Ribs have been in the headlines this week, but sadly, not as part of a review of exciting new ballpark barbecue offerings. On Monday, Triston Casas was diagnosed with a fractured rib on his left side, an injury that will result in a prolonged absence and comes at a time when the Red Sox infield has already been depleted. On Wednesday, the Cubs’ Cody Bellinger was diagnosed with fractured ribs on his right side, interrupting his rebound from a slow start.

The 24-year-old Casas left Saturday’s game against the Pirates after injuring himself while fouling off a Mitch Keller pitch. He was initially diagnosed with a strain in his left rib cage and was placed on the injured list on Sunday. An MRI taken on Monday revealed a fracture as well, and the presumption is that his absence will be a long one given that the damage involves muscle and cartilage as well as bone. “Timetable, there’s none. It has to heal on its own. We’ve just got to be patient,” said manager Alex Cora. That sounds like a trip to the 60-day IL could be in order. Read the rest of this entry »

Monday afternoon’s game between the A’s and Yankees ended in impressive fashion for Oakland, with closer Mason Miller buzz-sawing through the top of New York’s lineup to close out a 2-0 victory. The 25-year-old righty struck out Anthony Volpe, Juan Soto, and Aaron Judge consecutively on 14 pitches, mixing eight four-seam fastballs — all with velocities above 100 mph — with four nasty sliders. He absolutely overpowered Judge:

Those fastballs Judge flailed at were clocked at 100.7 mph, 102.2 mph, and 102.5 mph, the last of which wasn’t quite as fast as the 103.3-mph heater Miller used to strike out Soto. Whoosh! Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to an eight-run fifth inning that included Andy Pages‘ first major league home run, the Dodgers beat the Mets 10-0 on Sunday to avoid being swept at home. Even so, they’re off to a sluggish start this season after committing nearly $1 billion in free agent contracts this past winter and pushing their payroll to a club record $314 million. Maybe they’re not the juggernaut that figure suggests, though even given their star-laden roster, they came into this season as a work in progress.

The Dodgers entered Sunday having lost seven of their past nine games. They dropped the finale of a six-game midwest road trip to the Twins, then two of three to the Padres at Chavez Ravine, followed by two of three to the Nationals and two in a row to the Mets. The skid undid a 10-4 start, and they were in danger of — gasp — sinking to .500 had they lost on Sunday. They weren’t exactly getting steamrolled by powerhouses, either. The aforementioned teams had a weighted projected winning percentage of .472 at the outset of the season, and finished Sunday having produced a .453 winning percentage outside of this nine-game stretch against Los Angeles.

For the Dodgers, run prevention has been the biggest issue. Even with Sunday’s shutout — their first of the season, with eight dominant innings from Tyler Glasnow and one from Nick Ramirez — they’re allowing 4.54 runs per game, 11th in the National League. While they haven’t allowed runs at that clip over a full season since 2005, they allowed exactly the same number of runs over their first 24 games last year while going 13-11, then picking up the pace and winning 100 games. Déjà vu all over again? Read the rest of this entry »

No manager defined the era of baseball marked by artificial turf and distant outfield fences as Whitey Herzog did. As the manager of the Royals (1975–79) and Cardinals (1980, ’81–90) — and for a short but impactful period, the latter club’s general manager as well — he assembled and led teams built around pitching, speed, and defense to six division titles, three pennants, and a world championship using an aggressive and exciting brand of baseball: Whiteyball. Gruff but not irascible, Herzog found ways to get the most out of players whose limitations had often prevented them from establishing themselves elsewhere.

“The three things you need to be a good manager,” he told Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite in 1981, “are players, a sense of humor and, most important, a good bullpen. If I’ve got those three things, I assure you I’ll get along with the press and I guarantee you I’ll make the Hall of Fame.”

Herzog was finally elected to the Hall in 2010, an honor long overdue given that he was 20 years removed from the dugout and had never been on a ballot. He passed away on Monday in St. Louis at the age of 92.

Herzog’s career in baseball spanned 45 years, from 1949 until ’94, and included eight years as a major league outfielder (1956–63) plus 13 full seasons and five partial ones as a manager (1973–90) as well as time as a scout, coach, director of player development, and GM — a résumé whose depth spoke to the levels of insight that he brought to the game. He had a keen eye for talent, and one undersold aspect of his career was his pivotal role in building the Mets’ 1969 champions and ’73 pennant winners as their director of player development from 1967–72. If not for an ill-timed remark, he might have succeeded Gil Hodges as Mets manager.

“Whitey was the boldest man in baseball,” wrote Bill James in his essential Guide to Baseball Managers, within which he noted Herzog’s penchant for platoons and odd defenses, reliance upon his benches and bullpens, and his appreciation for speed as an asset on both sides of the ball. James later summarized Herzog’s aggressive approach: “Let’s take charge of this game, let’s make this game as hard as possible for the other team, let’s force the action, put pressure on them, and make them lose.”

Calling him “Our Casey” — in reference to Stengel, who mentored Herzog when he was an outfielder in the Yankees’ chain — in an oft-reprinted 1990 profile, the Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell wrote, “Everybody in baseball says the same three things about Whitey Herzog: He’s the best manager in baseball or else the first name mentioned on a very short list. He’s the most abrasively self-confident and outspoken executive in the sport. And, whether he’s in the middle of a controversy or a pennant race, he seems to have a better time than everybody else.”

Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog was born on November 9, 1931, in New Athens, Illinois, a village about 30 miles southeast of St. Louis. He was the second of three boys born to Edgar and Lietta Herzog; his father worked at the the Mound City Brewery, while his mother worked in a shoe factory. As a youngster, Herzog would sometimes skip school and hitchhike to Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis to watch the Cardinals or the Browns, and to collect batting practice balls to sell or play with. “Relly” — his nickname at the time — played baseball and basketball at New Athens High School; as a left-handed pitcher, first baseman, and outfielder, he earned second-team all-state honors and helped New Athens to the state championship game.

