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 »

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 San Diego Padres.

Batters

Not that there was any real chance that his 2019 debut was a fluke, but Fernando Tatis Jr. kept it going in 2020, proving very deserving of his place in the NL MVP voting. Tatis is probably the most likely of the game’s young starts to pull a Mike Trout and make the Padres’ 90-win challenge simply one of building a .500 team around him. And so far, they’ve more than done that! Tatis finally got his middle infield partner, which rather than being Luis Urías, came in the form of Jake Cronenworth, seemingly the umpteenth high minors second baseman with power developed by the Rays in the last decade. Cronenworth’s 2019 minor league breakout looked quite real once he reached the bigs. Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres made an announcement yesterday that Schrödinger would be proud of, releasing news that they had signed Mike Clevinger to a two-year deal covering his arbitration-eligible seasons and also that he would be lost for the 2021 season due to Tommy John surgery. In the short-term, they lose a talented starting pitcher they just traded for a few months ago. Taking a longer look, they’re betting on a solid recovery in 2022 and will be paying just $11.5 million in guaranteed money for that season’s work. (The details of the deal, per MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell: Clevinger gets $2 million in ’21, $6.5 million in ’22, and a $3 million deferred signing bonus.)

The recent trade, the elbow surgery, and Clevinger’s arbitration eligibility make this transaction a little more complicated than it might look at first glance. First, the trade is essentially irrelevant at this point. While the Padres gave up a lot in quantity to acquire Clevinger, any cost is now sunk. San Diego certainly hoped for more than four good regular-season starts and a single postseason inning, but injuries prevented Clevinger from doing more, and the same arm trouble will now prevent him from pitching at all in 2021.

With the trade behind them, the Padres were faced with three options.

Option 1: Tender Clevinger a Contract

Clevinger earned a pro-rated portion of his $4.1 million salary last season, his first year of arbitration eligibility. While arbitration salaries are a bit murky this season, he likely would have been in line for $5 million or so in arbitration for next season and maybe another $6 million or more in 2022 after sitting out the ’21 campaign. That ’22 salary wouldn’t be guaranteed at all until the Padres tendered him a contract next December, and even then, only a small portion would be guaranteed at that time.

Assuming salary arbitration works the same under a new Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2022, if the Padres didn’t like Clevinger’s progress, they could cut him all the way up to Opening Day and still only owe 45 days of termination pay (30 days if on or before the 16th day of Spring Training). This option has San Diego paying money now to retain greater flexibility for the 2022 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Without a true minor league season on which to fixate, I spent the summer watching and evaluating young big leaguers who, because of the truncated season, will still be eligible for prospect lists at the end of the year. This is the final divisional installment of those thoughts, as well as a general recap. The other divisions can be found here: National League East, NL Central, American League East, Central, and West.

Below is my assessment of the National League West, covering players who have appeared in big league games. The results of these final 2020 changes made to player rankings and evaluations can be found over on the updated Board, though I provide more specific links throughout this post in case readers only care about one team. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers are a machine. They’re star-studded, of course — Mookie Betts, Corey Seager, Cody Bellinger, Walker Buehler, Clayton Kershaw. I almost don’t know where to stop naming Dodgers. They’re deep, too — their role players could start for most teams, and their development pipeline keeps churning out relievers and shockingly good catchers, more than any team has a right to.

This is an article about Game 3 of the Dodgers-Padres NLDS, during which Los Angeles eliminated San Diego to advance to the NLCS. Don’t worry, there will be a tick-tock of who swung at what, who caught what, and when the damage was done. But I couldn’t stop thinking of a very old poem when I was watching the Dodgers, and honestly, that poem has more drama in it than this game did.

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias is, in theory, about hubris. Heck, it’s about hubris in practice, too. As every high school English teacher in the world can tell you, the imagery of an old, decrepit statue proclaiming its greatness even as it slowly crumbles into nothingness is a lesson in humility — you might think you’re great, but time wounds all heels. Soon enough, it will all be in the past.

Someday, that will be true of the Dodgers. Bellinger and Betts will get old and retire. Kershaw will be an old-timer who shows up at the stadium once a year for a celebration of his career. Julio Urías or Dustin May might leave the team; the Chris Taylors and Max Muncys will stop panning out quite so well.

As of yet, however, the Dodgers haven’t declined. They’re at the peak of their powers, Ozymandias in his own time. They towered over the Padres, made them look small. Baseball isn’t the kind of sport where you can dominate your opponent; on any given night, the margin separating victory and defeat is small and largely made of random chance, whether a ball eludes a glove or a bat misses the sweet spot by a fraction of an inch. And yet, the Dodgers just seemed better, like San Diego was accomplishing something merely by keeping even. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a moment in almost every Clayton Kershaw postseason start where the entire enterprise threatens to swing completely off its axis — where the boulder, finally nearing the top of the hill, begins its inexorable roll back down, leaving the three-time Cy Young winner flattened underneath it. It never happened in the Wild Card round, when Kershaw sliced and diced a punchless Brewers lineup over eight scoreless innings, but it arrived in Game 2 of the NLDS against the Padres in the sixth inning, when two pitches and two swings seemed like they would undo all of the veteran lefty’s hard work.

