The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 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.

Yet another installment of our quick look at the 14 players on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot who are certain to fall below the 5% threshold — with most of them being shut out entirely — but are worth remembering just the same.

Kevin Youkilis

At the major league level, Youkilis’ reputation — “Euclis: the Greek god of walks,” as nicknamed by Michael Lewis in the 2003 bestseller, Moneyball — preceded his arrival by over a year. First a source of friction between the A’s analytically-minded front office and their scouts ahead of the 2001 draft, and later a player they coveted as a potential acquisition, Youkilis was Billy Beane’s white whale, forever eluding Oakland’s general manager. Though he lasted just 10 years in the majors, he hit .281/.382/.478 (123 OPS+) while making three All-Star teams, and winning a Gold Glove and two championship rings, one as the Red Sox’s starting first baseman.

Born in Cincinnati on March 15, 1979, Youkilis did not have any actual Greek ancestry. Via Sports Illustrated’s Mark Bechtel in 2007:

Youk’s family history reads like a Michael Chabon novel: Back in the 19th century in Romania, males were conscripted at the age of 16. The Cossacks in the region weren’t known for their tolerance, so many Jews tried to avoid enlisting in the army. Youk’s great-great-great-grandfather—no one is sure what his first name was, but the family name was Weiner (it’s actually pronounced WINE-er)—moved to Greece, where the family had friends. After a year or two he got homesick and returned to Romania, but he assumed a Greek name so he could avoid the army and jail. And with that, the Youkilis family was born.

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Earlier this month, Jay Jaffe wrote about the Hall of Fame case for former Yankees southpaw Andy Pettitte. Pettitte, of course, was known for his cut fastball, his glare towards the hitter as he awaited the sign from Jorge Posada, and his pickoff move.

This pickoff move.

Pettitte’s pickoff move became legendary over the course of his long career, and led to teams essentially abandoning the running game against the lefty until late in his career. Pettitte retired as the active leader in pickoffs, despite baserunners often arguing that his move was really a balk. So let’s find out if Pettitte’s move was generally legal or not.

We’ll start, of course, with the rule. For our purposes, we’re concerned with Rule 6.02(a), which defines “Pitcher Illegal Action[s].”

(a) Balks.
If there is a runner, or runners, it is a balk when:
(1) The pitcher, while touching his plate, makes any motion naturally associated with his pitch and fails to make such delivery;
(2) The pitcher, while touching his plate, feints a throw to first or third base and fails to complete the throw;
(3) The pitcher, while touching his plate, fails to step directly toward a base before throwing to that base;
(4) The pitcher, while touching his plate, throws, or feints a throw to an unoccupied base, except for the purpose of making a play;
(5) The pitcher makes an illegal pitch;
(6) The pitcher delivers the ball to the batter while he is not facing the batter;
(7) The pitcher makes any motion naturally associated with his pitch while he is not touching the pitcher’s plate;
(8) The pitcher unnecessarily delays the game;
(9) The pitcher, without having the ball, stands on or astride the pitcher’s plate or while off the plate, he feints a pitch;
(10) The pitcher, after coming to a legal pitching position, removes one hand from the ball other than in an actual pitch, or in throwing to a base;
(11) The pitcher, while touching his plate, accidentally or intentionally has the ball slip or fall out of his hand or glove;
(12) The pitcher, while giving an intentional base on balls, pitches when the catcher is not in the catcher’s box;
(13) The pitcher delivers the pitch from Set Position without coming to a stop.

We generally think of a balk as an attempt to deceive a baserunner. But as you can see, while that’s certainly the purpose of the rule (MLB’s official glossary even says so), it’s also not the actual language of the rule. And really, that makes sense: if deceiving the runner were illegal across the board, all pickoffs would be illegal too. That’s because a pickoff, generally speaking, means the runner was fooled. The rule does prohibit some actions that would serve the purpose of deceiving the runner, like stepping towards a different base or pitching without facing the batter (a line Johnny Cueto and Hideki Okajima both straddled at various times during their careers). Most of the comments to the prohibited pitcher action rules mention player safety as a primary consideration, which makes sense given the pitcher is often hurling a hard sphere at 95 mph. So, it’s probably most accurate to say that the balk rule means that you can’t deceive the runner in a manner which MLB has deemed to threaten player safety, or in a way that would disrupt the balance between base runners attempt to steal and the pitcher’s attempt to get outs. In other words, you can only fool the runner so long as you don’t take one of the actions proscribed by the Rule.

All of those elements are things a pitcher can’t do without a balk being called. When assessing Pettitte’s move, we can eliminate some of them pretty quickly. Pettitte isn’t throwing home, so (5), (6), (12), and (13) are out. He has the ball, so (9) doesn’t apply. He actually throws, so (2) doesn’t apply. He’s not throwing towards an unoccupied base, so (4) is irrelevant also. Pettitte also generally keeps his foot on the pitching rubber, so (7) doesn’t apply either.

