Carlos Beltran entered last year’s playoffs with Hall of Fame credentials. Having accumulated 67 WAR, over 400 homers, and a few Gold Gloves out in center field, Beltran’s career was long and nearly finished. He had played in the postseason — including a World Series — and put up bonkers numbers in the process, hitting 16 homers in just 55 games. What he hadn’t done is win a title.

Beltran finally won that title with the Houston Astros.

He was not the only player to complement an impressive career with a championship last fall. Justin Verlander entered last year on a Hall of Fame trajectory. He also lacked a title. Following a trade to Houston, he picked up his first ring as well.

There might not be a Beltran in this postseason, but there are a handful of players with lengthy careers still seeking their first title.

We will start on the position player side. These are the players with the most WAR who have yet to get a championship ring. Read the rest of this entry »

Some fanbases regard themselves as the best in baseball. Others pride themselves on their ability to hate anything, including Santa Claus. Still others are just a group of eight people cowering in the shadows of a creaky, nightmare-inducing home-run feature. But no fanbase does self-immolation like Mets fans, whose experience is one mostly of mind-numbing frustration peppered by only the occasional highlight.

That staring-into-middle-distance sadness is, of course, justified given the team’s history — and, more relevant to this post, the ups and downs and ups of 2018.

The Setup

New York’s 70-92 record in 2017, during which almost everything went wrong, was bleak enough to obscure the club’s recent success, including a World Series appearance in 2015 and return to playoffs in 2016.

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NEW YORK — It was a nice, tight AL Wild Card Game until Fernando Rodney showed up. Through five-and-a-half innings, the Yankees led the A’s 2-0 on the strength of a two-run first-inning homer by Aaron Judge off opener Liam Hendriks and an effectively wild four innings from Luis Severino, backed by a pair of dominant frames from Dellin Betances. The Oakland lineup had managed just two hits to that point while striking out 10 times, yet the A’s were still in the game thanks to the four scoreless innings they got from the two pitchers who followed Hendriks — namely, Lou Trivino (who matched his season high with three innings) and Shawn Kelley. A’s manager Bob Melvin, who had elected to bullpen his way through the game, had another decision to make with Judge, Aaron Hicks, and Giancarlo Stanton due up for the sixth.

He chose poorly. The much traveled 41-year-old Rodney, who had been acquired from the Twins on August 9, had not pitched particularly well for the A’s, turning in a 3.92 ERA and 4.52 FIP in 20.2 innings; in September, he was rocked for an 8.38 ERA while walking 10 in 9.2 innings. Melvin literally had half-a-dozen alternatives upon which to call for what might be the most daunting and important stretch left on the table. Nobody would have raised an eyebrow if he’d tabbed Jeurys Familia, Yusmeiro Petit, or rookie J.B. Wendelken, all of whom fared better than Rodney in September.

Rodney got a called strike on a first-pitch sinker, but his second offering was doubled down the right-field line by Judge. Two pitches later, Hicks doubled to center field, expanding the Yankees’ lead to 3-0. A wild pitch sent Hicks to third base as Stanton stepped in, and Melvin had no choice but to pull him and call upon Blake Treinen to save not the game but the season.

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The Chicago Cubs are a very good team, one that employs a good manager and features a good front office. They’ve won a bunch of games over the past four seasons and, notably, claimed a World Series to end a century-long drought. The Cubs will have a good team next season, as well, and probably the one after that. The franchise has young stars around which to build, a front office that understands the importance of developing talent, and an endless supply of cash to ensure the team will contend for years to come. Things are looking good in Chicago.

And yet, following a Wild Card loss to the Rockies, one could be excused for regarding the Cubs as a bit of a disappointment. After that World Series title in 2016, a dynasty seemed inevitable to some. Chicago fans were thinking about the ’90s Bulls. Perhaps expectations were too high, though. Maybe the ’85 Bears were the better comparison.

If the Cubs had won this season, that would have given them three consecutive playoff appearances and two world championships in three years. In the last 40 years, only two franchises have pulled that off: the Blue Jays of the early 90s and Yankees of the late 90s. The Giants accomplished something either more or less impressive, depending on one’s criteria. On the one hand, they won three titles between 2010 and -14. On the other, they also missed the playoffs in the intervening seasons. The Red Sox won two World Series in the span of four years but also failed to reach the postseason in 2006.

Do any of those represent examples of a dynasty? Just the Yankees, probably. While there is no widely accepted definition of what constitutes a dynasty, it might be a case where it’s best to adopt Justice Potter Stewart’s view on such matters and say, “I know it when I see it.”

Let’s review the most recent contenders for the honor before returning to the Cubs.

The Yankees clubs of the late 90s and aughts were built around a core of Roger Clemens, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera and Bernie Williams. The team later added Jason Giambi, Mike Mussina, Alex Rodriguez to try and sustain their run, but they couldn’t do so, winning only one more time (2009) despite a decade of success.

For 14 consecutive seasons, the Atlanta Braves won their division. During that period, they made the World Series five times but won just once. In the Cardinals’ run from 2000 to -15, they missed the playoffs four times, lost twice in the World Series, and missed the playoffs in three out of four seasons between their two titles in 2006 and 2011. The Phillies won their division five straight times and won an average of 95 games during that timeframe, but they claimed just one title.

