Some of the weakest bonds in existence are those between fans and their favorite teams’ players. Those relationships are much like the concept of momentum in sports: valid and real, until the next event. Fans love players until they dislike them, and fans hate players until they can cheer them. Everything is superficial. Teams only like fans because of their money. Fans only like players because of their success. Rare is the fan who’s willing to be patient; affection lasts only right up to a slump.
Nathan Eovaldi is a hero in Boston. He’s a hero because of what he did in the playoffs, and he was so sensational he’s remembered most fondly for how he pitched in a loss. Now, granted, the World Series is permanent, so it can never be taken away. Eovaldi was a part of that winning roster. But as the future goes, nothing’s forever. Red Sox fans could turn on Eovaldi. Any fans could turn on anyone. That’s just a part of the experience. So much of how we feel about sports carries an unwritten “for now.”
But for the next few months, there are no games. There are no opportunities for performance to slide. After the World Series, Eovaldi became a free agent, pursued by at least half the league. On Thursday, Eovaldi has agreed to re-sign with the Red Sox, for four years and $67.5 million. In so doing, Eovaldi only further lifted his local status. He was already considered a hero. Now he’s a hero who didn’t want to leave. What will happen in 2019 is very much up in the air, yet 2018 is what dreams are made of.
Hall of Fame debate season is upon us, and subjectivity is inherent in the process. For every no-brainer candidate there are always several for whom a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down is largely in the eye of the beholder. Pushing bias aside — not always an easy exercise — one must weigh a ton of factors. Think “The Scales of Justice,” but with WAR, win totals, and DRS taking the place of a blindfold, a balance, and a sword.
Cutting to the chase, Omar Vizquel — arguably the most-polarizing player on the current ballot — probably deserves to be enshrined in Cooperstown. Attempting to not clumsily put a thumb in my eye while stating his case, I hereby offer the following statistical facts:
Vizquel ranks 43rd all-time with 2,877 hits. Nine of the 10 players directly below him on that list — Brooks Robinson among them — are in the Hall of Fame. The one who is not is Harold Baines. Vizquel had more hits as a shortstop than did Cal Ripken.
Here are brief notes on the prospects who were traded ahead of the 40-man roster deadline. The Padres had several prospects who needed to be added to the 40-man — including Chris Paddack and Anderson Espinoza — and were the most active team.
Lockett will provide immediate rotation depth for a contending Cleveland team as a 5th/6th starter and will probably be on the 25-man bubble in the spring. His fastball, 91-94, is very average. He can also make it sink in the 87-90 range. Each of his off-speed pitches — a changeup and curveball — will flash above-average. His changeup has a tendency to sail a bit, but it moves.
I think Feliz, who turned 19 in October, was the best prospect traded today. He’s a very athletic conversion arm who can spin a good breaking ball. He was 88-92 with natural cut during the summer and should grow into more velocity. He’ll probably begin 2019 in extended spring training.
Brewer was a minor league free agent signee after the 2017 season. He was up and down between San Diego and El Paso a few times in 2018, and was 92-94 with cut, up to 96. At times he’d take a little off and throw more of a slider around 87-88 mph. Brewer also has plus-plus breaking ball spin rates on an 82-85 mph curveball he doesn’t locate very well. If that improves, Brewer will be a good 40-50 inning relief option.
Quiroz is the most interesting prospect traded today. He was Team Mexico’s leadoff hitter in the 2017 WBC (he hit two homers and a double in 6 at-bats) and spent 2015-2017 crushing the Mexican League. He signed with Boston in November 2017 and had a hot April in 2018 at Double-A, but then missed three and a half months with an abdominal strain. He only played in 24 games at Double-A, then had 62 extra plate appearances in the Arizona Fall League.
Here in Arizona, Quiroz looked pretty good. He’s a stocky and strong 5-foot-6, and he has average, all-fields power. He hit two full-extension, opposite field shots this fall, including one that got out just left of center field at Sloan Park in Mesa. He’s patient and makes good decisions at the plate. He’s also fine at second base (below-average arm, below-average runner, above-average athlete, average hands) and played a lot of other positions while in Mexico. He’ll either need to be viable at other positions or just hit enough to play second base every day. It appears he has a chance to do the latter.
Wick is a capable, generic middle reliever. He works 93-96, has an above-average slider, and a change-of-pace curveball.
Vosler is a an extreme fly ball hitter (over 50%) with huge platoon splits. He might be just a 30 bat, but Vosler can play third and first and he crushes lefties; I think he’s a corner bench bat or platoon player.
Foley was 91-93 this fall; his changeup and slider were average, and he struggled to throw strikes. He’s 25 and coming off a good year at Double-A.