The most likely arguments for saying Pettitte balks on these throws are under (1) and (3), and fortunately, there are comments to the Rule that can help us suss this out.

Let’s start with 6.02(a)(1). Here’s the comment.

Rule 6.02(a)(1) Comment: If a left-handed or right-handed pitcher swings his free foot past the back edge of the pitcher’s rubber, he is required to pitch to the batter except to throw to second base on a pick-off play.

Does Pettitte do that? It’s actually hard to tell. Here’s one angle from a game against the Red Sox.

Pettitte comes really close there. How about here, in the 2005 World Series?

It’s safe to say that Pettitte swings his front leg towards the pitching rubber. Here, it looks like he may well have gone past at least the front of the rubber. (Interestingly, it looks like the call may have been blown twice here; in addition to failing to call a balk on Pettitte, Iguchi was safe.)

So whether Pettitte regularly swings his front foot past the back of the pitching rubber seems inconclusive. Given how close he comes, however, it’s likely he did technically violate the rule on at least some of his pickoffs.

So how about 6.02(a)(3)? Here’s what that rule means.

Rule 6.02(a)(3) Comment: Requires the pitcher, while touching his plate, to step directly toward a base before throwing to that base. If a pitcher turns or spins off of his free foot without actually stepping or if he turns his body and throws before stepping, it is a balk. A pitcher is to step directly toward a base before throwing to that base and is required to throw (except to second base)because he steps. It is a balk if, with runners on first and third, the pitcher steps toward third and does not throw, merely to bluff the runner back to third; then seeing the runner on first start for second, turn and step toward and throw to first base. It is legal for a pitcher to feint a throw to second base.

In other words, this Rule means that Pettitte, when throwing towards first base with his back foot on the rubber, had to actually step toward first base before throwing.

There, it looks like he does. But here’s that pickoff from the 2005 World Series again:

There, it doesn’t really look like he’s stepping towards first base until the very end, when he puts his foot down. And the rule doesn’t really say how “step directly” is defined. Is that determined by the pitcher’s body when his foot comes down? Or when he lifts his foot? Pettitte seems to circumvent this rule by where he plants his foot, not by where he lifts it. It’s a plausible interpretation, but it’s also equally possible that an umpire could view Pettitte as not really stepping “directly toward” first base.

A lot of Pettitte’s pickoffs came before modern camera angles, which makes a conclusive determination difficult. Still, it’s helpful is to take a look at a pitcher with a similar move to Pettitte’s: Julio Urias.

Now, interestingly, Urias also comes dangerously close to swinging his front foot past the back of the pitching rubber. But he does the same thing that Pettitte did. It’s what the announcers to those game aptly described as “a weight shift towards home but the step towards first.” Here’s a different pickoff where you can see it more clearly:

Now, there you can see that Urias steps towards first the whole time, but moves the rest of his body towards home plate. The only issue is that it looks from this angle like his front toe swings past the back of the rubber, which may well mean this should have been called a balk.

So what does this mean? Pettitte and Urias certainly, at the very least, tested the outer boundaries of the balk rule. It seems certain that at least some of Pettitte’s pickoffs should have been called balks. At the same time, the basic premise of the move – shifting your body towards home plate as you step towards first – isn’t prohibited by the rule. Jeff Sullivan has talked in these pages about pitches so good they fool the umpire as well as the hitter. The very best pickoff moves, it seems, aren’t any different.

In 2018, I once again had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds of people within baseball. Many of their words were shared in my Sunday Notes column, while others came courtesy of the FanGraphs Q&A series, the Learning and Developing a Pitch series, the Manager’s Perspective series, and a smattering of feature stories. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations.

———

“My slider will come out and it will be spinning, spinning, spinning, and then as soon as it catches, it picks up speed and shoots the other way. Whoosh! It’s like when you bowl. You throw the ball, and then as soon as it catches, it shoots with more speed and power. Right? “ — Sergio Romo, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher, January 2018

“One of the biggest lessons we learn is that iron sharpens iron. That is 100% how we try to do things with the Rockies — hiring people that are smarter than we are, and more skilled, and have different skills that can complement, and train people to be better at their jobs than I am at my job. That’s how you advance an organization.” — Jeff Bridich, Colorado Rockies GM, January 2018

“We could split hairs and say, ‘Hey, you’re playing in front of a thousand drunk Australians instead of 40,000 drunk Bostonians, and you’re living with a host family instead of at a five-star hotel.’ But The Show is The Show, and in Australia the ABL is The Show.” — Lars Anderson, baseball nomad, January 2018

“Baseball is heaven. Until our closer blows the game.” — Michael Hill, Miami Marlins president of baseball operations, January 2018 Read the rest of this entry »

Until three of the team’s four postseason starters got knocked out early by the eventual-champion Red Sox, the 2018 Yankees had a successful season. Giancarlo Stanton’s first season in New York may have been a disappointment relative to his MVP 2017, and the rotation required some midseason triage, but the team managed their first hundred-win season since 2009. And thankfully, they did not lose in the wild card game and thus highlight the weirdness in baseball design of combining wild cards with an unbalanced schedule.

