MLB managers not named Tony La Russa did Zoom calls with members of the media this past week. Today’s column features highlights from several of those sessions.

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Two of the topics Dusty Baker addressed on Monday were job-related. One was the position he currently holds with the Houston Astros, the other was a role that’s never appealed to him. The latter is anathema to baseball’s Most Interesting Man in the World because it wouldn’t allow him to kick back and ruminate on life.

“One reason I never wanted to be a general manager is because you don’t really have an offseason,” Baker told a cohort of reporters. “He works all year, and doesn’t have much time off, but for the general manager, and front office people, this is the most busy time of the year.”

Baker is 71 years old with 23 managerial seasons under his belt. How much longer he’ll sit in that chair is a question he can’t answer, but he’s been around long enough to know that life can come at you from different directions. Much for that reason, he’s simply going with the flow.

“Depends on how I feel [and it] depends on how the team feels about me,” said Baker, who was hired by Houston prior to last season. “Changes are going to come about in life. I tend to think in terms of Walter Alston and Tom Lasorda. Those guys signed a series of 20 one-year contracts. I’m not lame anymore. You know what I mean? A lame duck can’t fly. But my wings aren’t clipped no more. I can always fly.” Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Miami Marlins.

Batters

To make the playoffs in 2020, the Marlins needed a few things to happen. First, some of their young starting pitching, the organization’s strength, had to take a big step forward. The other thing was that the offense had to become, well, an MLB-ready lineup. With a 2018 team wRC+ of 83 and 2019’s woeful 79, run scoring (or the lack thereof) was a serious drag on the team’s hopes. Doubling this humiliation is the fact that Miami’s punchless attack could be directly linked to the trades of Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, Marcell Ozuna, and J.T. Realmuto.

But with the lineup improving to a 95 wRC+ and the pitching being a plus, the Marlins snuck into the playoffs for the first time since 2003. The temporary (crossing fingers) expansion to the playoff field and some fortune also aided, allowing Miami to play October baseball despite a record right around .500 and a Pythagorean record of 26–34. But again, flags fly forever!

The challenge is that the offense remains a team weakness, and it’s unlikely there’s any savior in the organization. While it would be incorrect to say that the Marlins didn’t get anyone solid in return for their quartet of traded stars — Sixto Sánchez is a wonderful young pitcher to have under your employ — it is fair to say that there’s a real chance they didn’t get any offensive contributors in these trades. Starlin Castro is already one (and wasn’t a prospect), and none of Jorge Alfaro, Lewis Brinson, Monte Harrison, Isan Díaz, or Magneuris Sierra were the reasons they made the playoffs. Miami did indirectly pick up a solid prospect by the transitive property of trade-ality — Zac Gallen was acquired in the Ozuna trade and was later swapped for Jazz Chisholm — but only Chisholm projects by ZiPS to have a 10-WAR career. Only two position players project to have at least 10 WAR remaining: Chisholm and Brian Anderson. The average in ZiPS is about five hitters per team, and a young team emerging from a rebuild ought to have more than this at this point. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 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. 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.

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 — 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 thirties did he strike out more than 80 times in a season, and in his prime, he walked far more often than he struck out. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 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.

At a moment when baseball is so obsessed with velocity, it’s remarkable to remember how recently it was that a pitcher could thrive, year in and year out, despite averaging in the 85-87 mph range with his fastball. Yet thats exactly what Mark Buehrle did over the course of his 16-year career. Listed at 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, the burly Buehrle was the epitome of the crafty lefty, an ultra-durable workhorse who didn’t dominate but who worked quickly, used a variety of pitches — four-seamer, sinker, cutter, curve, changeup — moving a variety of directions to pound the strike zone, and relied on his fielders to make the plays behind him. From 2001-14, he annually reached the 30-start and 200-inning plateaus, and he barely missed on the latter front in his final season.

August Fagerstrom summed up Buehrle so well in his 2016 appreciation that I can’t resist sharing a good chunk:

The way Buehrle succeeded was unique, of course. He got his ground balls, but he wasn’t the best at getting ground balls. He limited walks, but he wasn’t the best a limiting walks. He generated soft contact, but he wasn’t the best at generating soft contact. Buehrle simply avoided damage with his sub-90 mph fastball by throwing strikes while simultaneously avoiding the middle of the plate:

That’s Buehrle’s entire career during the PITCHf/x era, and it’s something of a remarkable graphic. You see Buehrle living on the first-base edge of the zone, making sure to keep his pitches low, while also being able to spot the same pitch on the opposite side of the zone, for the most part avoiding the heart of the plate. Buehrle’s retained the ability to pitch this way until the end; just last year [2015], he led all of baseball in the percentage of pitches located on the horizontal edges of the plate.

