FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: July 5, 2025
Hello FanGraphs Members and readers. I hope all of you here in the U.S. are enjoying your holiday weekend. I’ve spent much of this week on vacation, so I didn’t get to watch as many games as I usually do. Still, I followed some of the action from afar, enough to see Clayton Kershaw record his 3,000th strikeout, the Yankees fall out of first place, and the All-Star Game’s starters be named.
This week’s mailbag is a bit more evergreen than our previous ones, when we’ve answered your questions about the Rafael Devers trade and the impact of his contract, Jacob Misiorowski and perceived velocity, and the weirdness of the Twins. Instead, today we’ll discuss how we watch baseball, players of the past who could still mash in the modern game, and so much more.
Before we get to all that, I’d like to remind all of you that while anyone can submit a question, 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 next week’s 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.
I think with modern medicine for his knees, in a world where even smaller guys (Betts, Altuve, Ramirez, Carroll…) find power all the time, that Mantle would be fine.
Heck, give Mickey a world where Yankee Stadium doesn’t have a drain in the OF, so he doesn’t wreck his knee and he would probably have 30-40 SB a year
A world where Mantle can have Sabathia’s outcome rather than the one he faced would be a happier one, indeed (“adaptability” takes a lot of willpower and discipline, but support and understanding go a long way, too)
He hit a ball over the roof at old Tiger Stadium (maybe first to do it?). His power would play.
Giving the old timers an off season to train kind of undermines the spirit of the question. The point of the question is to ask how fast the game changes. If you want to allow the old timers to train, then I feel like you should change the question to “How much training would, say, Ty Cobb need to succeed in the modern game?” Would he just need an off season? Or would he have to have train year round from the time he was 18? Or what? The amount of training you need to get up to modern standards is a measure of how much the players, and the game, have changed.
Not shocked to see a couple of missed Mets opportunities in the Ken Phelps all stars list. Cacek being before my fandom time and I’d never even heard of him but I do remember as a pre-teen thinking Petagine would be the next in line of hit over power Mets 1b man. From Hernandez to Magadan to Brogna and eventually Olerud to close the 90s.
TIL Olerud was a dominant college pitcher too, and now I’m wondering if he’d grown up in this era…hmmmm…
I think Frank Howard would mash in the modern era. His walk rates increased in his 30s, showing some ability to adapt to an evolving game at the time, and he was 6’7″, 250+ lbs, an absolute tank launcher
I’m inclined to agree, but people asked Big Frank that question while he was with us and he answered that today’s players have so much size, strength, conditioning and coaching that he never had and that he didn’t think he could compete with that level of talent – especially the pitching – 95+ every night.
Hondo was a famously humble man, so perhaps he was simply discounting his own ability, but he was also a coach and manager at the major league level and saw these players firsthand.
We’ll never know, but that’s ok, I appreciate Hondo for the great memories he gave me and fellow DC fans and for what a fine gentleman he was to all of us.
Bluesky.lol
This is your bit now huh?
Man, that first answer was exhausting. MLB makes it so hard to watch every game of any one team. It’s very dumb.
It’s impossible to give a comprehensive answer to that question, but I am in CHicago and use DirecTV, the basic package is included in my building assessments but includes no baseball. My $32/mo “choice” package includes Marquee and CHSN and a bunch of other channels. That includes all the baseball games those two carry so I could watch every Cubs and Sox game…except for any on Apple, Amazon, QUBI, Soviet Central Television, or any of the three dozen other places MLB shows games for some reason.
I’m also in Chicago, and yeah. I get MLB.tv free through my T-Mobile plan, and then I pay for a VPN to watch locally. Not ideal, but I’m cord-cut and just unwilling to shell out for all the various and sundry combinations otherwise necessary. I may or may not have watched playoff games in 1 hour preview chunks via incognito tabs. Mostly I’m cheap, but also resent the run-around enough to be unwilling to pay for it.
I live in Hong Kong. I can watch any game through free streams available on a variety of websites. I pay nothing. No anti-consumer shenanigans.
I watch Mets games because I like their announcers, then I will watch teams with players on my fantasy team.
I was really excited that mlb finally offered a streaming package without blackout restrictions (eliminating 2/3 of the season; we don’t have cable tv). It is annoying that the price is far higher than it is for other teams, and ofc, being a fan of a marquee team means ESPN/Apple poach some games, but at least now I can watch roughly 75-80% of my favorite team’s games for the first time since I was in high school.
But this really is a testament to how much Manfred has failed to manage the streaming landscape, and considering the ongoing stadium problems in SAC/LV and TB, what the heck is this guy’s appeal to the owners over, say, an inanimate carbon rod?
T-Mobile gives free mlb.tv subscriptions as a perk. They’ve been doing it for several years now. It’s great!
A couple broadcast corrections:
ESPN games are typically not on ESPN+.
TBS (HBO Max) games aren’t exclusive — they are typically just simulcasts of local broadcasts, and still available on MLBTV as well.
FOX games are available free over the air in most places.
I just updated the piece with the correct info. Thanks for pointing these out!
Michael Baumann: you don’t have to actually wonder how Cobb would’ve done if he decided to pull the ball in the air more. Cobb actually did the experiment himself, a century ago, when he was 38:
https://baseballhall.org/discover/inside-pitch/cobb-proves-his-power-with-three-homer-game
I buy the MLB.com audio package every year. For like $25 a year I can listen to the local radio broadcast for every game of every team in MLB! That’s a heck of a deal! Baseball is awesome on the radio. I often game cast while I listen. Scroll through box scores. It really works. plus I can do laundry or do errands while I listen. It rocks!
I much prefer listening to watching, for the same reasons you list. Also, my team’s TV crew is much inferior to the radio broadcasters.
Yeah I’m with this camp, but I’m biased because I grew up listening way more often that watching games. Most of my favorite baseball memories involve the radio
Only problem there is the commercials are mind-numbing. I really only listen to the Cubs but they play the same commercials every inning it seems. And the silly “baseball vocabulary” bits (like who can’t figure out what an “oppo taco” is supposed to be?) and the quotes from players like Mike Piazza after the first post-9/11 game.
Pitching has changed a lot. I don’t even think Bonds could get 175 if dropped into today’s game. Wouldn’t be shocked to see him struggle. Pitching doesn’t even compare to what it did a decade ago, for example. Bonds would be the best bet. All the other names mentioned without training are striking out over 50%
Rickey? Hard to imagine with his eye
True
Peak George Brett had amazing bat to ball skills. He’d be fine in any era.
The strike zone has changed over the years too.
Thumbs up for Cal Raleigh!
Not quite right…I have an ESPN+ subscription and watch Sunday Night Baseball on my laptop.
Do you also have ESPN network access linked to your account? Otherwise, Sunday Night Baseball and other ESPN network programming is typically not available on ESPN+: https://www.espn.com/watch/schedule/_/type/upcoming/categoryId/e364bfcd-493d-3bfb-ac83-bd27d66fedd0/startDate/20250720