The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee 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, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

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 — he had 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 30s did he strike out more than 80 times in a season, and in his prime, he walked far more often than he struck out.

Bill James wrote of Sheffield in the 2019 Bill James Handbook:

“In all the years that I have been with the Red Sox, 16 years now, there has never been a player the Red Sox were more concerned about, as an opponent, than Gary Sheffield. Sheffield was a dynamite hitter and a fierce competitor… When he was in the game, you knew exactly where he was from the first pitch to the last pitch. He conceded nothing; he was looking not only to beat you, but to embarrass you. He was on the highest level.”

Two decades before that, James referred to Sheffield as “an urban legend in his own mind,” referencing the slugger’s penchant for controversy. Sheffield found it before he ever reached the majors through his connection to his uncle, Dwight Gooden. He was drafted and developed by the Brewers, who had no idea how to handle such a volatile player and wound up doing far more harm than good. Small wonder then that from the time he was sent down midway through his rookie season after being accused of faking an injury, he was mistrustful of team management and wanted out. And when he wanted out — of Milwaukee, Los Angeles, or New York — he let everyone know it, and if a bridge had to burn, so be it; it was Festivus every day for Sheffield, who was always willing to air his grievances. Read the rest of this entry »

Daylen Lile was one of the top rookie performers in the senior circuit this season. The 22-year-old outfielder debuted with Washington Nationals in late May and went on to slash .299/.347/.498 with a 132 wRC+ over 351 plate appearances. Displaying a combination of speed and power, Lile legged out 11 triples and left the yard eight times. A ninth home run on his ledger was an inside-the-parker.

When I talked to him in September, I learned that Lile and Nationals teammate James Wood were doing a lot of drill work together in the batting cage. Left on the cutting room floor from our conversation— the ensuing feature can be found here — was what he told me about the work itself. Like most good hitters, Lile is diligent about his routine.

“Your preparation matters, because what happens there translates to the game,” he said. “Mechanically, I still have the same swing I had [when entering pro ball in 2021], although I have changed a few things. I started getting my foot down early to see pitches longer, and now I’m doing a toe-tap for more rhythm, getting synced with the pitcher.”

And then there is the routine itself. Lile has been doing his “movement-prep stuff,” since coming back from UCL surgery, which cost him the 2022 season. Getting his body loose and keeping it that way throughout a long season is an integral part of his process. As you might expect, the work he does in the batting cage is every bit as important. Read the rest of this entry »

Max Anderson is making a name for himself in the desert. The Arizona Fall League’s hottest hitter is slashing a stand-up-and-take-notice .488/.650/.902 over 60 plate appearances with the Scottsdale Scorpions. Hitter-friendly circuit? Absolutely, but Anderson’s numbers are nonetheless impressive. The Detroit Tigers prospect has been scorching baseballs.

His regular-season numbers suggest that his AFL output isn’t wholly surprising. Playing against a higher level of competition, the 23-year-old infielder left the yard 19 times while putting up a 135 wRC+ between Double-A Erie and Triple-A Toledo. A .350/.400/.604 hitter at the University of Nebraska, the erstwhile Cornhusker has gone on to log a 120 wRC+ since being drafted 45th overall by Detroit in 2023.

Less impressive has been the youngster’s 6.7% walk rate as a professional. As Eric Longenhagen and James Fegan wrote back in March, “‘I like to swing, it’s not a secret,’ is both a favorite old José Abreu quote and the operating ethos of Anderson.” In terms of aggressiveness, that hasn’t really changed.

Our lead prospect analyst has seen a lot of him in the AFL, and he provided an updated report on the 40+ FV prospect earlier this week. Read the rest of this entry »

Rhett Lowder has his eyes on Yoshinobu Yamamoto as he works back from a pair of injuries that wreaked havoc on his 2025 campaign. Expected to be a part of the Cincinnati Reds’ starting rotation, the 23-year-old right-hander instead experienced a forearm issue in the spring, and that was followed by a more serious oblique strain. He ended up pitching just nine-a-third innings, all of them down on the farm.

Lowder is currently taking the mound for the Arizona Fall League’s Peoria Javelinas, and I caught up with him following a recent outing to learn what he’s been focusing on. Along with making up for lost innings, what is he doing to make himself a better pitcher?

