The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. 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, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Given that he made just one All-Star team in his 13-year major league career (2006–13), and only once finished higher than 11th in the Cy Young Award voting, it’s tough to argue that James Shields was a star. The 6-foot-3, 210-pound righty was a reliable, high-quality workhorse for most of his career, totaling 200 or more innings 10 times and making 33 or more starts nine times, five of which included an ERA+ of 110 or higher. He earned — or rather borrowed from NBA legend James Worthy — the nickname “Big Game James” for strong performances in high-profile spots, and while it wasn’t always apt, he was renowned for his work ethic and competitiveness, viewed as a player who could mentor younger pitchers and help to transform the culture of a team. Shields helped both the 2008 Rays and 2014 Royals come out of nowhere to reach the World Series, and wound up at the center of a couple of pivotal trades. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Francisco Giants drafted Reggie Crawford as a two-way player, and so far they’ve allowed the 30th-overall pick in the 2022 draft to continue to both pitch and swing the bat. How much longer that will be the case remains to be seen, with the forthcoming season likely going a long way toward determining an answer. To this point, Crawford has had scant opportunity to do either. Thanks largely to Tommy John surgery, the 6-foot-4, 235-pound University of Connecticut product has logged just 19 innings and 111 plate appearances (71 of them in the Arizona Fall League) since signing a professional contract.

Eric Longenhagen described the left-left hurler/first-baseman as “a prospect of extreme variance” and “still more a developmental project than anything else” when assigning him a 40+ FV midway through last summer. That both his hitting and pitching potential factor into our lead prospect analyst’s assessment makes Crawford arguably the most intriguing young player in the Giants’ pipeline. If he performs capably on both sides in 2024, he’ll be among the most intriguing young players in baseball.

Crawford discussed his two-way aspirations in the final week of the Arizona Fall League season.

———

David Laurila: To start, I’m interested in your thoughts on someone you’ve been playing against here in the Fall League. Carson Williams was highly regarded as a two-way player in high school, but has only played shortstop since Tampa Bay drafted him 28th overall in 2021. Could you see him succeeding at both in pro ball?

Reggie Crawford: “Oh, I’d imagine so. It just comes down to… I mean, for me the planning and the scheduling is probably the most difficult part. Someone who is that athletic and has those sets of tools, I don’t see why he wouldn’t be able to.” Read the rest of this entry »

Rhys Hoskins is a free agent, and it’s kind of weird. The 30-year-old first baseman spent 10 seasons in the Phillies organization, six of them (plus one full year spent on the injured list) with the major league club. For a time, he was one of the only bright spots on a completely moribund team, but eventually the big fella settled into a role as a supporting player and de facto table-setter for a lineup built around Bryce Harper. His achievements in that role include the Bat Spike home run, a three-run dinger off Spencer Strider in the 2022 NLDS — the Phillies’ first home playoff game in 11 years.

While it was surpassed in the imagination by Harper’s pennant-winning homer in the rain later that October, the image of Hoskins’ celebration lives on in memory as a highly localized version of the José Bautista bat flip for people who are deeply upset by the decline in the quality of Wawa’s sandwich bread since the chain went national. You want to watch the home run again? I do. Let’s watch it again.

Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Chicago Cubs.

Batters

Are the Cubs back to their mid-2010s form? That’s a bit of a stretch, but these Cubs showed they have a live pulse, not falling out of playoff contention until the final week of the 2023 season. Cody Bellinger, one of the reasons the offense was so potent (third in the National League in runs scored), turned out to be one of the best pillow-contract signings of all time. Perhaps a little too good, as it was enough for Bellinger to decline his side of a $25 million mutual option for 2024. The Cubs could still sign Bellinger, but even if they do, it’s not a great bet they’ll get the same production as last year. ZiPS is a bit more optimistic than Steamer, but it still projects a returning Bellinger to “give back” some of his contact and a significant chunk of his power. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and listener Michael Mountain banter about Michael’s proposal for Effectively Wild listener ballpark meetups during the 2024 MLB season, followed by (7:24) Michael’s guest Stat Blasts about the best non-award-winning players, his all-time player tiers, and Hall of Famers (and HoF candidates) who excelled or flopped at leading their leagues at their respective positions. Then (36:17) Ben and Meg talk to Brian Moritz about his prediction/warning that a major sports-betting journalism scandal could be coming.