The Setup

The early part of the 2017 offseason was wrapped up in the grand hunt for Giancarlo Stanton, a player far more interesting than nearly every free agent actually available for signing. After a number of false starts and mystery teams and trade clauses not-waived, the Yankees came out on top in the race for not-Michael. And unusually when picking up a superstar, it was actually better than simply signing a comparable player in free agency, with the Yankees able to shed Starlin Castro’s salary and only lose two prospects (only one, Jorge Guzman, was a top 10 prospect for the Marlins according to our very own Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel).

The obsession with the luxury tax ensnared several of the larger-payroll teams over the 2017-2018 winter, and the Yankees were one of the chief actors in this little mini-play. We can argue endlessly about whether the current luxury tax system is well-designed (it isn’t) or whether it serves as a soft salary cap (it does), but it is the system in place and staying under the threshold for a year in order to “reset” the penalty rate provides a tremendous financial motivation to go cheap in the short-term.

The desire to reset the luxury tax penalty heading into an offseason in which Manny Machado, Bryce Harper, and possibly Clayton Kershaw were set to hit free agency was strong, and both of New York’s other significant offseason trades reflected this urge. Chase Headley, a perfectly average third baseman for the Yankees, enough to make him a much better signing than rival Boston’s similar deal with Pablo Sandoval, was sent packing to San Diego in a pure salary dump; the Yankees gave the Padres Bryan Mitchell as compensation for taking Headley’s contract. Any notion that this wasn’t a move designed to trim payroll, that the Padres just really wanted Headley, is undermined by the fact that his new-old team gave him nine starts before sending him to the unemployment line, where Headley spent the rest of 2019.

A three-way trade with the Diamondbacks and Rays netted the Yankees Brandon Drury, who was basically brought in to fill the Headley role of a stopgap until Gleyber Torres or Miguel Andujar; he was made as expendable as a secondary henchman objecting to the antagonist’s devious plot in a James Bond film by the second week of the season.

The Yankees spent all of $14 million on one-year contracts for CC Sabathia and Neil Walker, a far cry from a decade prior, when they guaranteed more than $800 million in contracts after the 2007 and 2008 seasons. Only 2015-2016, when the team’s biggest signing was Chris Denorfia, was quieter.

The Projection

The ZiPS projection system pegged the Yankees as two games better than the Red Sox, with just under a 60% chance of winning the division. ZiPS expected the AL East division title to essentially be yet another Yankees-Red Sox battle, with only a 4% chance of one of The Others of surprising enough to take the division. ZiPS was confident about the Yankees’ offense, seeing most of the unknown as a matter how quickly Andujar and Torres would have full-time jobs and how effectively the Yankees would continue to yank Jacoby Ellsbury’s playing time. The bullpen was projected to be the best bullpen that ZiPS ever projected. The computer’s main worry was the back of the rotation, which the computer did not see as very deep should something happened to one of Sabathia, Sonny Gray, or Jordan Montgomery.

The Results

Oddly enough for a team that won 100 games, it felt like the Yankees had more than their fair share of disappointments. Some of the fears about the rotation came to pass; Gray’s command was a tire fire in the first half and Montgomery’s season — and most, if not all, of 2019 — ended in June with Tommy John surgery. Neither Domingo German or Luis Cessa proved to be ready for a rotation spot on a win-now team, and the surprising Jonathan Loaisiga was yanked from the rotation with shoulder pain, leaving the team with obvious back-rotation holes going into the trade deadline.

Unlike a team like the Giants, who could never have made a significant midseason addition without going over the luxury tax threshold (they only had a $300,000 cushion at one point), the Yankees left themselves some space to make move that would require them taking on salary. It was enough space that the team was able to add Lance Lynn and J.A. Happ for the stretch run, and pick up Zach Britton from the Orioles to make a deep bullpen even deeper. None of these moves ended up changing the team’s postseason fate, as New York fell short in the contest for the division, but they might have if the team had gone deeper into the playoffs than they actually did.

As projected by ZiPS, the team set a new all-time record for team home runs in a season with 267, though to be honest, that result wasn’t particularly surprising. But even the second-ranked scoring offense in the AL has some plans go awry. Gary Sanchez, who had established himself as a star-level catcher in his first 1 1/2 seasons in the majors, lost a hundred points of batting average, finishing at .186/.291/.406 (he was Rob Deer-like in that he still was worth 1.4 WAR in 89 games). Further marring his season was the charge that he lacked hustle, which, combined with a groin injury, led to weeks of conspiracy theory about his health status.

