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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2016 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. 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.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance of collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a pitch learned from teammate (and 2018 ballot-mate) Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 800 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA.

Lacking the longevity of fellow 2016 Hall of Fame ballot newcomer Trevor Hoffman, Wagner never set any saves records or even led his league once, and his innings total is well below those of every enshrined reliever. Hoffman’s status as the former all-time saves leader helped him get elected in 2018, but Wagner, who created similar value in his career, has major hurdles to surmount after receiving a high of 11.1% in three years on the ballot. Nonetheless, his advantages over Hoffman — and virtually every other reliever in history when it comes to rate stats — provide a compelling reason to study his career more closely. Given how far he’s come, who wants to bet against Billy Wags?

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When last year’s Nationals got around to giving in, one of the players they moved was Daniel Murphy. Near the end of August, Murphy was flipped to the Cubs, who’d put in a claim on Murphy off waivers. It made plenty of sense that the Cubs would’ve had interest. It made less sense that the Rockies didn’t have interest. The Rockies were getting nothing from first base and left field, and compared to the Cubs, they had the higher waiver priority. But Murphy got by, and the rest was history. By which I mean, neither the Cubs nor the Rockies won the World Series. So it goes.

Just a few months ago, then, the Rockies decided Daniel Murphy wasn’t their man. And yet in this month, the Rockies have changed their mind. Yes, I get that circumstances now are different. But anyway, the Rockies have agreed to terms with Murphy on a two-year contract worth $24 million. Somewhat importantly, it sounds like Murphy is going to play first base, instead of second. Ian Desmond will get bumped to the outfield. Earlier, one could only dream of Murphy batting half the time in Coors. Now we’ll all get to see it in reality.

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Episode 848

Jeff Sullivan returns to FanGraphs Audio to reflect on the time spent he and the rest of the FanGraphs staff spent in Las Vegas for the Winter Meetings, discuss a few of the trades and signings that went on there, and also learn just how it is that rodeo cowboys get bulls to buck when they ride them. The answer will disturb you.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @megrowler on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hr 4 min play time.)

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A couple days ago, the Angels signed Matt Harvey for a year and $11 million, with a small potential purse of incentives. And now today, the Angels have signed Trevor Cahill for a year and $9 million, with a smaller potential purse of incentives. Cahill is just a year older than Harvey is, and he’s coming off a superior season. But where Harvey threw 155 innings, Cahill threw just 110. And so Harvey’s contract is a little bit better.

As many of you already know, the main issue with Cahill is durability. Over the course of his career, he’s been on the disabled list eight separate times, and he hasn’t thrown 150 major-league innings since 2012. He hasn’t thrown 150 overall innings since 2013. The last two seasons alone, Cahill has dealt with (1) a strained lower back, (2) a strained right shoulder, (3) a right shoulder impingement, (4) a right elbow impingement, (5) a strained right Achilles, and (6) upper back discomfort. Cahill has hardly been the picture of health. It’s why he didn’t receive a multi-year commitment.

And yet, Cahill is only 30. He hasn’t experienced any velocity loss, and he actually throws harder now than he did when he was younger. And it might surprise you to learn that, for all of Cahill’s health issues, he’s never had surgery. Not that I could find a record of, anyway. He’s never had surgery on his shoulder. He’s never had surgery on his elbow. He’s never had surgery on his knee or his hip or his anything else. In this way, Cahill is different from Harvey. And the upside here is easy to spot.

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Chad Pinder learned how to turn on inside fastballs this season. Doing so didn’t turn the 26-year-old infielder/outfielder into a slugger, but it did make him a more well-rounded hitter. That’s bad news for opposing pitchers. Pinder had already been well on his way to establishing himself as an asset to the Oakland lineup.

A quest for higher launch angles wasn’t the impetus behind the “biggest adjustment” he’s made since the A’s took him in the second round of the 2013 draft out of Virginia Tech. While Pinder possesses pop, his 37% fly-ball percentage this year wasn’t exactly Khris Davis-esque. As much as anything, the former Hokie is now no longer quite so susceptible to being beaten by inside heat — even though his hands remain on the noisy side.

Pinder — coming off a season where he slashed .258/.332/.436 with 13 home runs in 333 plate appearances — discussed that adjustment, and his overall continued development as a hitter, earlier this month.

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Chad Pinder on hitting: “I’ve never actually gone through that phase of, ‘Hey, I’m going to hit the ball in the air.’ For me, it’s all about contact point. Contact point is everything. That’s what Jed Lowrie harps on. He’s all about where he’s meeting the baseball. Nothing else matters to him other than being in a position to get to the baseball, and he knows what move he has to make for every single pitch in the zone. That’s why Jed is such an incredible hitter.

“I’m still not there. I don’t have that deep of an understanding, like Jed does — or a JD Martinez or a Mookie Betts. Those guys are All-Stars for a reason. I’m still progressing. I’m still learning my swing. Read the rest of this entry »

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Batters

Even before the end-of-season collapse, Philadelphia’s offense wasn’t its strong suit. The team finished 11th in runs scored, 10th in on-base percentage, and 11th in slugging percentage, and didn’t put up a team OPS of .730 over any individual month of the season. Rhys Hoskins was the only member of the offense who was a real significant plus for the team — if we’re not counting the brief stint of Wilson Ramos — but he turned out to be quite dreadful defensively. It wasn’t for lack of effort, but -11 runs in the outfield by UZR and an almost amusing -24 by BIS was far from the adequate-big-guy-in-outfield the team crossed their fingers for, being more akin to Todd Hundley if forced to wear a pegleg. Fitting the disappointing Carlos Santana’s bat in the lineup wasn’t worth that defensive hit.

