The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 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.

When I sketched out a plan to tackle the 14 one-and-done candidates on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot, I found unifying themes to group them together even as the profiles themselves expanded: oft-injured infielders, sluggers who finished their careers concurrently with the White Sox, Dominican-born players who took unorthodox routes to the majors, starting pitchers for the 2003 champion Marlins, late-blooming relievers. When I reached the final pair, reliever José Valverde and slugger Raúl Ibañez, I was ready to concede that they were simply leftovers — but I had momentarily forgotten that during the 2012 ALCS, I had witnessed a moment firsthand that permanently tied them together:

In addition to that moment from the 2012 ALCS, both of these players seemed to have nine lives as they kept their grips on baseball — or vice versa, to invoke Jim Bouton’s famous line — for a long, long time. Read the rest of this entry »

The Royals agreed to sign third baseman Maikel Franco to a one-year, $2.95 million contract with up to $1.05 million in incentives, according to reports on Thursday afternoon. Franco is expected to be the Royals’ everyday third baseman in 2020 and could remain in Kansas City through 2021, as he has a year of arbitration eligibility remaining.

Now 27, Franco was once one of the Phillies’ top prospects and among the top 100 prospects in baseball — Baseball America ranked him third in the system and 56th overall after the 2014 season. But he never reached his lofty potential in Philadelphia. He hit well out of the gate, posting a 129 wRC+ in 335 PA in 2015, but has been unable to repeat those results in the years since. He hit relatively well in 2018, producing both a 105 wRC+ and one of the best bat flips of the year:

Read the rest of this entry »

Managers and front office executives have media obligations at the Winter Meetings, and here at FanGraphs we do our best to engage in, and report on, as any those sessions as possible. Today we’ll share some of what I learned in San Diego, with the five American League Central teams front and center.

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How do trade talks typically work at the Winter Meetings? Twins President of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey touched on that subject as things were winding down in San Diego.

“A lot of it is continuation of previous conversations,” Falvey told a small group of reporters. “End of season, everyone kind of takes a breath and looks at what’s going on. Then you have the GM meetings and start a lot of the conversations. This is just an extension of that. In many ways, we sit in our suites and text, and call, other teams. We’re not necessarily even walking down the hall, or going to another floor.”

The Twins aren’t unique in that respect. I subsequently overheard an executive from a National League team saying he’s not sure if anyone came to their suite all week.

As for the level of non-face-to-face exchanges, some clubs were more engaged than others. The AL Central champs fit into the “less” category, their attention directed more toward non-trade acquisitions.

“Last year was a little bit slower Winter Meetings,” Falvey said of expectations going in. “Could it be slower again? We weren’t sure. If anything, this gave us some more clarity around what our next few weeks will look like. We’ve already assessed the players. I’ll say this: The conversations with teams seemed a little less frequent than the free agent conversations.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Royals aren’t known for their analytics department. They have one, of course. It’s not as though the organization is the Flintstones while everyone else is the Jetsons. That said, they’re still viewed as being old-school. In the eyes of many, scouting still rules the roost in Kansas City.

Just how true is that perception? According to the team’s longtime general manager, it’s far less accurate than it once was. Which isn’t to say that Dayton Moore has cast aside his roots in an attempt to become something he’s not. What he’s done is adapt to the changing times.

“My background is my background,” Moore told me at last month’s GM Meetings. “I’m not going to be ashamed of that. I grew up in a very traditional way. I grew up as a coach. I grew up as a scout. But the game has changed since I came to Kansas City in 2006.”

Moore remembers meeting with, among others, saber-smart baseball scribe Bradford Doolittle. That “created a pathway to us developing an understanding of analytics.” He went on to hire Michael Groopman as a baseball operations assistant in 2008, then promote him to Director of Baseball Operations/Analytics in 2015. In Moore’s words, Groopman “came in and built our analytics program.” Read the rest of this entry »

In the second of a six-part series — you can see the AL East here — I’ll be highlighting each team’s most notable free agents and how it could fill the resulting void on the roster. A player’s rank on our recently released Top 50 Free Agents list, along with Kiley McDaniel’s contract estimates from that exercise, are listed where relevant. In some cases, the team already has a capable replacement ready to step in. In others, it’s clear the team will either attempt to re-sign their player or look to the trade or free agent markets for help. The remaining cases are somewhere in between, with in-house candidates who might be the answer, but aren’t such obvious everyday players to keep the team from shopping around for better options.

Here’s a look at the American League Central.

