As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Adolis García and Josh Jung were important, too. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Nathan Eovaldi is valuable because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process.

One note: In the pitching section, I took a more specific look at reliever matchups. This 2022 Cameron Grove study measures a repeat-matchup reliever penalty. A recent article examines the issue without focusing on specific matchups, but rather looking at relievers pitching on back-to-back days or on short rest after heavy workloads. Both of these things are, unsurprisingly, bad for reliever performance. Managing the balance between starter and reliever over-work is really hard. I probably haven’t given enough credit to the necessity of balancing bullpen workloads against particular opposing batters in the past, but I’ll make a note of it going forward. Read the rest of this entry »

The first of MLB’s major awards to be announced for 2023, the Rookie of the Year awards, were given out Monday evening, with Arizona’s Corbin Carroll and Baltimore’s Gunnar Henderson taking the laurels in the NL and AL races, respectively.

Getting inappropriately annoyed with year-end awards — more specifically in 1995, the year Mo Vaughn beat Albert Belle in the AL and Dante Bichette confusingly finished second in the NL — was one of the things that got me reading Usenet. A high schooler at the time, I had little idea that it was the start of a surprising career path. And even back then, I was frustrated that the writers who voted for these awards didn’t always make convincing arguments about their picks and, occasionally, offered no justifications at all.

I still believe that this kind of transparency is crucial for the legitimacy of any type of award. This is ostensibly an expert panel; if it’s not, there’s no purpose for the award to exist. As such, a secret ballot is not appropriate the way I believe it is for, say, a presidential or parliamentary election. So, as usual, this is my explanation (or apologia depending on your point of view) of why I voted the way I did. I don’t expect 100% of people to agree with my reasoning, which I doubt has happened for any opinion I’ve expressed ever, but that doesn’t mean I don’t owe you, the reader, the details of my vote.

This is my fifth Rookie of the Year vote. Previously, I gave my first-place votes to Spencer Strider, Trevor Rogers, Pete Alonso, and Corey Seager. This year, my ballot, starting at the top, was Carroll, the Mets’ Kodai Senga, and the Reds’ Matt McLain. Let’s start at the top. I’m also including preliminary 2024 ZiPS projections because, hey, why not? (They didn’t have any bearing on my vote, nor did the preseason projections.)

The Easy Part: Corbin Carroll

My last two first-place votes were close for me, and it took a while to decide on them. But this one was the easiest since Seager in 2016 (and I’m not forgetting Alonso versus Michael Soroka). Everyone expected Carroll to steamroll the league, and that’s just what he did. And while he didn’t have a Mike Trout-esque rookie season, who does?

For much of the season, Carroll logically was part of the MVP discussion, though by the time September rolled around, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Mookie Betts had an obvious advantage, with Freddie Freeman and Matt Olson being clearly superior, too. But if I had voted for the NL MVP, Carroll would have still landed somewhere in the back of my ballot. He hit .285/.362/.506, clubbed 25 homers and stole 50 bases, and played all three outfield positions at least respectably. He is the type of player for whom the phrase “speed kills” makes sense, because his skill set is broad enough that he can actually weaponize that speed. For the season, he was seventh in sprint speed, had dominating baserunning numbers beyond stolen bases, and in 90-foot splits, he was bested only by Elly De La Cruz.

The Still Pretty Easy Part: Kodai Senga

I’m inclined to like Senga considerably more than his WAR simply because he has a significant history of outperforming his peripherals in Japan as well, so there’s more basis for believing in his ERA than for the typical pitcher in this position. Because of that, I’m closer to bWAR on Senga (4.4) than I am to fWAR. If forced at gunpoint to name the Dan’s Brain WAR for Senga, I’d probably put him at 3.8–4.0 or so. Also, that’s a very weird use of a firearm.

There’s always a writer or two who complains about Japanese players being eligible for the RoY award, but I think the idea that they shouldn’t be is preposterous. Nippon Professional Baseball appears a bit closer to the majors than Triple-A ball in the U.S. is — something like Triple-A 1/2 — but it’s a very different kind of league. While Triple-A hitters may be easier than NPB hitters, you’re also facing a rather different style of play and plate approaches, and now that some of the recent rule changes have hit in the majors, Triple-A ball is roughly a not-as-good MLB.

Despite facing different types of hitters, a spate of different rules, and against the backdrop of New York pressure and a collapsing team behind him, Senga was one of the few players who could really be counted on there. He had some issues with walks early on, and to his credit, he adjusted. But it wasn’t actually his control that was the issue; he actually threw more strikes earlier in the season! Instead, the issue was that after putting up an out-of-zone swing rate above 30% in each of his last two seasons in Japan, he was down in the low-20s early on with the Mets. As time went on, he got a better feel on how to lure MLB batters to their doom; in the second half, his 31.1% out-of-zone swing rate was right where it was in Japan.