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In just a few hours, Luis Severino is going to throw the first pitch of the American League wild-card game. Some relatively short amount of time after that, Liam Hendriks will take the mound. Severino is one of the better starting pitchers in either league. Hendriks is a reliever who, in the middle of this very season, was designated for assignment. As far as the first inning goes, it’s…not an equal matchup. Or it doesn’t feel like one, at least. Of course, there’s more to it than that.

As Jay Jaffe has already written today, the Yankees are using a starter, while the A’s are planning on bullpenning. Hendriks has gotten used to being an opener, but this is going to be a little different, because he won’t be followed by a “bulk guy.” It’s likely to be Oakland relievers all the way down. This is the concept someone always advocates every year around this time, for a winner-take-all, one-game playoff. It’s no way to manage a pitching staff every day of every week of every month. The A’s don’t have to worry about that tonight. All that matters is what’s right before them.

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — David Cone, J.A. Happ, and Jake Petricka — on how they learned and developed their sliders.

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David Cone, Former Cy Young Winner and Five-Time All Star

“I grew up gripping the baseball the same way. Right along the seams, on top of the baseball, was a two-seam fastball. I threw my slider the same way. All I would do was bring both fingers inside the seams a little bit, just to get some friction. I basically threw a two-seam slider my whole career. I’ve seen a few other pitchers who do it that way. Not many.

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Lou Trivino, who is 26 years old and six feet, five inches tall, stands up straight when he’s talking to you. He holds his arms — massive, tanned — at his sides, occasionally resting his hands on his hips or clasping his hands behind his back in the manner of an enormous choir boy. Nuke Laloosh with five-day stubble.

When Trivino’s not talking to you, he is pitching for the Oakland A’s. The A’s bullpen, as Jeff Sullivan and then I and then Jeff Sullivan again have noted at various points throughout the year, has been very good all season, and a big part of that success has been Trivino’s performance as a rookie. In (brief) summary: Trivino threw 74 innings for Oakland this year, during which he struck out 82 batters and walked 31. His ERA was 2.92, which is 30% better than the league average. He recorded an 89 FIP-. He was quite good.

Still, his numbers would have been better had I recited them for your benefit a few weeks ago. On September 18th, against the Angels, Trivino recorded two outs and gave up three runs. In his next appearance, on the 21st against Minnesota, he gave up four runs and failed to record an out. When I caught up with him recently in Seattle, I asked him if he was tired.

“No, that’s not it,” he said, quickly, with a look at me that suggested that he thought I might have manager Bob Melvin hiding under my jacket. “I know a lot of people think that I’ve been overworked, but that’s not it at all. My arm feels good, my body feels good. It’s just hitters adjusting to me now and I’ve got to adjust back. That’s exactly it. I feel like I know exactly what I need to do, it’s just been a lack of execution. I just need to get back to executing pitches and I’ll be alright.”

There’s some merit to that argument: Trivino was successful enough in his first few months of the season that he’s now getting chances against batters who’ve faced him before. But there’s also the objective truth that he has pitched more innings this in 2018 than he did in either of his past two campaigns, both of which were in the minors.

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Before examining Mookie Betts and Mookie Betts’ excellent 2018 season in earnest, allow me first to address some claims I have no intention of making in what follows. I will not, for example, state definitively that Mookie Betts is the most talented player in the majors. I will not suggest that Betts ought obviously to be the MVP of the American League. I will not argue that Wins Above Replacement is an infallible measure of player value. I will also not contend that FanGraphs’ version of WAR is necessarily superior to others that exist.

What I will say is that WAR is a metric designed to account for the ways in which a player contributes on the field and to translate those various contributions into wins. While the methodology employed by FanGraphs differs slightly from the one used by Baseball-Reference, for instance, both are constructed with the same end in mind — namely, to estimate the value of a ballplayer relative to freely available talent. Each represents an attempt to answer a good question in a responsible way.

According to the version of WAR presented at this site, Betts was the major leagues’ most valuable player this year. By FanGraphs’ calculations, he was worth just over 10 wins relative to a replacement player. As Craig Edwards recently noted, that 10-win threshold is pretty significant: the “worst” player to reach it since the beginning of last century is Norm Cash. Cash, according to Jay Jaffe’s JAWS metric, was more or less his era’s Mark Teixeira. Whatever one’s opinion of Mark Teixeira, it’s encouraging if he represents the floor for a player’s career projection. It’s difficult to record a 10-win season by accident. Mookie Betts is very good.

What follows is an account of how Betts produced those 10 wins — an anatomy, as it were, of a historically great season. By examining the constituent elements of WAR — and Betts’ performance in each category — it’s possible perhaps to arrive at a better sense of what is required for a player to distinguish himself amongst his peers. It might also possibly allows us to better appreciate what a special talent Betts has become.

Batting Runs: +62.2
The batting element of WAR is calculated, more or less, by translating all the hitterly events (walk, single, double, etc.) into runs. By this measure, Betts ranked second among all major leaguers behind Mike Trout — and finished just ahead of teammate J.D. Martinez.

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