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.
The Dodgers seem pretty close to an off-the-shelf good team? They have an excellent minor league system which they use for trades, but a very large proportion of their roster is either free agents or players they traded for with a year of control and extended (Betts and Glasnow).
Miguel Dilone should get his own wing at the Hall of Fame with all the other guys who took off way more than they should have. Call it the Hall of Shamelessness.
I seem to recall that at some point in the late 1970s and early 1980s the Pirates got caught stealing at a super high rate. Ironic for Pirates, no? And Dilone came up with them IIRC.
Harold Reynolds also got thrown out a comically large amount. Like 40% of the time. Alfredo Griffin too, I am pretty sure he had a season where he got thrown out more than he made it.
Alfredo Griffin had three seasons in which he was caught stealing more than not.
But I’m unsure why you’re slagging on Miguel Dilone. Dude couldn’t hit a lick, but he had a 77% success rate stealing bases for his career (267/345).
Yeah maybe Dillone just had an off year.
Alfredo Griffin had three years where he was caught more than he stole?! That is really bad.
I think Griffin is probably the worst basestealer I can think of. He had over 300 attempts and he converted only a bit more than half of them. Harold Reynolds and Tony Fernandez were also pretty bad. So was Rod Carew who got caught an absurd number of times with 500+ stolen base attempts, although with the number of times he got on base I’m not sure he’s in the same category as the others.
Looking through the career CS leaders, I think the permanent stop sign leader is Pete Rose, with 198 SB and 148 CS. Which makes a lot of sense. Griffin is up there with 191/134. Dave Parker 154/113, Lenny Randle 156/112, and Greg Gagne 108/96 also didn’t help matters.
The most CS for anyone with a rate under 50% was Buddy Bell with a jaw-dropping 55 SB/79 CS. I can only hope he was on the front end of a lot of blown hit-and-runs.
Yeah although Pete Rose also got on base a crazy amount of times. I bet he has one of the lowest stolen base attempt rates of any position player with more than a couple thousand PAs.
I don’t entirely understand how Buddy Bell kept running, but he did.
I had never heard of Miguel Dilone. I wonder if such a player would have any hope of reaching 2000 plate appearances nowadays.
Dilone’s 1980 season is a strong contender for the wierdest outlier season in the long and glorious history of this great game.
Yeah, i remember that. He hit .340 out of nowhere and had a decent year.
Ironically, baserunning was the only thing Dilone was good at. He had a positive BsR every season, despite the CS but one while racking up negative hitting and defensive value.
Ach, we don’t have CS% for runners here!
Eyeballing the team seasons for caught stealing since 1950, some messed-up things were happening in 1977:
Cardinals stole 134 bases and got caught 112 times
Indians stole 87 bases and got caught 87 times (!) (Buddy Bell and John Lowenstein both 1 for 9)
Mets stole 98 bases and got caught 81 times (Mike Vail 0 for 7)
That year the Pirates did have Dave Parker and Al Oliver get caught more than they succeeded while running a bunch, but they also had Omar Moreno, Frank Taveras, and Phil Garner stealing a whole bunch with decent rates, so while their 120 CS was the second-most ever it came with a respectable 260 SB. The most CS ever was the ’76 A’s with 123, but also the most SB ever with 341, so no one’s complaining. (Led by Bill North, who I don’t remember at all but who appears to have been a legitimate Dude.)
Basically the Pirates were often stealing a bunch with what we now know to be at terrible success rate, but I don’t think it was an outlier at the time.
The most CS for a team ever for a CS rate below 50% was the 1980 Blue Jays, with 67 SB and 72 CS. With the deficit coming entirely from… Alfredo Griffin! Though the rest of the team’s 50% doesn’t exactly do them honor. Worst ratio before I get tired of clicking through the leaderboards was the 67 Indians, 53 SB/65 CS, led in infamy by one Max Alvis 3-for-13.
Shooters shoot
Alfredo Griffin may very well hold the record for the most games played by a player whose career fWAR is a negative number. -1.0. At least he managed a positive 3.0 bWAR, which is very possibly also the record.
The amazing thing about Alfredo Griffin is that it’s not like we found out later that his defense was abysmal, or that once we adjust for park factors his offense wasn’t great, or anything like that. His particular brand of bad baseball was immediately obvious to anyone who looked at his statline. He only had something like 350 extra base hits in his entire career, which is pretty awful when you hit .249 and have over 7000 PAs. His career OPS was like .600. That’s literally worse than Dontrelle Willis or Carlos Zambrano.
And bringing it back to another question from the mailbag, Alfredo Griffin did make an All-Star team. According to Wikipedia, his double-play partner Damaso Garcia brought him along to the game, and when Alan Trammell got hurt, the manager named Griffin to the roster as a substitute since he was already around.
