Five years after leaving his hometown Braves for New York City, and two years after winning a title in Houston, Brian McCann returned to Atlanta Monday night on a one-year deal worth $2 million. This deal would have made sense even if the Braves hadn’t also signed Josh Donaldson Monday night; Kurt Suzuki and Tyler Flowers shared catching duties for Atlanta in 2018, and Suzuki is now a Washington National. But with Donaldson also in the fold, the picture is crystal clear: The Braves expect to win the National League East for a second straight year, and Brian McCann, fresh off the high of two straight trips to the LCS, wants a piece of the action.

The upside for the Braves here is pretty obvious. McCann probably isn’t going to put up a wOBA above .350 ever again, as he did five times in his previous nine seasons for Atlanta, but he’s only one season removed from three consecutive years of wOBAs above .320, and Baseball Prospectus‘ catcher metrics still have him as a passable if not exceptional defensive receiver. Package that on-field skill-set with the kind of gruff, beardy clubhouse leadership that big-league executives always seem to think young teams need, and you’ve got a perfectly solid backup catcher at a reasonable price. In a catching market that saw Jeff Mathis get $3 million a year on a multi-year guarantee, the Braves could have done a lot worse. Steamer certainly thinks so: Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Oliver Drake’s new/old home, the Braves signing Josh Donaldson and Brian McCann and converting Johan Camargo, the Pirates signing Lonnie Chisenhall, and the Twins claiming C.J. Cron, then (11:20) talk to Bill Rowe, official baseball advisor for the film Twilight, about how he helped make the movie’s depiction of vampire baseball look (more) realistic, where and how the scene was filmed, the actors’ (lack of) athleticism, what real vampire baseball would look like, the cultural significance of the scene, why he stopped playing minor league ball and switched to show business, his baseball work on Calvin Marshall, Leverage, and Portlandia, his two College World Series wins at Oregon State University, analytics at the college level, and more.

Audio intro: The Band, "Twilight"
Audio interstitial 1: Lou Reed, "Set the Twilight Reeling"
Audio interstitial 2: Elliott Smith, "Twilight"
Audio outro: Electric Light Orchestra, "Twilight"

Link to Jeff’s Cron post
Link to episode with baseball coordinator from Pitch and Moneyball
Link to Twilight scene
Link to Vulture post on Twilight
Link to baseball scene oral history
Link to EW Secret Santa sign-up

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One year ago, Josh Donaldson was coming off of a very good season, hitting 50% better than league average on his way to 5.1 WAR despite missing six weeks early in the year with a right calf injury. If Donaldson had hit free agency then, he would have been the best position player on the market and likely would have bested J.D. Martinez’s contract despite being a couple of years older. But he didn’t, and after an injury-riddled 2018, the soon-to-be-33 year-old surveyed the market, and opted for a one-year, $23 million deal with the Atlanta Braves, per Ken Rosenthal.

Donaldson faced a difficult decision this winter. He could have tried to cash in on his previous success and get the highest guarantee possible. In our review of the Top 50 Free Agents, both the crowd and Kiley McDaniel assumed that route, and predicted three year deals with an average annual value between $18 and $20 million. It’s possible that Donaldson preferred the Braves for personal reasons, having grown up in Alabama. Holding out for a better deal would have included some risk for Donaldson if this year’s market proves to be slow like last year’s did. The middle ground with a player opt-out after one season might have made the most sense, but that also might have taken more time to develop and lessened the guarantee in the first year. The deal Donaldson did strike with the Braves is not devoid of risk, however. Read the rest of this entry »

For the most part, the baseball industry shuts down over Thanksgiving break, but everyone’s back now, and the Braves have signed Josh Donaldson, to say nothing of Brian McCann. The Mariners are reportedly trying to figure out a way to trade Robinson Cano. The Diamondbacks are reportedly more interested than ever in trading Paul Goldschmidt. Bryce Harper‘s on the market! Manny Machado’s on the market! Let’s spend a few minutes talking about DJ LeMahieu.

