Just because the Athletics are leading their division while the Astros are well below .500 doesn’t mean that the AL West is entirely upside-down. Once again, a catcher is having such an incredible season at the plate that his offense is worth talking about, and if the season ended today, he’d be in the MVP discussion. This time around we’re not talking about Cal Raleigh — who just landed on the injured list shortly after snapping an 0-for-38 slump — but Shea Langeliers. At this writing, the A’s catcher is currently hanging with the big boys on the batting leaderboards and doing things that are worth keeping an eye upon.

The 28-year-old Langeliers entered Friday hitting .340/.397/.623, which is not just great for a catcher, but it’s one of the best lines in baseball. His 179 wRC+ ranks third in the majors behind only Ben Rice and Yordan Alvarez, one point ahead of Aaron Judge, and his slugging percentage is third in the AL, nestled among those same four hitters. He leads all catchers with 12 home runs, tied for eighth among all major league hitters. But what really caught my eye is that his batting average leads the AL.

Yes, batting average is the least important of those slash stats, but as I’ve maintained before, at a time when .300 hitters have become an endangered species — the NL had just one last year, Trea Turner — it’s worth giving a damn about batting average again. Batting average is fun; batting average has entertainment value. When batting averages are low, the game is more static, and right now the 30 teams as a whole are slashing a combined .240/.319/.389, down from .245/.315/.404 last year. If maintained over a full season, this year’s batting average would be the third lowest since 1901, ahead of only 1968 (.237) and 1908 (.239). Read the rest of this entry »

“If Bobby [Cox] wasn’t here, he’d be one of the leading candidates for the job. A new broom sweeps clean. That’s all,” said Braves owner Ted Turner at the October 8, 1981 press conference to announce the dismissal of the manager who had piloted the team for the previous four seasons, with just one finish above .500. Known then as one of baseball’s most controversial, impulsive, hands-on owners — so hands-on that he had even managed the team for one night, only to be prohibited from doing so again — Turner admitted that he was making a change for change’s sake.

The Braves would win the NL West in 1982 under new manager Joe Torre, but not until Turner rehired Cox as general manager after the ’85 season — just after he’d managed the Blue Jays to their first division title — and focused on building from within instead of chasing expensive free agents did the team sustain its success. Once Cox returned to the dugout in mid-1990, he led the Braves to 14 division titles, five pennants, and a championship in 15 seasons (1991–2005), interrupted only by a second-place finish in strike-shortened 1994. He added a wild card berth in his final season (2010) for a record-setting 16 playoff appearances in 29 seasons of managing. He won four Manager of the Year awards, and on the 2014 Expansion Era Committee ballot, alongside Torre and Tony La Russa, he was elected unanimously to the Hall of Fame.

Cox won more regular season games (2,504) than all but Connie Mack, La Russa, and John McGraw. He ranks third all-time in games above .500 (503), fifth in games managed (4,508), sixth in losses (2,001), and 19th in winning percentage (.556) at a 1,000-game cutoff. Aided by expanded playoffs, he’s first all-time in postseason losses (69), second in games managed (136) behind only Torre, and fourth in wins (67). He’s also the all-time leader in managerial ejections with 162, 41 more than McGraw. The count undergirded his reputation as a players’ manager. “If I were on the field, I’d want the manager sticking up for me,” Cox once said. “Sometimes players are dead wrong, ranting and raving, but you stick up for them. They appreciate that.”

“He treats you like a man. He’s very simple in what he wants,” said Tom Glavine in 1999. “He doesn’t have a whole lot of rules. You show up on time, and you show up ready to play, and you play the game the right way.”

Brash and often profane, or at least offensive, Turner earned nicknames such as “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South” for confrontational statements, ostentatious womanizing, and self-aggrandizement. Anecdotes from his early years owning the Braves could fill a book. He eschewed the executive suite for a seat behind the home dugout, often appeared in the clubhouse wearing jeans and boat shoes, and took up chewing tobacco to fit in with players. In 1978, the New York Times’ Roger Vaughan called him “an interesting blend of Southern gentleman and funky downhome goofhead cousin in whose vernacular the words ‘sir’ and ‘ain’t’ nestle compatibly. It is an ideal combination for selling baseball in Atlanta.”

By the mid-1980s, with Cox in the fold, Turner learned to leave baseball to his baseball people and focused more on his cable television empire, where he proved to be a visionary, taking the Braves nationwide via Superstation TBS, founding the Cable News Network, purchasing the libraries of MGM films to broadcast on Turner Classic Movies and Hanna-Barbera cartoons to air on the Cartoon Network. In 1996, he merged his conglomerate — which included the Braves — with Time Warner, creating what was hailed as the world’s largest communications company, and became vice chairman while surrendering control of the Braves. After the Braves moved from Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to their new ballpark, Turner Field, in 1997, he retained a presence at their games for several more years. He remained with Time Warner after AOL purchased it in 2001, though his prominence in the corporate hierarchy was reduced.

“For the 10 years I ran [the team], it was a disaster,” said Turner in October 1996, after completing the sale. “But buying the Braves was a good move. As I relinquished control of the Braves and gave somebody else the responsibility, they did well.”

After selling his company, Turner put his money toward humanitarian and conservation efforts. In 1997, he donated $1 billion to create the United Nations Foundation, supporting the UN and its causes; at the time it was the largest philanthropic gift in history. He became the fourth-largest landowner in the U.S., using his two million acres spread across 13 ranches for sustainable agriculture and managing the world’s largest private bison herd.

Turner died on May 6 at age 87. He had suffered from Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder, since being diagnosed in 2018. Cox died on May 9 at age 84, after battling numerous health issues following a massive stroke in 2019. Their deaths followed the May 4 passing of John Sterling, a play-by-play broadcaster for the Braves from 1982–87 who gained greater fame in that role with the Yankees.