Though he drew interest from nearby colleges, Herzog instead signed with the Yankees in 1949, the same year as Mickey Mantle. He played for five years in the Yankees’ system, interrupted by a 1952-54 stint in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. While stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, he got his first taste of managing, piloting the base’s team to the Fifth Army championship and once beating a Fort Carson, Colorado team managed by Billy Martin.

Though Herzog never played a regular season game for the Yankees, Stengel took a shine to him during the team’s spring rookie camp. During his Hall of Fame induction speech, Herzog attributed the manager’s interest to a belief that he was the grandson of infielder Buck Herzog, a contemporary during Stengel’s playing days. “Casey and I used to sit in the press room during spring training and every night we would have a few pops and talk baseball, amongst other things… For some reason he knew that I was going to be a big-league manager.”

In that speech, Herzog recounted Stengel’s advice for how to deal with the media while managing a bad ballclub:

“You feed them and you drink with them and you stay up all night with them having a few pops. Put them to bed about 4:30 and by the time their deadline comes, they won’t even put the score of the game in.”

Herzog absorbed Stengel’s lessons on strategy as well. “I’ll bet Casey Stengel walked me down the third-base line 75 times a day teaching me that good base running boils down to anticipation and knowledge of the defense… You can steal a lot of runs,” he told the New York Times’ Richard Sandomir in 2010.

During his time in the Yankees’ organization, the towheaded Herzog acquired an indelible nickname based on his resemblance to Yankees pitcher Bob Kuzava, known as “The White Rat.” Various sources credit the observation to a local sportscaster covering the McAlester Rockets, the Class D affiliate with which Herzog started his professional career, and to Johnny Pesky, who coached Herzog with the Denver Bears in 1955.

Stocked in the outfield, in April 1956, the Yankees sent Herzog to the Washington Senators as the player to be named later, completing a seven-player deal centered around pitcher Mickey McDermott and giving the 24-year-old his big league shot. As the regular center fielder for a team that lost 95 games, he hit .245/.302/.337, then spent much of 1957 back in Triple-A, and in early ’58 was sold to the Kansas City A’s. He evolved into a useful platoon outfielder, hitting .268/.383/.384 (109 OPS+) in parts of three seasons for Kansas City and performing similarly in two seasons with the Orioles after being included in a six-player deal in January 1961. Slowed by an inner ear virus in 1963, Herzog played sparingly for the Tigers, then retired as a player. He finished his career with a .257/.354/.365 (97 OPS+) line, 25 homers, and 2.5 bWAR in 634 games.

In 1964, A’s farm director Hank Peters offered Herzog a scouting job at $7,500 a year. “I signed 12 players for $120,000 and seven of them eventually made the major league roster,” Herzog told Sports Illustrated’s Steve Wulf in 1982. “The best was Chuck Dobson, the pitcher. I could have had Don Sutton for $16,000, but Charlie Finley wouldn’t give me the money.”

After serving as a coach in 1965 under managers Mel McGaha and Haywood Sullivan, Herzog quit when Finley wouldn’t offer him more money, either. “You can take your damn mule and make him your coach,” he told the notoriously miserly owner.

Thanks to a recommendation from former Cardinals GM Bing Devine, who knew Herzog from the St. Louis area, he spent 1966 as the Mets’ third base coach under manager Wes Westrum. While his own contemporary estimate of the position’s value was comically inflated (“A good third-base coach can win 16 or 17 games a season for his club,” he told the New York Times in 1966), he had distilled Stengel’s advice, explaining, “When a base runner has a chance to score, you’ve got to remember that the percentage is with him. It’s like being a gambler — you’ll force the other side to make either a perfect play or a damaging mistake.”

A year later, Herzog was promoted, becoming the director of player development. While in that capacity, the team drafted a couple of key contributors to the 1973 pennant winners in Jon Matlack (the 1972 NL Rookie of the Year) and John Milner, and Herzog helped advance the careers of players such as Nolan Ryan, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry, and Wayne Garrett, all of whom contributed to the ’69 champions, plus Amos Otis and Ken Singleton, both of whom would attain stardom after being traded away. He even managed several of those players on the Mets’ 1967 Florida Instructional League team. During the Mets’ 1969 victory party, Hodges thanked Herzog, telling him, “For three years, whenever I called you for what I needed, you got me the right players.”

Herzog was viewed as the heir apparent to Hodges, but after the sudden death of the Mets manager from a heart attack on April 2, 1972, things didn’t unfold as expected. Mets chairman M. Donald Grant — whose name would later become mud in Queens for trading Tom Seaver — not only bypassed Herzog in favor of Yogi Berra, but also ordered him not to attend Hodges’ funeral “just so there wouldn’t be speculation that I’d be hired as the new manager,” Herzog told author Peter Golenbock. The chairman bore a grudge after word had gotten back that Herzog had once said, “M. Donald Grant doesn’t know beans about baseball!”

Herzog soon received his first major league managerial posting by resigning from the Mets in November 1972 to accept a three-year contract to manage the Rangers, replacing Ted Williams, who had advised Herzog of his pending retirement and suggested he throw his hat in the ring. The 40-year-old Herzog took over a team that had gone 54-100 in the strike-shortened season, its first since moving from Washington, D.C. to Arlington, Texas. Immediately tapping his reserve of humor, he suggested at his introductory press conference that he might also coach third base, “But if they hit like they did last year, I won’t have anything to do over there.”

As chronicled in Mike Shropshire’s hilarious account of the mid-1970s Rangers, Seasons in Hell, Herzog had to draw from that wellspring to endure the frustrations of a team in transition from veterans to youngsters — and one with a meddlesome owner, Bob Short. After drafting Houston high school pitcher David Clyde with the first pick in 1973, Short insisted that the 18-year-old lefty begin his professional career in the majors in order milk his potential as a gate attraction. The move took place over Herzog’s objections, and while it initially worked — Clyde won his debut despite walking seven in five innings — he wore out in August and finished with a 5.01 ERA.

