Gaylord Perry presented some kind of mathematical paradox to the mind of this young fan. If baseball had outlawed the spitball some 60 years earlier, how could this admittedly gray-haired guy in his early 40s have been grandfathered in? Yet there was Perry, throwing — or at least appearing to throw — wet or otherwise loaded baseballs with impunity, preceding each pitch with a detailed routine in which he’d rub his brow, both sides of the underbill of his cap, then the brim, then the side, then the brim again before delivering. Sometimes it was a decoy for the fact that he was hiding the foreign substance on his wrist, his neck, or somewhere on his uniform.

Master of the “spitball”. Made players angry, including Reggie Jackson was fuming. #RIPGaylordPerry pic.twitter.com/uH9PQAaqxx

— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) December 1, 2022

The math didn’t work, but the wet ones, or at least the belief that he was throwing them, did. In my early years of watching baseball, the rubber-armed, rule-bending rogue brought vivid color (not just the Padres’ infamous brown-and-yellow) to the more black-and-white corners of the game’s history, planting the evocative names of bygone spitballers such as Burleigh Grimes and Urban Shocker in my mind while earning his own spot in the annals. In 1978, the year I began closely following the game, Perry became the first pitcher to win a Cy Young Award in both leagues and just the third pitcher to reach 3,000 strikeouts, after Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson. On May 6, 1982, while a member of the Seattle Mariners, he became the 15th pitcher to reach 300 wins, the first in 19 years and the first of six from his cohort to reach that milestone; that season also brought the only time he was ejected for throwing an illegal pitch. On August 13, 1983, about six weeks from the end of his 22-year major league career, he became the third pitcher of that group, after Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton, to surpass Johnson’s previously unassailable record of 3,508 strikeouts. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, news broke that Jason Heyward had signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers. I’m not going to lie: there are very few teams who could have signed Heyward that would have compelled me to spend multiple hours doing research and writing about the former Cubs outfielder. Back in the day when he was floating in the free-agent market, I was excited about where he would land. His profile as a hitter has always compelled me: very good plate discipline, great athleticism, and, more interestingly, wiggly limbs.

I’m not sure I’ve ever used that saying before, but when I see Heyward, that’s what comes to mind. His arms and legs are always dancing in the box, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. In fact, he uses these movements to keep his body loose; energy can’t travel as smoothly through one’s body if there is tension in the way. Heyward has done this his entire life. It’s what made him special when he was one of the best high school players of all time, an incredibly productive minor leaguer, and a well-above-average hitter in Atlanta and briefly St. Louis. His success isn’t about removing these movements; rather, it’s about harnessing them.

Heyward’s run in Chicago didn’t bring out the best version of his swing. He was never expected to be an off-the-charts hitter, but his interest in the free-agent market at the time had much to do with his potential to harness the power and bat speed he had and turn that into more home runs. But for some reason, things instead went in the other direction, resulting in four below-average seasons by wRC+, two seasons of an exactly 100 wRC+, and an impressive run in the shortened 2020 season of a 131 wRC+ in 181 plate appearances. Yes, it was only a third of a full season, but Heyward flashed what seemed to be a concrete plate discipline improvement to go along with a swing that had been improved enough to do more damage on contact. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and today’s team is the Minnesota Twins.

Batters

Even with Carlos Correa unsigned, Minnesota’s offense looks solid, though there’s a larger-than-normal dropoff if injuries happen to hit hard. And unfortunately, there are lots of places for injuries to hit the Twins hard; it seems unlikely that Byron Buxton is ever going to play 140 games again, and Royce Lewis‘ exact return from a torn ACL is speculative. Left field appears to be a problem at present time, and though ZiPS was at one time fairly high on Alex Kirilloff, injuries and some mediocre cups-of-coffee during his healthy interregnums have caused his projection to deteriorate considerably in the last couple of years. It’s a moot point now that the Mets have brought back Brandon Nimmo, but given the outfield options, I’m not necessarily sure that Correa is that much more desirable than Nimmo would have been, something I probably wouldn’t say for almost every other team.

