FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: December 20, 2025
As is often the case the week after the Winter Meetings, there has been a flurry of transactions for us to cover at FanGraphs since we got back from Orlando. So many relief pitchers came off the board. The Padres re-signed Michael King on Thursday night while Meg’s Seahawks were staging an absolutely stupid comeback against my Rams; San Diego followed that up yesterday by signing a Korean infielder with the musical name, Sung-mun Song. Earlier this week, the Twins signed Josh Bell to hit in the middle of their order, while the Phillies added Adolis García to replace right fielder Nick Castellanos, who is still technically on the roster but definitely won’t be when the season starts. The two moves inspired Michael Baumann to compare them to babies putting every single thing they see into their mouths. Lovely.
Then, yesterday, two big trades went down. Eric Longenhagen has you covered on the Rays-Orioles swap that sent Shane Baz to Baltimore, while Brendan Gawlowksi analyzed the three-team trade between the Rays, Pirates, and Astros. Of course, there are a number of high-profile free agents still out there, including four of the top five on Ben Clemens’ Top 50 list and six of the top 10.
We won’t be covering any of that in today’s mailbag; you can find all the relevant buzz in Jon Becker’s latest edition of the Matrix Reloaded column. Instead, we’ll answer your questions about the position players with the most WAR who never made an All-Star team, whether baseball should use WPA as pitcher wins, the windup, and more. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
Kirk Gibson winning an MVP but not getting a single all star game appearance is one of the weirdest baseball factoids I have learned in a while.
That 1988 NL All-Star roster…wow. The starters were Darryl Strawberry, Vince Coleman, and Andre Dawson. Two of which were totally reasonable, and then Coleman.
They then had to wrangle three reserve outfielders. I don’t remember who picked the reserves then but between Gibson, Bonds, and Andy Van Slyke they had three really great outfielders that had been left out of the first round and only Van Slyke got picked. Somehow they wound up with a pre-breakout Rafael Palmeiro and Willie McGee who had been trading on his reputation since 1985. Neither one was required to have one player per team.
Until I read this article I would not have guessed that Kirk Gibson never made an All Star team and if that were the answer to a Sunday trivia question, I surely would have gotten it wrong.
Makes me wonder about the best position players to never win MVP. If you rule out players who had elite seasons before the “modern” MVP award in 1931, I’m going with Wade Boggs. But I think Eddie Mathews has more fWAR so depending how you measure it you could go with him.
A lot of people say Mel Ott, but that feels incorrect to me even though he’s probably a viable answer depending on how you word the exclusion criteria. He had one MVP-level season before 1931 and it was so long ago that it was before the Cy Young award which meant they kept giving the NL MVP to Carl Hubbell.
None of Boggs, Mathews, or Beltre won an MVP. Seems like HOF third basemen in general have fewer MVP awards than other positions as well…
My core four would be Gary Carter, Eddie Mathews, Mel Ott, and Mike Piazza. Boggs was awesome, but he’s overrated by raw B-R WAR.
As a fan of Detroit & growing up in that era, it is weird.
He was a big name player- 1st rd pick who was also an All American WR at MSU who would have likely been a 1st rd NFL draft pick if he had went that route. Also got tagged with the “next Mickey Mantle” hype as a young player & was a charismatic, highlight reel type guy, esp when he was young in Detroit. Big guy that could fly & you did NOT want to block the plate if your were a catcher & he was rounding 3rd.
Only thing I can think of is he never had big counting stats, was more of a does a little of everything type guy. never hit .300, never hit 30 HR, never had 100 RBI, so-so BA’s backed up with decent OBPs (which no one noticed, of course), so-so arm in RF, stole 20-30 SB’s with a really good %, but, never close to leading the league. That & I think he was considered “disappointing” his first few years due to the Mickey Mantle hype stuff.
It’s one thing to not make the All-Star game in a year where you win the MVP. It’s another thing to not make the All-Star game in the years in between his ALCS MVP—which established him as a legitimate star—and his NL MVP. He finished 6th in MVP voting in 1984 and got some down ballot votes in 1985 too, and somehow his status as a legitimate star didn’t make a dent the next year. It was stiff competition in the AL with Rickey, Winfield, Puckett, Barfield, Dwight Evans, Chet Lemon, George Bell etc in the mid 1980s but Gibson was as good as a lot of those guys. Not Rickey, but he is at least close to the other ones.