By that point, he was no longer Herzog’s problem. Short coveted Martin, who by then had managed both the Twins and Tigers to division titles and was still on the job in Detroit; at one point he told Herzog, “I’d fire my grandmother to hire Billy Martin.” When the Tigers fired Martin on September 2, allegedly for ordering his pitchers to throw loaded-up pitches at Cleveland in protest of the umpires not ejecting Gaylord Perry for doing the same thing, Short made his move, firing Herzog, whose team was 47-91, and hiring Martin. “I thought I was hired to build more for next year than to win this year,” said Herzog at his exit interview. “I guessed wrong and I got fired.”

Declining a job in player development with the Rangers, Herzog spent most of 1974 as the Angels’ third base coach, serving as interim manager for four games between the firing of Bobby Winkles and the hiring of Dick Williams. He remained on staff into the 1975 season, until Royals GM Joe Burke reached out in late July, needing a manager after firing Jack McKeon, who had guided the 1969 expansion team to 88 wins in ’73 and had them at 50-46 thus far in ’75. As GM in Texas, Burke had hired Herzog, then resigned when he was fired; here he hired him again.

The Royals had drafted and developed an impressive core of young players centered around 22-year-old third baseman George Brett, 24-year-old righty Dennis Leonard, and 25-year-old righty Steve Busby, with astute acquisitions from elsewhere such as the 28-year-old Otis, a center fielder, 26-year-old first baseman John Mayberry, and 29-year-old left fielder Hal McRae. Within a few weeks, Herzog moved Brett from sixth to third in the batting order and replaced aging second baseman Cookie Rojas with 24-year-old Frank White, a light hitter but a slick fielder and a speedster who emerged as an exemplar of Whiteyball. The team went 41-25 on Herzog’s watch, finishing second in the AL West, then won three straight division titles — the franchise’s first taste of success — from 1976–78 by going 90-72, 102-60, and 92-70. With Herzog emphasizing a speed-and-defense style of play well suited to Kauffman Stadium’s artificial turf, Brett won his first of three batting titles (edging out McRae) and made his first of 13 All-Star teams in 1976; White won his first of eight gold Gloves in ’77 and made his first of five All-Star appearances in ’78; McRae became one of the first star designated hitters; and Leonard developed into a Cy Young contender and staff workhorse. (Busby, alas, was never the same after becoming the first active pitcher to undergo rotator cuff surgery in 1976.)

Unfortunately, the Royals lost three straight ALCS to the Yankees, the first two of which took place with Martin — who got himself fired in Texas so as to make himself available to the Yankees — at the helm and were decided in the ninth inning of winner-take-all Game 5s. They lost in 1976 when closer Mark Littell served up a walk-off home run to Chris Chambliss, and in ’77 after Herzog benched Mayberry, who had shown up late and in no condition to play, then dropped a pop-up that led to an unearned run in a Game 4 defeat. “The man couldn’t even talk, and I knew what was wrong… It must have been a hell of a party,” Herzog wrote in The White Rat, his 1987 memoir. In Game 5, Herzog started John Wathan at first base over the protests of other players, who believed Mayberry still gave the team the best chance to win; Wathan and reserve Pete LaCock went hitless, and then a faltering Leonard, Larry Gura, and Littell surrendered three runs in the ninth in Game 5, turning a 3-2 lead into a 5-3 defeat.

Blaming Mayberry — who after finishing as runner-up in the 1975 AL MVP voting had turned in two below-average seasons — for the defeat, that winter Herzog demanded the first baseman be traded. He was eventually sold to the Blue Jays just before the 1978 season opened in order to make room for phenom Clint Hurdle. With Hurdle and fellow rookies Willie Wilson, a left fielder, and shortstop U L Washington getting regular play, the Royals outlasted the Angels and Rangers in a three-way race, but fell to the Yankees in a four-game ALCS.

The Royals declined to 85 wins in 1979 as Herzog clashed with Burke over personnel moves and owner Ewing Kauffman over never having been offered more than a one-year contract. Meanwhile, some veterans resented Herzog’s handling of the Mayberry situation. Fired after the season ended, Herzog criticized Burke for not doing so sooner as a means of sparking the team.

Herzog started the 1980 season at home. At one point he was rumored to be replacing Red Sox manager Don Zimmer, but no call came until the 18-33 Cardinals fired manager Ken Boyer on June 8. Herzog signed a contract through 1982 and said at his introductory presser, “I’m gonna take this dang team and run it like I think it should be run.” The Cardinals went 38-35 on his watch before Herzog was promoted to GM, replacing John Claiborne, with Red Schoendienst stepping into the dugout on an interim basis. “I can do more for the Cardinals as GM than as field manager,” said Herzog of the promotion.

Though they had the league’s most potent offense in 1980, the Cardinals were awful at run prevention, and not fast enough for Herzog’s tastes given Busch Stadium’s turf and cavernous dimensions (414 feet to center field, 330 down the lines). In his two winters as GM, he would reshape the roster to suit his preferences, and thereafter push the team’s GMs in that direction. His clubs weren’t always successful, particularly on the pitching side (they were perennially near the bottom in strikeout rate), but his offenses were dynamic and entertaining — and, as Joe Sheehan pointed out in his newsletter tribute to Herzog, driven by high on-base percentages, which weren’t appreciated in that era the way they are today.

Also underappreciated was Herzog’s successful pursuit of the platoon advantage. He generally had at least four switch-hitters in the lineup, with five in 1985 and sometimes six in ’87. Via Baseball Reference, his offenses (including the Royals and Rangers) had the platoon advantage 68.7% of the time during his career, the highest of anybody with at least 600 games managed during the 1973–90 window (Gene Mauch and Davey Johnson both had about 65%). The major league average over that span was 58.7%, putting Herzog at 119 in Platoon%+ — a stat B-Ref’s Adam Darowski and Kenny Jackelen helped to realize for this nugget (thanks, gents).