As a veteran player, LeMahieu profiles as a fairly ordinary free agent. He’s a second baseman who turned 30 in July, and last year he posted a wRC+ of 86. The year before, he posted a wRC+ of 94. The Rockies declined to extend to LeMahieu a qualifying offer, which would’ve been worth $17.9 million, and MLB Trade Rumors thinks LeMahieu will eventually sign somewhere for $18 million over two years. Kiley McDaniel thinks he’ll sign somewhere for $22 million over two years, and the median FanGraphs crowd estimate put him at $36 million over three years. Pretty good money, all things considered, and LeMahieu is going to be a regular. But let me shine a brighter light on his skillset. I want to show you something that might well influence LeMahieu’s ceiling.

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The following article is the first part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2018 Hall of Fame ballot. It has been adapted from The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Nobody closed the door like Mariano Rivera. The wiry, unflappable Panamanian not only set the all-time record for saves (652), he prevented runs at a greater clip relative to his league than any other pitcher. Yet neither of those accomplishments capture his brilliance in October. During Rivera’s 19-year-career, the Yankees missed the playoffs just twice, and for all of his regular season dominance, he was even better when the stakes were the highest, helping the Yankees to five championships. He was the last man standing on the mound an unprecedented four times, securing the final outs of the World Series in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2009.

Rivera did all of this while relying almost exclusively on one pitch, a cut fastball discovered almost by accident in 1997, his first year as closer. Even when batters knew what was coming — and at speeds as high as 98 mph in his younger days, it was coming fast — they could rarely predict its sideways movement well enough to make hard contact. If they connected at all, they often broke their bats. Teammates and opponents marveled at the success of the pitch, while writers placed it in the pantheon of great signature offerings, alongside Nolan Ryan’s fastball, Roger Clemens’ splitter, Sandy Koufax’s curve, Steve Carlton’s slider, Pedro Martinez’s changeup, and Hoyt Wilhelm’s knuckleball.

Debates have long raged over how to value relievers and determine their fitness for the Hall of Fame, no small task given that just six are enshrined, as much for their roles in shifting the paradigm for closers as for the numbers they racked up. Yet Rivera’s case shuts those debates down like they’re opponents trailing by three runs in the ninth inning of a playoff game. He’s so far ahead of the field on so many levels that one could argue he’s the lone reliever outside the Hall worthy of entry, and as the top newcomer on the 2019 ballot, he’ll likely become just the second reliever to gain first-ballot entry, after Dennis Eckersley (2004).

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Cindy Hyde-Smith is not a baseball player. This is undoubtedly the first time her name has ever been mentioned on this site, and, with any luck, it will also be the last. That’s because Ms. Hyde-Smith is a Republican United States Senator from Mississippi, a state that has no major league baseball team. After being appointed to the seat earlier this year to replace the ailing Thad Cochran, she’s running to be elected in her own right, facing Democrat Mike Espy in a high-profile run-off Senate election set for November 27.

Ordinarily, this isn’t something we would cover at FanGraphs. But over the weekend, Major League Baseball found itself in a bit of hot water after donating $5,000 to Ms. Hyde-Smith’s campaign.

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Some may say it was choking. Some may say it’s a new curse. Some may even say it was due to only scoring two runs in 22 innings of two must-win games against the Brewers and Rockies. However it happened, the Cubs were the first team dispatched of the ten playoff teams, baseball’s answer to the point-of-view character in the first chapter of a George RR Martin book.

The Setup

This may be a bit of obscure trivia, but the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016, a matchup against the Cleveland Indians that determined which team could waste enough cheap beer to fill a very disappointing swimming pool.

Following up on a World Series championship is always a bit of a tricky problem to approach for a team. Since new seasons start every year–a very fortunate fact for those of us employed as baseball writers–there’s no final happy ending in which everyone walks off into the sunset. Even championship teams have difficult decisions to make, often centered around how much you’re willing to tinker with a winning roster while also keeping the team’s core more-or-less together.

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