That’s a rough stretch for Braves fans, even with the team currently making a strong rebound from a rare losing season (76-86) that ended a run of seven straight postseason appearances and a 2021 World Series championship. While Turner and Cox didn’t do it alone — scouting director Paul Snyder, Hall of Fame GM John Schuerholz, and pitching coach Leo Mazzone figured prominently, and pitchers Glavine, Greg Maddux, and John Smoltz, center fielder Andruw Jones, and third baseman Chipper Jones built Hall of Fame careers with the Braves — the late great tandem raised the bar for Atlanta baseball.

“Whatever truth is to be found in it, the following is incontrovertible,” wrote the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Ken Sugiura. “It would seem a near impossibility for another two-person team to have a greater impact on sports in Atlanta than Turner and Cox. Turner was the dynamic owner who stopped at nothing to support the team. Cox was the steady skipper who delivered Atlanta — a fan base whose sporting history is draped in heartache and failure — its most consistent winner, and arguably its grandest moment, the 1995 World Series championship.”

…

Robert Joe Cox was born on May 21, 1941 in Tulsa, Oklahoma to J.T. Cox, an electrician, and Willie Mae (Hendrix) Cox, a store clerk. When the young Cox was three years old, his family moved to Selma, California, a farming community in the San Joaquin Valley. He grew up a Cardinals fan because the team based a Class-C affiliate in nearby Fresno, and idolized Stan Musial. At Selma High School, he played baseball, football, and basketball. In 1959, legendary Dodgers scout (and later pitching coach) Red Adams recruited him out of Reedley Junior College to sign for a hefty $40,000 bonus.

Cox spent five years in the Dodgers’ system (1960–64), splitting time between second base and third and climbing as high as Double-A Albuquerque in 1964. In November of that year, the Cubs chose him in the minor league portion of the Rule 5 draft; he spent 1965 at their Triple-A Salt Lake City affiliate, then on April 28, 1966 was traded to the Braves. After a strong 1967 season at Triple-A Richmond, he was dealt to the Yankees for catcher Bob Tillman and pitcher Dale Roberts on December 7, 1967.

In the spring of 1968, the going-on-27-year-old Cox initially won a reserve spot on the Yankees; when 23-year-old third baseman Mike Ferraro slumped and was sent down to Triple-A Syracuse, Cox took over for him. He played regularly in 1968, and even earned Topps All-Star Rookie honors, but was reduced to a bench role in ’69, when 23-year-old Bobby Murcer won the third base job, and then a platoon role after Murcer moved to right field. Across two seasons, Cox hit a combined .225/.310/.309 (87 wRC+) with nine homers and 1.6 WAR, and endeared himself to manager Ralph Houk, who called him “an old-fashioned ball player… comes to work early, keeps busy, hones his bat, talks baseball all the time and thinks baseball all the time. He has his limitations, of course, but you can’t help rooting for him.”

“My knees were shot by the time I got to the major leagues. I struggled a little bit when I was up there,” Cox told Kevin Newell in a 2009 interview. “But I loved it. It was a great experience. I had the opportunity to play alongside Mickey Mantle in 1968.”

After spending 1970 at Syracuse, Cox retired as a player. The Yankees believed he was worth keeping around, hiring him to manage the team’s A-level Fort Lauderdale affiliate, which went 71-70 in 1971. In 1972, Cox managed Double-A West Haven of the Eastern League to an 84-56 record and a division championship. He spent 1973–76 managing Syracuse, finishing above .500 each year and winning the International League championship in ’76 after going 82-57. During that time, he oversaw dozens of future major leaguers, most notably Rick Dempsey, Scott McGregor, and Ron Guidry.

In 1977, Cox joined the Yankees as first base coach under Billy Martin, alongside Yogi Berra, Elston Howard, and Dick Howser. “I got to know those guys really well. Pick their brains here and there,” he told Newell. After that team won the World Series, Turner hired the 36-year-old Cox to manage the Braves, replacing the fired Dave Bristol. “We’re hoping Bobby can be the manager to lead us to the promised land as soon as possible,” said Turner. “His credentials, background, and experience were just what the doctor ordered.”

Cox understood the tall task ahead, saying, “We lost 101 games last year, so obviously there is the need for a lot of work… Our top pitcher (Phil Niekro) won 16 games and lost 20 and our next-best pitcher (Dick Ruthven) won seven games. We definitely need pitching, that’s all there is to it. You can’t win without pitching.”

…

Robert Edward Turner III was born on November 19, 1938 in Cincinnati to father Robert Edward Turner Jr. (known as Ed) and Florence Rooney Turner. Ed was a Mississippi native whose family grew cotton; he moved to Ohio during the Great Depression. When Ted was nine, the family moved to Savannah, Georgia, where Ed started a billboard advertising company. While growing up, Ted suffered physical and psychological abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father, whom he nonetheless strove to please. He romanticized his harsh treatment, telling The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta in 2001, “He thought that people who were insecure worked harder, and I think that’s probably true. I don’t think I ever met a superachiever who wasn’t insecure to some degree.”

Ted attended the Georgia Military Academy, the military program at Chattanooga’s McCallie School, and then Brown University, where he was vice president of the debating union and captain of the sailing team. His choice of studies angered his father, whose disdainful letter Ted published in the campus paper: “I am appalled, even horrified, that you have adopted Classics as a major. As a matter of fact, I almost puked on the way home today… I think you are rapidly becoming a jackass, and the sooner you get out of that filthy atmosphere, the better it will suit me.”

While Ted later switched to economics, he was suspended twice and ultimately expelled for multiple infractions of having women in his dorm room. After leaving Brown and spending six months in the Coast Guard to fulfill his military service obligation, he returned to Georgia to join his father’s company. But even while expanding the business, Ed spiraled downwards while battling depression as well as alcohol and drug abuse. On March 5, 1963, Ed committed suicide at age 53. Deeply in debt, he had agreed to sell the company’s largest division, but the 24-year-old Ted decided to keep it, returning the down payment and paying a penalty for annulling the deal.