The Excruciating Part and the Fifth Wheel: Matt McLain versus Nolan Jones versus James Outman

I don’t see Rookie of the Year as necessarily meaning Most Valuable Rookie, but as Best Rookie. As such, in a kind of small-scale examination of Hall of Fame candidates’ peak versus career numbers, I don’t necessarily think measures against replacement are as important as in the MVP voting, which has directions that more strongly imply an emphasis on quantity.

Outman was probably the most valuable of the three hitters I listed above, but he also got a lot more playing time, winning the job from the start. Both McLain and Jones out-hit him from a quality standpoint, with a 128 wRC+ from McLain, a 135 from Jones, and a 118 from Outman. I might discount this if there were evidence from their minor league time that the major league time was flukier, but both played in Triple-A just about how you’d expect from their actual major league performances. Outman was an excellent player and a big part of why the Dodgers survived the loss of a lot of players, but I would have him fifth in a larger ballot because he wasn’t quite as good as McLain or Jones. Per WAA on Baseball-Reference, both McLain and Jones were well ahead of him.

McLain versus Jones was very difficult for me, and I went back and forth on it the entire Sunday I made my vote (the last day of the season). And it still wasn’t an obvious result, more a 51%–49% judgment; if asked on a different day, I might have said Jones instead of McLain. But at the end of the day, I had to pick one. McLain hit almost as well as Jones did and played the hardest non-catcher defensive position. I don’t like deciding based on small things, but it’s inevitable if the big things can’t settle the score. The slight nudge to McLain comes on the balance of having the more valuable defensive versatility (2B/SS for him versus 3B/OF for Jones) and the fact that he played for a team that was playing higher-leverage games all season, with a deep roster of prospects that could push him off a job at any time. The Rockies, meanwhile, were a basement dweller without a lot in the cupboard.

Jones may have just missed my ballot, but it’s no negative reflection on what was an excellent season. I was quite perturbed that he didn’t start the season in Colorado, with the Rockies apparently deciding that Mike Moustakas was nine years better in age than Jones, but they at least weren’t stubborn after he crushed pitchers in the Pacific Coast League. That wRC+ of 135 was an OPS+ of 138 if you like the simpler approach, and both numbers are park-adjusted, so he was Actual Good, not merely Coors Field Good.

Short on Pitching: Bobby Miller, Eury Pérez, and Andrew Abbott

Outside of Senga, no pitcher was close to making my ballot, though these three came closest. The Dodgers should be greatly pleased about having Miller’s services, but his numbers weren’t enough to balance out a rather low innings total. Pérez not being called up until May was a handicap, and while the Marlins being cautious with his workload to the extent of giving him a bit of a mini-vacation in July may be good for his future, it’s hard to give a Rookie of the Year vote to someone who threw less than 100 innings. Abbott’s mid-rotation performance was absolutely needed by the Reds, but again, not quite enough.

The Sixth Man: Patrick Bailey

Of the rest of the field, the closest to making my ballot was Bailey, who was absurdly good defensively in 2023. I could have voted for a player short on playing time; I clearly did with McLain and was close with Jones. But to vote for a hitter at any position who slashed .233/.285/.359 over Outman, McLain, and Jones, I’d need a lot more certainty with defensive numbers than I have. We’ve made great progress in evaluating defense, but it remains extremely volatile, meaning that we simply can’t count on a small sample of defensive data to the same degree as a small sample of offensive data.

I have little doubt that Bailey is an elite defensive catcher, but just how elite is crucial to advancing him over the others with only 97 games played. And it was just a bridge too far for me; if he had been the catcher at the start of the season, there would have likely been a little more flexibility on how to deal with a defense-only candidate.

The Best of the Rest: Spencer Steer, Francisco Alvarez, Elly De La Cruz, Ezequiel Tovar

Steer played the entire season but was basically a league-average starter — something that had value, but he was clearly behind several others in quality. Alvarez hit a lot of homers (25) but was rather one-note in his offensive contributions, though he really surprised with his framing numbers. Tovar was brilliant defensively, and it was nice to see him as a Gold Glove finalist, but his offense was well behind his glove.

De La Cruz was arguably the most exciting of the prospects, maybe even more than Carroll, but he still has some serious holes in his game that were exposed with time in the majors. At the very least, he’s going to need to shore up his plate discipline or become better at effectively connecting with junk in the way Tim Anderson was able to do at his peak.