Valdez didn’t sign a pro contract until he was 20, and Colorado didn’t push him to an age-appropriate level despite his success, so he’s a 23-year-old who hasn’t set foot in full-season ball. But he’s a really loose, wiry 6-foot-1 with a good arm action. He has been 92-94 with an above-average curveball in my looks. I like him as a late-blooming relief candidate.
This post is part of a series concerning the 2019 Today’s Game Era Committee ballot, covering executives, managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in Las Vegas on December 9. Use the tool above to read the introduction and other installments. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com and Baseball Prospectus. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
2019 Today’s Game Candidate: Lee Smith
Pitcher
Career
Peak
JAWS
WPA
WPA/LI
IP
SV
ERA
ERA+
Lee Smith
29.0
20.9
24.9
21.3
12.8
1289.1
478
3.48
112
Avg HOF RP
38.1
26.5
32.3
27.7
19.2
SOURCE: Baseball-Reference
Over the course of his 18-year career, Lee Arthur Smith was consistently considered to be one of the game’s top relievers. Physically intimidating — officially listed at 6-foot-5, 220 pounds but reported as big as 6-foot-6, 269 pounds — and mellifluously middle-named, Smith pitched for eight teams, earned All-Star honors seven times, led his league in saves four times (and finished as runner-up in four other seasons), and placed as high as second in the Cy Young voting. He passed Jeff Reardon on April 13, 1993, to grab the all-time saves record and held it at 478 until September 24, 2006, when Trevor Hoffman finally surpassed him.
When Smith retired in 1998, just two relievers had been elected to the Hall of Fame: Hoyt Wilhelm (1985) and Rollie Fingers (1992). Since then, that number has tripled via the elections of Dennis Eckersley (2004), Bruce Sutter (2006), Rich Gossage (2008), and Hoffman (2018), with Mariano Rivera poised to join them via the 2019 BBWAA ballot. Smith appeared to be on track to join that company, debuting on the 2003 ballot at 42.3% and inching his way to 50.6% by 2012, his 10th year of eligibility. But over his final five years of eligibility, he got lost in a deluge of polarizing, high-profile candidates whose continued presence on the ballot made it tough to find room for Smith. By 2014, his share of the vote was down to 29.9%, and he never got back to 35%.
Brock Burke was nowhere to be found on top-prospect lists when he was featured here at FanGraphs last June. But he did merit our attention. Tampa Bay’s third-round pick in the 2014 draft had one of the lowest ERAs in the minors at the time. While the sample size was small — just nine starts on the season — his dominance was undeniable. He’d begun to put himself on the map.
The southpaw out of Evergreen, Colorado wasn’t nearly as good after a mid-summer promotion from low-A Bowling Green to high-A Charlotte. His ERA as a Stone Crab was exponentially higher than it was as a Hot Rod — a Brobdingnagian 4.64 as opposed to a Lilliputian 1.10.
This year he flip-flopped his ebbs and flows. The 22-year-old lefty started slow, then got on a serious roll after earning a promotion to Double-A Montgomery in July. In nine starts for the Biscuits, Burke put up a 1.95 ERA and punched out 11.9 batters per nine innings. If win-loss records are your cup of tea, six of seven decisions went his way.
The popularity of baseball is oft-discussed and yet somewhat difficult to measure. We can look at everything from attendance to jersey sales to commercials to revenue and yet fail to reach any real conclusions due to the constantly changing ways in which people consume media and celebrate fandom.
Another measure is television viewership and ratings. Determining the number of people who have enough interest to watch the sport on television should be a relatively good measure of popularity, although even those measures need context to make any sense. On one hand, local television ratings remain strong during the season, indicating relatively widespread support for the game. On the other hand, the ratings for this season’s World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers were not good.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred says that he, too, is a bit frustrated/bewildered about current World Series ratings. Despite west coast/east matchup w two glamour teams, G1-2 ratings off ~10% & lowest since SF/KC in '14. "We're looking hard at it and haven't isolated a cause."
Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.
In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Ron Darling, Jack Morris, and Tyler Thornburg — on how they learned and developed their change-of-pace pitches.
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Ron Darling, Former All-Star
“When I first started throwing a split, I was one of those pitchers who could never develop a changeup. I was in the minor leagues with Al Jackson, who was a crafty left-hander in his day, and he taught me a screwball. He used to throw one. I got very adept at it, but it made my arm hurt. I had to develop a change-of-pace pitch that didn’t hurt my elbow, and that’s how the split-finger came to be.
“It was an era where the pitch was popular. Roger Craig taught it to a lot of pitchers, but it was a split-finger fastball for those guys. For me it was more of a forkball. It was something soft that I could combine with my fastball and hard curveball.