Drafted and developed by the White Sox — practically plucked from obscurity, at that — Buehrle spent 12 of his 16 seasons on the South Side, making four All-Star teams and helping Chicago to three postseason appearances, including its 2005 World Series win, which broke the franchise’s 88-year championship drought. While with the White Sox, he became just the second pitcher in franchise history to throw multiple no-hitters, first doing so in 2007 against the Rangers and then adding a perfect game in 2009 against the Rays. After his time in Chicago, he spent a sour season with the newly-rebranded Miami Marlins, and when that predictably melted down spent three years with the Blue Jays, helping them reach the playoffs for the first time in 22 years.

Though Buehrle reached the 200-win plateau in his final season, he was just 36 years old when he hung up his spikes, preventing him from more fully padding his counting stats or framing his case for Cooperstown in the best light. A closer look suggests that beyond the superficial numbers, while he’s the equal or better of several enshrined pitchers according to WAR and JAWS, he’s far off the standards, and doesn’t have the peripheral collection of accomplishments to bolster his candidacy. Like Tim Hudson, he may receive a smattering of support on a ballot that’s hardly crowded, but his candidacy isn’t likely to lack staying power. Read the rest of this entry »

I have the honor of casting a Hall of Fame ballot for the first time this year. Jay Jaffe does as well, each of us having joined the BBWAA in 2010 while colleagues at Baseball Prospectus. A decade later — and in Jay’s case, countless words written on the subject at hand — we are the first FanGraphs writers to be granted voting privileges.

I’m sharing my ballot in this column, but before doing so, it’s only appropriate that I tip my hat to my fellow first-time voter. As most everyone reading this knows, Jay’s JAWS system is invaluable when assessing Hall of Fame credentials, as is his must-read Cooperstown Casebook. Given his extensive research and analysis, there may not be a greater authority on the subject.

That being said, the question of what defines a Hall of Famer is inherently subjective. Following Ryan Thibodaux’s Ballot Tracker will tell you as much. With barely over a dozen made public, we’ve already seen ballots with 10 checkmarks, while others have been left blank. As a “Big Hall” guy, I’m clearly not in accord with the latter camp.

Jay and I disagree on at least one player. Barring an earth-shaking surprise, Omar Vizquel won’t get his vote. Conversely, the iconic-yet-polarizing shortstop was a no-brainer for me. The first names I checked on my ballot were Vizquel and Scott Rolen. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, when the Marlins announced they had hired Kim Ng as their new general manager, they set off a tidal wave of celebratory reactions from people both inside and outside baseball. That’s to be expected when a glass ceiling is broken. Her success was a triumph for women who have always had to fight for their place in the sport.

As soon as the news of Ng’s hiring went public, a question quickly gained prominence: How do you pronounce Ng? Media outlets reporting her hiring revealed a checkered understanding of the answer. The worst offender went with the extremely phonetic interpretation of “N-G.” Most got close, and those familiar with her work in baseball got it right. (To be clear, she pronounces it “ang,” which differs from the pronunciation of some Chinese Americans, who might pronounce it “ing.”

The widespread confusion about something as basic as Ng’s name is an extension of a few all too common questions most Asian Americans are familiar with: What are you? Where are you from? These reductive questions flow from the perpetual perception of foreignness that colors the experience of many Asian people in America. And it shows why Ng’s ascent to the top position in the Marlins organization is so important for Asian Americans, too.

Ng is the second Asian person to hold the position of general manager in major league baseball, and the first Asian American as well as the first Chinese American to rise to the top. Farhan Zaidi, who is of Pakistani descent, is Canadian-born and became the first Asian person to hold the title of general manager when he reached that position with the Dodgers in 2014. Ng also became just the second Asian American to become the GM in any of the major men’s North American professional sports — Rich Cho was the first when he was named GM of the Portland Trail Blazers in 2010. This dearth of Asian people in leadership positions extends to the field as well. There have been just two field managers of Asian descent in baseball, and there are just a handful of others across the other major men’s sports. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, the Marlins announced that Kim Ng would be assuming the role of general manager. It was a historic move for a number of reasons: She’s the first woman and first Asian-American to be hired as a GM in the major leagues, and is indeed the first woman in any major American men’s pro sport to hold that role. It was also a move that was long foretold, as many pointed out, linking to various blog posts and lists of years and decades past that included Ng’s name as one to watch in the world of high-ranking baseball executives. She’s been at least an assistant GM for as long as I’ve been alive. “When I got into this business,” her statement posted to the Marlins’ social media read, “it seemed unlikely that a woman would lead a major-league team, but I am dogged in the pursuit of my goals.”

It was a celebratory day for many women in baseball, a sign of how far they have come and how far they could still go, and a testament to Ng’s individual drive and ability, which, given her history, is undeniable. It was also a celebratory day for Asian-Americans in baseball. What once seemed unlikely, and before that unimaginable, is now real, tangible, and true — not only for Ng individually, not only for the other people who have blazed trails in this industry, and not only for all the historically underrepresented people she might inspire to pursue careers in the game, but also for literally everyone, apparently, in the entire sport. All those heavy-hitters and decision-makers who for the decades upon decades prior to this day were fine with maintaining the status quo — this moment was, somehow, their achievement to celebrate as well.