At the December 1980 Winter Meetings, Herzog went on a legendary spree. On December 7, he signed free agent catcher Darrell Porter, who had bolstered the Royals during his Kansas City tenure by making two All-Star teams (plus a third in 1980). On December 8, he and McKeon — “Trader Jack,” now the Padres’ GM — swung an 11-player deal in which the Cardinals acquired ace reliever Rollie Fingers and catcher/first baseman Gene Tenace. On December 9, he traded Leon Durham, Ken Reitz, and a player to be named later to the Cubs in exchange for another ace reliever, Bruce Sutter. Dealing from strength, he flipped Fingers to the Brewers along with pitcher Pete Vuckovich and catcher Ted Simmons in exchange for a four-player package that included pitcher Dave LaPoint. He’d clashed with Simmons, believing he could no longer control the running game and would serve the team better at first base, though that would have meant moving three-time Gold Glove winner Keith Hernandez to the outfield.

Not all of those deals panned out; the Milwaukee one gave the Brewers both the 1981 and ’82 AL Cy Young winners in Fingers and Vuckovich, with LaPoint the only one of the four newcomers whose long-term contribution with St. Louis was substantial. But the Cardinals were a better team for his efforts. With Herzog returning to the dugout in a dual manager/GM role, they compiled the NL East’s best record in 1981 at 59-43, but in the strike-torn season missed the playoffs by finishing second in both the pre- and post-strike halves. Despite a 7-2 closing run in the second half, they wound up half a game (yes) behind the Expos.

Herzog not only remained active that offseason but had even more success with his trades. In October he dealt reliever Bob Sykes to the Yankees for switch-hitting minor league outfielder Willie McGee. Sykes never pitched in the majors again while McGee would go on to win two batting titles and an MVP award for St. Louis. In November Herzog traded away pitchers Silvio Martinez and Lary Sorensen (from the Brewers trade) in a three-team deal that yielded outfielder Lonnie Smith. At the Winter Meetings, he traded outfielder Sixto Lezcano (another from the Brewers deal) and two-time All-Star shortstop Garry Templeton to McKeon’s Padres as part of a six-player deal that brought All-Star shortstop Ozzie Smith to the Cardinals. Though still just 25 years old, Templeton had worn out his welcome in St. Louis; Herzog suspended him without pay for three weeks after he gave hometown fans the finger and grabbed his crotch after they booed him for not running out a dropped third strike. Earlier, Templeton had complained about being too tired to play day games after night games. The suspension was lifted after Templeton agreed to see a psychiatrist, was diagnosed with depression, and was given medication, but the bridge was burnt. “Templeton doesn’t want to play in St. Louis, he doesn’t want to play on artificial turf, he doesn’t want to play in Montreal, he doesn’t want to play in Houston, he doesn’t want to play in the rain,” Herzog said. “The other 80 games, he’s all right.” Templeton made one more All-Star team in a career that lasted another decade, while Smith made 14 as a Cardinal, becoming a St. Louis icon and a Hall of Famer.

Herzog stepped down as GM just as the 1982 season began, but the team he built flourished, winning 92 games and the NL East, their first success since the advent of division play in 1969. The offense’s 67 homers ranked last in the NL, with only Porter and George Hendrick reaching double digits, but their 200 steals led the league; eight players reached double digits, with Lonnie Smith’s 68 propelling him to a second-place finish in the NL MVP voting. Ozzie Smith made his second All-Star team, McGee finished third in the NL Rookie of the Year race, and Sutter third in the NL Cy Young race. In their first playoff appearance since 1968, the team swept the Braves in the NLCS, then beat the Brewers — featuring Vuckovich and Simmons (Fingers was injured and missed the series) — in a seven-game World Series. Porter became the second player to win both LCS and World Series MVP honors in the same season.

The Cardinals receded to 79 wins in 1983. On June 15, GM Joe McDonald traded Hernandez to the Mets for pitchers Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey. As a baseball move, this one was lopsided in favor of New York, but Herzog and Hernandez hadn’t gotten along, and the manager was already aware of the first baseman’s cocaine usage. During the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials, Hernandez confessed that he used cocaine with teammates Joaquin Andujar, Lonnie Smith (who voluntarily entered rehab in mid-1983), and Sorenson. That year, Herzog estimated that 11 of his Cardinals players were “heavy users” in the early ’80s and said he believed cocaine had cost him a championship with the Royals.

After a mediocre 1984, the Cardinals won 101 games in ’85 despite having just one player reach 20 homers: first baseman Jack Clark, acquired from the Giants in February in exchange for LaPoint, outfielder David Green (another player from the Brewers deal), and two other players. The team’s 87 homers ranked second to last in the NL, but St. Louis again led with 314 steals, with rookie left fielder Vince Coleman stealing an NL-high 110; the Cardinals led in scoring as well while ranking second in run prevention. McGee won the NL batting title and MVP honors, hitting .353/.384/.503 (147 OPS+) with 18 triples and 56 steals, while Andujar and newly acquired lefty John Tudor each notched 21 wins and respectively placed fourth and second in the Cy Young voting behind Dwight Gooden.

The 1985 season marked the first in which the two championship series were expanded from best-of-five to best-of-seven. Facing the Dodgers, the Cardinals lost the first two games in Los Angeles, and lost Coleman to a fractured left leg in a bizarre mishap with Busch Stadium’s automatic tarp. St. Louis nonetheless stormed back to win in six thanks to some late-inning heroics. In Game 5, switch-hitting Ozzie Smith — who to that point had never homered off a righty in over 3,000 career plate appearances — hit a walk-off solo homer off Dodgers closer Tom Niedenfuer to push the Cardinals to a three-games-to-two lead. In Game 6 back in L.A., the Dodgers carried a 5-4 lead into the ninth, but the Cardinals put two on base against Niedenfuer. With two outs and runners on second and third, Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda bypassed the opportunity to intentionally walk the right-handed Clark (.281/.393/.502, 149 OPS+ that year) and summon a lefty to face lefty Andy Van Slyke (.259/.335/.439, 116 OPS+) or force Herzog to go to his bench to gain the platoon advantage. Instead, Niedenfuer faced Clark, who drilled his first pitch for a three-run homer that proved decisive.