Audio intro: Guy Russo, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: The Gagnés, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to listener-meetup form
Link to Michael on Episode 1263
Link to undecorated players sheet
Link to EW Episode 964
Link to Bill James proposal
Link to reworked tiers
Link to league leaders sheet
Link to Hall of Stats shutdown
Link to Eight Men Out wiki
Link to Brian’s Nieman Lab piece
Link to Brian’s 2022 piece
Link to Brian at St. Bonaventure
Link to Sports Media Guy
Link to WSJ on journalist inside info
Link to story on BBWAA rules
Link to story on ESPN rules
Link to story on Chams
Link to newsroom betting policies
Link to tweet about Curb betting
Link to “fading” definition
Link to MLBTR on Stroman
Link to over/under draft results
Link to Ben on arbitration
Link to Stat Blast song cover
Link to all Stat Blast covers

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He may not have upper-echelon career totals, but boy was Michael Brantley an absolute baller. A five-time All-Star, Brantley also won a Silver Slugger and finished third in American League MVP voting in 2014, a year that saw him finish second in the AL in WAR behind only Mike Trout, the MVP winner. After a very successful 15-year career, the sweet swinging lefty outfielder has decided to hang up his cleats. It’s an unsurprising move for Brantley, who had battled shoulder injuries for much of the last three seasons and would have been entering his age-37 season.

Brantley was a unique player. Over the course of his career (2009-2023), the league-wide strikeout rate increased from 18.0% to 22.7%. But while the league was whiffing more and more, Brantley bucked the trend. During his 10-year tenure in Cleveland, he struck out 10.7% of the time; in the five years he spent in Houston, that mark was exactly the same. Indeed, his strikeout rate with the Astros was over 40% better than the league average rate (22.8%) during that period. Of the hitters with at least 1,000 plate appearances from 2019 to 2023, 21 had a strikeout rate below 14%. Only two had a higher wRC+ than Brantley: Alex Bregman (137) and José Ramírez (132).

His skill set was timeless, headlined by his elite contact ability. His wRC+ was actually higher in his 30s (124) than it was in his 20s (112). And his future looked bright – ZiPS projected him for a .290/.354/.416 line and a 114 OPS+ in the upcoming season had he played. As Timothy Jackson of Baseball Prospectus put it, Brantley was “unique among players with outlier skills.” And so, with his time in the majors coming to a close, I wanted to look back at Brantley’s career progression. More specifically, I wanted to examine how his consistently elite contact skills allowed him to maintain his performance despite myriad injuries. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognosgtications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

When I look at Cincinnati’s offense, I’m incredibly confused. By “confused” I don’t mean that the offense is lousy, just that its construction is utterly bizarre in a lot of areas. For example, even if you write Matt McLain and Elly De La Cruz in permanent marker at second base and shortstop, respectively, you still have a team that’s overflowing with plausible third base candidates: Jonathan India, Noelvi Marte, Spencer Steer, and Christian Encarnacion-Strand to start. Given this hot corner glut, the Reds signed… one of the best third basemen available, in the form of Jeimer Candelario, but not, mind you, to be the starting third baseman. And while he’ll see time there, it’s extremely likely he’s going to get a ton of time at first base and designated hitter. One of the main reasons to like Candelario is that he hits like he does while playing a very competent third base. The more time he sees at 1B/DH, the more it’s the equivalent of buying a sports car to use as a step ladder to change the light bulb in your garage.

What’s more, many of the players who’ll be shifting down the defensive spectrum doesn’t really have much in the way of synergy. Candelario, Steer, and Encarnacion-Strand are all essentially right-handed hitters in profile (Candelario has the splits of a right-handed batter), so it’s not like one of those sneaky Gabe Kapler platoons.