Hoskins’s projection looks more normal back at first base, and the Phillies’ big acquisitions so far this offseason — the trade for Jean Segura and the signing of Andrew McCutchen — should give the team the legitimate above-average performances they sorely needed without forcing anyone to play grossly out-of-position. But the team’s still missing, as Jack Donaghy said on 30 Rock, the third kind of heat. Unlikes the Braves, who have graduated Ronald Acuña and Ozzie Albies to the majors in the last couple of years, the Phillies can only get such a boost with the power of splashing cash. Either Bryce Harper or Manny Machado slide into the lineup quite nicely. But the uncertainty of signing them (other teams can make bids, after all; you can’t just go to the Bryce Harper Store and pick up as many as you can pay $350 million) made McCutchen and Segura crucial additions.

Pitchers

Outside of Aaron Nola, a pitcher with whom ZiPS has had a long obsession, ZiPS just isn’t that excited about the team’s rotation. It’s solidly average, yes, but a question mark surrounds most of the non-Nola starting talent. Jake Arrieta in particular takes a big hit in the projections, with ZiPS seeing his nearly 20% decline in strikeouts as a troubling sign. Which, historically, it has been.

On the other hand, the bullpen, despite the lack of eye-popping names a team like the Yankees possesses, projects as a deep, competent group with a lot of extra parts.

Bench and Prospects

In the sense of 2019 reinforcements, among the hitters, ZiPS only sees 2017 first-rounded Adam Haseley as having the potential to contribute to the parent team. Haseley projects as a worse offensive player than Dylan Cozens, but also has more defensive versatility, which might be important for a team not blessed with terribly exciting outfield depth. Speaking of that depth, I can’t blame the computer for not knowing what to make of Aaron Altherr at this point. I’m not sure what to make of him either, what with his Ryan Raburn-esque pattern of alternating overachieving and underachieving seasons. ZiPS has all but written off Mickey Moniak as a prospect.

Sixto Sanchez just missed getting a projection this year due to my dislike of projecting pitchers with no experience in the high minors, but he’s probably still the best bet on the roster for a nice surprise, and I may need to project him by midseason. ZiPS has a cyber-crush on former MLB pitcher’s son Luke Leftwich and while the team’s deep set of relievers means he’ll face an uphill battle for a roster spot, he’s at least a name that other teams should be paying attention to if they need to fill out the back of their bullpens.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site.

Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. It is based on earlier work done for SI.com. 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.

Roy Oswalt spent a decade as one of the National League’s top pitchers before injuries took their toll. Though listed as just six feet tall and 180 pounds — size that caused him to be overlooked by scouts during his amateur days — he spent nearly a decade as a staple of the Astros’ rotation and a perennial Cy Young contender. Relying primarily on a mid-90s fastball/curve combination with an almost 20 mph differential, he never took home an award, or won a championship, but he played a key part on five postseason-bound teams in Houston and Philadelphia.

Had Oswalt enjoyed better luck in the health department, his career probably would have been the subject of spirited debate on, say, the 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. Alas, lower back woes caused by a pair of degenerative discs curtailed Oswalt’s major league career. His last effective season was in 2011, his age-33 season, and he threw his last pitch one month past his 36th birthday. His total of 2,245.1 innings is fewer than those of all but one Hall of Fame starter — and no, it’s not Sandy Koufax, it’s Dizzy Dean. While he may not truly be a viable candidate, he’s on a separate tier from the one-and-dones whom I’ll cover in brief later in this series.

Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi on August 29, 1977, Oswalt grew up in nearby Weir, a tiny town with a population of just 550. His father Billy Joe, a logger and rec league softball player, saw his son excel in Little League and eventually petitioned the school board to start up a baseball program at his high school, Weir Attendance Center; Billy Joe volunteered to clear pine trees for a ball field using his own equipment. Looking to get every advantage he could out of his small stature, the younger Oswalt came up with an unorthodox delivery. From a 2006 profile for ESPN Magazine by Buster Olney:

Because he was so slightly built, he had to use everything he had to propel the baseball-arm, legs, soul.

Young Roy had seen enough to know that most pitchers start their delivery with one foot parallel to the rubber. This made no sense to him. He was trying to drive himself toward the batter, like a sprinter breaking out of the blocks. Sprinters, he thought, don’t plant their feet parallel to the starting line; their feet are pointed forward.

So that’s how Oswalt designed his pitching mechanics, with his back foot, his right foot, angled slightly forward. He raises his left foot, pauses slightly, then hurls his body at the batter, more like a javelin-tosser than a sprinter in the end. Nobody else in the majors uses mechanics like these, and no pitching coach would teach them unless he was considering a change of profession. But batters have confessed that Oswalt’s motion can be unnerving, this wiry six footer leaping at them like a mugger.

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