The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2021 election, 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.

Torii Hunter could go get it. Fluid and graceful while patrolling center field, he was renowned for his leaping, acrobatic catches and his willingness to sacrifice his body. He made a strong enough impression upon those who watched him that he won nine Gold Gloves during his 19-year career, more than all but three center fielders, namely Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr., and Andruw Jones. Hunter earned the nickname “Spider-Man” for his ability to climb outfield walls to steal home runs — something he did more than just about anybody else during his career — though one attempt to do so at Fenway Park left him with a broken ankle, and another a concussion.

“I’ll do anything to get that little white ball. I’ll put my life on the line,” Hunter told Sports Illustrated’s Albert Chen in 2005, sounding very much like the football player he was during his high school days in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Hunter rose from difficult circumstances in Pine Bluff, including a father who was addicted to crack cocaine and friends who fell into the dead-end life of drugs, guns, and gangs. His athleticism helped him escape, though when he entered professional baseball as a first-round pick of the Twins in 1993, his talent was more raw than most. Read the rest of this entry »

Masataka Yoshida is an extremely cool ballplayer. The 29-year-old has hit .300/.400/.500 six seasons in a row, and despite 20-homer power and plenty of walks, he never strikes out. I’m serious: in 508 Pacific League plate appearances in 2022, Yoshida walked 80 times and struck out just 41 times. That’s a BB% and K% of 15.7% and 8.1%, respectively. He makes Alejandro Kirk look like Dave Kingman. Now, will a 5-foot-8 left fielder be able to keep hitting 20 homers a year on this side of the Pacific? I don’t know, but I’m excited to find out.

Yoshida is, so far, the crown jewel of the offseason for the Red Sox. Between his five-year contract and posting fee, he cost Boston $105.4 million, a significant outlay for any team. If you roll in the posting fee, that’s within rounding distance of the AAV Brandon Nimmo and Kyle Schwarber got in free agency; that indicates Boston views Yoshida as an impact player at his position.

On Thursday, the Red Sox officially announced Yoshida’s signing and added him to the 40-man roster. In order to make room, they designated Jeter Downs for assignment. And suddenly what should have been a joyous day was dampened by the weight of reflection. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The final installment of this week’s set of international player updates revolves around the amateur prospects who will begin to sign a month from now when the new international signing period begins on January 15. An overview of the rules that govern signing international amateurs can be found on MLB’s glossary here, while more thorough and detailed documentation can be found starting on page 287 of the CBA (forgive the 2017-21 version – the full text of the latest agreement isn’t publicly available yet), and page 38 of the Official Professional Baseball Rules Book. I pulled out portions of these documents for reference in the pieces published earlier this week and have done so again here, but I suggest readers familiarize themselves further. The international amateur arena is a procedural and ethical mess that has undergone wholesale structural changes several times during my time as a writer, most recently because of what the pandemic did to shift the timeline of each signing period.

Projected signing teams, scouting reports and tool grades on just over 30 players from the 2023 class can now be viewed over on The Board. Because the International Players tab has an apples and oranges mix of older pros from Asian leagues and soon-to-be first-year players, there is no explicit ranking on The Board, but I’ve stacked the class of anticipated 2023 signees in a table below with a ranking for reference should you need it. As has been the case with past classes, after these players sign, they will be pulled off the International Players section of The Board and warehoused in a ranking of their signing class for record-keeping purposes.

As always, the FV grade is a more important measure for readers to focus on than the ordinal rankings here. Because these players are so close in age to the younger prospects who participate in any given domestic draft, I like to use theoretical draft position as a barometer by which to grade the international amateurs. Scouting and comparing international players’ tools and athleticism to those of recent and upcoming domestic amateurs helps me to triangulate approximately where they’d go in a given draft, and assign them a FV based on that approximation. Players with a 40+ FV grade or above tend to be prospects who I think would go in the first two rounds of a draft, while the teenage 40 FV prospects are the sort I’d ballpark in the $700,000 to $1 million bonus range as draft prospects, basically the slot amounts just after the second round. Read the rest of this entry »

What kind of hitter did the Milwaukee Brewers get when they acquired Owen Miller from the Cleveland Guardians on Wednesday in exchange for a player to be named later or cash? Statistically speaking, the answer is someone who put up uninspiring numbers in his first full big-league season. The infielder, who recently turned 26 years old, logged a .287 wOBA and an 85 wRC+ in 472 plate appearances. After starting strong — he had a 1.043 OPS on May 8, and had delivered a number of clutch hits — Miller provided only a modicum of value with the bat.