I’m sad to see a rather bland Luis Arraez projection; he’s one of my favorite players to watch hit, since he plays more like someone from 1922. But in the end, while he’s a fun throwback to a different time in style, he plays in 2022, and his lack of power puts a fairly hard ceiling on his value as a first baseman. If he had been a better middle infielder, he might be one of baseball’s best young bets to join the 3,000 hit club, though he’d probably be the worst player to collect 3,000 hits overall! If he’s truly limited to first base, Arraez probably fades out of the league fairly quickly; a .280/.340/.370 first baseman isn’t really a starter unless he plays defense like a futuristic cyborg Keith Hernandez. Read the rest of this entry »

Gather ‘round the fireplace, dear FanGraphs readers, because today I want to tell you a story. Ye be warned: It’s not for the faint of heart, and it’s probably more appropriate for Halloween night. But a little bit of spookiness never hurt the Christmas spirit — just ask Tim Burton. Here is the outfield depth chart for the Red Sox before they signed Masataka Yoshida:

Scary, huh? Enrique Hernández and Alex Verdugo are good — it’s the individuals behind them that create the horror. Jarren Duran here is like butter scraped over too much bread (which, from the butter’s perspective, has to be a pretty gruesome experience). Then there’s Hoy Park and Wilyer Abreu, who shouldn’t be getting big slices of the outfield pie on a supposedly contending team. Rob Refsnyder did put up a 146 wRC+ out of nowhere this season (in 57 games), but, c’mon. Yoshida’s arrival doesn’t alleviate the Red Sox’s shallow depth. But he is something they desperately needed: a fixture in left field. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets, who had gone some three days since singing a top free agent, went shopping again on Thursday evening. Brandon Nimmo was a sort of Aaron Judge situation-in-miniature: a New York team flirted with losing its best outfielder before realizing it’d be more trouble than it was worth to replace him. Best just to bring him back, even if it meant making him rich beyond the wildest fantasies of avarice.

Nimmo, the no. 9 player overall on our top 50 free agent list and no. 2 outfielder behind Judge, got paid quite a bit more than our projections, which is emerging as something of a theme this offseason. The readers thought he’d make an even $100 million over five years; Ben Clemens had Nimmo penciled in for $110 million over the same time frame. Instead, Nimmo has signed for eight years and $162 million.

To put that number in context: for $162 million, Nimmo could buy this 15-foot-by-25-foot inflatable water slide for every single one of the 578,000-plus residents of his native Wyoming. (Wayfair says two-day shipping is free for a purchase of this size. We shall see.) He’d then have enough left over to pay the $10 million the Mets agreed to pay relief pitcher David Robertson in their second major signing of the evening. And even after that he’d have some $1.2 million left over. Maybe he could spend that on a new garden hose or swim trunks so as to get the most out of the water slide. Read the rest of this entry »

The Braves have taken a heterodox approach to building a bullpen in recent years. Sometimes they apply the overall team strategy of strongly preferring players with ties to Georgia, like Collin McHugh and former Brave Will Smith. Sometimes they take fliers on players looking to reinvigorate their careers, like Kirby Yates and Nick Anderson. Sometimes they fleece the Angels for Raisel Iglesias, or sign a good closer to a short-term deal like Kenley Jansen, or draft and develop an A.J. Minter. Heck, sometimes they just call Jesse Chavez, and he magically appears in the bullpen.

