The past week’s game of free-agent infielder musical chairs — which sent Marcus Semien to Toronto, Andrelton Simmons to Minnesota, Tommy La Stella to San Francisco, Enrique Hernández to Boston, and Freddy Galvis to Baltimore — did find a couple of contestants staying in place. Cleveland re-signed Cesar Hernandez, while most notably, Philadelphia retained Didi Gregorius, signing the soon-to-be 31-year-old shortstop to a two-year, $28 million deal. In this nearly stagnant market, that rates as the second-largest contract of any free-agent infielder after DJ LeMahieu’s six-year, $90 million pact.

Gregorius initially landed with the Phillies via a one-year, $14 million pillow contract in December 2019, reuniting with former Yankees manager Joe Girardi, under whom he’d played during the transformative 2015–17 stretch of his career. His comparatively quick return from October 2018 Tommy John surgery had yielded a subpar half-season with the Yankees, as he hit .238/.276/.441 with a 69 wRC+ over the final two months of the ’19 season. Not only did that injury scuttle talks of a long-term extension with the Yankees, but his struggles upon returning also meant no $17.8 million qualifying offer on the way out the door.

Gregorius bounced back in rather impressive fashion in 2020, playing all 60 games and hitting .284/.339/.488 with 10 home runs and a 117 wRC+, an excellent approximation of his 2017–18 production. His defense rebounded as well, to something in the vicinity of average:

In all, Gregorius’ 1.4 WAR not only outdid his modest 0.9 from 2019, but it was also tied for 11th among all shortstops; the rankings were clustered so tightly that he was 0.2 from being eighth or 13th, depending on direction.

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On Tuesday afternoon, the Phillies answered one of the biggest questions of their offseason in decidedly positive fashion, reportedly coming to terms with J.T. Realmuto on a five-year, $115.5 million contract. A physical is still pending, but the contract will keep Realmuto in Philly until the end of the 2025 season assuming all goes well. The number-one free agent in our offseason top 50, Realmuto’s signing removes the best option for anyone looking to make a race-changing upgrade at catcher.

The Philadelphia Phillies and JT Realmuto are in agreement on a 5 year $115.5 million dollar contract. Pending physical. Per source.

— Craig Mish (@CraigMish) January 26, 2021

It’s hard to overstate Realmuto’s importance to the Phillies. Indeed, his presence is so crucial that if Philadelphia were for some reason only able to retain one of him or Bryce Harper, I’d have to choose Realmuto, a two-time All-Star who has led the team in WAR over the last two seasons. Harper’s a very fine player and will likely still be in baseball years after Realmuto retires, but the short-term alternatives behind the plate looked bleak if the organization had had to scramble for a Plan B. There’s no combination of Andrew Knapp, Rafael Marchan, and non-roster invitee Christian Bethancourt that would have given the Phillies a fighting chance to avoid being near the bottom of the league at the position. Nor would the free agent options have provided a panacea; James McCann, Jason Castro, and Kurt Suzuki are already gone, and Yadier Molina is ancient.

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Last year, the Phillies’ disastrous bullpen was a major reason why they missed out on the playoffs for the ninth consecutive season. If you go back to 1969 — the year MLB lowered the mound — the 2020 Phillies bullpen posted the absolute worst league-adjusted ERA in a single season. By FIP, they were only a little better, landing 16th worst among 1,438 team seasons. Upgrading the bullpen had to be a significant focus of their new front office tandem, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski and general manager Sam Fuld.

Their problems were numerous, but the Phillies’ relief corps suffered from a significant lack of gas in 2020. Their relievers threw the second lowest rate of fastballs thrown over 95 miles per hour in 2020. Indeed, just 10.5% of them reached that threshold. To address this dearth of heat, the Phillies have added a bunch of relievers who throw extremely hard fastballs. Just before the calendar flipped to 2021, they added José Alvarado in a three-way trade with the Rays and Dodgers — Alvarado’s fastball averages 97.7 miles per hour. Then a week ago, they acquired Sam Coonrod from the Giants — his heater comes in even faster at 98.7 mph. And yesterday, they added a third hard-throwing reliever to their bullpen, signing Archie Bradley to a one-year, $6 million contract. Adding elite fastball velocity won’t be a panacea for all their woes, but it should help.

Bradley’s fastball is the slowest of the bunch, averaging 94.4 mph in 2020. That’s actually a point of concern. It was the lowest average velocity for his four-seamer since he transitioned to the bullpen full-time in 2017.

Despite the drop in velocity, Bradley posted the best FIP of his career last season. His strikeout rate dipped a bit, from 27.4% to 24.7%, but he also slashed his walk rate to just 4.1%. In 2019, he had survived as the Diamondbacks closer with a 11.4% walk rate. During that season, his rate of pitches thrown in the zone dipped below league average for the first time as a reliever. He reversed that trend in 2020, getting his zone rate just above league average.