The so-called “I-70” World Series pitted the Cardinals against the Royals, now managed by Dick Howser and still featuring Brett, White, Wilson, McRae, and Dan Quisenberry in prominent roles as well as young starters Bret Saberhagen and Danny Jackson. The Cardinals won the first two games on the road, and after losing Game 3, took Game 4 as well, with Tudor notching his second victory of the series. Jackson’s five-hitter in Game 5 staved off elimination and sent the series back to Kansas City. With the Cardinals’ Danny Cox and the Royals’ Charlie Leibrandt both pitching masterfully, Game 6 remained scoreless until the eighth, when St. Louis scratched out a run on two singles and a walk. The Cardinals took that lead into the bottom of the ninth when all hell broke loose.

Pinch-hitter Jorge Orta led off by hitting a slow bouncer to the right side of the infield, where a charging Clark fielded the ball cleanly and threw to pitcher Todd Worrell covering first. The throw beat Orta, who tripped over the base, but umpire Don Denkinger called him safe. Replays showed he was out, but with no challenge system in place, Herzog argued to no avail.

Another single, a forceout at third, a passed ball, and an intentional walk loaded the bases, and then ex-Cardinal Dane Iorg singled home pinch-runner Onix Concepcion with the winning run, sending the series to Game 7. Realizing Denkinger would work the plate in the final game, Herzog sounded beaten already, saying beforehand, “We got about as much chance of winning as a monkey.” Pitching on three days of rest for the fourth time that month, Tudor was chased in the third inning after allowing five runs, and both Herzog and Andujar were ejected for arguing balls and strikes. Saberhagen went the distance for a five-hit shutout and an 11-0 win.

Disliking the abuse Denkinger took for missing the call, Herzog later made his peace with the umpire. In 2005, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Cardinals’ pennant, he invited Denkinger to speak at a fundraiser benefitting his charitable foundation.

With Clark limited to 65 games due to a torn ligament in his right thumb, the Cardinals slipped to 79-82 in 1986 thanks to an offense that was the NL’s worst. Both he and the team came back strong in 1987 as he hit 35 homers and led the NL in walks, OBP, SLG, and OPS+, but he severely sprained his right ankle on September 9 and was limited to a few pinch-hitting appearances thereafter. The Cardinals won 95 games and the NL East, then overcame a three-games-to-two deficit to defeat the Giants in a seven-game NLCS, but Clark pinch-hit once and was left off the roster for the World Series against the Twins.

Under Tom Kelly in his first full season as manager, the Twins had gone just 85-77 before upsetting the 98-win Tigers in the ALCS, but in addition to not having to face Clark, the Twins had one other advantage: the Metrodome, where they had gone 56-25 as their fans’ high-decibel cheering unnerved opponents, and where they would play four of the series’ seven games, since home field advantage alternated between leagues rather than depending upon won-loss records. The home team won every game of the series, with the Twins outscoring the Cardinals 33-12 at the Metrodome — and only Game 7 was close. After the Cardinals scored two runs off Frank Viola in the second inning, the Twins chipped away, going ahead for good in the sixth and winning 4-2.

That was the Cardinals’ last gasp at greatness under Herzog. For the third time during his tenure, they followed a pennant with a sub-.500 season, this time 76-86 and a fifth-place finish, their worst since 1978. They rebounded to 86 wins in 1989, but when the team started the ’90 season 33-47, a disgusted Herzog resigned.

He never managed again. Long friendly with Angels owners Gene and Jackie Autry, he returned to Anaheim as senior vice president and director of player personnel in September 1991. But while he thought he’d have complete control of baseball operations, he instead wound up in a power struggle with Dan O’Brien, the senior VP of baseball operations. It was an odd situation, particularly with Herzog given license to work primarily from his home in suburban St. Louis. The Angels went 72-90 in 1992, then 71-91 in ’93. In mid-September 1993, Herzog convinced the Autrys to fire O’Brien, thus consolidating his authority. But while his ability to spot talent remained intact — mainly in the form of not trading away the likes of Jim Edmonds, Tim Salmon, and other youngsters the Angels were developing — he was constrained by a budget cut, and had fallen behind the times in his dealing with his players and their agents, alienating them with his abrasive negotiating tactics. He resigned in mid-January 1994.

Following the 1996 season, Herzog rejected an offer to manage the Red Sox; the team instead turned to Jimy Williams.

Herzog finished his managerial career with a 1281-1125 record and a .532 winning percentage. He ranked 25th in managerial wins when he retired, which may help to explain why he wasn’t considered for Cooperstown until the 2010 Veterans Committee Managers and Umpires ballot. Up for election alongside contemporaries Johnson, Kelly, Martin, and Mauch as well as older candidates, and with both Lasorda and Dick Williams sitting on the committee, he received 14 of 16 votes. Umpire Doug Harvey, who received 15, was elected as well.

In the end, Herzog’s legacy went well beyond wins and losses. In the era of big hair and plastic grass, his teams were of their time, but like Stengel and contemporary Earl Weaver, he was well ahead of the curve, masterful in assimilating information and deploying it to his advantage. Long before the age of analytics, his hand-colored defensive charts were the stuff of legend. He understood his players’ strengths and how to place them in positions to succeed, the most timeless of qualities when it comes to managing a ballclub.

Coming up through the Dodgers system, Michael Busch gained a reputation as “a bat-only prospect,” a player whose offensive skills far outpaced his defensive ones. So when the Dodgers landed Shohei Ohtani in December, it closed the door on the team finding room for Busch as a DH, and they were already set at first base — Busch’s main position in college — with Freddie Freeman in the fold. Busch needed a trade to clear his path, and in January he got one, a four-player deal with the Cubs. So far, the 26-year-old rookie is off to a flying start, ranking high on the leaderboards after reeling off a streak of five consecutive games with a home run.