“There are a couple things in the delivery, trying to take some pressure off the arm and the oblique, helping set myself up to be healthy,” replied Lowder, who’d logged a 1.17 ERA over six late-season starts with the Reds in 2024. “I’ve watched a little bit of Yamamoto and how he moves. Everything looks so effortless when he throws. I’ve tended to leak a little bit to the third base side, then compensate by over-rotating. That puts more pressure on the oblique, which is a rotational muscle, so I want to be more direct toward home plate with my delivery.”

Being direct to home plate is a common goal for pitchers. Appearance of effortlessness aside, what specifically made Yamamoto a point of study? Read the rest of this entry »

At last, we’ve got a World Series matchup to wrap our heads around. Representing the American League are the Blue Jays, who are back in the Fall Classic — making it a truly international World Series — for the first time since 1993. They’ll face the Dodgers, who are vying to become the first back-to-back champions since the 1999–2000 Yankees. They’re the first defending champions to repeat as pennant winners since the 2009 Phillies, who lost that World Series to the Yankees. If that matchup feels like a long time ago, consider that it’s been twice as long since the Blue Jays were here.

Though the core of the lineup is largely unchanged, this year’s Dodgers team differs from last year’s in that it has reached the World Series on the strength of its starting pitching rather than in spite of it. Due to a slew of injuries in the rotation last year, manager Dave Roberts resorted to using bullpen games four times to augment a rickety three-man staff consisting of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Jack Flaherty, and Walker Buehler. Even as those starters (or “starters,” in some cases) put up a 5.25 ERA while averaging just 3.75 innings per turn, the bullpen and offense more than picked up the slack, and the Dodgers took home their second championship of the Roberts era.

This time around, with Flaherty and Buehler elsewhere and Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, and Shohei Ohtani joining Yamamoto, Dodgers starters have been absolutely dominant, posting a microscopic 1.40 ERA while averaging 6.43 innings per turn through the first three rounds, helping the team to paper over a shaky bullpen. After Snell utterly dominated the Brewers, holding them to just one hit over eight innings while facing the minimum number of batters in Game 1 of the NLCS, Yamamoto followed with a three-hit, one-run masterpiece — the first complete game in the postseason since the Astros’ Justin Verlander went the distance against the Yankees in Game 2 of the 2017 ALCS. Glasnow, who began the postseason in the bullpen, allowed one run across 5 2/3 innings in Game 3 of the NLCS, while Ohtani backed his 10 strikeouts over six shutout innings in Game 4 with a three-homer game in what for my money stands as the greatest single-game postseason performance in baseball history. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin McGonigle is an elite prospect, and his bat is a big reason why. Playing across three levels in the Detroit Tigers organization — topping out at Double-A — the 21-year-old shortstop/third baseman slashed .305/.408/.583 with 19 home runs and 182 wRC+ over 397 plate appearances in 2025. Ranked third on The Board behind only Konnor Griffin and Jesús Made, McGonigle has been described by Eric Longenhagen as having “real juice in his hands” and a swing that is “geared for launch.” Built to bash baseballs, McGonigle’s left-handed stroke is both compact and lethal.

Currently with the Arizona Fall League’s Scottsdale Scorpions — he’s in the desert primarily to work on his defense — McGonigle has a bright future regardless of where he ends up in the infield. Longenhagen feels that his best fit might be second base. But again, there is juice in his hands. The bat is McGonigle’s carrying tool, and it promises to carry him a long way.

McGonigle sat down to talk hitting prior to a recent game at Scottsdale Stadium.

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David Laurila: How have you evolved as a hitter? For instance, if I looked at video from the time you signed and compared it now, would I see the same guy?

Kevin McGonigle: “You’d see the same swing. I’m a little bit bigger now, obviously, but the swing hasn’t changed. It’s been the same since I was 10 years old, to be honest with you. That’s the way my body naturally wants to move, and the best way I can explode on a baseball, so I try to keep doing the same thing I’ve done since I was younger.”

Laurila: How does your body naturally move?

McGonigle: “I’ve got the toe tap, and I’m in my legs more than a lot of guys are at the plate. I pretty much see ball, hit ball, and try to… not take the same swing. I feel that you’re going to have a different swing on every pitch. But I try to keep the same toe tap, the same everything.”

Laurila: While you’re continuing to do what comes naturally, you also have talented hitting instructors to work with. How are you balancing that?

McGonigle: “What I like about the Tigers is that they’re not really hands-on unless you have questions. I go to them for little pieces, like routines or drills that I want to do. One big thing for me was bat speed, so they put me on a bat-speed program last offseason. That really helped me with power this year. Bat-to-ball, of course. Gap-to-gap power. I’m trusting in them — the Tigers and all the coordinators — because they’re there to help you get better and better each day.”