Stanton also has to be considered at least a mild disappointment, dropping to 38 home runs and a 127 wRC+ from 59 and 159 his final year with the Marlins. Now, it would be greedy to focus too much on this dip — complaining about a 4.2 WAR player is a high class problem to have — but the fact remains that the Yankees did not get as much from their newly acquired star as they would have liked to see. Greg Bird managed to stay healthy for the second-half of the year, but also managed to stay around replacement level, resulting in him mostly losing his job to Luke Voit.

Those disappointments, even when combined with the Brett Gardner starting to show his age, turned out not to really matter. Aaron Hicks can rightly be described as a legitimate All-Star, which still seems a little strange to 2016 Dan, but that’s the world we’re in now. Andujar and Torres finished second and third in the Rookie of the Year voting (I would have flipped them given Andujar’s poor defense). Aaron Judge’s regression toward the mean indicated his mean was pretty damn high.

One interesting note is that ZiPS never actually knocked the Yankees down behind the Red Sox in projections. Even with the eight-game cushion at the end of the season, ZiPS still saw the Yankees as a sliver better than the Red Sox, though you wouldn’t have known it from their four-game playoff series.

What Comes Next?

In the early offseason, the Yankees have played the “Golly gee, I don’t know, the root cellar needs a’fixin’ and I’m not sure we have the money for those big city fancies with grandpa’s water on the knee” card publicly when it comes to the cream of this year’s free agent crop. This is hardly unusual this winter; most of the big spending teams, including the Red Sox, Dodgers, and Cubs, have all been mumbling this storyline with only a few variations on the theme. Only the Phillies, with their talk of “stupid money” have really broken ranks.

That’s not to say the team has done nothing, but the moves they’ve made have largely been keeping the band together. Gardner and Sabathia, two primary remaining holdovers from the team’s prior core, will return in 2019 on one-year deals. Happ, who stabilized the back of the rotation in late summer, returns in that role for two more years.

The team also made one of the bigger trades this winter, picking up James Paxton from the rebuilding Seattle Mariners for a package led by Justus Sheffield. With a rotation that now looks like Luis Severino–Masahiro Tanaka-Paxton-Happ-Sabathia in 2019, I think at least when it comes to the pitching, the Yankees will have a quiet rest of their offseason.

Otherwise, I’m not so sure that the impression the team has given of only dipping their toes into free agency is just posturing. Ten years ago, I’d have cried total bull, but with even large-market teams seeming generally less interested in splashing cash than they have been at any point I can remember as a baseball fan (I’m 40), I’m not really sure right now. Bryce Harper or Manny Machado ought to be a fit, as would someone like Brian Dozier to fill-in at second with Torres presumably at short while Didi Gregorius recovers from surgery, but I just don’t know if the team’s hinted lack of interest is genuine or not.

There’s a bit of a prisoner’s dilemma going on with the Red Sox and Yankees, both teams that ought to be in the top three in MLB in 2019, in that both of them spending $200 million might not advantage either over a scenario in which both spend very little. What actually happens is one of the most interesting questions remaining this winter. The Yankees will be a very good team in 2019, but I’m quite unsure how much they’ll open up their ceiling this offseason.

ZiPS Projection – Giancarlo Stanton

How much will Stanton bounce-back from a weak-ish 2019? How beneficial would it be for him to opt out after 2020? How high can he get in the all-time home run rankings? These are questions, naturally, for the ZiPS-o-matic 5000.

No, I’m not actually calling it that.

ZiPS is more negative on Stanton than I had expected. It isn’t thrilled by his step backwards in plate discipline from 2017, now seeing Stanton with a higher chance at going down that “old player skills” career path than establishing a high-enough level for a more graceful decline phase. A lot of players who didn’t age particularly well have crept up in his similarity group, with names like Rudy York, Jack Clark, Jay Buhner, Richie Sexson, and Boog Powell all in the top ten. That gets Stanton up to 637 home runs, but like Pujols, has him petering out before he seriously gets into the Ruth/Aaron/Bonds battle.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 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.

Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time. Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander spent all or most of their careers in the dead-ball era, before the home run was a real threat, and pitched while the color line was still in effect, barring some of the game’s most talented players from participating. Sandy Koufax and Tom Seaver pitched when scoring levels were much lower and pitchers held a greater advantage. Koufax and 2015 inductees Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez didn’t sustain their greatness for nearly as long. Greg Maddux didn’t dominate hitters to nearly the same extent.

Clemens, meanwhile, spent 24 years in the majors and racked up a record seven Cy Young awards, not to mention an MVP award. He won 354 games, led his leagues in the Triple Crown categories (wins, strikeouts and ERA) a total of 16 times, and helped his teams to six pennants and a pair of world championships.

Alas, whatever claim “The Rocket” may have on such an exalted title is clouded by suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs. When those suspicions came to light in the Mitchell Report in 2007, Clemens took the otherwise unprecedented step of challenging the findings during a Congressional hearing, but nearly painted himself into a legal corner; he was subject to a high-profile trial for six counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress. After a mistrial in 2011, he was acquitted on all counts the following year. But despite the verdicts, the specter of PEDs won’t leave Clemens’ case anytime soon, even given that in March 2015, he settled the defamation lawsuit filed by former personal trainer Brian McNamee for an unspecified amount.