This week, they’re trying a new tack, making a trade to shore up their already-solid relief corps. It wasn’t the biggest transaction of the week or anywhere near it, but every transaction deserves a little analysis. Let’s talk Braves and Tigers. Let’s talk Joe Jiménez, Justyn-Henry Malloy, and Jake Higginbotham:

#Braves acquire RHP Joe Jiménez: pic.twitter.com/VkFZGXIdhw

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) December 8, 2022

Jiménez is a walking advertisement for reliever volatility. Depending on the year, he’s been either excellent or near-unplayable. His true talent level likely lies somewhere in between his superlative 2022, when he struck out a third of opposing batters to go with pinpoint control, and his ’21, when he ran a 16.7% walk rate and an ERA approaching 6.00. Sure, relievers are volatile, but Jiménez has been really volatile. Read the rest of this entry »

In Game 1 of the World Series, Phillies manager Rob Thomson made a rather unorthodox pitching change, bringing in Ranger Suárez, his probable Game 3 starter, for the seventh inning. He did so because he wanted a lefty to face the heart of Houston’s lineup, and he had already used his best southpaw reliever a few innings prior. Philadelphia did have a second left-hander waiting in the bullpen – Brad Hand – but in that moment, it was clear Thomson didn’t trust him with the game on the line. Fast forward a couple of months: Hand is a free agent, and the Phillies have a new lefty in his place. On Tuesday at the Winter Meetings, the team signed Matt Strahm for a two-year, $15 million contract, per Jeff Passan of ESPN. By giving him the sixth-largest guarantee for a free-agent reliever this offseason, the Phillies are betting that he’ll pitch well enough that they don’t have to put Suárez back in the bullpen anytime soon.

Strahm received a similar deal as Chris Martin (two years, $17.5 million), but he’s far less proven of a player. A 31-year-old left-hander, he spent last season with the Red Sox, throwing 44.2 innings with 52 strikeouts and a 3.72 FIP. It was a solid bounce-back season after he missed most of 2021 recovering from patellar tendon surgery on his right knee. Indeed, the southpaw has had a career full of setbacks and breakthroughs. He was a 21st-round draft pick who pitched just 30 innings of rookie ball before Tommy John surgery shut him down. Yet when he finally began his professional career in earnest, he was utterly dominant, quickly rising through the ranks of the Royals’ farm system. In 2017, five years after being drafted 643rd overall, he was named a top-100 prospect by this very website.

72. Matt Strahm

Scouting Summary: I’m on Strahm as a starter not just because I think his changeup will progress to average as he continues to make up for lost development time due to injury, but also because he has excellent command of a vicious curveball that he regularly works inside to right-handed hitters. He’ll also run his fastball up to 96.

-Eric Longenhagen

Strahm’s prospect pedigree hinged on his mid-rotation potential, a ceiling he never reached. He was terrific pitching out of the pen in 2018, his first full season, yet the Padres (who had acquired him in a deadline deal in ’17) tried moving him into the starting rotation the following season, and he failed miserably. He wound up back in the bullpen by the All-Star break. He was great again in the second half, and it seemed like he had finally found his calling as a dependable reliever. Unfortunately, that stability didn’t last long, as he had a wildly inconsistent 2020 season and ultimately needed knee surgery in October. He was non-tendered after the 2021 season, and the Red Sox picked him up for cheap.

That’s Strahm in a nutshell: from unheralded draft pick to top prospect to failed starter to solid reliever to injured list to eight-figure free-agent deal. As a result of all those ups and downs, he is still figuring things out at 31 years old. Evidently, the Phillies think they can aid in his self-discovery and turn Strahm into a consistent relief option over the next two years. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2020 election, 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.

Bobby Abreu could do just about everything. A five-tool player with dazzling speed, a sweet left-handed stroke, and enough power to win a Home Run Derby, he was also one of the game’s most patient, disciplined hitters, able to wear down a pitcher and unafraid to hit with two strikes. While routinely reaching the traditional seasonal plateaus that tend to get noticed — a .300 batting average (six times), 20 homers (nine times), 30 steals (six times), 100 runs scored and batted in (eight times apiece) — he was nonetheless a stathead favorite for his ability to take a walk (100 or more eight years in a row) and his high on-base percentages (.400 or better eight times). And he was durable, playing 151 games or more in 13 straight seasons. “To me, Bobby’s Tony Gwynn with power,” said Phillies hitting coach Hal McRae in 1999.