Laurila: What is your approach in terms of where you’re looking to hit the ball?

McGonigle: “It depends on who is on the mound. If a good lefty is out there, I’ll think left-center gap and then just react to his offspeed and pull it. Same thing with right-handers. If it’s a guy throwing really hard, like upper-90s, maybe I’ll think right-center. That’s the farthest I’ll go with a heater. Then, changeup, curveball — whatever secondary he throws — pull it down the line. Top hook it in the corner is what I like thinking.

“When I’m on, I’m mostly hitting balls hard in the right-field gap or down the right-field line. That’s even with pitches dotted away. I’ll still be able to get under it and pull it. There does comes a time and place when I want to let the ball travel, though. With two strikes, I try to use all parts of the field.

“I’m also always sitting on fastballs and reacting to offspeed from there. I don’t like sitting on other pitches, really. If it’s a lefty that just spams sweepers, I’ll sit sweeper, but that’s about it. For me, it’s mostly all reaction.”

Laurila: My impression is that you fit into the KISS category — Keep It Simple, Stupid — yet you think about hitting quite a bit. Is that accurate?

McGonigle: “Definitely. I mean, if I’m hitting the ball hard and it’s going right at somebody, there’s nothing you can do about it. So, my main thing is to just find the barrel. That’s it. If you find the barrel, it’s a win. If you don’t, then get him next time.”

Laurila: Coming up from amateur ball and and through different levels of pro ball, you’re basically the same guy, but with more reps under your belt…

McGonigle: “Yeah, just seeing more pitching. In high school, I didn’t really see 95 [mph] really at all. Once I got a feel for that, I had to get used to guys having better offspeed. They like to throw it in leverage counts, and that’s one thing I really needed to work on this year. Last year I got a lot of fastballs to hit, and this year they’re flipping in 3-0 sliders, 3-1 sliders, changeups in 0-0 counts.

“Getting my hack off on 0-0 counts when I get offspeed that is middle-middle, or it’s a get-me-over offspeed… if I swing and miss, so what? I’m down 0-1. But if I put a barrel on it, then it’s a win. I’m more aggressive now than I was last year.

“If he’s a fastball-changeup guy who throws a lot of changeups, I’ll still sit fastball. A lot of times I’m going to look up. The changeup is going to start there, then have a little bottom to it and go to the heart of the plate. I’m kind of tunneling where I want the pitch to start.”

Laurila: Has bat-speed training helped you react better to heaters when you’ve been expecting something offspeed?

McGonigle: “Yeah. I’d say there were a few times this year that I was sitting offspeed, a guy threw a heater down the middle, and I was still was able to hit it hard to left field. Having a quicker bat has definitely helped. I’m able to protect on two-strike counts. If I’m beat on a fastball, I can at least get a bat on it and foul it off, give myself life to hopefully win that two-strike count.”

Laurila: How much do strikeouts matter? That was something Riley Greene struggled with this year, even while putting up good numbers.

McGonigle: “It’s not a great feeling. I mean, Riley Greene is a great baseball player. I’m looking forward to hopefully one day sharing a field with him. He wouldn’t be in the spot he is right now if it wasn’t for the way he plays baseball, and the way he hits. Strikeouts aren’t the best thing in the world, but he also performed in all the different aspects of the game. The whole strikeout thing… I think it is a big deal, but not as big as everyone thinks it is.”

Laurila: Outside of defense, what do the Tigers want you to work on this coming offseason?

McGonigle: “We have exit meetings with our hitting coordinators — mine will be after [the AFL] — and off the top of my head, I don’t know exactly. But the curveball is one pitch that I struggled with this year. I was either under it, or on top of it.”

Laurila: Why was that?

McGonigle: “Some of it was timing, but some of it was swinging at the wrong curveballs. If it’s low, that’s where the pitcher wants it, and the high ones would kind of fool me. A pitcher would go up top with a curveball, and I would clip it back, whereas that’s a pitch you want to hammer. I’m so used to training it down in the zone, where pitchers usually want to get it, but now some guys are trying to get it up top. I need to work on that, on hitting offspeed up top.”

Laurila: Any final thoughts on hitting?