Griffin’s co-rookie of the year award was reasonable, at least if you buy the defensive stats. He led all AL rookies in fWAR. In part because, if the leaderboards are to be believed, only eleven rookies got as many as 200 PAs in the majors in 1979.
Griffin walked so Neifi Perez could run.
Or something like that.
Griffin
walkedlightly poked a single through the infield and then was immediately caught stealing so Neifi Perez could runFTFY
Yeah, on top of his terrible baserunning & lack of power, he NEVER walked.
In 1984, he had 4 BB in over 440 PA’s. That was an outlier but even in good years he only walked 20-30x.
In 1984, him and Damaso Garcia combined for 20 BB in 1100 PA’s.
I’m convinced that he was the beneficiary of having a cool name. Mostly because I can’t think of any other reasons that he stuck around for so long.
John Tudor would have won the Cy Young for his 1985 in about 85% of MLB seasons, but, he picked the wrong year, as that was Gooden’s 24-4, 1.53 ERA year.
Tudor’s year always reminded me a little of Jake Arrieta in 2015 with his 2nd half.
I was really surprised Dennis Leonard never made an AS team..as you said, 20 wins 3x and had a good year in 1981, too. Real workhorse. More importantly he had a great fu manchu mustache that young me thought was awesome.
I was really surprised by Tom Candiotti and Kevin Tapani not making it. Tapani was the best pitcher on a world-series winning team and Candiotti was the best pitcher on a couple of different teams.
His stache was equaled only by Gorman Thomas.
Old(er) you can and should still think his fu manchu was awesome
Really nice writing, Jay, as usual.
I’m curious about Vince Coleman not making the stolen bases list.
For example, in his 1985 season, he got on base 220 times and stole 109 bases. I’m surprised that doesn’t rank.
Probably many times on base give more than one stolen base opportunity. If the leadoff hitter singles and then doesn’t steal, that’s three opportunities, one for each of the next batters. For instance, in 1986 Eric Davis got on base 147 times (158 hits + 68 walks + 1 HBP – 27 HR) but had 252 opportunities for his 91 attempts. Coleman’s 135 attempts in 219 times on base (subtracting his one home run) is about the same ratio. Maybe he had more chances because he batted leadoff more?
Although I just went through the game logs for his first four games and Coleman may have attempted on every chance he had. Must’ve eased off.
Yeah, I remember Coleman in the 80s because I grew up in St Louis. It felt like he was off to the races as soon as he was on base.
Coleman’s 1985 season was 11th, 135 attempts out of 414 total opportunities (32.6%). His 1986, 1987, and 1988 seasons are all in the top 25 too.
Glad you are familiar with Miguel Dilone now Ben!
“ And man, I’d never even heard of Miguel Dilone, who went 50-for-73 on stolen base attempts, a terrible success rate, while running at a Henderson-like clip when reaching base. He also had a 67 wRC+ and only played roughly half the year en route to a negative WAR total for the season. It’s hard to imagine a player like that today.”
Yeah, they end up out of the major leagues, it’s what happened eventually to Billy Hamilton, we don’t really have much if any modern parallels.
Billy Hamilton left Earth to return to his home planet.
I noticed that your data extended back to 1974. I would be curious to know Lou Brock’s stats from that year. (I presume that is why you went back that far.) He had 118 SB and 33 CS for a total of 151 attempts.
I am also curious where Brock’s 151 attempts ranks in your data.
1974 just happens to be the oldest year in our data, but Brock’s 1974 season (151 attempts in 538 opportunities) is 28th, amusingly sandwiched between 1990 Vince Coleman (28.1%) and 1991 Vince Coleman (28.0%). 151 attempts is the second-most I found – he just got on base a ton, 9th-highest number of opportunities in my database, though to be fair it might only count guys who attempted at least one steal.
I am a huge baseball fan, but I found the Hall of Fame museum extremely boring. I would never go back. The town of Cooperstown, however, was very nice.
Those starting pitchers at their peaks would have been a great rotation. Darwin and Tudor were particularly strong! I am shocked Tudor did not get more respect for the Hall personally. I lived in Missouri and was surrounded by Cardinals fans in the mid to late 80s. He was often great!
As for the SB list, I was surprised Vince Coleman did not make the list. Three straight 100+ steal seasons. I thought he got caught more than he did though before I looked him up.
The 1976 A’s had a couple of guys that were only used to steal bases. I’m not sure how they fit in. Larry Lintz had 4 PAs and 42 SB attempts. And then looking at this other player’s career, I’m not sure he’s even a real player: Matt Alexander with 27 attempts in 30 PAs. He had 145 SB attempts in 195 plate appearances over 9 seasons.
If you’re in the NYC area and aren’t planning to go to the HOF, which would still require at least a weekend of travel, check out the Jackie Robinson museum. It’s not the same obviously, but well worth any baseball fans time.
Forgive my ignorance, but who is “the poet” in the Miami section?
If “jiggy” was an apt context clue, I’m assuming it’s Will Smith.