Amid the ongoing Hall of Fame-related debates over hitters connected to PEDs — most prominently Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa — it’s worth remembering that the chemical arms race involved pitchers as well, leveling the playing field a lot more than some critics of the aforementioned sluggers would admit. The voters certainly haven’t forgotten that when it comes to Clemens, whose share of the vote has approximated that of Bonds. Clemens debuted with 37.6% of the vote in 2013 and only in 2016 began making significant headway, climbing to 45.2% thanks largely to the Hall’s purge of voters more than 10 years removed from covering the game. Like Bonds, he surged above 50% — a historically significant marker towards future election — in 2017, benefiting from voters rethinking their positions in the wake of the election of Bud Selig. The former commissioner’s roles in the late-1980s collusion scandal and in presiding over the proliferation of PEDs within the game dwarf the impact of individual PED users and call into question the so-called “character clause.”

Clemens’ march towards Cooperstown stalled somewhat last year even as he climbed 3.2 percentage points to 57.3%. Whether or not the open letter from Hall of Fame Vice Chairman Joe Morgan pleading to voters not to honor players connected to steroids had an impact, the end result was another year run off the clock. He still has a shot at reaching 75% before his eligibility runs out in 2022, but he needs to regain momentum.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 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 much as Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte was a pillar of the Joe Torre-era Yankees dynasty. The tall Texan lefty played such a vital role on 13 pinstriped playoff teams and seven pennant winners — plus another trip to the World Series during his three-year run Houston — that he holds several major postseason records. In fact, no pitcher ever started more potential series clinchers, both in the World Series and the postseason as a whole.

For as important as Pettitte was to the “Core Four” (Williams always gets the short end of the stick on that one) that anchored five championships from 1996 to 2009, he seldom made a case as one of the game’s top pitchers. High win totals driven by excellent offensive support helped him finish in the top five of his leagues’ Cy Young voting four times, but only three times did he place among the top 10 in ERA or WAR, and he never ranked higher than sixth in strikeouts. He made just three All-Star teams.

Indeed, Pettitte was more plow horse than racehorse. A sinker- and cutter-driven groundballer whose pickoff move was legendary, he was a championship-level innings-eater, a grinder (his word) rather than a dominator, a pitcher whose strong work ethic, mental preparation, and focus — visually exemplified by his peering in for the sign from the catcher with eyes barely visible underneath the brim of his cap — compensated for his lack of dazzling stuff. Ten times he made at least 32 starts, a mark that’s tied for seventh in the post-1994 strike era. His total of 10 200-inning seasons is tied for fourth in that same span, and his 12 seasons of qualifying for the ERA title with an ERA+ of 100 or better is tied for second. He had his ups and downs in the postseason, but only once during his 18-year career (2004, when he underwent season-ending elbow surgery) was he unavailable to pitch once his team made the playoffs.

On a ballot with two multi-Cy Young winners (Roger Clemens and Roy Halladay) as well as two other starters (Mike Mussina and Curt Schilling) who were better at preventing runs and racking up strikeouts — and also had plenty of postseason success — Pettitte would appear to be a long shot for Cooperstown. And that’s before factoring in his 2007 inclusion in the Mitchell Report for having used human growth hormone to recover from an elbow injury. Thanks to his championship rings and his high win total, he’ll probably receive enough support to persist on the ballot nonetheless.

About those wins: Regular readers know that I generally avoid dwelling upon pitcher win totals, because in this increasingly specialized era, they owe as much to adequate offensive, defensive, and bullpen support as they do to a pitcher’s own performance. While one needn’t know how many wins Pettitte amassed in a season or a career to appreciate his true value, those totals have affected the popular perception of his career.

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Rumors swirled on Wednesday morning that the New York Yankees had reached an agreement to re-sign J.A. Happ, but that deal was walked back as the two teams couldn’t quite come together. As the parties kept getting closer, alternatives continued to come off the board, with Charlie Morton signing with the Rays and Lance Lynn headed to Texas. All of this was set against the backdrop of a warmer-than-expected market for starting pitching, which had already seen Patrick Corbin get a sixth year on his deal with the Nationals and Nate Eovaldi receive a guarantee of $68 million from the Red Sox. The cause of the holdup between Happ and the Yankees was likely the years of the contract, as Happ wanted three and the Yankees wanted to pay for two. The result the two sides seem to have come to is a two-year, $34 million contract with a $17 million option vesting for Happ if he reaches 27 starts or 165 innings in 2020, providing the Yankees with significant protection against potentially paying an ineffective 38-year-old. The deal has yet to be officially announced.

Happ returning to the Bronx wasn’t a foregone conclusion, as there appears to have been significant interest in the lefty, and for good reason. Over the last four years, Happ has been a consistently above-average pitcher, grabbing about three wins and 170 innings every year. In our free agent rankings, Eric Longenhagen discussed how Happ has been able to perform well through his mid-30s.