McGonigle: “There’s not a perfect swing. Every swing is going to be different. If it’s a low pitch, if it’s a high pitch, if it’s away… but you see a lot of guys trying to chase that perfect swing. That’s hard to do when you have a guy throwing 99 and it’s running 20 inches, or sinking 20 inches. My thought is just, ‘Go up there and get the bat to the ball.’ Keep it that simple. Don’t try to chase the perfect swing. I want my swing to be adjustable. Simple and adjustable.”

——

Earlier “Talks Hitting” interviews can found through these links: Jo Adell, Jeff Albert, Greg Allen, Nolan Arenado, Aaron Bates, Jacob Berry, Alex Bregman, Bo Bichette, Justice Bigbie, Cavan Biggio, Charlie Blackmon, JJ Bleday, Bobby Bradley, Will Brennan, Jay Bruce, Triston Casas, Matt Chapman, Michael Chavis, Garrett Cooper, Gavin Cross, Jacob Cruz, Nelson Cruz, Paul DeJong, Brenton Del Chiaro, Josh Donaldson, Brendan Donovan, Donnie Ecker, Rick Eckstein, Drew Ferguson, Justin Foscue, Michael Fransoso, Ryan Fuller, Joey Gallo, Paul Goldschmidt, Devlin Granberg, Gino Groover, Matt Hague, Andy Haines, Mitch Haniger, Robert Hassell III, Austin Hays, Nico Hoerner, Jackson Holliday, Spencer Horwitz, Rhys Hoskins, Eric Hosmer, Jacob Hurtubise, Tim Hyers, Walker Jenkins, Connor Joe, Jace Jung, Josh Jung, Jimmy Kerr, Heston Kjerstad, Steven Kwan, Shea Langeliers, Trevor Larnach, Doug Latta, Dillon Lawson, Brooks Lee, Royce Lewis, Evan Longoria, Joey Loperfido, Michael Lorenzen, Mark Loretta, Gavin Lux, Dave Magadan, Trey Mancini, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Marcelo Mayer, Hunter Mense, Owen Miller, Paul Molitor, Colson Montgomery, Tre’ Morgan, Ryan Mountcastle, Cedric Mullins, Daniel Murphy, Lars Nootbaar, Logan O’Hoppe, Vinnie Pasquantino, Graham Pauley, David Peralta, Luke Raley, Julio Rodríguez, Brent Rooker, Thomas Saggese, Anthony Santander, Drew Saylor, Nolan Schanuel, Marcus Semien, Giancarlo Stanton, Spencer Steer, Trevor Story, Fernando Tatis Jr., James Tibbs III, Spencer Torkelson, Mark Trumbo, Brice Turang, Justin Turner, Trea Turner, Josh VanMeter, Robert Van Scoyoc, Chris Valaika, Zac Veen, Alex Verdugo, Mark Vientos, Matt Vierling, Luke Voit, Anthony Volpe, Joey Votto, Christian Walker, Jared Walsh, Jordan Westburg, Jesse Winker, Bobby Witt Jr. Mike Yastrzemski, Nick Yorke, Kevin Youkilis

The year of the splitter has come and gone. Actually, those of us who follow these things closely know that both 2023 and 2024 were considered the years of the splitter, and then we established back in March that 2025 would be the year of the kick change. While major league pitchers ran a 3.3% splitter rate in 2025, the highest mark since the pitch tracking era started in 2008, that represented a jump of just 0.21 percentage points from 2024. It’s a difference of less than one splitter per team every three games. While the number is still going up, the big increases came in 2023 and 2024, and the pace fell off this year.

That graph makes it official. This isn’t the year of the splitter. But now let me add another line to that graph. That was the regular season. We’re in the thick of the playoffs, so let’s throw the postseason in the mix, too. If you saw that first graph and wondered why I left all that empty space at the top, well, now you know.

That’s more like it. October 2025 has seen a splitter explosion. The red line is always going to be more volatile than the blue line because the postseason is such a small sample, but even so, the playoffs have seen a 6.6% splitter rate. That’s not just the highest we’ve ever seen. It’s twice the rate for any regular season or postseason in the past 23 years. Maybe 2025 was the year of the kick change, but October 2025 is very definitely shaping up to be the month of the splitter. The playoffs aren’t even over, and we’ve already seen more splitters this October than in the postseasons of 2023 and 2024 combined. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m trying out a new format for our managerial report cards this postseason. In the past, I went through every game from every manager, whether they played 22 games en route to winning the World Series or got swept out of the wild card round. To be honest, I hated writing those brief blurbs. No one is all that interested in the manager who ran out the same lineup twice, or saw his starters get trounced and used his best relievers anyway because the series was so short. This year, I’m skipping the first round, and grading only the managers who survived until at least the best-of-five series. Today, we’ll start with the two managers who lost in the American League Divisional Series, Aaron Boone and A.J. Hinch.

