As expected, the first weekend after the end of the lockout gave us a flurry of moves. Relievers in particular were a hot commodity, with teams trying to bolster their bullpens as the pool of quality pitchers continues to shrink. Let’s take a closer look at a few of these moves from over the weekend.

White Sox Sign Joe Kelly

Kelly comes to Chicago on a two-year, $17 million deal with a club option for a third year. At 33, the veteran is coming off of a great season with the Dodgers, probably his best as a reliever. Underneath his 2.86 ERA, he posted a career-best swinging-strike rate (11.6%) and exit velocity (85.5 mph), as well as his lowest walk rate (8.2%) ever. Even with all the success, a pair of injuries raise questions about his durability moving forward. Kelly got a late start in 2021 because of an offseason surgery to clean up his shoulder, and his year ended with him walking off the mound in the playoffs after suffering a forearm injury. Luckily, he avoided the worst case scenario; all reports have him ready for the upcoming season.

Kelly’s successful 2021 came on the back of a dominant low-spin sinker. In each of the previous five seasons, his four-seam fastball was his most used heater, but after years of middling results with the pitch, he all but shelved it in 2021. A new sinker-heavy pitch mix helped increase his groundball rate over the years; his three primary pitches — sinker, curveball, and changeup — all generate grounders more than 55% of the time. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 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.

Jake Peavy has a claim as the best player the Padres have drafted and signed since choosing Tony Gwynn in the third round in 1981, and probably the most important as well. From 2004 until he was traded in mid-’09, Peavy, a 1999 15th-round pick out of an Alabama high school, was their ace, winning two ERA titles and a Cy Young award, making two of his three All-Star appearances, and helping the team to back-to-back NL West titles in ’05 and ’06 — the franchise’s only playoff appearances between the 1998 World Series and the expanded playoffs in 2020.

Undersized at 6-foot-1, 195 pounds, and dismissed as “frail and wild” by talent evaluators, Peavy parlayed a mid-90s fastball/slider/changeup combination and a bulldog mentality into a 15-year major league career (2002–16). During that time, he made four trips to the playoffs with three different franchises and earned two World Series rings (though he struggled mightily in October), all while battling through a variety of injuries that turned him from an extraordinary pitcher into a rather ordinary one.

Through it all, Peavy’s irrepressibly competitive nature remained apparent. As Baseball Prospectus 2016 noted just before he headed into the final season of his career, “Few pitchers present a bigger contradiction between stuff and mound demeanor than Peavy, whose fiery outbursts and furious soliloquies mask a finesse approach that no longer intimidates his foes.” A tip that Peavy picked up from Roger Clemens, one of his many high-profile mentors, may have had something to do with that. According to Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller, Clemens introduced Peavy to Icy Hot Balm, telling him “to take a little and put it on no-man’s land down there.”

“So over the next 12 years, you might say, Peavy regularly pitched with his balls on fire,” wrote Miller.
Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 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 the sake of diplomacy, we’ll call A.J. Pierzynski a polarizing player, even if much of that polarization tended towards the negative end of the spectrum. “If you play against him, you hate him,” said his own manager Ozzie Guillen in 2006, the year after Pierzynski served as the starting catcher for the World Series-winning White Sox. “If you play with him, you hate him a little less.”

Pierzynski spent parts of 19 seasons in the majors provoking extreme reactions among players, fans, and everyone else, that while making two All-Star teams, helping five teams to the playoffs, and catching more games than all but eight other backstops. A November 2013 article by NESN’s Ricky Doyle, at a point just a few weeks before the defending champion Red Sox signed him as a free agent, summarized the book on Pierzynski to that point:

The most obvious risk of signing Pierzynski involves his accompanying baggage. There’s a difference between having a colorful personality and having a personality that evokes disdain, and Pierzynski’s behavior seemingly strikes a chord. According to an August 2012 article on SI.com, Pierzynski has in his career been voted by his opponents as the player they would most like to see beaned (2006), baseball’s meanest player (2011) and baseball’s most hated player (2012). Men’s Journal polled 100 MLB players on various topics in 2012, and 34 percent of respondents voted Pierzynski the most hated player in the game.