“Bobby was way ahead of his time [with] regards to working pitchers,” said his former manager Larry Bowa when presenting him for induction into the Phillies Wall of Fame in 2019. “In an era when guys were swinging for the fences, Bobby never strayed from his game. Because of his speed, a walk would turn into a double. He was cool under pressure, and always in control of his at-bats. He was the best combination of power, speed, and patience at the plate.” Read the rest of this entry »

The A’s have made no secret of their intentions to spend as little as possible. Per Spotrac, they entered the offseason with a grand total of zero guaranteed dollars of active payroll, outside of arbitration and pre-arb salaries. Of the 39 players on their 40-man roster, only four are arb-eligible, and Tony Kemp, with all five years and 98 days of big league service time, is by far the most-tenured player on the team. They’ve traded nearly every productive major leaguer over the past calendar year for prospects and players making the minimum. But at the Winter Meetings, Oakland finally made its first signings of the offseason, agreeing to terms on two-year deals with utility player Jace Peterson and former Astros utility man Aledmys Díaz, the latter worth $15 million.

Originally drafted by the Padres in 2011, the 32-year old Peterson has made plenty of stops throughout his career, from Atlanta to New York and Baltimore; he spent the last three seasons with the Brewers before becoming a free agent this offseason. In 2022, he appeared in 112 games, starting 81 of them. Utilized almost exclusively as a platoon player, he racked up 293 plate appearances against right-handed pitchers, only stepping into the box 35 times against lefties. His primary platoon partner this year was Mike Brosseau, who posted a 117 wRC+ in 160 PA, about two-thirds of which came against southpaws. Peterson came up as a second baseman but has spent the bulk of his career as a super-utility player, in most seasons making starts at first, second, third, and both corner outfield spots. This year with the Brewers, he primarily played third base, making 67 starts there as everyday players took the bulk of playing time at the other positions he has usually manned.

Peterson’s biggest strength on the offensive side has been his disciplined approach at the plate. During his three-season stretch with the Brewers, he walked in 12.4% of plate appearances, and his 24.6% chase rate ranked in the 90th percentile among major league hitters, placing him in company of Joey Votto and Mookie Betts. He’s affectionately earned the nickname “On Base Jace” (he’s had three postseason plate appearances and drew walks in all of them) and slashed .238/.337/.373 with a 98 wRC+ during his time in Milwaukee. While his raw power grades out at about average, he has never hit double-digit homers and has a below-average ISO for his career, largely because he hits more ground balls than average and doesn’t pull the ball at a high rate. Despite these middling offensive numbers, he’ll likely slot into the heart of an Oakland lineup that had just two hitters with at least 300 PA and an above average wRC+, and with backstop Sean Murphy likely on the move in the near future, that list is cut to just Seth Brown. Read the rest of this entry »

With the avalanche of transactions crashing down during the Winter Meetings, I wouldn’t blame you for missing the Orioles’ signing of Kyle Gibson. General manager Mike Elias confirmed on Monday that the deal was official for one year and $10 million, identical to one that Gibson reportedly turned down from Toronto. But while you may not have noticed the deal, Orioles fans certainly did, as it was the club’s most significant move of the offseason thus far. In fact, apart from a pair of minor league signings in Josh Lester and Nomar Mazara, Gibson’s deal was Baltimore’s only move made in San Diego.

Yet, despite a reputation as a smaller-market team, the O’s seem to be on the precipice of competing, and they have been in on bigger names in the free-agent pitching market. They have been linked to all of Jameson Taillon, Carlos Rodón, and Noah Syndergaard. In the same breath as his confirmation of the Gibson deal, Elias indicated that the Orioles were not done spending just yet.

That’s good news for a club whose starting pitching ranked 19th in WAR last year. The group’s 3.97 ERA came in at 17th, but Baltimore outperformed its FIP, xFIP, and SIERA, and its K-BB% ranked 21st. That’s hardly a playoff-caliber rotation, despite missing out on the last AL Wild Card spot to the Rays by just three games. By contrast, Tampa Bay’s starters ranked 11th in WAR. Read the rest of this entry »