As soon as any World Series is over, it’s fair to wonder how the most recent champion stacks up when compared to the history. And while sometimes the numbers are downright laughable, the 2018 Red Sox have been pretty extreme. In the regular season, they won five more games than anyone else. In the playoffs, they lost just once per series while eliminating the three other best teams in the game. Sometimes, you think about the history because you think you’re obligated. In this case, we look to the history because it seems like the Red Sox might’ve done something historic. It feels like this might’ve been one of the all-time greats.
I’ve run some numbers in order to see what we’ve got. I should acknowledge right here there’s no perfect, agreed-upon way to do this. There’s no ideal measure of a team overall. Does it matter how good a team is for seven months, or is it only the playoffs that matter, provided you do just enough to make it in in the first place? There are arguments to go in either direction, but for my purposes here, I’ve simply combined regular-season numbers with postseason numbers. The postseason sample, of course, is dwarfed by the regular-season sample, but that’s how I feel like it should be. You might have another opinion, and so you might trust your own analysis. Below, I’ll quickly present my own.
Xander Bogaerts triple-slashed .288/.360/.522 in 580 regular-season plate appearances in 2018, which translated to a 133 wRC+ and 4.9 WAR. Both figures represented career highs. Like his teammate Mookie Betts, Bogaerts thrived offensively while largely maintaining a disciplined approach at the plate. This year, the 25-year-old swung at 61% of pitches he saw in the strike zone and just 43% of pitches overall. Both figures sit below league norms (just 16 of 140 qualified hitters swung at pitches in the zone less often this year) and are broadly consistent with Bogaerts’scareer figures. Bogaerts can, clearly, be a successful major-league hitter without taking a cut at every tempting fastball and slider he sees in the zone. He’s done it in each of past four years.
He did not, however, do so during this World Series. The only ball he struck really well in all five games was a second-inning double against Hyun-Jin Ryu in Game Two; his only other hits were a soft line-drive single in the ninth inning of Game Four that appeared to be almost the accidental result of a swing on which Bogaerts rolled over badly, and a single in the seventh in the clincher. Everything else he produced during this World Series was, for the most part, a weak ground ball or, in one horrible sequence of the 18-inning marathon that was Game Three, a ground out to second, a ground out to the pitcher, a ground out to the catcher, a strikeout swinging, and a ground ball into a double play. Bogaerts seemed simply unable to get his timing right for any consistent length of time in this World Series. Nor, until the final game, did Mookie Betts or J.D. Martinez.
Although all three Boston stars struggled to a greater or lesser extent during this Fall Classic — a matter examined by Jeff Sullivan earlier today — I’d like to focus on Bogaerts for much of this piece because his struggles seem, at least to me, the most pronounced — and most out of line with his performance during the regular season in 2018 (and, one presumes, his forthcoming performance in 2019). The first ground out in that horrible five-PA sequence I mentioned above, against Kenley Jansen in the ninth inning of Game Three, is instructive for its demonstration of Bogaerts’ Series-long inability to time up usually hittable pitches. (Please note: I’m not saying I could do this. I would cry if someone threw something past me at even 85.) The first pitch of the sequence was a sinker at 95 that Bogaerts took as a strike on the lower inside corner of the plate. Here it is:
In Game Five of the World Series on Sunday night, behind a stifling seven-inning, three-hit effort from David Price — on three days of rest, even — and a pair of home runs by Steve Pearce, the Red Sox completed their dismantling of the Dodgers with a 5-1 victory and a four-games-to-one Series win. Like the other games in the series, this one was close for a while. Ultimately, though, the Red Sox pulled away late, with the Dodgers unable to produce a run beyond David Freese’s leadoff homer in the bottom of the first inning. On top of their franchise-record 108 wins, the Red Sox went 11-3 in the postseason, losing just one game in each round of the playoffs. They’ll take their place among the most dominant championship teams of recent vintage, and have a claim as the best in franchise history.
To these eyes, the World Series turned on eight factors, areas that set the Red Sox apart from the Dodgers in what was, at times, a fairly close series that will nonetheless look rather lopsided in the history books.
Two-Out Damage
Continuing what they did against the Astros in the ALCS, the Red Sox scored the majority of their runs against the Dodgers with two outs. In fact, the totals and rates in the two rounds match up almost exactly: 18 out of 29 runs scored against Houston (62.0%) and 18 of 28 against Los Angeles (64.3%). In the World Series they hit .242/.347/.484 in 72 plate appearances with two outs and put up video-game numbers — .471/.609/.882 in 23 PA — with two outs and runners in scoring position. Their OPS in that latter situation set a World Series record:
Best Two-Out, RISP Peformances in World Series History