In terms of his overall development as a hitter, Miller has evolved — intent-wise more than production-wise to this point — from the player who Eric Longenhagen described prior to the 2021 season. Ranking him No. 14 on that year’s Cleveland Top Prospects list, our lead prospect analyst wrote that the former third-round pick out of Illinois State University had a “minimalistic swing [that] enables him to make high rates of contact, while the strength in Miller’s hands generates doubles power.”

Miller stroked 26 doubles this past season, but only six home runs, and he had 93 strikeouts to go with 32 walks. By and large, he remains a work-in-progress — albeit one who can provide value with his versatility while continuing to work on his offensive skills.

The newest Brewer talked hitting in an interview that took place a handful of months into the season, only to be placed on the back burner until now.

———

David Laurila: How would you describe yourself as a hitter?

Owen Miller: “I’ve kind of changed, I would say. When I was younger — coming up in college, and in the minors — I was very contact-oriented, with a very line drive approach. I was handsy, trying to manipulate my barrel. Then, over the quarantine period when we had time to work on things… I understood that there are things that elite hitters do as far as using their bodies more, and I started to make some swing changes off of that. Not really swing changes, per se, but rather adjustments. Read the rest of this entry »

Nine down, one to go. The 2022 free-agent signing period has been fast and furious. When Carlos Correa signed with the Giants earlier this week, he was the eighth of my top 10 free agents to sign. That breakneck pace hasn’t slowed. On Thursday night, Carlos Rodón and the Yankees agreed to a six-year, $162 million contract, as Jon Heyman first reported.

I pre-wrote some words on Rodón as a player, so let’s get to those before discussing the broader context of his signing. He’s a fascinating story, and yet simultaneously a very straightforward pitcher. He throws an overpowering fastball. He throws an overpowering slider. He throws them both very hard, and with solid accuracy. It sounds almost too simple, but both pitches are spectacular, and they pair well together. He’s going to throw them; the question is whether batters can hit them.

For the past two years, the answer has been a resounding no. In 2021, you could convince yourself it was just a hot streak. Rodón missed most of 2019 and ’20 due to injury, and he’d been roughly league average before that. The peripherals were excellent, and the pedigree was there — he was the third overall pick in the 2014 draft after a standout college career at North Carolina State — but he was a two-pitch pitcher with health concerns and one excellent season. To make matters worse, he looked fatigued at the end of the season — reasonably so given his workload increase — and lost fastball velocity until regaining it in the playoffs. The White Sox declined to issue him a qualifying offer, and he signed what was essentially a high-class prove-it deal with the Giants: two years and $44 million, with an opt out after the first year. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 1004

This week, we talk to the man in charge of an on-the-rise franchise before discussing the international market and a puzzling trade.

• At the top of the show, David Laurila welcomes Jerry Dipoto, president of baseball operations for the Seattle Mariners. We hear his thoughts on the wild spending going on around the league this offseason, as well some acquisitions Seattle has made recently, including Teoscar Hernández and old friend Dave Cameron. Dipoto also shares insights on Mariners players like Andrés Muñoz, Penn Murfee, Emerson Hancock, and Marco Gonzales, as well as his own pitching career (and his son’s). [4:14]
• In the second half, Ben Clemens catches up with Eric Longenhagen after missing each other at the Winter Meetings in San Diego. The duo talk a little bit about the World Cup and the World Baseball Classic before discussing the signings of Kodai Senga and Masataka Yoshida, and how they and other international prospects may adapt to the major leagues. Ben and Eric also chat about the puzzling Sean Murphy trade, how much higher the A’s must be on Esteury Ruiz than everyone else does, and what direction Oakland seems to be heading in (if any). [45:26]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 95 minute play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Pirates’ Vince Velasquez hype video, a “mutant option” for Cody Bellinger, and a Francisco Rodríguez-only Hall of Fame ballot, then (22:09) discuss Carlos Correa’s 13-year contract with the Giants and its implications for the NL West, the Twins and Cubs, and the future of old-player production, along with musings on the state of the Dodgers’ rotation after their signing of Noah Syndergaard. After that (51:24), FanGraphs writer Ben Clemens joins to get everyone interested in interest rates and explain why the CBA and economic conditions have encouraged teams to sign so many free agents to extremely lengthy deals this winter. They close (1:22:40) with a Past Blast from 1942.