When you’re a kid, you can dream of being all kinds of ridiculous, incredible things. The first person to create a cat-to-human translation system. The first person to walk on Mars. A kajillionaire, a world-peace creator, an undersea explorer — all at the same time, all existing within the same realm of possibility. You get older, of course, and with your increasing ability to understand the world around you, to grasp what is expected of someone like you, the dreams get scaled and hedged accordingly. You absorb information and adjust your ideas of what is possible. Kajillionaire becomes maybe a full-time job and your debt paid off by the time you’re 50. World-peace creator becomes maybe you survive another year of being exploited by your racist boss. The moon becomes a tiny room in a shared house for $900 a month. It’s good, after all, to have goals that are actually possible to reach. That’s what you’re taught in career planning classes and therapy sessions: achievable, real, tangible. The bounds of the imagination shrink. Read the rest of this entry »

Torey Lovullo didn’t have a lot of game-changing hits over the course of his career. The Arizona Diamondbacks manager finished his playing days with just 60 RBIs in parts of eight big-league seasons as a utility infielder. But he did have a handful of memorable knocks, three of which he recounted in a conversation earlier this week.

The first of Lovullo’s standout moments came in his second-ever game. Called up by the Detroit Tigers in September 1988, he plated a run with an 18th-inning single against the New York Yankees. Adding to the thrill was the fact that the Tigers were in a three-team pennant race with the Bombers and the Boston Red Sox. The balloon burst in short order. Claudell Washington walked off Detroit southpaw Willie Hernandez with a two-run shot in the bottom half, negating Lovullo’s heroics in blunt fashion.

Five years later, the Santa Monica native turned the tables with an extra-inning walk-off of his own. Lovullo had signed with the California Angels — a team he’d grown up cheering for — prior to the 2013 season. On a July afternoon, he made the most of a second chance.

“In the bottom of the 11th inning, [Yankees manager] Buck Showalter walked the bases loaded in front of me and I popped up with one out,” recalled Lovullo. “We ended up going deeper into the game, and in the 14th inning he did the exact same thing [issued two intentional walks to load the bases]. This time I got a base hit. That was a proud moment for me, because I didn’t want it to happen again. A manager targeted me, and I came through.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlanta Braves finished sweeping the Miami Marlins on Thursday afternoon, issuing a 7-0 shellacking to knock the Fish out of the postseason. After holding Cincinnati’s bats firmly in check in two Wild Card games, the Braves’ bats exploded in Games 1 and 3, with a generally ineffective Miami lineup struggling to keep up.
Coming into the 2020 season, one of the big question marks surrounding the Marlins was just how effective they’d actually be at scoring runs. In 2019, the team finished last in the National League in runs scored, nearly half a run per game behind the 14th-place San Diego Padres. The Marlins added some veteran depth to the lineup in the form of Jesús Aguilar, Jonathan Villar, Corey Dickerson, and Matt Joyce last offseason — which feels like it was about five years ago at this point — and the hope was that with the team’s impressive stable of young pitching improving, they’d score just enough runs to become relevant. With an assist from a 16-team playoff format, that’s exactly what happened; the offense managed to support a generally solid rotation, and the weak bullpen (5.65 FIP) didn’t sink the team enough to drop it below .500.

That blueprint worked against the Cubs and their 10th-ranked offense and thanks to Sandy Alcantara and Sixto Sánchez, seven runs in two games still left Miami with significant room to spare. But shutting out the Braves is a trickier proposition and when Atlanta’s run-scoring machine ramped up, the Marlins failed to match it, leading them to be the first team eliminated from the round of eight. Read the rest of this entry »

This time there wasn’t much offense. On the heels of a Game 1 that finished 9-5, the Atlanta Braves took a commanding two-games-to-none lead in the NLDS by pushing past the Miami Marlins by a score of 2-0. Ian Anderson and four relievers combined for the shutout, with a pair of solo home runs providing just enough run-support for a suddenly-stellar pitching staff.

What scoring there was came early. Dansby Swanson took Pablo López deep in the second inning with what was his second home run in his last two at-bats. In Game 1, the 26-year-old shortstop — given name James Dansby Swanson — had homered his final time up to cap a six-run Atlanta seventh.

Travis d’Arnaud, who’d preceded Swanson’s Game 1 blast with one of his own, then went yard against López in the fourth. Seven plate appearances into the NLDS, 31-year-old backstop — given name Travis E. d’Arnaud — now had a single, a double, and a pair of walks to go along with his two dingers.

Anderson wasn’t giving up anything. A suddenly-feeble Marlins lineup managed just three hits off him in five-and-two thirds innings — a near copy-cat of his no-runs-on-two-hits, six-inning performance last week in the Wild Card round. Read the rest of this entry »