Clayton Kershaw is not Clayton Kershaw™ any more. At the same time, he is neither bad nor finished, and his 2020 was a resurgence previously hard to imagine for a 32-year-old man with 2,300-plus innings on his arm and a wobbly back that shifts and grinds like tectonic plates. He made 10 starts and threw 58.1 innings and struck out 62 batters and posted a 2.16 ERA, a hair off his 2.13 mark in 2016, the last year when he was really, truly the best pitcher in baseball. Since then he’s been more passable imitation of himself than the genuine thing, but this season was proof that he could adjust and thrive despite a fastball that’s past its peak.

The trick to Kershaw’s success, as Ben Lindbergh noted over at The Ringer, is that he starts off with that fastball — which, after dipping to an average of 90.5 mph, a career low, in 2019, rose back up 91.6 this year and got up to 93–94 — and then goes to his slider. It’s a winning strategy for several reasons: Hitters tend to let the first pitch go, allowing Kershaw to pump in strikes and get ahead; and his slider is a monster of a pitch. None of that likely works without that four-seamer getting a little more life on it, but Kershaw also has smarts and savvy and spin on his side, and he can reach back and find his old self albeit without the heat.

So it was against Milwaukee and so it looked against San Diego. For the first five innings, Kershaw stuck to his plan: 19 first-pitch fastballs out of 24 offerings, 45 fastballs total averaging 91.7 mph and peaking at 93.6, lots of two-strike sliders. And for five innings it worked, aside from a Wil Myers RBI double in the second on a slider that caught too much of the plate; otherwise, weak contact and strikeouts abounded. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Diego Padres knew this was the outcome they risked. Just two pitches into the second inning of his start in Game 1 of the NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers, right-handed pitcher Mike Clevinger made a somber exit from the game, wincing at a pain in his elbow. He would later say it felt like bones were hitting the back of his elbow. The Padres knew this might happen, because it was almost exactly what did the last time Clevinger started a game, back on September 23. It was the reason his attempt to clear himself for the team’s Wild Card series last week failed. This was the risk the team took, however, because it was still the Padres’ best chance at avoiding precisely what happened anyway — a revolving door of relievers being asked to keep the team afloat for a fourth time in as many playoff games.

It wasn’t the Padres’ bullpen that stole the show on Tuesday, however, but that of the Dodgers, who picked up another short start by Walker Buehler by silencing San Diego’s deep lineup en route to a 5-1 victory to open the best-of-five series at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. The second game of the series will take place Wednesday at 9:08 p.m.

Buehler went four innings for the Dodgers while allowing just one run on two hits, but walked four and threw 95 pitches. Behind him, Dustin May, Victor González, Blake Treinen and Kenley Jansen combined for five innings of one-hit shutout baseball, striking out six and walking none.

For five innings, the Padres’ bullpen had walked a high-wire act without falling: eight walks, a hit by pitch, and an error in the field behind them, yet somehow just one run allowed. Those numbers suggest shoddy command, to be sure, but they also show the lengths to which the ‘pen was willing to go to avoid giving into the Dodgers’ powerful lineup. Of the 116 pitches thrown by Padres arms over those innings, just 58 were strikes. That led to a mind-numbing 11 hitters reaching three-ball counts; it also led to the Dodgers not recording a hit.

In the sixth inning, the dam finally broke. With the game tied at one apiece, Padres right-hander Garrett Richards walked Chris Taylor with one out before surrendering the first hit of the game — a Mookie Betts double to right-center. Left-hander Matt Strahm was then brought into face Corey Seager, who scored Taylor on a fly ball to give Los Angeles its first lead of the game. Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres and Dodgers submitted their rosters for the Division Series on Tuesday morning, a formality for most postseason series but one that this time around carried considerable intrigue. As was hinted by multiple reports in the 24 hours leading up to the deadline, the team has indeed included Mike Clevinger, who has pitched just one inning since September 13 due to issues with his biceps and elbow and who was left off the Wild Card Series roster, and furthermore, they have tabbed him to start Game 1. Dinelson Lamet, who similarly left his September 25 start with tightness in his biceps and missed the Wild Card Series, was not included.

To review: after throwing seven innings of two-hit shutout ball on September 13 against the Giants, Clevinger was scratched from his turn five days later against the Mariners due to soreness in his right biceps. After the team and the 29-year-old righty were reassured by a bullpen session on September 21, he started against the Angels two days later, and pitched a 1-2-3 first inning, striking out both David Fletcher and Mike Trout, but his velocity was down a bit, and he didn’t return for the second inning. The Padres said his biceps was bothering him again, and two days later, they revealed that he had been diagnosed with posterior elbow impingement (a side effect of inflammation) and given a cortisone shot.