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of the outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies or unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Cam Schlittler and Michael Busch were also great this October. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Blake Snell is important because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process.

I’m always looking for new analytical wrinkles in critiquing managerial decisions. I’m increasingly viewing pitching as a tradeoff between protecting your best relievers from overexposure and minimizing your starters’ weakest matchups, which means that I’m grading managers on multiple axes in every game. I think that almost no pitching decision is a no-brainer these days; there are just too many competing priorities to make anything totally obvious. That means I’m going to be less certain in my evaluation of pitching than of hitting, but I’ll try to make my confidence level clear in each case. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Willie MacIver has caught a lot of power arms since entering pro ball in 2018. Some were in Sacramento this season — the 28-year-old University of Washington product spent a chunk of the summer with the Athletics, backing up Shea Langeliers — but none of those hurlers stand out as having the best raw stuff he’s been behind the dish for. That distinction belongs to a former Colorado Rockies farmhand whose brief major-league ledger includes a 22.09 ERA and a 22.7% walk rate over five appearances comprising three-and-a-third innings.

“I caught a guy named Riley Pint,” said MacIver, citing the right-handed flamethrower whom the Rockies drafted fourth overall in 2016 out of an Overland, Kansas high school. “To this day, he has the best stuff I’ve ever seen. I caught him from Low-A all the way through Triple-A, so I was on the ride with him the whole time.”

That ride isn’t necessarily over. Pint is just 27 years old, and while he missed the 2025 season with an injury, the arm is indeed special. MacIver caught him as recently as 2024, and it’s being Pint, and not recent teammate Mason Miller, who he cited speaks volumes.

“When we were in Low-A, it was 102 [mph] all over the place,” MacIver told me. “Then he started throwing a sinker. We were at Driveline together and he was throwing sinkers that were registering as left-handed curveballs on the TrackMan. He could make the ball move like nothing else. His sinker would be like negative-eight, and then he would throw a true sweeper that was Morales-like with the horizontal, but at 87 [mph]. Read the rest of this entry »

SEATTLE — On a per-game basis during the regular season, the Mariners and Tigers both scored and allowed roughly the same number of runs — 4.70 and 4.28, respectively. Through the first four games of the best-of-five ALDS, each team eked out a one-run win and each team triumphed in something of a laugher. Both teams won one game at home and one game on the road, and both teams relied extensively on their bullpens. Heading into Game 5 on Friday night in Seattle, it was clear one team was going to need to do something to distinguish itself. These teams entered the night locked in a dead heat, having played matching hands for much of the series and needing a new strategy, something different to get an edge and break the stalemate, and even then, it required 15 innings and four hours and 58 minutes to do that. When it was all over, the Mariners had outlasted the Tigers, 3-2, on a walk-off single by Jorge Polanco to advance to the American League Championship Series for the first time in 24 years.

“I don’t even know where to begin to try to recap all the heroic efforts that went into today,” manager Dan Wilson said. “And 15 innings? I’ve got to say, I don’t know how the fans kept their energy going. It was unbelievably loud, even in the 15th inning. And this is a special place. T-Mobile Park is a special place, and they showed us that tonight. And just an incredible ballgame from top to bottom.”

Both starting pitchers were taking the mound for a second time in the series, and both brought a slightly different approach to Game 5 than what they put on tape in their prior starts. In Game 1, Seattle starter George Kirby threw his slider 31% of the time; it was the first pitch he threw to eight of the 22 batters he faced. In Game 5, Kirby went to his slider 50% of the time and threw it as the first pitch to 10 of the 18 batters he faced. After the game, he confirmed this was a conscious shift in strategy to show Detroit’s lineup something different from what it’d seen from him six days prior. “All those guys from top to bottom are probably looking for a heater to start,” Kirby said, “and just starting off with a slider, curveball, whatever it may be, just — if I kept them off balance a little bit, I was able to attack the zone a little bit more with my fastball.” By mixing in more sliders early in the count, he was able to maintain the effectiveness of his four-seamer despite the recent exposure. Though the slider-heavy approach meant Kirby racked up fewer strikeouts than usual, he finished his outing allowing just three hits and one earned run over five innings with six punchouts. Read the rest of this entry »