Turner pushed the company to greater success than his father had, and kept up with competitive sailing, trying out unsuccessfully for the 1964 Olympics. By 1970, bored of billboards, he bought a money-losing UHF television station, Channel 17, which ran fifth out of five stations in the Atlanta market. He renamed the station WTCG, which stood both for Turner Communications Group and its slogan: “Watch This Channel Grow.” The station ran old movies, classic cartoons, and syndicated sitcoms like Andy Griffith and The Beverly Hillbillies. In 1973, Turner acquired broadcasting rights for both the Braves and the NBA’s Hawks, providing WTCG with bulk programming. He bid $600,000 for the Braves’ rights, triple what the previous rights-holder, WSB, had been paying, and agreed to televise three times as many games, going from 20 to 60 per year. Turner expanded his station’s range beyond Atlanta by relaying WTCG’s signal using microwave dishes throughout the Southeast. Cable systems picked up the station.

However, the Braves were flailing. They went 67-94 in 1975 while ranking 11th in a 12-team league in attendance. An ownership group from Boston sought to purchase the team and move it to Toronto. Fearful of losing his programming, in January 1976, Turner purchased the team for $500,000 in cash and $8 million at 6% annual interest over 10 years — giving him a complete inventory of 162 games to broadcast; in 1977, he bought the Hawks, as well. Meanwhile, changes in FCC rules allowed over-the-air broadcasters to use RCA’s communications satellite to transmit their signal to cable providers, facilitating the ability for WTCG to go national. The station had two million subscribers by the end of 1976 and reached all 50 states by the end of ’78; its value had increased by $40 million. In 1979, it would be rechristened Superstation WTBS. Around this time, Turner branded the Braves as “America’s Team.”

Thanks to the landmark Messersmith-McNally decision that opened the floodgates for free agency, baseball’s landscape was changing, too. Turner’s opening salvo was to sign Andy Messersmith, the three-time All-Star who successfully challenged the reserve clause, to a three-year, $1 million deal in April 1976, and assign him jersey no. 17, with CHANNEL in place of MESSERSMITH above it — free advertising for his station, at least until NL president Chub Feeney cracked down in late May. At that time, Feeney also ordered Turner to stop playing poker with his players, and disallowed contractual incentives based on the team’s performance and attendance.

As if Turner needed even more ways to set himself apart from other owners, for the Braves’ 1976 home opener, he led the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium crowd in singing a pregame “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” rode a chariot while racing ostriches against the team’s broadcasters, and climbed onto the field to congratulate right fielder Ken Henderson after he homered.

OTD in 1976, Ted Turner competed with Skip Caray, Pete Van Wieren, and Ernie Johnson in a pre-game Ostrich race. The idea was a one lap around the warning track heat, but the Ostriches apparently weren't clear on the course. Ted and the announcers even wore custom racing silks. pic.twitter.com/frKd3Jn0hf

— Braves Historian (@BravesHistorian) July 26, 2024

Another pregame promotion called for players to race while pushing baseballs with their noses from third base to home plate. After Braves players balked at participating, director of public relations Bob Hope (not the legendary entertainer) interrupted the owner’s dinner with the Reverend Jesse Jackson and asked him to race Phillies reliever Tug McGraw. Turner won, bloodying his face in the process.

On September 17, 1976, Turner quietly made baseball history by promoting Bill Lucas, a former minor league infielder then working as the team’s farm director, to the title of vice president of player personnel and charged him with performing the duties of a GM — though Turner himself kept the GM title. Lucas became the first Black man to run a major league franchise, but alas died of a brain hemorrhage in May 1979 at age 43. Turner also brought back franchise icon Henry Aaron after his 1976 retirement. Aaron spent 13 years as vice president and director of player development before becoming a senior VP in 1989.

Turner wanted more free agents. During the 1976 season, commissioner Bowie Kuhn fined him $10,000 for tampering by having GM John Alevizos convey his interest to the agent of Giants outfielder Gary Matthews, an upcoming free agent. At a cocktail party during the World Series, Turner publicly challenged Giants owner Bob Lurie to outbid him for Matthews, and in November, signed the outfielder to a five-year, $1.875 million deal. After Lurie complained, Kuhn suspended Turner for one year while allowing the contract to stand. Kuhn also stripped the Braves of the third overall pick in the June amateur draft.

“I’m thankful he didn’t order me shot,” said Turner, who sought an injunction to block the suspension. While that process played out, on May 11, 1977, with the Braves having lost 16 straight games, he sent Bristol on a 10-day sabbatical “scouting trip,” donned a uniform, and appointed himself as “acting manager,” justifying the move as a chance to get an up-close look at his investment; coach Vern Benson made the lineup and dictated strategy. After the Braves lost to the Pirates, executives around the game voiced their disapproval. “By making himself manager, he’s making a bigger laughingstock out of the team than the losing streak is,” said Lurie. “It’s got to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve seen in baseball,” said Padres GM Buzzie Bavasi. “Well, maybe they’ll Turner it around,” quipped White Sox GM Roland Hemond.

The next day, Feeney disallowed the move, ordering Bristol reinstated. On May 19, a federal judge upheld Kuhn’s right to suspend Turner but reinstated the draft pick. In September, while under suspension, Turner skippered the Courageous to victory in the 1977 America’s Cup, beating the challenger Australia in a four-race sweep.

Bristol was fired on October 25, 1977. The Braves’ board of directors focused on six candidates, including Berra and Howser, but did not talk to all of them; Niekro, the team’s 38-year-old ace, also threw his hat in the ring, but in the end, Turner chose Cox.

…

The Braves lost 187 games in Cox’s first two seasons, but with 1974 first-round pick Dale Murphy, originally a catcher, breaking out with a move to center field, the team went 81-80 in 1980, its best showing in six years, and drew over one million fans for the first time. In the strike-torn 1981 season, the Braves went a combined 50-56; additions of expensive free agents, such as reliever Al Hrabosky (signed in November 1979) and Claudell Washington (signed in November 1980), did nothing to change their fate. Shuffling the deck chairs, Turner dismissed Cox, whom the Blue Jays hired a week later. Toronto GM Pat Gillick, who as the Yankees’ coordinator of player development in the mid-1970s had worked with Cox, believed his new manager could mold a young team into a contender.