Clevinger resumed playing catch on September 28 and then threw a 23-pitch bullpen session the next day, but was left off the Wild Card Series roster. After a higher-intensity bullpen session on Sunday, the Padres sounded notes of optimism that made their way into a handful of tweets suggesting he was likely to be added and to start Game 1. That is indeed the case. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: The Padres did indeed include Mike Clevinger on their roster, which was submitted on Tuesday morning, but not Dinelson Lamet. For more on the impact of both teams’ rotation and roster decisions, please see here.

Despite some nail-biting moments in their respective Wild Card Series, the Dodgers swept the Brewers and the Padres outlasted the Cardinals to produce a Division Series matchup that just so happens to pit the National Leagues’s two best teams by both won-loss record (the Dodgers went 43-17, the Padres 37-23) and run differential (+136 for the former, +84 for the latter) against each other. In that regard, it’s a pity the two teams only get a best-of-five series to settle things instead of a best-of-seven. With MVP candidates Mookie Betts, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Manny Machado — not to mention past MVPs Cody Bellinger and Clayton Kershaw — and perhaps some future Cy Young candidates, this one has the potential to be as entertaining as any later-round series.

The Dodgers, after playing at a 116-win pace during the regular season — not necessarily the best omen, mind you — never trailed the Brewers during the Wild Card Series. They didn’t exactly run away with things in their 4-2 and 3-0 wins, but none of their pitchers had to work back-to-back days. The Padres, who played at a 100-win pace but lost starters Mike Clevinger and Dinelson Lamet to arm injuries during the final week of the season, won their first playoff series in 22 years, beating the Cardinals despite not getting more than 2.1 innings from a starting pitcher in any of the three games. They lost Game 1 and had to climb out of a four-run hole in the later innings of Game 2, but won the rubber match via a nine-pitcher shutout, an unprecedented postseason showing. Four of their pitchers worked all three games, though none threw more than three total innings.

During the regular season, the Dodgers beat the Padres in six out of 10 games, and outscored them 60-48. A single 11-2 win on August 13 — during which Chris Paddack was shellacked for six runs in three innings while Julio Urías pitched 6.1 strong innings — accounted for the lion’s share of that run differential.

Worth noting: this series will be played in the Globe Life Field, the brand new home of the Texas Rangers. It’s covered, and has artificial turf, and with outfield dimensions of 329′-372′-407′-374′-326′ from left to right, it’s shorter to the power allies but deeper to center field than its predecessor. It plays as a pitcher-friendly venue, and could help the more fly ball-oriented Padres staff more than the Dodgers. The 66 homers hit there this year ranked 22nd in the majors, so for all the power these two teams showed during the regular season, there may not be as many fireworks. Read the rest of this entry »

The 0-0 score in the middle of the fifth inning in Friday’s decisive Wild Card series Game 3 between the Padres and Cardinals was, technically speaking, accurate. It was true that neither team had tallied a run to that point in the contest. But the thing about scores is that they hide things, details that influence the way a fan actually feels while watching the game. In this case, the score conveyed a tie — a situation in which neither team had yet gained the upper hand. It probably would have been difficult to find a Padres fan who agreed, however. St. Louis had their ace on the mound going strong, and had yet to even warm up a second pitcher. San Diego, meanwhile, had already used up five pitchers in the game. Even without allowing a run, it felt the team was playing from behind. It had been that way ever since they lost their two best starters the final weekend of the regular season, and when they lost Game 1 of the series, and when they literally named Craig Stammen their starter in a win-or-go-home playoff game.

I’m not sure when it is that feeling went away. Maybe it was when the Padres scored their first run in the bottom of the fifth, or when they added two more in a seventh inning full of defensive miscues from St. Louis. Maybe it wasn’t until the end of the game that it finally set in that the Padres had accomplished something stunning — a 4-0 win carried out by nine bullpen pitchers that advanced the team to an NLDS standoff with the rival Los Angeles Dodgers next week. It is the most pitchers ever used in a shutout during the live-ball era, and the first playoff series win for San Diego in 22 years.

It was the second-straight day the Padres used nine pitchers, after doing so in the team’s 11-9 victory in Game 2 on Thursday. The day before that, the team had used eight pitchers. In both of those games, however, the conga line marching in from the bullpen was the result of starting pitchers who allowed the game to slip away from them early. In Game 1, Chris Paddack only made it 2.1 innings before allowing six runs on eight hits. In Game 2, Zach Davies went just two innings and allowed four runs on five hits. With Dinelson Lamet and Mike Clevinger already ruled out of the series because of injuries suffered last weekend, the Padres’ options for Game 3 were limited. It wasn’t until just a few hours before first pitch that the team announced Stammen — who last started a game in 2010, and held a 5.63 ERA in 24 innings this season — would get the ball in the first inning.

But Stammen got the first five outs of the game while allowing just a single hit, and each arm that followed simply continued to put up zeroes. Padres pitchers allowed just four hits and three walks, striking out eight and enjoying stellar defensive work from the infield behind them. Read the rest of this entry »