That dip in strikeout rate is just as concerning as his lower velocity. His fastball’s whiff rate was right in line with where it had been in years past. The biggest change for him in 2020 was the number of swinging strikes he was getting on his curveball. The whiff rate on his bender dropped from 30.5% to just 16.7%. Like his fastball, his curveball lost velocity last year, dropping down to 80 mph on average. It’s possible that lost velocity affected the effectiveness of the pitch enough to cause batters to spit on it more often. Now, he did record the highest rate of called and swinging strikes of his career in 2020, so it’s also possible that his falling strikeout rate was simply poor sample size luck.

The only reason why his overall swinging strike rate didn’t budge all that much in 2020 was because of his changeup. That third pitch had been a part of his repertoire back when he was a starter but it was inconsistent and he often lost his feel for it. He brought it back in 2019 with some success and increased his usage of it to 11.6% last year. He threw just 32 changeups in 2020, but its 38.9% whiff rate would have ranked 18th among all changeups thrown at least 100 times during the season.

Beyond his downward sloped strikeout and walk rates, Bradley worked through some odd results when opposing batters put his pitches in play. He induced the lowest hard hit rate of his career while also allowing the highest barrel rate of his career. His expected wOBA on contact of .370 was just a hair below league average so those additional barreled balls didn’t do much damage — he allowed just a single home run in 2020. His groundball rate had consistently been above league average throughout his career but it dipped below average for the first time in 2020. He threaded a very narrow needle by allowing more contact in the air, even though it was a little weaker contact overall, all while pitching in the zone more often with a fastball that was thrown a little less hard.

It was a bit of a surprise that Bradley was available as a free agent at all. He was entering his final year of arbitration and had pitched decently enough for the Reds after they acquired him at the trade deadline. But with all these red flags and concerning trends, you can see why they decided to non-tender him. He ended up getting a contract around his estimated arbitration salary anyway. If he can find that lost velocity on his fastball and curveball and continue to refine his changeup, he should be a stabilizing presence for the Phillies bullpen.

Simply based on his track record, Bradley will likely enter the season with at least a job-share in the ninth inning with Héctor Neris. Like every other Phillies reliever last year, Neris had his own problems and lost his handle on the closing duties when Brandon Workman was brought in. Between Bradley, Neris, and Alvarado, they’ll have plenty of options should any of them falter during the season. But there are enough question marks between the three of them that the Phillies should probably be in the market for another reliever, just in case.

In some ways, Tuesday’s three-way trade between the Phillies (who acquired relief lefty José Alvarado), Rays (who acquired first baseman Dillon Paulson and a PTBNL/cash) and Dodgers (who acquired bullpen lefty Garrett Cleavinger) was an extension of the Blake Snell trade from earlier in the week. In that deal, the Rays got two 40-man roster players back in return (Francisco Mejía and Luis Patiño) but sent away only one, which meant they needed to clear a 40-man spot via trade in order for the move to be announced without them losing someone for nothing.

As a result, the Rays were leveraged into giving up the most exciting player in a minor swap in Alvarado, a husky lefty with elite-level stuff, a troubling injury history and frustrating control. It wasn’t long ago that he looked like the Rays’ future closer or high-leverage stopper. In 2018, when he was routinely sitting 98–101 mph early in the year, he ranked seventh among MLB relievers in WAR despite throwing just 53 innings because he was striking out hitters at a 30% clip, and generating ground balls 55% of the time his pitches were put in play. Alvarado became .giffamous (pronounced like infamous) because nobody should be able to throw a ball that moves that much that hard.

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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 2013 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.

On the field, Curt Schilling was at his best when the spotlight shone the brightest. A top starter on four pennant winners and three World Series champions, he has a strong claim as the best postseason pitcher of his generation. Founded on pinpoint command of his mid-90s fastball and a devastating splitter, his regular season dominance enhances his case for Cooperstown. He’s one of just 18 pitchers to strike out more than 3,000 hitters, and is the owner of the highest strikeout-to-walk ratio in modern major league history.

That said, Schilling never won a Cy Young award and finished with “only” 216 regular-season wins. While only one starter with fewer than 300 wins was elected during the 1992-2014 span (Bert Blyleven), four have been tabbed since then, two in 2015 (Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz) and two in ’19 (Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina), suggesting that’s far less of an obstacle than before.

Schilling was something of a late bloomer who didn’t click until his age-25 season, after he had been traded three times. He spent much of his peak pitching in the shadows of even more famous (and popular) teammates, which may have helped to explain his outspokenness. Former Phillies manager Jim Fregosi nicknamed him “Red Light Curt” for his desire to be at the center of attention when the cameras were rolling, while Phillies general manager Ed Wade said, “Schilling is a horse every fifth day and a horse’s ass the other four.” Whether expounding about politics, performance-enhancing drugs, the QuesTec pitch-tracking system, or a cornerstone of his legend, Schilling wasn’t shy about telling the world what he thought.