This post is part of a series covering the 2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Managers/Executives/Umpires ballot, covering candidates in those categories who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present. For an introduction to the ballot, see here. The eight candidates will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in Nashville on December 3, and anyone receiving at least 75% of the vote from the 16 committee members will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 21, 2024 along with any candidates elected by the BBWAA.

Cito Gaston

After Jackie Robinson integrated the National League in 1947, it took 28 years — not to mention pointed public comments from Robinson himself just before his death — for a team to hire a Black manager, namely Frank Robinson, who piloted Cleveland starting in 1975. Such was the slow pace of change that it took another 14 years for two teams with Black managers to square off in the same game, when Robinson’s Orioles and Cito Gaston’s Blue Jays met on June 26, 1989. Three years later, Gaston carved out an even bigger spot in baseball history when he became the first Black manager to lead a team to a World Series victory, a feat he and the Blue Jays repeated in 1993.

During his time in the dugout, Gaston earned a reputation for putting trust in his players (sometimes to a fault) and being approachable, creating a calm and stable working environment. Even so, he spent only eight full seasons and parts of four others as a major league manager and was never hired by a team besides the Blue Jays. After falling short in multiple interviews, he was outspoken regarding the process, expressing a belief that he was sometimes just the token minority included in a team’s search for a new manager. That said, he also expressed a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to the job and often seemed happier as a hitting coach, a role he held for nine seasons and change in Toronto. Gaston is the only one of the four managers on this Era Committee ballot to win multiple World Series. The question is whether that should push him to the front of the line in this context despite his career length. Read the rest of this entry »

The true offseason has yet to begin, as teams have begun their annual housekeeping on their rosters, but the big moves have yet to materialize. That means it’s the perfect time to see how they stack up against each other. Think of these power rankings as a glimpse at which teams are close to being ready for 2023 and which teams might have a lot of work to do before even thinking about next season.

A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), their pitching (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by starter and reliever IP share) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. For these offseason power rankings, I’ve used each team’s projected stats based on their Depth Charts projections which are entirely powered by the 2024 Steamer projections at this point. The result is a power ranking, which is then presented in tiers below.

While these offseason power rankings will continue to emulate the format from the past few years, I am working on a new format to the rankings for the 2024 regular season that will hopefully address many of the concerns voiced about the current methodology. I hope to have more to share about what these new rankings will look like in the months ahead. Anyway, to the rankings!

It’s a good sign when the team with the best regular-season record in 2023 is projected to have the best record again the following season. The Braves’ young core is locked up for years, and they look ready to dominate the National League for years to come. They’ve already addressed some needs in their bullpen by re-signing Pierce Johnson and Joe Jiménez, and they’ll likely continue adding to their pitching staff to cover for the loss of Kyle Wright to shoulder surgery. They’ve also got a need for more depth in the outfield. Still, those are small concerns; this roster as it stands would be an easy World Series favorite if the season started today.

The projections will always favor a deep and flexible team like the Rays because their ability to weather the attrition of a long season is easily accounted for in the data. Our current Depth Charts projections have Wander Franco taking the majority of the playing time at shortstop, but the step down to Junior Caminero’s isn’t that drastic. Their pitching staff looks set, with a full season from Tyler Glasnow and the return of Shane Baz hopefully in the cards. They’ll miss the trio of Shane McClanahan, Drew Rasmussen, and Jeffrey Springs, but bringing in Aaron Civale at the trade deadline this year and the emergence of Zack Littell should give them a formidable rotation.

The version of the Astros we saw in 2023 was a diminished one compared to their dominant championship from the year prior, most of which can be attributed to injury woes that plagued them throughout the season. The majority of the core that drove so much of their success in ‘22 will be back next year, but they’ll need to add a bit of depth to their starting rotation. Justin Verlander will be 41 years old in 2024, and there’s no telling what they can expect from Lance McCullers Jr. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Corbin Carroll and Evan Carter were important, too. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Corey Seager is valuable because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process.

One note: In the pitching section, I took a more specific look at reliever matchups. This 2022 Cameron Grove study measures a repeat-matchup reliever penalty. A recent article examines the issue without focusing on specific matchups, but rather looking at relievers pitching on back-to-back days or on short rest after heavy workloads. Both of these things are, unsurprisingly, bad for reliever performance. Managing the balance between starter and reliever over-work is really hard. I probably haven’t given enough credit to the necessity of balancing bullpen workloads against particular opposing batters in the past, but I’ll make a note of it going forward.