Greater use of a sinker to complement his changeup has facilitated his ascent from 1.0 WAR back-end starter to 3.0 WAR mid-rotation innings-eater. Happ’s size and length create discomfort for opposing lefties, and he has been able to dominate them (left-handed opponents slashed .171/.239/.248 against Happ last year) without a good breaking ball. Instead, Happ makes unusually frequent use of his fastball (throwing 73% of the time, roughly 20 points higher than the league-average mark for starters), which is firmer now than it was in his mid-20s.

Every team could use the three wins and 30 starts the Yankees can expect from Happ in 2019. The potential issue, though, isn’t so much next season as it is the ones that come after it. The Yankees didn’t want to guarantee that third year and that reticence is justified. The lefty turned 36 years old in October. A three-year contract would take him through his age-38 season. Over the last decade, only six pitchers have produced even four wins and 400 innings in their age-36 to age-38 seasons, with CC Sabathia likely to join that group in 2019. Here is how those pitchers, along with Happ, fared in their age-32 to age-35 seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

The major-league phase of Thursday’s Rule 5 Draft began with its annual roll call of clubs confirming the number of players currently on their 40-man rosters and ended with a total of 14 players being added to new big-league clubs. Dan Szymborski offered ZiPS projections here for the players taken earlier today. Below are brief scouting reports on the players selected, with some notes provided by Kiley McDaniel.

But, first: Our annual refresher on the Rule 5 Draft’s complex rules. Players who signed their first pro contract at age 18 or younger are eligible for selection after five years of minor-league service if their parent club has not yet added them to the team’s 40-man roster. For players who signed at age 19 or older, the timeline is four years. Teams with the worst win/loss record from the previous season pick first, and those that select a player must not only (a) pay said player’s former club $100,000, but also (b) keep the player on their 25-man active roster throughout the entirety of the following season (with a couple of exceptions, mostly involving the disabled list). If a selected player doesn’t make his new team’s active roster, he is offered back to his former team for half of the initial fee. After the player’s first year on the roster, he can be optioned back to the minor leagues.

These rules typically limit the talent pool to middle-relief prospects or position players with one-dimensional skillsets, though sometimes it involves more talented prospects who aren’t remotely ready for the majors. This creates an environment where selections are made based more on fit and team need than just talent, but teams find solid big-league role players in the Rule 5 every year and occasionally scoop up an eventual star. Let’s dive into the scouting reports on this year’s group.

First Round

1. Baltimore Orioles
Richie Martin, SS (from A’s) – Martin was a 2015 first rounder out of the University of Florida, drafted as an athletic shortstop with some pop who was still raw as a baseball player. Martin had really struggled to hit in pro ball until 2018, when he repeated Double-A and slashed .300/.368/.439.

He has average raw power but hits the ball on the ground too often to get to any of it in games. Houston has been adept at altering their players’ swings, so perhaps the new Orioles regime can coax more in-game pop from Martin, who is a perfectly fine defensive shortstop. He should compete with incumbent Orioles Breyvic Valera and Jonathan Villar, as well as fellow Rule 5 acquisition Drew Jackson, for middle infield playing time. But unless there’s a significant swing change here, Martin really only projects as a middle infield utility man.

2. Kansas City Royals
Sam McWilliams, RHP (from Rays) – McWilliams was an overslot eighth rounder in 2014 and was traded from Philadelphia to Arizona for Jeremy Hellickson in the fall of 2015. He was then sent from Arizona to Tampa Bay as one of the players to be named later in the three-team trade that sent Steven Souza to Arizona. McWilliams is pretty raw for a 23-year-old. He spent two years in the Midwest League and posted a 5.02 ERA at Double-A when the Rays pushed him there after the trade.

He has a big fastball, sitting mostly 93-94 but topping out at 97. He’ll flash an occasional plus slider but it’s a rather inconsistent pitch. The industry thought McWilliams had a chance to grow into a backend rotation arm because his stuff is quite good, but he has a much better chance of sticking as a reliever right now.

3. Chicago White Sox (Traded to Rangers)
Jordan Romano, RHP (from Blue Jays) – Romano is a 25-year-old righty who spent 2018 at Double-A. He’s a strike-throwing righty with a fastball in the 91-93 range and he has an average slider and changeup, both of which reside in the 80-84 range. His command is advanced enough that both of his secondaries play up a little bit. He likely profiles as a fifth starter or rotation depth, but the Rangers current pitching situation is quite precarious and Romano may just end up sticking around to eat innings with the hope that he sticks as a backend starter or swingman when they’re competitive once again.

4. Miami Marlins
Riley Ferrell, RHP (from Astros)- Ferrell was a dominant college closer at TCU and was consistently 93-97 with a plus slider there. He continued to pitch well in pro ball until a shoulder aneurysm derailed his 2016 season. Ferrell needed surgery that transplanted a vein from his groin into his shoulder in order to repair it, and the industry worried at the time that the injury threatened his career. His stuff is back and Ferrell is at least a big league ready middle reliever with a chance to be a set-up man.