That desire eventually extended beyond the mound. Schilling used his platform to raise money for research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and, after a bout of oral cancer, recorded public service announcements on the dangers of smokeless tobacco. In 1996, USA Today named him “Baseball’s Most Caring Athlete.” But in the years since his retirement, and particularly over the past half-decade, his actions and inflammatory rhetoric on social media have turned him from merely a controversial and polarizing figure to one who has continued to create problems for himself. 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.

For better or worse, I’m a completist. In 17 years of analyzing Hall of Fame ballots using my JAWS system, I’ve never let a candidate pass without comment, no matter how remote his chance of election. From the brothers Alomar to the youngest Alou and the elder Young, I’ve covered ’em all. Thus it’s my sworn duty to tackle the minor candidates on the 2021 BBWAA ballot. I count 18 major ones — the 14 holdovers plus Mark Buehrle, Tim Hudson, Torii Hunter, and Barry Zito (the only newcomer to win a major award) — leaving seven candidates for this series.

To be eligible for election, a player must appear in games in at least 10 major league seasons, with a career that ended at least five calendar years ago, and then be nominated by at least two members of a six-member screening committee — a step that can produce some arbitrary results, as I’ve noted in the past, though their leaving the younger Young off this year’s ballot given his meager numbers and high-profile mistakes on and off the field was merited. Getting this far is a victory unto itself, but these candidates aren’t going any further; given that the seven players have combined for a single mention on the 36 ballots published so far, it’s fair to say that none is going to get the 5% necessary to remain eligible, let alone the 75% needed for election. Just the same, these one-and-done candidates were accomplished players who deserve their valedictory, and in this series, they’ll get it.

Our first batch covers a pair of outfielders who seemed to take forever to secure major league jobs, though both wound up helping several teams reach the playoffs before injuries eroded their performances and led them to walk away in the their mid-30s. 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 Philadelphia Phillies.

Batters

Is this all there is? I imagine nearly everyone asks themselves that existential question at some point in their lives, and it’s definitely one the current version of the Phillies inspires. The Phillies started rebuilding in late-2015 in the midst of their third consecutive losing season, and while that was arguably a bit late, they went about it in earnest. In one of his final pieces at ESPN, our friend Sam Miller explored the ins-and-outs of Philly’s process in detail. Long story short, the Phillies and Braves reworked their rosters over roughly the same time frame but the Braves made the playoffs in three consecutive seasons, while the Phillies are still looking for their first campaign over the .500 mark.

It would be one thing if this was a team on the upswing, but looking at the projected lineup, the roster more closely resembles a club at the end of a cycle of success, not one that’s still working on completing its remodel. For a team that’s had J.T. Realmuto and Bryce Harper in the lineup for two years, the overall results have been quite underwhelming. In terms of WAR, the team’s position players finished 16th in baseball in 2020, just behind the Royals. 2019 wasn’t much better, with the Phillies ranking 15th, and this has been the high water mark in recent years; going backwards from 2019, they’ve finished 22nd, 27th, 29th, and 29th. With Realmuto a free agent, the Phillies rank 21st in our Depth Charts, which, as a reminder, are Steamer-based until the ZiPS run is complete in a few weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

The cruelty of 2020 is unending. Sunday might have been the day that Dick Allen was finally elected to the Hall of Fame, if not for the coronavirus pandemic that forced the Hall’s era-based committees to postpone their vote. Instead, on Monday, we learned that Allen had died at 78 years old after battling cancer.

Allen, who made seven All-Star teams and won the NL Rookie of the Year and AL Most Valuable Player awards during his 15-year career (1963–77), was one of the heaviest hitters in baseball history. Wielding bats weighing 40 ounces or more, Allen led the league in home runs and on-base percentage twice apiece and in slugging percentage three times, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In each of the 10 years that he qualified for the batting title, he ranked among the league’s 10 most potent hitters, leading in OPS+ three times, finishing second twice, and placing among the top 10 five more times. His career 156 OPS+ matches those of Willie Mays and Frank Thomas, tied for 14th among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances, but Mays (12,496 PA) and Thomas (10,075 PA) played for far longer than Allen (7,315 PA). The comparative brevity of his career left him with modest hit and home run totals (1,848 of the former, 351 of the latter) that made it easier to downplay the impact of his raw batting line (.292/.378/.534), compiled during a pitcher-friendly era. Hall of Fame voters of all flavors bypassed him more often than not.

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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.

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 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 2016 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.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance over collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a pitch learned from teammate Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 800 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA.

Lacking the longevity of Mariano Rivera or Trevor Hoffman, Wagner never set any saves records or even led his league once, and his innings total is well below those of every enshrined reliever. Hoffman’s status as the former all-time saves leader helped him get elected in 2018, but Wagner, who created similar value in his career, has major hurdles to surmount. There are, though, fewer hurdles than before: In his fifth year on the ballot, his share of the vote nearly doubled, from 16.7% to 31.7%, the third-largest gain among returning candidates. His advantages over Hoffman — and virtually every other reliever in history when it comes to rate stats — provide a compelling reason to study his career more closely. Given how far he’s come, who wants to bet against Billy Wags?

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