The Blue Jays had finished last in the seven-team AL East in each of their first four seasons and the first half of 1981 before rising to sixth in the second half of that year, but a booming farm system had already produced a two-time All-Star in righty Dave Stieb, a fifth-round 1978 pick. With Stieb having his first Cy Young-caliber season, righty Jim Clancy making his lone All-Star team, and youngsters Jesse Barfield, Lloyd Moseby, and Willie Upshaw acclimating to the majors, the team went 78-84 in 1982, finishing sixth, then jumped to 89 wins in ’83 and ’84, with finishes of fourth and second. Hitting coach Cito Gaston, a former minor league teammate of Cox who played for him in 1978, helped mold one of the game’s top offenses, led by Barfield, Moseby, and former Rule 5 pick George Bell. Stieb emerged as the AL’s top pitcher but never won a Cy Young.

Further fueled by the emergence of shortstop Tony Fernández — the crown jewel of the team’s pipeline of Dominican talent — and the shifts of Jimmy Key to the rotation and Tom Henke to closer, the Blue Jays went 99-62 in 1985, winning the AL East by two games over the Yankees. They took a three-games-to-one lead over the Royals in the first best-of-seven ALCS, but Cox’s gambit of starting Key, Doyle Alexander, and Stieb on three days of rest in Games 5 through 7 failed, and Kansas City’s young pitching held Toronto to five runs over those three games. The Royals completed the series comeback and went on to beat the Cardinals in the World Series.

“Bobby instilled winning,” former Blue Jays communication head Howard Starkman told Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi. “We were only eight years into the business and all of a sudden we were one win from having the World Series at Exhibition Stadium… Bobby knew how to get the most out of players.”

Upon election to the Hall in 2013, Cox called his Toronto stint “one of the greatest experiences I ever had in baseball… I had more fun there than probably anywhere in the world.” But with his contract expired and his family still in Atlanta, he accepted Turner’s overture to return as GM.

After winning the NL West in 1982 — the first of Murphy’s back-to-back MVP seasons as he emerged as a wholesome icon ideal for marketing “America’s Team” — the Braves slipped to second in each of the next two years, with totals of 88 and 80 wins. Torre was fired, after which the team crashed to 66-96 under Eddie Haas and interim replacement Bobby Wine. Turner hired manager Chuck Tanner, who had won the 1979 World Series with the Pirates, before hiring Cox as GM.

The team barely improved, and Turner earned a reputation as such an easy mark for free agents that some approached him without being represented by agents, who were still comparatively new to the sport. Other owners disliked him, not only for his boorish, outspoken nature, but also for driving up salaries even while unsuccessfully pursuing the likes of Goose Gossage, Pete Rose, and Dave Winfield. Turner’s 1984 signing of Bruce Sutter to a six-year, $9.1 million contract included an outrageous 13% interest rate on deferred payments. That deal that looked worse when shoulder trouble hastened Sutter’s decline and ended his career prematurely.

Finally in 1986, team president Stan Kasten — who also served as the Hawks’ GM and president — advised Turner to lay off the big signings. “We had a last-place team with the highest payroll in baseball,” Kasten told The Athletic’s Tyler Kepner. He told Turner, “I know the ad boys who are selling our game on TV — which is the engine driving our train — need something to sell in the offseason, so you’re signing free agents every year… You’re also blocking the development of younger players and you’re giving up draft-pick compensation.”

“Stan, I don’t need a lecture. Just do it,” Turner told Kasten. He and Cox fell into line during the mid-1980s collusion scandal, where owners avoided poaching other teams’ free agents. Notably, in an incident described in John Helyar’s vastly entertaining Lords of the Realm, Cox withdrew an offer to free agent righty Bryn Smith, in part because the structure of Turner’s ownership fell under league scrutiny as he brought in minority partners to bail him out of debt after buying MGM and trying to buy CBS. Even while telling his fellow owners, “Gentlemen, we have the only legal monopoly in the country and we’re f—ing it up,” Turner could only afford to buck the system so hard.

From 1985–89 under Tanner (who was fired in early 1988) and Russ Nixon, the Braves annually lost between 89 and 106 games, never finishing higher than fifth, but below the surface, Cox was laying the groundwork for what would follow, aided by Snyder. They drafted pitchers Kent Mercker (1986), Steve Avery and Mark Wohlers (both 1988), outfielder Ryan Klesko (1989), and third baseman Chipper Jones (1990, with the first pick); all would soon contribute, as would 1983–85 draftees Glavine, Ron Gant, and David Justice, whom Cox inherited. Cox’s August 1987 trade of the veteran Alexander to the Tigers for Smoltz, a 20-year-old prospect, was a stroke of genius that also helped Detroit win its division; by 1989, Smoltz was an All-Star.

On June 22, 1990, with the team en route to a 65-97 record and its third straight season of attendance below one million, Cox fired Nixon and returned to the dugout. For as bad as things looked, the rotation — led by Glavine, Smoltz, and Charlie Leibrandt — emerged as a strength, Justice won NL Rookie of the Year, and Gant broke out. In the fall, Cox relinquished GM duties to Schuerholz, who had helped build the Royals into an AL powerhouse and at one point tried to hire Cox.

In 1991, Glavine won 20 games and his first Cy Young, Avery came into his own, and Schuerholz signee Terry Pendleton won the NL batting title and MVP award. The team won 94 games, including eight in a row from September 28 to October 4 to turn a two-game deficit into a division title. Thanks to back-to-back shutouts by Avery (the series MVP) and reliever Alejandro Peña in Game 6 and Smoltz in Game 7, the Braves outlasted the Barry Bonds/Bobby Bonilla Pirates in a thrilling NLCS to capture their first pennant since 1958.