“Everyone wants a villain,” Pierzynski told SI.com’s Ben Reiter in the aforementioned profile. Reiter was able to penetrate the persona to find an introspective, intelligent and hard-working player, not to mention a devoted family man. “Look at what LeBron James has gone through the past few years. My teammates get the best kick of it,” Pierzynski continued. “When we go to Oakland, Anaheim, San Francisco, Minnesota, Cleveland, I get loud boos. Guys on my team can’t wait to see that and to hear that… Now, when those polls come out, it’d be a big upset if somebody else won.” Read the rest of this entry »

When Buster Posey announced his retirement in early November, my first thought was something along the lines of “Fantastic career; he’ll be getting my vote when he becomes Hall of Fame eligible in five years.” Looking back, that initial reaction actually undersold just how dominant Posey was over his 12-year career.

A few days ago, I shared the following on social media:

Best catchers in baseball history: 1. Mickey Cochrane, 2. Johnny Bench, 3. Josh Gibson, 4. Yogi Berra, 5. Gary Carter, 6. Ivan Rodriguez.

Your opinion of that ranking aside, a follower proceeded to ask for my opinion of Posey. That prompted me to compare the 34-year-old’s career to that of Cochrane, who likewise was done at a relatively-early age. Cochrane played his last game shortly after his 34th birthday, an errant Bump Hadley pitch — this in the days before hitters wore helmets — having fractured his skull and rendered him unconscious for 10 days. Coincidentally or not, Cochrane had taken Hadley deep in his previous at bat.

Cochrane played from 1925-1937 — a high-offense era — and finished his career with an eye-popping .320/.419/.478 slash line. Perusing our WAR leaderboard for that baker’s-dozen stretch, you’ll find Cochrane sandwiched between Rogers Hornsby and Tony Lazzeri. In 1947, Cochrane became the first catcher voted into the Hall of Fame by the BBWAA.

Cochrane played in 1,482 games. Posey played in 1,371 games. How do they otherwise compare? Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 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.

As I continue to play catch-up with my coverage with the holidays approaching, it makes sense to take a fresh look at a trio of pitchers who have done just enough to remain on the ballot. Mark Buehrle, Tim Hudson, and Andy Pettitte all cleared the 200-win mark during their exceptional careers while producing some big moments and playing significant roles on championship-winning teams, but none ever won Cy Young awards, produced much black ink, or dominated in the ways that we expect Hall-caliber hurlers to do. When Buehrle and Hudson debuted last year, I was skeptical that they would even clear 5% and retain their eligibility, but with the ballot traffic having thinned out, enough voters — particularly those on ballots that went unpublished — found room for them to do so, though the results were hardly resounding. Read the rest of this entry »

Luis Robert debuted in 2020 as our No. 7 prospect in baseball and put up up a strong rookie season with league average offensive numbers (100 wRC+), and stellar center field defense (8 Defensive Runs Saved), helping the White Sox return to the playoffs. Under the hood, though, there were some red flags. He had the worst SwStr% in baseball at 22.1%, as well as a 32.2% strikeout rate. His O-Swing rate of 43.1% was fourth worst in baseball, and even when he did make contact, he had a below-average exit velocity of only 87.9 mph. The 2021 season started off with a similar level of production until Robert suffered a torn hip flexor in early May that would end up costing him the middle three months of the season.