Chicago White Sox | Depth Chart | Payroll

Jose Abreu, 1B/DH
FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agent Ranking: 44
Kiley McDaniel’s contract projection: 1 year, $11M

Andrew Vaughn, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2019 amateur draft and the White Sox’s first baseman of the future, isn’t likely to need much time down on the farm. But it’s rare that any prospect, even one as advanced at the plate as the 21-year-old Vaughn, doesn’t spend at least one full season in the minors. Therefore, the White Sox will require a stopgap at first base in 2020 and have already taken a necessary step to keeping Abreu around for at least one more season.

The 32-year-old was tendered a qualifying offer, which will hurt his value if he wants to test the free agent waters. He could just settle for the one-year, $17.8 million contract or work out a long-term deal that would ensure he’s around to mentor the next wave of prospects, which could include Vaughn, second baseman Nick Madrigal, and outfielders Luis Robert and Luis Alexander Basabe, all who could arrive during the next two seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

Two spring trainings ago I was at the Padres complex in Peoria, Arizona, chatting with Dave Cameron. The longtime FanGraphs frontman had recently joined the NL West club as an analyst, and he had a suggestion. “You should talk to Rowan Wick,” Cameron said of the non-roster invitee whom San Diego had claimed off waivers the previous month. “He’s a good story.”

Indeed he was. Wick entered pro ball as a catcher in 2012, converted to the mound in 2015, and possessed what was later described to me as “one of the shortest, quickest arms I’ve ever seen.” He’d had yet to throw a pitch in the big leagues.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Wick before departing Arizona, but I remembered Cameron’s suggestion when I returned to the Cactus League this past spring. The right-hander — now with eight-and-a-third MLB innings on his resume — was in camp with the Cubs, a long shot to make the team. A full year after having the bug put in my ear, I wrote about the 26-year-old hurler from North Vancouver, British Columbia.

He proceeded to outperform all expectations. The bulk of his big-league action coming since mid-June, Wick logged a 2.43 ERA and a 2.82 FIP in 31 games out of the Chicago bullpen. Those weren’t even his most-impressive numbers. Opposing hitters slashed a paltry .183/.295/.233 against his overpowering arsenal — one which included a retooled secondary offering.

Wick pointed to just that when asked to explain his breakout campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

While eight teams remain in the postseason, seven who missed out are busy searching for their next skipper. On Thursday, the Mets’ Mickey Callaway joined the ranks of the unemployed, getting the axe after just two seasons at the helm. He’s the fourth manager fired since late September with at least a year remaining on his contract, after the Padres’ Andy Green, the Pirates’ Clint Hurdle, and the Angels’ Brad Ausmus. Meanwhile, two former World Series winners, the Giants’ Bruce Bochy and the Royals’ Ned Yost, have retired, and a third ex-champion, Joe Maddon, parted ways with the Cubs after his contract expired. At this writing, the fate of the Phillies’ Gabe Kapler still hangs in the balance.

What follows here is a roundup of each vacancy, including a list of reported candidates that may not be comprehensive, since all of this is attempting to hit several moving targets. I’ve attempted to distinguish them from those whose candidacies are merely speculative. The teams are listed in order of 2019 records.

Mets (86-76)

What happened: Callaway was hired by general manager Sandy Alderson, who took a leave of absence in mid-2018 due to a recurrence of cancer and decided not to return to the job. Former agent Brodie Van Wagenen was hired last November, and he made a series of splashy moves, many of which ultimately set the Mets back (particularly the trade of two former first-round picks for Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz). The holdover manager did not mesh with an increasingly analytically inclined front office — at one point, Callaway boasted, “I bet 85% of our decisions go against the analytics,” a statement that stood out given his often glaring in-game mistakes, many centered around a bullpen that ranked among the league’s worst. Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Maddon has managed for 14 MLB seasons, and in nine of them his team has won 90 or more games. He captured a pennant in Tampa Bay, and most notably a World Series title with the Cubs. Four of his five years in Chicago have included October baseball.

Not this year: not after a September swoon that saw the Cubs lose nine straight down the stretch. Despite having a plus-106 run differential — by comparison, the playoff-bound Brewers and Cardinals are plus-one, and plus-93, respectively — Maddon’s club is heading home after today’s game.

The bespectacled and thoughtfully-loquacious denizen of Hazelton, PA was to meet with Theo Epstein last night, and not simply for a cold frosty. Speculation has been swirling about Maddon’s future — this is the final year of his contract — and in all likelihood there was some solemnity to the Saturday evening sit-down. It will come as a surprise if we don’t soon learn that the Joe Maddon era is over in Chicago.