The World Series against the Twins — who also vaulted from worst to first — proved to be an instant classic, with five games decided by one run and four via walk-off, three of which came in extra innings. The Twins won the first two in Minnesota, but the Braves took the next three in Atlanta. They lost Game 6 at the Metrodome on Kirby Puckett’s 11th-inning walk-off homer, and then Jack Morris shut out the Braves for 10 innings in Game 7; Smoltz, Mike Stanton, and Peña matched zeroes with Morris until Gene Larkin’s 10th-inning walk-off single against Peña decided the championship.

The agonizing near-miss was hardly the last. In 1992, after a 98-64 record and another NL West title, the Braves again outlasted the Pirates in a seven game NLCS, rallying for three runs in the bottom of the ninth against flagging starter Doug Drabek and reliever Stan Belinda. With two outs, pinch-hitter Francisco Cabrera drove in the tying and winning runs for a 3-2 victory that sent the Braves back to the World Series to face the Blue Jays, now managed by Gaston.

Atlanta won Game 1 behind Glavine and catcher Damon Berryhill’s three-run homer off Morris (now a Blue Jay), but lost three one-run games in a row. After Smoltz beat Morris in Game 5, the Braves scratched out the tying run against Henke in the bottom of the ninth in Game 6 to send it to extras. Leibrandt, relegated to relief duty that postseason, yielded two runs in the top of the 11th. The Braves rallied to bring the tying run to third base before Otis Nixon — who had driven in the ninth-inning run — grounded out to end the series.

In December 1992, the Braves signed Maddux, the reigning NL Cy Young winner, to a five-year, $28 million deal, winning out over a reported $34 million bid by the rebuilding Yankees. With Maddux winning his second of an unprecedented four straight Cy Youngs, Glavine placing third, and Justice, midseason acquisition Fred McGriff, and Gant finishing 3-4-5 in the NL MVP voting, the 1993 team won a franchise-record 104 games. They needed every win to edge the Giants, who themselves had added Bonds in free agency, in the NL West standings, but fell to the Phillies in a six-game NLCS. The 1994 team was 68-46, second in the newly reorganized NL East behind the Expos, when the players’ strike began in August.

On May 7, 1995, two weeks into the strike-delayed season, Cox was arrested at his home and charged with simple battery for allegedly punching his wife Pamela and pulling her hair during a domestic dispute. The police report said Cox was intoxicated and that his wife had visible swelling and redness on the left side of her face. She said he had spilled a drink on the carpet while the couple had guests over and that she had made a comment about it; the alleged assault occurred after their guests departed. In the report, Pamela Cox “stated that this has occurred many times before, but (she) never called the police because of possible media attention” and the effect on their children, the youngest of whom witnessed the attack. Cox admitted to pulling his wife’s hair and calling her a name but denied hitting her, according to the report. He added “that she also has been violent in the past, and that he hit her in reflex to her assault on him.”

In a joint press conference two days later, Pamela “said she didn’t make statements to police about physical abuse in the past or on Sunday night and didn’t know why they were in the police report,” according to a newspaper report in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. More:

“Said Pam Cox of the dispute: ‘It was just a personal problem… that had been escalating. We needed to talk about this a month ago, but due to the (Braves’) extended spring training it just kept escalating.’

“Bobby Cox, who said, “I’m just not a good listener,” said the couple will attempt to resolve their problems with the assistance of counseling. But he strongly denied the charge that he hit his wife.”

While today Major League Baseball would have placed Cox on leave and likely would have disciplined him in accordance with its domestic violence policy, at the time neither the league nor the Braves imposed any penalty on Cox — or even investigated the matter. The couple attended court-ordered counseling, after which the charges were dropped.

On the field, the Braves put it all together in 1995, going 90-54 to begin their string of NL East titles. Maddux and Glavine finished first and third in the Cy Young voting, and McGriff, Justice, Klesko, and rookie Chipper Jones all hit at least 20 home runs. After steamrolling the Rockies in a four-game Division Series, the Braves held the Reds to five runs in a four-game NLCS sweep. In a tight six-game World Series, the Braves limited a powerhouse Cleveland lineup that included Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, Manny Ramirez, and future Hall of Famers Eddie Murray and Jim Thome to just 19 runs; five games were decided by one run. The Braves secured their championship — the franchise’s first since 1957, when it played in Milwaukee, and the first ever for an Atlanta team in a major professional sport — when Glavine (the Series MVP) and Wohlers combined for a one-hit shutout, backing Justice’s solo homer in a 1-0 victory. “The team of the Nineties has its world championship!” exclaimed NBC announcer Bob Costas.

“At last, at last,” said an elated Turner, whose five-year plan to bring Atlanta fans a championship instead took two decades. In September 1995, just before all of that went down, he agreed to sell Turner Broadcasting — which by that point owned CNN, TBS, TNT, the Cartoon Network — as well as the Braves to Time Warner for $7.5 billion dollars worth of stock. The deal, which took just over a year to complete, made Turner the vice chairman of Time Warner and its largest single shareholder (10%), but he relinquished control of the Braves, from whom he’d already stepped back.

“I’ve been a C.E.O. for 33 years, and that’s a long time for anyone,” Turner said when the deal was first announced. “I’m married to Jane Fonda, so I know what it’s like to be No. 2,” he added, referring to his third wife, who would help shape his political evolution and his latter-day philanthropic efforts.

The regular-season dominance continued, as the Braves annually led the NL in wins from 1996–99, with the majors’ best record in ’97 (101-61) and ’99 (103-59), and a new franchise record of 106 wins in ’98. Smoltz’s 1996 Cy Young ended Maddux’s four-year reign, and after the Braves swept the Dodgers in the Division Series and beat the Cardinals in a seven-game NLCS, 19-year-old Andruw Jones, a late-season call-up, clubbed two homers in the World Series opener against Torre’s Yankees. But while the Braves won the first two games in New York, the Yankees took four straight in Atlanta to capture their first championship since 1978.