I’ve already covered the losing managers of the Wild Card round, the various Division Series eliminations, the ALCS, and the NLCS. Today, it’s Torey Lovullo’s turn. Read the rest of this entry »

Reese Olson has a chance to be a top-of-the-rotation starter in Detroit, and it is notable that the Tigers acquired him via trade. On July 30, 2021, then-general manager Al Avila dealt Daniel Norris to the Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for the now-24-year-old right-hander, who at the time had a 4.30 ERA in High-A and was flying below most prospect radar. Talented but raw, he ranked seventh in a system that wasn’t particularly well-regarded.

Olson made his MLB debut this past June, and by season’s end he was showing signs that he could emerge as a No. 1 or a No. 2.on a promising young staff. Over his last six starts, the plain-spoken Gainesville, Georgia native allowed just 18 hits and six earned runs in 35-and-two-thirds innings. On the year, he had a 3.99 ERA and a 4.01 FIP to go with a 24.4% strikeout rate and a .214 BAA. He fanned 102 batters in 103-and-two-thirds innings.

Scott Harris doesn’t believe in labels like No. 1 starter or No. 2 starter. He does believe in the fast-rising righty.

“Reese has three distinct secondary pitches that miss bats,” Detroit’s President of Baseball Operations told me at this week’s GM meetings. “That’s really hard to find. He also has two different fastballs that reach the upper 90s. I also think he did some things this summer that reminded me of what other really good pitchers do in their first year in the big leagues. I’m not going to throw those expectations on him, but his ceiling is as high as anyone’s.” Read the rest of this entry »

FanGraphs’ Top 50 free agents of the 2024 offseason went live on Thursday, and you might have noticed a starting pitcher or 20 among the group. Even though Shohei Ohtani won’t fit the description until 2025, the top of the market is just brimming with rotation talent, from Aaron Nola to Cy Young finalists Blake Snell and Sonny Gray, playoff hero Jordan Montgomery, and Japanese phenoms Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shota Imanaga. And the list goes on; beyond the cream of the crop are plentiful second and third tiers. Suffice to say, the market will be active this winter.

Amidst all the fray, a 30-year-old who finished sixth in the Cy Young voting two years ago will have comparably little attention on him. Frankie Montas lost almost all of 2023 to surgery on his right throwing shoulder, returning on the final weekend of the regular season to get four outs – and a win – for the Yankees in Kansas City on September 30. Read the rest of this entry »

Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski addressed the media on Wednesday at MLB’s GM meetings, before a virus ripped through the league’s front offices and turned a normally convivial event into gastrointestinal Ragnarok.

Speaking as someone who makes frequent use of bathrooms at MLB facilities, and as someone who got knocked out by norovirus earlier this year: Fellas, you gotta wash your hands. I’m not going to break the omerta of the men’s room and name names, but there are too many people who work in baseball who think it’s acceptable to go potty, then leave the room to go around touching stuff without so much as a cursory splash of hand sanitizer. It’s 2023. Grow up. Wash your damn hands.

Where was I? Oh yeah, speaking of making a splash, Dombrowski shared some important news: Bryce Harper is going to be a first baseman from now on. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series covering the 2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Managers/Executives/Umpires ballot, covering candidates in those categories who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present. For an introduction to the ballot, see here. The eight candidates will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in Nashville on December 3, and anyone receiving at least 75% of the vote from the 16 committee members will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 21, 2024 along with any candidates elected by the BBWAA.

Jim Leyland

Jim Leyland was his era’s archetype of an old-school manager, as he went from looking ancient at the start of his career to actually being ancient, at least in baseball terms. Prematurely gray — at 42, he looked 20 years older — and known for sneaking cigarettes between innings, he cut an indelible image in the dugout and in front of a microphone. His dry wit made him a media favorite, and despite a gruff exterior and a knack for getting his money’s worth from umpires when the situation merited it, he earned a reputation as a players’ manager rather than an old-school hardass. That sometimes worked against him, as he was prone to sticking with struggling players longer than most other managers — a vulnerability in a short series. His success will garner him strong consideration for the Hall of Fame, but his case may be haunted by the number of times his teams came up just short. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about norovirus derailing the GM meetings, leftover Boras quotes, and the baseball players deemed sexiest by People magazine, Stat Blast (18:47) about a possible bunting comeback and whether age is correlated with pitch-clock violations, and then (43:39) talk to FanGraphs writer Ben Clemens about the free-agent market and his ranking of the top 50 free agents.

Audio intro: Josh Busman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Liz Panella, “Effectively Wild Theme”

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