5. Detroit Tigers
Reed Garrett, RHP (from Rangers)
Garrett’s velo spiked when he moved to the bullpen in 2017 and he now sits in the mid-90s, touches 99 and has two good breaking balls, including a curveball that has a plus-plus spin rate. He also has an average changeup. He’s a fair bet to carve out a bullpen role on a rebuilding Tigers team.

6. San Diego Padres
No Pick (full 40-man)

7. Cincinnati Reds
Connor Joe, 3B (from Dodgers) – The Reds will be Joe’s fourth team in two years as he has been shuttled around from Pittsburgh (which drafted him) to Atlanta (for Sean Rodriguez) to the Dodgers (for cash) during that time. Now 26, Joe spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. He’s a swing changer who began lifting the ball more once he joined Los Angeles. Joe is limited on defense to first and third base, and he’s not very good at third. He has seen a little bit of time in the outfield corners and realistically projects as a four-corners bench bat who provides patience and newfound in-game pop.

8. Texas Rangers (Traded to Royals)
Chris Ellis, RHP (from Cardinals)- Ellis, 26, spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. One could argue he has simply been lost amid St. Louis’ surfeit of upper-level pitching but his stuff — a low-90s sinker up to 94 and an average slider — did not compel us to include him in our Cardinals farm system write up. The Royals took Brad Keller, who has a similar kind of repertoire but better pure stuff, and got more out of him than I anticipated, so perhaps that will happen with Ellis.

9. San Francisco Giants
Travis Bergen, LHP (from Blue Jays)- Bergen looked like a lefty specialist in college but the Blue Jays have normalized the way he strides toward home, and his delivery has become more platoon-neutral in pro ball. He has a fringy, low-90s fastball but has two good secondaries in his upper-70s curveball and tumbling mid-80s change. So long as he pitches heavily off of those two offerings, he could lock down a bullpen role.

10. Toronto Blue Jays
Elvis Luciano, RHP (from Royals)- Luciano turns 19 in February and was the youngest player selected in the Rule 5 by a pretty wide margin. He was acquired by Kansas City in the trade that sent Jon Jay to Arizona. Though he’ll touch 96, Luciano’s fastball sits in the 90-94 range and he has scattershot command of it, especially late in starts. His frame is less projectable than the typical teenager so there may not be much more velo coming as he ages, but he has arm strength and an above-average breaking ball, so there’s a chance he makes the Jays roster in a relief role. He has no. 4 starter upside if his below-average changeup and command progress. If he makes the opening day roster, he’ll be the first player born in the 2000s to play in the big leagues.

11. New York Mets
Kyle Dowdy, RHP (from Indians)
Dowdy’s nomadic college career took him from Hawaii to Orange Coast College and finally to Houston, where he redshirted for a year due to injury. He was drafted by Detroit and then included as a throw-in in the Leonys Martin trade to Cleveland. He’s a reliever with a four-pitch mix headlined by an above-average curveball that pairs pretty well with a fastball that lives in the top part of the strike zone but doesn’t really spin. He also has a mid-80s slider and changeup that are fringy and exist to give hitters a little different look. He could stick in the Mets bullpen.

12. Minnesota Twins
No Pick (full 40-man)

13. Philadelphia Phillies (Traded to Orioles)
Drew Jackson, SS (from Dodgers)- Jackson is a plus runner with a plus-plus arm and average defensive hands and actions at shortstop. He’s not a great hitter but the Dodgers were at least able to cleanse Jackson of the Stanford swing and incorporate more lift into his cut. He had a 55% ground ball rate with Seattle in 2016 but that mark was 40% with Los Angeles last year. He also started seeing reps in center field last season. He projects as a multi-positional utility man.

14. Los Angeles Angels
No Pick (team passed)

15. Arizona Diamondbacks
Nick Green, RHP (from Yankees)- Green has the highest present ranking on The Board as a 45 FV, and we think he’s a near-ready backend starter. Arizona lacks pitching depth, so Green has a pretty solid chance to make the club out of spring training. He induces a lot of ground balls (65% GB% in 2018) with a low-90s sinker and also has a plus curveball.

16. Washington Nationals
No Pick (team passed)

17. Pittsburgh Pirates
No Pick (team passed)

18. St. Louis Cardinals
No Pick (full 40-man)

19. Seattle Mariners
Brandon Brennan, RHP (from Rockies)- Brennan is a 27-year-old reliever with a mid-90s sinker that will touch 97. He has an average slider that relies heavily on it’s velocity more than movement to be effective. The real bat-misser here is the changeup, which has more than 10 mph of separation from Brennan’s fastball and dying fade.

