, with a keen eye for talent. From his Washington Post obituary in 2015: “Patient and unflappable, Mr. Peters did most of his work away from the public spotlight. The Baltimore Sun once likened his laid-back persona to that of a ‘rubber tree plant in an insurance office.'” Within the aforementioned Sun column, from 1985, his admirers found him to be “a rock,” “a great organizer, a great detail man,” and “the consummate baseball man.”

Peters is the only general manager among the eight candidates on this ballot, though Lou Piniella served in that role briefly with the Yankees. He’s one of only two executives on the ballot, along with former National League president Bill White, whose credentials also include stardom as a player and a stretch as a pioneering broadcaster. Read the rest of this entry »

An entire offseason’s worth of managerial reshuffling took place early Monday afternoon, as the most coveted managerial role was filled and the most coveted managerial candidate found a home — just not how you’d think.

The Guardians first announced the hiring of Mariners bullpen coach and golden-voiced baritone Stephen Vogt. Shortly thereafter, news broke that the Cubs were hiring outgoing Brewers manager Craig Counsell, despite already having David Ross under contract for that position. Counsell had been expected to follow former Brewers baseball ops boss David Stearns to the Mets, but when he landed in Chicago, the Mets unveiled Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza as their new manager.

Counsell, regarded as one of the top skippers in the sport, has reset the market for manager salaries with a five-year, $40 million contract. A free agent after his Brewers contract expired, he interviewed with both New York and Cleveland and was regarded as both teams’ top choice. When he made his unexpected switch to Chicago, that made the other teams’ decisions easier, and thus followed the busy afternoon on the coaching carousel. Read the rest of this entry »