Earlier this week Maddon was asked about having used the word “optimistic” when addressing his tenuous-at-best situation. His response suggested something other than an expected return engagement at the Friendly Confines. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Ned Yost announced that he would retire at the end of the season. While the news came as a surprise, the man himself has always kept a healthy perspective on the game. Based on Alec Lewis’s profile, he’ll leave the game feeling fulfilled and ready for the next chapter of his life. His departure, along with a juicy rumor that Royals special advisor and former Cardinals manager Mike Matheny will replace him, made for an eventful Monday morning in Kansas City.

As a skipper, Yost was never a visionary strategist. He’s not analytically inclined by nature, and he struggled in game states that require managers to play the percentages. Too often, his choices looked reflexive and dated: He liked having his fast shortstop lead off, OBP be damned. His good players bunted far too often. He didn’t always know when to deploy his closer. Managing the bullpen proved particularly challenging.

In one 2014 game, Yost summoned young Danny Duffy into a tied, extra-inning contest on the road, and then turned to Louis Coleman after the lefty loaded the bases. All that time, he had all-world closer Greg Holland ready to go, but he never got to pitch; Baltimore walked it off against Coleman. Later that year, Yost brought in a lefty specialist specifically to face (then) feeble-hitting Jackie Bradley Jr. with one on late in a one-run game; the Red Sox predictably inserted lefty-basher Jonny Gomes, who socked a two-run homer to give Boston a one-run win. After that episode, the manager memorably took responsibility, saying he’d “outsmarted himself.” Perhaps more than anyone over the last decade, Yost earned an almost anti-analytic reputation, becoming the face of what sabermetric seamheads spent so much time ranting about on Twitter.

But as Yost’s time in the dugout stretched on, the criticisms of his tactical acumen felt like an increasingly small slice of the story. For subscribers of the iceberg theory of managing, it’s clear that he compensated with other strengths. Yost always absorbed the blame whenever things went haywire, a point that both his bosses and charges acknowledged and appreciated. He also had a steady hand with young players. In Milwaukee and Kansas City, he helped turn perennially losing teams into playoff-caliber squads, happily shepherding young talents through the inevitable growing pains. Notably, a number of highly touted prospects who began their big league careers slowly — Eric Hosmer, Alex Gordon, Mike Moustakas, Jorge Soler, and Adalberto Mondesi among them — eventually blossomed. Might they have done so sooner under another manager? Perhaps, perhaps not. Regardless, most of the best prospects under Yost’s watch figured things out eventually. Read the rest of this entry »

“I don’t do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision.” – Allen Ginsberg

There’s no team harder for me to get a read on than the Kansas City Royals. The afterglow of the 2015 World Series has long faded, and attendance is falling back towards levels you might expect for a baseball team playing in Florida. Given the team’s inconsistent statements concerning the organization’s present — and the accompanying moves in harmony with that theme — I’m not sure whether Kansas City is incompetently rebuilding, incompetently retooling, or incompetently competing. Short of a sudden change in organizational focus, the Royals’ main task is to mark the time between the end of one Pat Mahomes season and the start of the next one.

The Setup

After two years of treading water post-championship, 2018 was the year that everything came crashing down. That that season was going to be a dreadful one was largely preordained, prophesied by the team’s contract situations. After winning 80 games in 2017, players worth more than half of the team’s WAR (13.0 wins out of 24.7 total) hit free agency, and there was little hope of one of the league’s weakest farm systems or a fat ownership wallet making good on those losses. Mike Moustakas returned to Kansas City after receiving scant interest in free agency and Alcides Escobar was re-signed for no fathomable reason, but there was little reason to believe that these moves were enough to keep the team wild card pretenders into August.

The 2018 Royals finished with 104 losses and it seemed as if they were finally ready to embrace a full-blown rebuilding process. After all, the Royals spent the summer trading most of their veterans who could fetch some kind of player in return; Moustakas, Kelvin Herrera, Jon Jay, Lucas Duda, and Drew Butera were all dealt. A rebuilding team hardly needs a dedicated pinch-runner and Terrance Gore was traded to the Cubs. Even Escobar started to have his playing time curtailed in just his third consecutive year of near replacement-level production. Sure, players like Alex Gordon and Ian Kennedy stayed put, but they were largely immovable anyway. Read the rest of this entry »