After winning four pennants in five years, Cox’s Braves ran into buzzsaws in the postseason in 1997 and ’98, falling to the Marlins and Padres in a pair of six-game NLCS. The team did return to the World Series in 1999, the year Chipper Jones won NL MVP honors, but was swept by the Yankees in the World Series.

Cox’s Braves continued to win division titles, but from 2000–05, they were ousted in the Division Series all but once, with three straight Game 5 losses from ’02–04. The great rotation, the foundation of the team’s success, scattered. Smoltz lost his 2000 season to Tommy John surgery and returned as a reliever. Glavine defected to the Mets after 2002, and Maddux rejoined the Cubs after ’03. The farm system produced NL Rookie of the Year Rafael Furcal in 2000 and a solid second baseman in Marcus Giles in ’01, but it would take until the ’05 arrivals of Jeff Francoeur and Brian McCann before factoring in again. In 2006, after Mazzone departed to join the Orioles, the Braves slipped to 79-83, their first losing season since 1990, and their first of four straight outside the postseason; they sandwiched winning records around a 72-90 crash in 2008.

On September 23, 2009, Cox announced he would return for one final season. With a lineup anchored by McCann and rookie Jason Heyward and a staff led by Tim Hudson and Billy Wagner, the 2010 Braves rose to the occasion by going 91-71 and claiming the NL Wild Card, but the eventual champion Giants ousted them in the Division Series. All four games were decided by one run, but the Braves scored just 11 total.

Such offensive droughts, or at least a lack of timely hitting, often doomed Cox’s postseason teams despite the starters’ great efforts. While Smoltz went 15-4 with a 2.65 ERA for the Braves in October, Glavine went 12-15 with a 3.44 ERA, and Maddux 11-13 with a 2.81 ERA. In 129 postseason games from 1991–2010 under Cox, the Braves outscored opponents 539-472 but went 64-65, including 19-25 in one-run games and 5-7 in walk-offs. Their batting clutch score in that span was -3.20, their pitching clutch score -0.44 — in other words, they underperformed, particularly on the offensive side.

Upon retiring, Cox continued as a team consultant, but he suffered a massive stroke after participating in the Braves’ home opener in 2019. Though his condition eventually improved somewhat, he never regained full capacity for speech or the use of his right arm, and made it to Truist Park — where a statue of him was unveiled in 2017 — just three times, the last on August 22, 2025 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his championship team.

Turner’s volatility and Cox’s steadiness made them quite an odd couple. Both men had their flaws, but they paired well. Together and separately, they left an indelible mark on baseball.

In his first three seasons, Patrick Bailey carved a niche as one of the game’s top defensive catchers, dominating the Statcast defensive leaderboards and winning two Gold Gloves. The development of his offense has lagged, however, and with the Giants struggling to score runs and sporting one of the majors’ worst records, they’ve decide they can live without Bailey’s glovework. On Saturday, they traded the 27-year-old backstop to the Guardians for 23-year-old lefty pitching prospect Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson and a Competitive Balance pick in the upcoming draft.

This is the second season in a row that president of baseball operations Buster Posey has shaken up San Francisco’s roster with an early-season trade; last year, it was the mid-June acquisition of slugger Rafael Devers in a blockbuster with Boston. You don’t have to squint too hard to accept that both trades were aimed at upgrading moribund offenses, but when the Giants dealt for Devers, they were 11 games above .500 (41-30), one game behind the Dodgers in the NL West. They felt they’d landed the offensive cornerstone that had eluded them after unsuccessful pursuits of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, a player who could help them return to the postseason for the first time since 2021. This time around, they entered the day of the trade 15-23, last in the division, and the move appears far more tilted toward the future, as Wilkinson has just gotten his feet wet in Double-A and the draft pick won’t make an immediate impact.

If this trade had occurred just prior to the deadline (August 3 this year), it might have been characterized as a white flag, part of a larger selloff. To these eyes, it’s a shakeup that at worst smacks of panic and at best places a lot of faith that Posey — a likely Hall of Fame catcher who has yet to show similar prowess as an executive — has found a diamond or two in the rough with his two recent catching acquisitions: Jesus Rodriguez, who came from the Yankees in last year’s Camilo Doval trade, and Daniel Susac, who was flipped by the Twins in December after being plucked from the A’s as a Rule 5 pick. Both are 24 years old and have fewer than 10 games of major league experience, with Susac, who turns 25 on May 14, currently on a rehab assignment after being sidelined by neuritis in his right elbow. Eric Haase, a 33-year-old backstop who hit his way out of a starting job in Detroit in 2023, started in Saturday’s 13-3 drubbing by the Pirates — San Francisco’s ninth loss in 11 games — while Rodriguez started Sunday’s 7-6 win, which lifted the team’s record to 16-24, still third worst in the NL. Read the rest of this entry »

With Thursday’s 6-2 win over the Mets, the Rockies snapped a six-game losing streak and lifted their record to 15-23, momentarily escaping the distinction of owning at least a share of the National League’s worst record, which is currently shared by those Mets and the Giants (14-23). If they are again one of the majors’ worst teams, the Rox are at least not on pace to approach last year’s 119 losses, nor are they entirely devoid of bright spots, including catcher Hunter Goodman, starter Tomoyuki Sugano, and relievers Chase Dollander and Antonio Senzatela. But by far their brightest spot lately has been the play of Mickey Moniak. Now in his second season with the team, Moniak leads the league in slugging percentage (.700), ranks second in wRC+ (176), and is third in home runs (11) despite barely having enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title.

Alas, the 18-game hitting streak Moniak rode into Thursday came to an end in that victory, as he went 0-for-3 with a strikeout and a walk. He’d barely kept the streak alive on Wednesday night, going hitless in his first four plate appearances. He got under a pair of hard-hit balls against Mets starter Freddy Peralta, producing a popup to shortstop and a fly out to center field, both routine, and struck out twice, once against a high Peralta fastball and once against a low-and-away Brooks Raley sweeper. By the time he came to the plate for the fifth time, the Rockies were down 10-4 with one out in the ninth. Moniak ripped a hot smash 106.7 mph just to the left of pitcher Sean Manaea and past the outstretched glove of second baseman Marcus Semien as he dove to his right.