20. Atlanta Braves
No Pick (team passed)

21. Tampa Bay Rays
No Pick (full 40-man)

22. Colorado Rockies
No Pick (team passed)

23. Cleveland Indians
No Pick (team passed)

24. Los Angeles Dodgers
No Pick (full 40-man)

25. Chicago Cubs
No Pick (team passed)

26. Milwaukee Brewers
No Pick (team passed)

27. Oakland Athletics
No Pick (team passed)

28. New York Yankees
No Pick (full 40-man)

29. Houston Astros
No Pick (team passed)

30. Boston Red Sox
No Pick (team passed)

Second Round

San Francisco Giants
Drew Ferguson, OF- Ferguson is a hitterish tweener outfielder with a good combination of bat-to-ball skills and plate discipline. He has a very short, compact stroke that enables him to punch lines drives to his pull side and he’s tough to beat with velocity. Ferguson doesn’t really run well enough to play center field and lacks the power for a corner, so his likely ceiling is that of a bench outfielder.

A rumor surfaced last night that a three-team trade might be brewing between the Mets, Yankees, and Marlins. According to Ken Rosenthal, J.T. Realmuto would head to the Mets with Noah Syndergaard going to the Yankees. While Realmuto might not fill the Mets’ biggest need, the Marlins catcher is a really good player who would provide a sizable upgrade over the options they have on the roster. For the Yankees, getting another ace-level pitcher in Syndergaard would help them to continue building their rotation after missing out on Patrick Corbin. As for the Marlins, they are obviously looking to get younger as they try to rebuild for the future. The player who might be headed to Miami? That would be Miguel Andujar.

Name to watch with #Yankees: Miguel Andújar. Rival execs tell me and @ByRobertMurray NYY open to moving him. Would make sense as #Marlins’ ask for Realmuto; MIA wants established young MLB player as headliner. Also would line up with NYY pursuit of Machado. Torres could play SS.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 11, 2018

The Yankees third baseman is coming off a very good rookie campaign, during which he batted .297/.328/.527 for a 128 wRC+. Andujar features a contact-heavy approach that limits walks and strikeouts. In the Yankees’ Top 27 Prospects write-up last year, this what Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen had to say about Andujar, who they ranked as the 14th-best prospect in baseball heading into the 2018 season.

Andujar has tantalized scouts since early in his pro career with a strong, athletic frame and flashy tools that are above average to plus across the board. He was largely seen as potential, even passed over by all 30 teams in the Rule 5 Draft following the 2015 season. He broke out in a huge way in 2017, reaching a critical mass of adjustments and maturity that showed up in the counting stats.

Andujar has cut down on his swing-and-miss while also lifting the ball more and hitting it with more authority, an obviously rare and desirable combination when you’re already working with a toolsy prospect who was always young for his level.

Andujar lived up to that report last season, and as a batter, he was a top ten third basemen in baseball. With five seasons left of team control, Andujar is a young, cheap potential star. As to why the Yankees might move him, Andujar was very bad on defense last year, 16 runs below average on defense by UZR and -25 by DRS. He should probably not be playing third base. I asked Longenhagen what position Andujar should be playing, and he said he would move him to right field. Andujar has a great arm and above-average sprint speed, so a move to the outfield might showcase his skills better than the hot corner does, but the Yankees already have a full outfield. First base might waste Andujar’s arm and some of his issues in the field might not be alleviated by moving across the diamond. Trading Andujar to help the rotation would also free up a spot to potentially sign Manny Machado.

Putting Andujar in right field limits his ceiling, as an average third baseman with his batting line last season would have been a 4-plus win player. Even slightly below average defense in right field would put Andujar in the three-win range, meaning the bat would need to take another step forward to compensate. That step forward is a possibility for a player who is just 23 years old, especially if he improves his walk rate a little and his strikeouts come down closer to his minor league numbers. That’s still an All-Star level player in right field. Even if the Yankees are making Andujar available, it shouldn’t be seen a huge slight to Andujar. He’s a good player now, and has the potential to be better.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame 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, 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.

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

Off the field, Bill James once referred to Sheffield as “an urban legend in his own mind.” Sheffield found controversy 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 you 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.

Later in his career, Sheffield became entangled in the BALCO performance enhancing drug scandal through his relationship with Barry Bonds — a relationship that by all accounts crumbled before he found himself in even deeper water. For all of the drama that surrounded Sheffield, and for all of his rage and outrageousness, he never burned out the way his uncle did, nor did he have trouble finding work.

Even in the context of the high-scoring era in which he played, Sheffield’s offensive numbers look to be Hall of Fame caliber, but voters have found plenty of reasons to overlook him, whether it’s his tangential connection to PEDs, his gift for finding controversy, his poor defensive metrics, or the crowd on the ballot. In his 2015 debut, he received just 11.7% of the vote, and in three years since, he’s actually lost a bit of ground, getting 11.1% in 2018. At this point, he’s more likely to fall off the ballot before his eligibility window expires than he is to reach 75% — a fate that, I must admit, surprises me.

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