Busch’s streak, which ended on Tuesday night in Arizona, took place during the Cubs’ nine-game western road trip, beginning with a game-tying two-run homer off the Padres’ Dylan Cease at Petco Park on April 10. Two days later in Seattle, he went deep off the Mariners’ Ryne Stanek. The Cubs lost both of those games, but he helped them win three straight, starting with a solo shot off Tyson Miller in the seventh inning of a 4-1 win Saturday night, then a two-run homer off Luis Castillo in the fourth inning of a 3-2 win on Sunday. Moving on to Arizona, he didn’t waste any time, connecting off Merrill Kelly in his first plate appearance of Monday’s game, an 11-inning, 3-2 win. Read the rest of this entry »

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my Tuesday chat. Apologies for the technical glitch in terms of the pre-chat queue but we should be up and running.

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Pouring one out for Whitey Herzog, the Hall of Fame manager best known for piloting the Cardinals to the 1982 championship and two other pennants.

2:03

Jay Jaffe: And pouring another one out for Carl Erskine, a true mensch who not only helped the Dodgers to five pennants and their 1955 championship — and threw two no-hitters as well — but became “a fierce champion of human rights, racial equality and, when his late son Jimmy was born with Down syndrome, became immersed in fighting for people with special needs.” The Hall of Fame honored Erskine with the Buck O’Neill Lifetime Achievement Award last summer https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/2024/04/16/indianas-carl-erskine…

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Forgot about Holtzman, who was a big part of the A’s three straight championships and holds the record for most wins by a Jewish pitcher (174).

2:05	Jay Jaffe: I’m thinking about whether I can pull off a Herzog tribute in a timely fashion.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros have dominated the American League West in recent years, winning three straight division titles and six out of the past seven, and getting at least as far as the American League Championship in each of those years. Their quest to extend that run is off to a rocky start, however. Despite taking two out of three from the Rangers this weekend in Houston, they own the league’s second-worst record thus far at 6-11, ahead of only the White Sox (2-13).

Even with the series win over the Rangers — whom they’ve now beaten in four out of seven games while going 2-8 against their other opponents — the Astros are off to their worst start since 2016, when they went 5-12. Notably, that season was the last one in which they missed the playoffs. Their 4-11 record through Friday was their worst through 15 games since 2013, the year they lost a franchise-record 111 games. That said, this is their fifth straight season below .500 at this juncture:

Read the rest of this entry »

On the heels of a 101-loss season and a trade of Dylan Cease, it was quite apparent that the White Sox would be bad this year. So far, however, they’ve been even worse than that, losing 10 of their first 12 games to become the first AL team whose Playoff Odds have reached zero. Adding to that insult, they’ve already lost Eloy Jiménez, Luis Robert Jr., and Yoán Moncada — the three players who projected to be their most valuable — to injuries, sadly an all-too-common occurrence when it comes to each of them. It’s going to be a long season on the South Side.

The most severe of the injuries is that of Moncada, and woof, it not only looked bad but it may mark the end of his run with the White Sox, one that has certainly contained its share of highs and lows. While running out a grounder in the second inning of Tuesday’s game against the Guardians, he suddenly started limping about halfway down the line, then stumbled and crumpled to the ground before reaching first base, writhing in agony before being tended to by head athletic trainer James Kruk. “When I was running down the line, it felt like something broke. Honestly, that was the worst pain I’ve felt in my career,” Moncada told reporters via an interpreter on Wednesday.

Moncada was diagnosed with a strained left adductor, one of the muscles of the inner thigh, and yes, this will be a recurring theme. You don’t have to believe in jinxes to cringe at the fact that in the pregame media session before Moncada’s injury, manager Pedro Grifol told reporters that the 28-year-old third baseman had been dealing with a nagging hip/adductor injury for three or four days, adding, “He’s doing a really good job maintaining it.” Thus a minor injury has become a major one; the team announced that Moncada’s estimated recovery time is three to six months. In a best-case scenario, that would place his return around the start of the second half, while in a worst-case one, he might not make it back onto the field again this season.

Moncada is already coming off a pair of injury-wracked seasons that took a significant toll on his performance. After hitting for a 120 wRC+ with 3.7 WAR in 144 games in 2021, he slipped to a 76 wRC+ and 0.8 WAR in 104 games in ’22, missing five weeks due to an oblique strain and then 10 days for strains in each hamstring. He rebounded slightly in 2023, hitting .260/.305/.425 (98 wRC+) with 1.1 WAR, but still played just 92 games, missing over 10 weeks due to a pair of IL stints for lower back inflammation. He was off to a good start this season, hitting .282/.364/.410 (127 wRC+) while showing improved plate discipline through his first 44 plate appearances.

He is now in the final guaranteed season of the five-year, $70 million extension he signed in March 2020, making $24 million this year with a $25 million club option and $5 million buyout for 2025. Given the trends of his performance and Chicago’s payroll — which declined from $193 million in 2022 to $177 million to ’23 to $148 million this season as both the old and new regimes have stripped the roster for parts — it’s unlikely the team would have picked up his option. More likely, general manager Chris Getz would have looked to trade him this summer in an effort to fortify a farm system that got a shot in the arm last year, rising from 27th in projected future value in the spring to 12th later in the season.

Grifol said the team will rotate among a trio of players to fill in for Moncada, with 29-year-old lefty Nicky Lopez, 26-year-old lefty Braden Shewmake, and 24-year-old righty Lenyn Sosa all in the mix. None of them has hit a lick at the major league level, with Lopez — who has started eight games at second base and one at shortstop so far this year — the best of the bunch with a career 72 wRC+ across more than 1,900 PA; Sosa owns a 43 wRC+ through 224 PA, while Shewmake has a 50 wRC+, but only 25 PA so far. Each of them is a huge step down from Moncada, to say the least.