During Thursday’s game, Moniak’s contact wasn’t nearly as solid, though he almost kept the streak alive with a soft liner. The ball’s 64.3-mph exit velocity and 21-degree launch angle made it the kind of flare that actually lands for a hit more often than not, with just enough oomph to get over the infield dirt; the expected batting average on such balls is .550, but Semien did a fine job chasing that one down. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — “He brought that New York theater to the ballpark,” said Aaron Judge about John Sterling before Monday’s game, offering a perfect summation of the approach of the longtime Yankees broadcaster, who died earlier that day at the age of 87 in Englewood, New Jersey. Dressed in a suit and tie even though listeners couldn’t see him, prone to dropping a reference to a midcentury Broadway musical while celebrating a Yankees home run, and delivering his lines with a booming baritone capable of reaching the cheap seats, Sterling brought a unique and dramatic flair to the job.

His grandiloquent style could be polarizing, his puns agonizing. His personalized calls for each Yankee player’s home runs — from “Bernie goes boom! Bern, baby, Bern!” for Bernie Williams to “Robbie Cano, don’t ya know?” for Robinson Canó to “He sends a Tex message!” for Mark Teixeira — could sound a bit corny at times, his stentorian elongation of the word “the,” as in his oft-imitated “Thuuuuuuuuh Yankees win!” a hammy flourish.

When you root for a team, though, calls like Sterling’s punctuate the high points of fandom and the thrill of victory. Sterling never failed to convey the excitement of the ballpark with his triumphant blasts, but he easily downshifted into a calmer cadence with his partners, most notably Michael Kay and Suzyn Waldman, during more mundane moments. Such conversations are the comforting stuff of summers past, and such enduring presences in the booth offer us yardsticks by which we can measure our lives. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my first chat of May! Happy Cinco de Mayo to those celebrating, and a belated happy Star Wars Day if that’s your thing.

12:03

Jay Jaffe: On Friday I wrote about the league scoring environment through the end of April, noting that walk rates are up, likely due to the impact of the new ABS Challenge system https://blogs.fangraphs.com/more-walks-more-runs-an-early-look-at-offe…

12:04

Jay Jaffe: On Sunday I had a bizarre gardening accident, but fared better than the average Spinal Tap drummer https://bsky.app/profile/jayjaffe.bsky.social/post/3mkxvubesl22v

12:05

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday, I wrote about Ildemaro Vargas’ unlikely hitting streak. (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/ildemaro-vargas-is-suddenly-a-hitting-mach…), and last night I went up to Yankee Stadium to do some reporting to supplement a tribute to longtime Yankees radio play-by-play broadcaster John Sterling, who passed away at age 87. That will be up tomorrow.

12:06

Jay Jaffe: Sterling, of course, is famous in the site’s lore https://x.com/JSterlingCalls/status/1300580776464068608

12:08

Jay Jaffe: and one final programming note: next Tuesday evening I’ll be accompanying MLB.com’s Michael Clair to Word Bookstores in Williamsburg to moderate a discussion of his book on the Czech Republic’s national baseball team and its unlikely rise: https://bsky.app/profile/michaelclair.bsky.social/post/3ml4k6v4zqs2u

Read the rest of this entry »

You’re forgiven if you’re not exactly familiar with Diamondbacks utilityman Ildemaro Vargas. Though he’s spent parts of 10 seasons in the majors, the switch-hitting 34-year-old has been designated for assignment seven times, suited up for five different teams, and has never played more than 97 major league games in a season. From 2017–25, he netted a grand total of 1.5 WAR in 460 games, reaching 1.0 WAR in a season just once, in 2022. Yet Vargas just finished the hot streak of his life, one that made a bit of history. His 4-for-4 performance against the Cubs on Friday afternoon pushed his batting average to .404 and marked his 27th consecutive game with a hit dating back to last season, the longest in the majors in seven years and the longest ever by a Venezuela-born player; meanwhile, his 24-game streak to start the season is the second longest of the integration era. Vargas was finally held hitless on Saturday, but maintained a lofty perch on the batting leaderboards after a 1-for-4 performance on Sunday.

Vargas ended the weekend hitting .382/.406/.657, good enough to lead the majors in batting average and the National League in slugging percentage, thanks in part to his six home runs — a total that’s already matched his career high, set with the Diamondbacks in 2019. His 195 wRC+ leads the NL as well, while his on-base percentage ranks fourth in the league and his 1.5 WAR is virtually tied for seventh. Small sample though it may be, that’s a remarkable performance coming from a player who did not figure to be central to the plans of the Diamondbacks after hitting a meager .270/.292/.383 (85 wRC+) in 38 games and 121 plate appearances for the team last year.

Vargas was originally signed by the Cardinals out of Venezuela in 2008, so this is his 19th season of professional baseball. He’s now on his fourth stint with Arizona, which first signed him out of the independent Atlantic League in 2015, after he had been released by St. Louis. He reached the majors for a couple sips of coffee in 2017, and continued to shuffle between the minors and the majors until being DFA’d and traded to the Twins in August 2020. From there, in rapid succession, he bounced to the Cubs (2020), and then to the Pirates and back to the Diamondbacks (both 2021). He split 2022 between the Cubs and Nationals, the latter of whom kept him around through the ’24 season and gave him more regular play than any other team. The Diamondbacks signed him to a minor league deal in late January 2025; he exercised an opt-out in late May but quickly re-signed with the team. Four weeks later — after just 10 games in the majors — he was hit on the right foot by a curveball, fracturing his fifth metatarsal and sidelining him for about eight weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Major League Baseball’s rules have been in a constant state of flux during the 2020s, with the implementation of the extra-innings runner (the so-called Manfred Man), the universal designated hitter, the three-batter minimum, the pitch clock, the disengagement rule, larger bases, and the infield shift ban accompanying additional changes to roster sizes and the injured list. Most — but not all — of these rule changes have been aimed at livening the game up, with more action and fewer dead spots, and have generally favored offenses rather than pitchers. This year’s Big New Rule is the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System, which has shaken up batters’ and pitchers’ understanding of the strike zone. With the month of April now behind us, it’s worth checking in on this season’s numbers, in part to see what kind of impact the ABS is having.

