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.

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The criteria for winning a batting title are crystal clear. A player needs:

1. 3.1 plate appearances per team game in either the NL or AL

2. The highest batting average (H/AB) in that respective league

Even in the exceedingly rare circumstance in which a player can win the batting title with fewer than 3.1 PA per team game, as long as he would still possess the highest batting average if he went hitless in enough at-bats to reach the necessary plate appearance threshold, the rules are fully laid out. There’s no room for interpretation.

Few other individual honors in the sport work this way. For proof, look no further than the MVP debate, which rages on to this day: Is there a meaningful difference between the best player and the most valuable player? After decades of argument, a consensus remains out of reach.

Awards like the MVP, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year will always be contentious because they are determined by a panel of human voters rather than a statistical calculation. But the difference between the batting title and the BBWAA awards goes beyond the subjective/objective distinction. The criteria for the BBWAA awards (and most other individual honors) aren’t just subjective; they are incredibly minimal. Not only is it up to each individual voter to decide who the most valuable player is, but it is also each voter’s job to determine what the word “valuable” even means. As the BBWAA puts it on the MVP ballot, there is no “clear-cut definition” of “most valuable.”

This goes beyond the MVP award, even if that particular prize is the source of the fiercest argumentation. I’ve taken part in debates about whether pitcher defense (and before the universal DH, pitcher offense) should play a role in Cy Young voting. I am a firm “no” in that discussion, but I’ve been surprised to learn how many people feel the opposite way. To be fair, they have a point; it’s not totally clear if the Cy Young is for the best pitcher or the best pitcher.

There is plenty of squabbling to be had over any subjective award, but I have found none as difficult to pin down as the Comeback Player of the Year, presented by MLB itself and selected by a panel of MLB.com beat writers. We can nitpick the definitions of terms like “most valuable,” “best pitcher,” or “top rookie,” but ultimately, the difference between anyone’s individual opinions will be relatively small. The word “comeback,” however, is open to far more interpretation. Where do I even begin? Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the offseason. As is customary, FanGraphs’ annual top 50 free agent rankings come out the week after the World Series. In recent years, we’ve rotated through the writers principally responsible for the list – first Dave Cameron, then Kiley McDaniel, Craig Edwards, and, more recently, me. I’m back this year and I’ve brought help: the FanGraphs staff contributed mightily to this piece.

Below, I’ve provided contract estimates and rankings of the winter’s top free agents, along with market-focused breakdowns for the top 25 players. That could be a quick discussion of where a player might sign, what a team might look for, or even just statistical analysis masquerading as market analysis – I’m an analyst at heart and never stray far from my roots. Meanwhile, a combination of Davy Andrews, Michael Baumann, Chris Gilligan, Jay Jaffe, Kyle Kishimoto, David Laurila, Eric Longenhagen, Leo Morgenstern, Dan Szymborski, and Esteban Rivera supplied player-focused breakdowns, which are designed to provide some context for each player at this moment in his career. Special thanks to David Appelman, Sean Dolinar, Jason Martinez, and Meg Rowley for their help behind the scenes.

The players are ranked in the order in which I prefer them. That’s often the same as ranking them in contract order, but not always. In some cases, I prefer a player I expect will get less money over one who stands to make more. I’ll generally make note of that in the accompanying comment, but just to reiterate, this list isn’t exclusively sorted by descending average annual value or anything like that. All of the dollar amounts are estimated guarantees. Plenty of contracts will include team options or player incentives, but those aren’t included here. Player opt outs are similarly not included. Unless otherwise noted, the projections below are Steamer 2024 projections, but use our Depth Chart playing time allocations. The listed ages indicate the age-season the player is about to play. Every player’s crowdsourced projection will appear alongside my projection, with the exception of Yariel Rodriguez, who we did not poll on due to a slip up on my and Meg’s part. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s experience covering the GM meetings and broadcasting an AFL game, with an emphasis on Brian Cashman’s testy exchanges with reporters, Meg’s interaction with Jerry Dipoto, and Scott Boras’s wordplay, plus listener emails (1:01:04) about “electing” free agency, whether the pitch clock has lowered the average age of baseball spectators, when fans started wearing sports jerseys, and possible successors to Baseball Twitter.

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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.

Lou Piniella

Lou Piniella spent even more years managing in the majors (23, between 1986 and 2010) than he did playing the outfield (18, between 1964 and ’84). To both, “Sweet Lou” brought a flair for the dramatic and a fiery intensity — his dust-kicking, hat-stomping, base-throwing tirades became the stuff of legend — as well as tremendous baseball acumen. Like fellow Contemporary Baseball candidate Davey Johnson, he won championships in both phases of his career, but his failure even to reach the World Series a second time as a manager cast a long shadow on every successive stop. Unlike Johnson, however, he came close to election, missing by just one vote on the 2019 Today’s Game Era Committee ballot from which Harold Baines and Lee Smith were elected. Read the rest of this entry »

In case you were on sabbatical on Monday and missed the news, it’s manager hirin’ season. As much as player evaluation is an inexact science, identifying good potential managers is even more so. Even previous success as a manager is no guarantee. Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy both won titles almost immediately after being hired to their last jobs, but consider how badly things went for Joe Girardi in Philadelphia or Joe Maddon in Anaheim.

So much of this job is either intangible or inscrutable to outsiders; more than that, there are several different ways to become qualified for it. Monday’s new hires — Craig Counsell of the Cubs, Stephen Vogt of the Guardians, and Carlos Mendoza of the Mets — represent three different paths to managerial candidacy. That got me thinking about managers less as individuals than as classes of individuals. Read the rest of this entry »

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to the first offseason edition of my Tuesday chat!

2:03

Jay Jaffe: This is also very possibly the last one of these I conduct for a few weeks in my current abode, as The Big Move from the apartment where I’ve spent the past 16 years — the everyday professional part of my writing career, as it is — to our new home further south in Brooklyn is scheduled for a week from Saturday.

2:04

Jay Jaffe: It’s all very exciting and stressful and there’s a lot to do, as you can imagine. Since I’ll be without a computer setup for a few days, I’ll have to work ahead, hence the unlikelihood of a chat next week. Anyway, yesterday I wrote about Clayton Kershaw’s surgery and Lance Lynn’s option: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/with-kershaws-surgery-and-lynns-declined-o…

2:05	Jay Jaffe: And today I published my first candidate profile from the 2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Managers/Executives/Umpires ballot, Davey Johnson https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2024-contemporary-baseball-era-committee-c…

2:05	Jay Jaffe: And now, on with the show

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.

Davey Johnson

Like Billy Martin before him, albeit with far less drinking and drama, Davey Johnson was renowned for his ability to turn teams around. He posted a winning record in his first full season at four of his five managerial stops and took four of the five franchises that he managed to the playoffs at least once. But after six-plus seasons managing the Mets, he never lasted even three full seasons in any other job and never replicated the success he had in piloting the 1986 Mets to 108 wins and a World Series victory. Read the rest of this entry »