Robert isn’t expected to be out as long as Moncada, but his absence is depriving the White Sox of their lone All-Star from last year and their most dynamic player. The 26-year-old center fielder left Chicago’s April 5 game after injuring himself running out a double, and was diagnosed with a Grade-2 flexor strain in his right hip, the same one in which he suffered a Grade-3 strain in 2021. He missed about three and a half months that time, but this time around he’s only anticipated to be out six to eight weeks, with “only” doing a lot of work here.

The shame of it is that Roberts is coming off the closest thing he’s had to a full season in a while. His 145 games played last year was the highest total of his four major league seasons, topping his 98 games from 2022, when he made trips to the IL for COVID-19, blurred vision, and a wrist sprain; the only other time he played at least 100 games in a season was 2019, when he tallied 122 while rocketing through three levels of the minors. Even as the team collapsed around him last season, he put together an outstanding campaign, hitting 38 homers and stealing 20 bases while hitting .264/.315/.542 (128 wRC+) with 4.9 WAR. His slugging percentage and home runs both placed third in the American League, his wRC+ and WAR, eighth.

Robert was hitting just .214/.241/.500 at the time of his injury, with a two-homer, three-hit, four-RBI game against the Tigers on March 30 accounting for the bulk of his contributions. Thus far in Robert’s absence, Grifol has shifted his right field platoon over to center. That pairing — 26-year-old lefty Dominic Fletcher and 35-year-old righty Kevin Pillar — along with various other players in smaller roles placed the White Sox 28th in the right field version of our preseason positional power rankings. Meanwhile, Robert drove their no. 5 ranking among center fielders, but with his playing time reduced, he and his replacements have dropped to 12th in our Depth Charts. Somebody ought to put up a warning sign: “Beware of Falling Projections.”

As for Jiménez, he didn’t even make it to April, or to a spot in the outfield, before getting hurt. In the season’s third game, on March 31, the 27-year-old slugger strained an adductor in his left leg while running out an infield grounder and left the game. This marks his fourth straight season with a trip to the IL; in 2021 he missed four months due to a torn pectoral tendon, in ’22 he lost two and a half months to a torn tendon in his right knee, and in ’23 he was shelved 10 days for a left hamstring strain, and then three weeks for an appendectomy. Jiménez still managed to play 120 games last year, his highest total since his 2019 rookie season, but through his first five years, he played in only about 62% of Chicago’s games.

In the wake of last year’s early-season injuries, the White Sox used Jiménez in right field in just 14 games and DHed him 105 times. Keeping him off the grass is probably preferable given not only his fragile state but his defensive metrics (-22 RAA, -18 DRS, -9.8 UZR in 2066.2 career innings). That said, a DH-only role places a lot more pressure on him to hit in order to be valuable, and last year’s .272/.317/.441 (104 wRC+) translated to just 0.5 WAR, which doesn’t cut it. The good news is that Jiménez is on the mend, and could possibly return this weekend. In his absence, Gavin Sheets has gotten hot, batting .333/.455/.704 through 33 PA but [checks notes] none of our projections suggest he can maintain that.

In our preseason projections, Robert (4.0 WAR), Moncada (2.4), and Jiménez (1.9) occupied the team’s top three spots, with Andrew Vaughn (1.6) and Andrew Benintendi (1.5) the only other position players above 1.0. In other words, without this trio the Sox don’t have a single player who projects to be average or better in the lineup. These outages and this miserable start — which includes the lowest-scoring offense in the majors, at 2.42 runs per game — have dropped their already-abysmal win projection from 66.3 as of Opening Day to 60.8. With the possible exception of the days that Garrett Crochet starts — he’s got a 2.00 ERA and 2.50 FIP through three turns — this is going to be an unwatchable team at least until Robert gets back.

We’re two weeks into the 2024 season — Seoul Series excepted — so it’s difficult to take any hot start too seriously. Still, it’s a surprise that the Pirates entered Thursday with the National League’s highest winning percentage (.750, on the back of a 9-3 record), despite losing to the Tigers 5-3 on Tuesday afternoon in Pittsburgh. Since this isn’t the kind of condition that has tended to prevail after April in recent years, we’ll zoom in for a closer look.

The Pirates entered 2024 having finished below .500 in five straight seasons and seven out of the past eight, with an 82-79 record in 2018 constituting the lone exception; last year’s 76-86 record was their best since then, a 14-win improvement over 2022. While they did not have a particularly auspicious winter, they didn’t sit still, with general manager Ben Cherington signing half a dozen players — including four former All-Stars (Aroldis Chapman, Yasmani Grandal, Martín Pérez, and Andrew McCutchen, the last of them re-upping) and a Gold Glove winner (Michael A. Taylor) — to one-year contracts worth anywhere from $2.5 million to $10 million, with a couple notable minor league deals as well (Domingo Germán and Eric Lauer). Cherington also made a handful of trades, most notably adding Marco Gonzales and Edward Olivares. The team’s biggest move was inking top starter Mitch Keller to a five-year, $77 million extension that suggests he’ll outlast all of the newcomers. Read the rest of this entry »

Tyler O’Neill didn’t take long to adapt to a new team. Traded to the Red Sox in December after spending six years with the Cardinals, O’Neill claimed sole possession of a major league record by homering on Opening Day for the fifth straight season. As we approach the two-week mark of the season — yes, it’s early — he finds himself atop major leaderboards and has helped Boston get off to a 7-4 start.

On Tuesday at Fenway Park, O’Neill launched a towering solo shot over the Green Monster off Orioles ace Corbin Burnes to put the Red Sox up 1-0 in the first inning:

The Statcast-estimated distance of 413 feet made that O’Neill’s longest of this season so far. It was his sixth homer, momentarily moving him out of a tie with Mookie Betts, Marcell Ozuna, and Mike Trout, though Trout countered with his sixth later on Tuesday night. Nonetheless, O’Neill has matched Fred Lynn’s hot 1979 start for the most homers by a Red Sox player in the team’s first 11 games of a season, doing so while making just nine starts and a pinch-hitting appearance. By comparison, last season O’Neill didn’t hit his sixth home run until August 11, and finished with just nine in 72 games.