Given how much ownership has cried poor, I don’t want to discourage the Reds from spending, but if they’re going to grow payroll, why not spend to address actual team weaknesses? Spending more money and getting bang for your buck are not mutually exclusive propositions. When I expressed confusion on Twitter about the Reds earlier this offseason, I was assured by fans of the team that the roster would make more sense after all the trades they were certainly going to make. Well, those moves haven’t come.

But who knows? The Reds do have a lot of talent on the roster, even if their players are deployed in a rather odd way. McLain is terrific, and I think De La Cruz’s late-season drop-off removed the over-exuberance that he was going to be Fernando Tatis Jr.; he’s now about properly rated for what he is. Tyler Stephenson ought to have a better season than he did in 2023, and ZiPS projects the outfield to be adequate if healthy, though the computer can hardly be described as enthusiastic. ZiPS is kind of interested in Blake Dunn as someone who could eventually push Stuart Fairchild off the roster. As we’ve seen with them before, the Reds likely missed the window to get a good return for India, but he’s still probably a roughly league-average player and isn’t going to get any more valuable as a role player.

I’ll be generous and give the team the benefit of the doubt that there’s a plan to trade off some of the surplus talent here before it’s frittered away by time and attrition. But they’re running out of time to do it before the start of spring training.

Pitchers

ZiPS likes a lot of Cincinnati’s hitters, but it’s less enthusiastic about the pitching. That’s not so much a rotation problem, though several of the starters have worse projections than last year. It’s really odd that the Reds made a playoff run and it turned out that it have very little to do with breakouts from Hunter Greene, Graham Ashcraft, or Nick Lodolo, all three of whom were some combination of mediocre and injured in 2023. ZiPS is a believer in Andrew Abbott in the sense that he’s a deserving part of the rotation, but its expectations are tempered a bit. Greene, Ashcraft, and Lodolo all have worse outlooks than they did at this time last year, though that can hardly be a surprise.

[One of the Greenes came out as Green, and this has been fixed -DS]

Unlike some of the other Cincy signings, I really like the Frankie Montas pickup. There’s a good chance that he doesn’t contribute anything at all in Cincinnati, but the upside, given his history, is really quite interesting. I wish the team signed players like this more often, ones who represent a real jackpot for the team if they hit, say, their 70th percentile projections and stay healthy. The computer likes Nick Martinez as a useful swingman.

ZiPS absolutely hates the bullpen, though in the end, it has the group projected for the same 2.3 WAR that Steamer does. ZiPS likes Alexis Díaz, Fernando Cruz, and Martinez when he’s used in relief, but is lukewarm everywhere else.

I think the Emilio Pagán signing was the worst bullpen addition any team has made in free agency so far this winter, but I was surprised that ZiPS likes Pagán even less. I see this as a good example of a team thinking that the season before is the same thing as a projection, and ignoring the red flags. Pagán was basically successful because he suddenly went from being a terrible home run pitcher to a great one. Home runs allowed is a terrible stat, so terrible in fact that it makes xFIP useful, when it really should not be. Pagán has a long history of allowing a lot of homers in pitcher-friendly environments and actually had the worst average exit velocity allowed in his career in 2023. He remained a fly ball pitcher, and now he goes to one of the worst environments in baseball for a pitcher who allows a lot of flies. This is like the anti-Dodgers signing. That’s not a guarantee that Pagán will be lousy — relievers are quite volatile — but I really don’t like the odds.

So what does this all add up to? If the projections are to believed, about a .500 team, just where the Reds finished last year. Given the team’s young talent, I wish this franchise was taking a more practical approach to actually improving the roster.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time.

Here are how the ZiPS percentiles worked out in 2023 for pitchers and hitters in in 2023.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2024 due to injury, and players who were released in 2023. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Belgian Death Metal Skiffle Band that only plays songs by Franz Schubert, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.33.

Hitters are ranked by 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 that appear in the 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.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

12:02

Dan Szymborski: And we are here!

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, though I’m  not thinking much of Padres in 2024; that’s still a lot of performance to replace and they kinda needed pitching *now*

12:03

Dan Szymborski: I dont’ think slower than usual. One thing is that there just aren’t many very good position players ou thtere

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Been really lite on stars

Read the rest of this entry »