For starters, scoring levels are up, both relative to last year as whole and to the opening month, by which I mean April plus the handful of games in March that preceded it (a convention I’ll maintain throughout this article). In a vacuum, that would rate as a bit of a surprise, since temperatures are generally cooler in the opening weeks than in the summer months, reducing the extent to which fly balls carry, and thus scoring levels. On the other hand, pitchers tend not to throw as hard as they do later in the season, which would favor hitters, as well. Yet through the end of April, teams are scoring more runs per game than in all but one of the past five seasons’ opening months:

I’ve included a bunch of numbers there to unpack, but first I’ll note that the timing of Opening Day influences the size of these samples. The 2021 season began on April 1, while the owners’ lockout delayed the start of the ’22 season until April 7. With the ensuing Collective Bargaining Agreement creating the need to shoehorn an additional round of playoffs into the schedule, Opening Day is now routinely a March thing, and it often begins with the baseball equivalent of an amuse-bouche. While all 30 teams kicked off play on March 30 in 2023, in ’24 a pair of games in Seoul on March 20–21 preceded the stateside Opening Day of March 28. The 2025 season began in similar fashion, with a pair of games in Tokyo on March 18–19 before everybody else got down to business on March 27. This year featured one game on March 25, with just about everybody else starting on March 26. Read the rest of this entry »

The moment may prove fleeting, but at this writing, the Braves have a claim as the best team in baseball. At the outset of this season, Atlanta looked as though it might be headed for disaster yet again due to injuries and absences, with another Jurickson Profar suspension and the loss of Spencer Strider providing a particular sense of déjà vu. Instead of stumbling out of the gate, however, and even with a far-from-complete roster, the 2026 Braves have dominated opponents on both sides of the ball. At 21-9, they own the majors’ best record — and it appears they’ll get Strider back soon, as well.

Nearly five weeks in, the Braves haven’t lost a series. They kicked things off at Truist Park by taking two out of three from both the Royals and A’s, then went on the road and split a four-game set with the Diamondbacks before taking two out of three from the Angels. Upon returning to Atlanta, they took two of three from both the Guardians and Marlins, and after that sandwiched a pair of series wins against the reeling Phillies — a three-game sweep in Philadelphia and then two out of three at home — around a three-out-of-four series win in Washington. That’s eight series wins and one tie to date; by comparison, the Dodgers and Yankees (both 20-10) have each dropped pair of three-game series and split a four-gamer.

To be fair, after last year’s 76-86 dud and the retirement of manager Brian Snitker (replaced by bench coach Walt Weiss), the Braves were still essentially projected as NL East co-favorites alongside the Mets, according to our Playoff Odds, with a forecast for 89.6 wins, a 30.6% chance of winning the division, and a 79.0% chance of making the playoffs. Still, few expected them to return to dominate in such fashion. Through 30 games, they’ve matched the second-best start in franchise history, a record shared by the division-winning 1969 and 2000 editions. The only time they’ve started better was in 1997, when they went 22-8 and finished 101-61. They’ve gone 16-6 against sub-.500 teams without even getting a shot at the struggling Mets, and 5-3 against teams .500 or better. Their current record isn’t a fluke, in that they’ve actually got slightly higher Pythagorean- and Base Runs-projected winning percentages (.722 and .695, respectively) than their actual mark; both of those rank second in the majors behind the Dodgers, while their +68 run differential is tops. The Braves have run up those numbers by scoring a major league-high 5.70 runs per game and allowing just 3.43 per game, tied with the Yankees for second in the majors and behind only the Dodgers. Read the rest of this entry »

Three weeks ago, things weren’t looking great for the Cubs. True, the season hadn’t hit the two-week mark at that point, but the NL Central favorites had started 4-6 and were running last in the division. Two members of their starting rotation, Matthew Boyd and Cade Horton, had just landed on the injured list, and right fielder Seiya Suzuki had yet to play after straining a ligament in his right knee during the World Baseball Classic. Soon, the injury bug would bite their bullpen, as well, but just as it did, the team reeled off a 10-game winning streak, the majors’ longest this season. While that ended on Saturday at the hands of the Dodgers, followed by another loss on Sunday, the Cubs do appear to be back on track. With a 17-11 record, they’re one game behind the Reds for the division lead.

Their streak began on April 14, a day after the Phillies pounded them 13-7 at Citizens Bank Park. To that point, the Cubs were 7-9, having won three-game series against the Angels and Rays but lost three-game series to the Nationals, Guardians, and Pirates. But Chicago turned the tables on the Phillies by dropping double-digit run totals on back-to-back days, winning 10-4 and 11-2, before returning home to kick off a sweep of the Mets with a 12-4 victory. The Cubs then capped that sweep two days later with Nico Hoerner’s 10th-inning walk-off sacrifice fly, then circled back to take four straight from the Phillies, including another 10th-inning walk-off, this time on a Dansby Swanson single on April 23. Their winning streak reached 10 games with a 6-4 victory over the Dodgers in Los Angeles on Friday. It was Chicago’s longest since 2016, when the club won 11 straight from July 31 to August 12.

It certainly didn’t hurt that the Cubs’ schedule coincided with both the Mets and Phillies playing particularly bad baseball. New York lost 12 in a row from April 8-21 and Philadelphia 10 in a row from April 14–24; both finished the weekend 9-19. The Cubs own the NL’s highest winning percentage against sub-.500 teams (.750, a 12-4 record), though they’re just 5-7 against those .500 or better after their two losses in Los Angeles this weekend. Read the rest of this entry »