FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: January 3, 2026
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a relaxing and enjoyable lobe of the year; now it’s back to reality. As you return to your usual routines and start counting down to Opening Day, rest assured that all of us at FanGraphs are here to provide you with the same entertaining and informative baseball coverage that you’ve come to expect.
Speaking of the coming season, there are still plenty of star free agents left unsigned, including four of the top five and six of the top 10 on Ben Clemens’ Top 50 rankings, so it’s bound to be an eventful two-month lead-up to spring training.
In this week’s mailbag, we’ll answer your questions about the pitchers with the most WAR who never made an All-Star team, why the Hall of Fame matters, the Marlins, and Rickey Henderson’s 1982 season. Before we do, though, 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.
“And Eric Davis was great.” Yes, yes he was.
Before Bobby Witt and Elly de la Cruz there was Eric Davis. More power than Rickey Henderson and faster than Barry Bonds.
The tools were totally crazy. I don’t know what kind of tool grades you would put on him in retrospect. Definitely 80 speed, at least 70 raw and maybe 80, and a hit tool in the range of 50 to 60? He had the second most home runs between 1986 and 1989 and the fourth most stolen bases.
Eric Davis took the mantle of everyone’s favorite player from Rickey Henderson in 1985.
He would be a great Zips time warp guy- what stats would a healthy Eric Davis rang up?
There was a piece on that. It had him ending with over 400 homers and 400 stolen bases and about 50 WAR in only about 7500 PAs.
The health issues he dealt with were crazy. Early in his career they damaged his athleticism, and later in his career they became increasingly freaky and life-threatening. The most PAs he had in a year was 562 and after his age 28 season he only cleared 500 PAs once. But he had a run in the mid to late 1980s where he was just one extended highlight reel.
I forgot that, I’ll have to look it up.
I remember him lacerating a kidney diving for a ball in the WS, which just sounds awful.
& then he got colon cancer & came back & played in the postseason while undergoing treatment…which i assume was chemo or radiation..all I can about that is Damn!! How has there not been a documentary about that?
Him lacerating his kidney was one of the most horrible things I’ve seen in a baseball game. It was something like the first batter the Reds faced in that game too.
His comeback season from chemo somehow even crazier. It was in 1998, and it was the most games he had played in a season since 1990.