Audio intro: The Luxembourg Signal, “Ramblin’ Rodriguez”
Audio interstitial: The Hold Steady, “On With the Business”
Audio outro: PUP, “Grim Reaping”

Link to Velasquez video
Link to signing tweet
Link to Priester video
Link to laptop tweet
Link to Pirates’ winter moves
Link to “mutant option” tweet
Link to Foolish tweet
Link to Belisle mutual option
Link to bad ballot
Link to Dan S. on Correa
Link to Mallory Pugh wiki
Link to Eisert on Syndergaard
Link to Dodgers depth chart
Link to SP depth charts
Link to Simon on Correa
Link to Olney on Judge
Link to Ricketts comment
Link to Ben on long deals
Link to Rosenthal on long deals
Link to EW on long deals
Link to Kovalchuk article
Link to NPR on interest rates
Link to 1942 story source
Link to FDR’s letter
Link to Jacob Pomrenke’s website
Link to Jacob Pomrenke on Twitter
Link to Carlin video
Link to Carlin transcript
Link to Secret Santa sign-up sheet
Link to Secret Santa FB thread

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Despite trailing only the Mets in payroll last season, the Dodgers inked just their second eight-figure contract of the offseason Wednesday night. Noah Syndergaard and his one-year, $13 million pact will join the returning Clayton Kershaw (on a one-year, $20 million deal) in shoring up a rotation that has said goodbye to breakouts Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney.

Enduring the losses of Anderson and Heaney means the Dodgers will have to rely more heavily on a number of pitchers with health concerns. Julio Urías, whose 2.16 ERA came out just above Tony Gonsolin’s 2.14 mark, is the only Dodgers starter to have thrown at least 175 innings in each of the past two years; Urías was himself a non-factor for two years after having anterior capsule surgery on his left shoulder in 2017. As for Gonsolin, owner of the rotation’s lowest 2022 ERA, he suffered a forearm strain in late August; he would go on to pitch just 3.1 innings the rest of the year, including the playoffs. Relegated to mid-rotation duty now, Kershaw hasn’t appeared in 30 games since 2015 and in the past two seasons hasn’t topped 22. Dustin May, Tommy John returnee, was only in the rotation for six turns this summer before landing on the shelf again, this time with a back issue. And now the player formerly known as Thor will round things out. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2021 election, 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.

At a moment when baseball is so obsessed with velocity, it’s remarkable to remember how recently it was that a pitcher could thrive, year in and year out, despite averaging in the 85–87 mph range with his fastball. Yet that’s exactly what Mark Buehrle did over the course of his 16-year career. Listed at 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, the burly Buehrle was the epitome of the crafty lefty, an ultra-durable workhorse who didn’t dominate but who worked quickly, used a variety of pitches — four-seamer, sinker, cutter, curve, changeup — moving a variety of directions to pound the strike zone, and relied on his fielders to make the plays behind him. From 2001 to ’14, he annually reached the 30-start and 200-inning plateaus, and he barely missed on the latter front in his final season.

August Fagerstrom summed up Buehrle so well in his 2016 appreciation that I can’t resist sharing a good chunk:

The way Buehrle succeeded was unique, of course. He got his ground balls, but he wasn’t the best at getting ground balls. He limited walks, but he wasn’t the best a limiting walks. He generated soft contact, but he wasn’t the best at generating soft contact. Buehrle simply avoided damage with his sub-90 mph fastball by throwing strikes while simultaneously avoiding the middle of the plate:

That’s Buehrle’s entire career during the PITCHf/x era, and it’s something of a remarkable graphic. You see Buehrle living on the first-base edge of the zone, making sure to keep his pitches low, while also being able to spot the same pitch on the opposite side of the zone, for the most part avoiding the heart of the plate. Buehrle’s retained the ability to pitch this way until the end; just last year [2015], he led all of baseball in the percentage of pitches located on the horizontal edges of the plate.

Drafted and developed by the White Sox — practically plucked from obscurity, at that — Buehrle spent 12 of his 16 seasons on the South Side, making four All-Star teams and helping Chicago to three postseason appearances, including its 2005 World Series win, which broke the franchise’s 88-year championship drought. While with the White Sox, he became just the second pitcher in franchise history to throw multiple no-hitters, first doing so in 2007 against the Rangers and then adding a perfect game in ’09 against the Rays. After his time in Chicago, he spent a sour season with the newly-rebranded Miami Marlins, and when that predictably melted down, spent three years with the Blue Jays, helping them reach the playoffs for the first time in 22 years.

Though Buehrle reached the 200-win plateau in his final season, he was just 36 years old when he hung up his spikes, preventing him from more fully padding his counting stats or framing his case for Cooperstown in the best light. A closer look beyond the superficial numbers suggests that, while he’s the equal or better of several enshrined pitchers according to WAR and JAWS, he’s far off the standards. Like fellow lefty and ballot-mate Andy Pettitte, the boost that he gets from S-JAWS — a workload-adjusted version of starting pitcher JAWS that I introduced last year — doesn’t improve his case enough to sway me. He’s received a smattering of support, but his drop from 11% in 2021 to 5.8% last year shows that his candidacy is on life support. Read the rest of this entry »