I am floored by that. I can’t remember the last time I absolutely knew a baseball fact….but learned I was wrong !!
Gibson was selected to the AS team multiple times, but declined to attend. So this is really just a technicality
Yeah this instantly makes it totally uninteresting
This is correct. He was selected in 1985 and 1988, and declined to get rest and family time. This fact probably also affected future potential selections.
Tony Phillips being the hitter with the highest career WAR to never make an All Star team struck me as fascinating but also as hilariously ironic because our fantasy league for many years had a team named Tony Phillips’ All Stars!
As an Angels fan back in those days, I would have guessed Salmon. I did remember Tony Phillips being super underrated and surprisingly smacking a bunch of homers with said Angels one year.
The WPA win idea might be less disruptive to tradition when the starter goes less than 5 innings but leaves with a lead that is held until the end of the game and still contributed to the win (as measured by WPA) more than any reliever. Having the scorer pick a relief pitcher for the W is too subjective and there are even cases where the relievers except for the closer all have negative WPAs but one of them is required to get the W.
I am in favor of replacing the stupid concept of a “win” with this somewhat less stupid but far more complicated idea. It’s the only way to kill off the win for good.
Fan vote for Game Ball. Winner gets the first slice of pizza after the game
Surprised Garry Maddox never got an Allstar game HOF vote.
He was widely known as a great CF when he played, likely the best in baseball. Won 8 straight GG’s. Famous for the quote: “Two-thirds of the Earth is covered by water, the other one-third by Garry Maddox”.
Not a great hitter, but, decent..had a bunch of years over .280.
Garry Maddox is not (necessarily) the answer to the first writer’s second question. The question was “Who has the highest career WAR and never received a single Hall of Fame vote?”
Garry Maddox is the answer to “Who has the highest career WAR, *never made an All-Star team*, and never received a single Hall of Fame vote?”
I think the player with the highest career WAR to appear on a writers’ ballot and not receive a vote is probably Jimmy Wynn. Unless there’s some weirdness with some really early candidate like Charlie Buffinton or something. Mark Langston is also up there.
And Willie Davis is the eligible player with the highest WAR never to appear on a ballot, according to this Bob Nightengale article about how Eric Anthony found out that Davis was his biological father (sadly, years after Davis’s death). The original writer’s instincts were correct.
Thanks for wrapping up the loose end from last week Matt. This must be what it feels like when the local grammar Nazi finally manages to get one of their corrections in the paper: vindicated yet vaguely guilty at having put people through the trouble.
For future reference, if this happens again you can always just punish Baumann by making him write glowing pieces on the Mets for a week or something in lieu of answering the question.
Chavez was a bit more than a glove-first guy. From 2001-2005, he had the most homers and was tied for the fourth-highest wRC+ among qualified ML 3Bs. Back issues derailed his career, but he was certainly worthy of at least one ASG selection.
Yeah I’m surprised he never made one he was one of the best 3rd basemen in the league at his peak.
Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle !! I would have bet a lot of money that Kirk Gibson made multiple all star teams. He made zero !! I follow baseball history and I’m shocked.
Willie Davis has a legit HOF case, yet he was never even included on a ballot. Best player to never be included on the ballot.
The 21st century equivalent inexplicably left off the ballot has to be Javier Vazquez.
Kirk Gibson’s SABR bio contains this parenthetical note: “Gibson was the first, and through 2008 the only MVP winner to never appear in an All-Star game. He had been selected twice, in 1985 and 1988, but declined to attend.”
Ken McMullen (Brooks Robinson) and Richie Hebner (Mike Schmidt) were both excellent third baseman, but who played in the shadow of two of the best 3B of all-time.
Dusty Baker should definitely be in the Hall of Fame. He made some post-season mistakes as a manager, but his teams were consistently good from year to year.
Glad to have a Fangraphs contributor who can analyze pitching mechanics and also probably has hot takes on Measure HLA implementation. UCLA’s transportation department is one of the best!