O’Neill began the season by homering off Mariners reliever Cody Bolton on Opening Day in Seattle. In doing so, he broke a tie with Yogi Berra (1955–58), Gary Carter (1977–80) and Todd Hundley (1994–97) for the most consecutive Opening Day games with a home run. (And you thought you were glad baseball was back!) He closed out the Seattle series with a homer off Bryce Miller on March 31, took the Angels’ Griffin Canning and José Soriano deep on April 5, then added a dinger against Chase Silseth on April 7.

Unfortunately for the Red Sox, O’Neill’s blast on Tuesday was their only run of the day; they lost 7-1. And oddly enough, the 28-year-old left fielder hasn’t driven in anyone else despite his six home runs, which is more a commentary on his teammates than his own failings; he’s 1-for-3 with a pair of walks with runners in scoring position. Regardless of his RBI total, he’s swinging a very hot bat overall, hitting .344/.488/.906. It’s not every day you’re miles ahead of two future Hall of Famers for the major league lead in key categories, so we’ll note that his slugging percentage is 126 points ahead of the second-ranked Trout, and his 276 wRC+ is 32 points ahead of the second-ranked Betts. Meanwhile his on-base percentage merely leads the American League.

Of course, O’Neill has played just 10 games, the first nine of them against the Mariners, A’s, and Angels — all on the road — and there’s only so much we can take from that, but the number one thing is that he’s healthy, and that’s a big one, because save for his monster 2021 season and his brawny physique (“listed at 5-foot-11 and 200 pounds, of which about 198 pounds is biceps and quads,” wrote Michael Baumann), injuries have largely defined his career.

Drafted by the Mariners out of a British Columbia high school in the third round in 2013, O’Neill became a Cardinal in the Marco Gonzales trade four years later. He debuted in the majors on April 19, 2018, but spent much of that season and the next one bouncing back and forth between Triple-A and the majors, with five (!) trips to the injured list thrown in for good measure. After spending all of 2020 in the majors and on the active roster — and even winning his first Gold Glove, but hitting a miserable .173/.261/.360 — he finally got something close to a full-length season under his belt in 2021, hitting .286/.352/560 (143 wRC+) with 34 homers, 15 steals, and 5.3 WAR in just 136 games, but accompanying that with two more trips to the IL. He added a second Gold Glove that year, and finished eighth in the NL MVP voting, but since then he hasn’t come close to replicating that season, with injuries limiting him to just 168 games, 23 homers, a 98 wRC+ and 2.0 WAR across 2022–23, another two-year span that included five trips to the IL:

Thus the 28-year-old O’Neill entered this season having played more than 100 games in a major league season just once, and more than 72 just twice. Between his injuries, a crowded field of alternatives, his increasing price tag, and a spat with manager Oliver Marmol — who publicly questioned O’Neill’s effort running the bases during a heavy rain last April 4 in St. Louis, calling his effort “unacceptable” — O’Neill fell out of favor in St. Louis. On December 8, the Cardinals traded the pending free agent to the Red Sox in exchange for a pair of righty relievers, Nick Robertson and Victor Santos.

So far, the change of scenery seems to agree with him, though it’s worth noting that Tuesday’s game was his first at Fenway with the Red Sox. One game, one homer? That’s a pretty good rate!

In light of O’Neill’s long history of leg woes, it’s worth pointing out that as of now he’s hitting the ball harder than in the past two seasons. I present these stats while acknowledging that we don’t have enough data to draw strong conclusions about what’s happening yet; this is as much about his decline from 2021 as it is his torrid start:

Bear in mind that, as Baseball Prospectus’ Russell Carlton has noted, exit velocity stabilizes around 40 batted ball events, and barrel rate at 50 BBE, while groundball, fly ball, and hard-hit rates do so at 80 BBE. Within this small sample, this year’s exit velo and barrel rate at least look more like 2021 than ’22 or ’23. On a rolling basis of 25 plate appearances, both his xSLG and xwOBA show that his season-opening hot streak resembles only two or three stretches from the past two seasons, while he had a handful of such stretches in 2021:

The other thing to note about O’Neill is how much he’s tightened his approach so far. He’s a guy with a lot of swing-and-miss in his game, so much so that even as he ranked no. 61 on our Top 100 Prospects list in 2018, he had 30/40 grades (present/future) on his hit tool, and from 2018–23, he struck out 30% of the time, seventh among hitters with at least 1,500 PA in that span. Production-wise, he’s near the upper end among guys with strikeout rates in that neighborhood; of the hitters with the 30 highest strikeout rates over at least 1,000 PA within that span — everybody from 28.8% up — his 111 wRC+ ranks fourth, behind only Luke Voit (123), Giancarlo Stanton (122), and Teoscar Hernández (117).

Entering this season, O’Neill had swung at 72.5% of pitches within the strike zone, including 71% last year; so far this year, he’s cut that down to 50.8%. Similarly, his overall swing rate of 48.1% entering this year (44.9% last year) is down to 36%. His swinging strike rate of 15.4% (11.2% last year) is way down to 6.4%, and his strikeout rate, which was 25.2% last year, is at 19.5%. Mind you, none of these stats have stabilized — swing rate takes about 50 PA (he’s at 41) and strikeout rate requires roughly 60 PA — but those are at least promising trends.

We’re obviously still early enough in the season that any trend could be a mirage, a two-week heater or skid that might not merit closer scrutiny if it were located in mid-June or the dog days of August. Still, when combined with his hot streak, the health and change-of-scenery aspects of O’Neill’s situation are at least worth keeping an eye on. He’s not going to continue slugging .906, but for a team whose outfielders entered this season ranking 22nd in the majors with a combined 96 wRC+ since 2020 — i.e., the post-Betts era — this counts as a welcome development.