When he returned to action in early August, he immediately looked like a different hitter, putting up a 173 wRC+ over the rest of the season and, perhaps most impressive of all, dropping his SwStr% all the way down to 14.5% — not quite league average, but nowhere near the outlier he had been prior to his injury. Check out the contrast in his career numbers before and after his injury:

As you can see, his gaudy offensive performance is now being backed up by a huge improvement in his strikeout rate, as well as much better quality of contact. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Player Development Affiliate Intern

Locations: Charlotte, NC; Birmingham, AL; Winston-Salem, NC; Kannapolis, NC; Glendale, AZ

Summary:
The Chicago White Sox are seeking multiple seasonal Player Development Affiliate Interns. This entry level opportunity will provide individuals with a wide range of experiences in professional baseball. These positions will assist with front office administrative projects and support Minor League coaching staffs at affiliate locations throughout the Minor League season. Read the rest of this entry »

In news that was buried under the pre-lockout transaction rush, the White Sox brought back 30-year-old utility man Leury García on a three-year deal for $16.5 million. Despite a season slash line of .267/.335/.376, he still put up 2.0 WAR in 126 games, a testament to his defensive prowess.

It’s the bat that has been the issue, as you can see in his career 80 wRC+, though his 98 wRC+ in 2021 was a significant step up. The lack of power is the largest hole in García’s offense, or at least the clearest area for improvement. There is some measurable power, with a max exit velocity of 109.6 mph that is above league average, but it’s largely undone by a 55% ground-ball rate. He lags behind those with similar exit velocity in barrel rate, too.

Deficiencies with the bat don’t matter so much with García, though, as he is through and through a utility man, and while many players end up playing a bevy of positions, he is firmly in the Chris Taylor tier. Both were the only two players to play at least 60 innings at six different positions in 2021 — the only two with at least 30, in fact.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a good time to be a pitcher: The market for hurlers has been ablaze with rumors and signings, and we haven’t even reached Thanksgiving. The latest move comes from the White Sox, who have signed reliever Kendall Graveman to a three-year, $24 million deal, per MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. He is already the fifth pitcher to sign a multi-year deal so far this offseason, and the sixth pitcher to come off our Top 50 free agent list, where he was ranked at No. 45.

Graveman spent his mid-20s as a starter for the A’s, posting elite ground-ball rates and minimal strikeouts — a recipe that never quite worked out, as by the time he had Tommy John surgery in 2018, he had a career ERA of 4.38, a FIP of 4.54, and a strikeout rate of only 15%. He returned to the big leagues in 2020 with the Mariners, which is where we first got a glimpse of his new form, with a 3.60 ERA and 3.09 FIP in a month of bullpen work to close out the season.

His successful transition to the ‘pen after struggling as a starter is hardly a new story, yet Graveman and his aversion to whiffs isn’t exactly the prototype you look for when trying to create a great reliever. One of the keys for him, as is often the case, came from tapping into unseen velocity when pitching shorter relief outings; what once was a 93-mph sinker now sat 96 and touched 99.

The velocity carried over into 2021, and with it, newfound run suppression, as he became a dominant closer for the surprising Mariners. By the time the trade deadline rolled around, Graveman had a 0.82 ERA, and while his peripherals (a 2.90 FIP and 3.13 xFIP) may have suggested he was closer to a good reliever than an elite one, it was still clear that the move to the bullpen had turned his career around. The Astros acquired him at the deadline to bolster their bullpen for the playoffs, and while still good, he regressed closer to what his peripherals had said all along, putting up a 3.13 ERA the rest of the way. 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 a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Chicago White Sox.

Batters

The White Sox offense projects similarly to how it did prior to the 2021 season, which is good news for the team considering how easily they made the playoffs. But that also means the fundamental problems in the offense remain, with an additional issue compared to last year. ZiPS may be underestimating Eloy Jiménez — it’s always hard to evaluate players coming back from injury — but we can’t pretend that there isn’t some risk involved there. The remaining outfield position and DH are thornier concerns, and ZiPS is more pessimistic here than Steamer is. This is not a popular opinion, but if the White Sox plan to use Andrew Vaughn like our depth charts indicate they will, I really hope they just let him crush Triple-A pitching for a few months rather than juggling him with Gavin Sheets and Adam Engel. The basic problem is that though Vaughn was deservedly a terrific prospect, and 2020’s lost season of course did him no favors, he still doesn’t have a professional season in line with what you would expect from a top first base prospect. Read the rest of this entry »