If you’ve been aware of either the Baltimore Orioles or FanGraphs Dot Com in the past nine months, you already know the two entities have not always played nice with one another. On the eve of the 2022 season, our playoff odds gave Baltimore just 0.1% chance of making the playoffs, meaning that out of 20,000 simulated universes, the Orioles would only reach the Wild Card round 20 times. (I’ve been to one of those universes. Chick-fil-A is open on Sundays, Ryan Reynolds owns Twitter, and the airlines never got deregulated. It’s heaven.)

As late as September, when the Orioles had clearly surpassed any reasonable expectations and were still in the hunt, our playoff odds were still quite pessimistic relative to other projections systems. Sure enough, Baltimore finished 83-79, three games behind Tampa Bay. But for a team that hadn’t finished at or above .500 since 2016 and hadn’t even won 55 games in a full season since 2017, that’s a good year. Something to build on, particularly considering the wellspring of young talent bubbling up from the minors like the Clampett family’s oil well.

And yet the Orioles aren’t exactly keeping the band together. After moving Jorge López and Trey Mancini at the trade deadline, the first week of the offseason proper has seen several more departures, including Robinson Chirinos, Rougned Odor, and Jordan Lyles. That’s three starting position players (at least for part of the season), as well as Baltimore’s leaders in saves and innings pitched. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners don’t necessarily have a specific model when it comes to drafting and developing pitchers. But they do favor certain traits, and a pair of talented young right-handers serve as prime examples. One of them is George Kirby, whose 3.0 WAR this season was tops among American League rookie hurlers. The other is a 2020 fifth-round pick who emerged as arguably the most promising arm in the system.

“Taylor Dollard was identified by our pitching strategists as an interesting mover,” Mariners President of Baseball Operations Jerry Dipoto said of the 23-year-old right-hander. “We do movement assessments on draft-eligible pitchers, and from there we identify picks in the middle rounds that we think we can really do something with. Dollard was very high on our list that year.”

Plus command was, and remains, the Cal-Poly product’s primary selling point. Dollard waked just 2.2 batters per nine innings as a collegian, and this year he issued 31 free passes in 144 innings with Double-A Arkansas. His other numbers were equally impressive: 106 hits, 131 strikeouts, and a 16–2 record with a 2.25 ERA. Buoyed by that performance, he climbed to No. 3 in our Mariners top prospect rankings.

Tom Allison, who at the time was Seattle’s VP of Scouting, played a key role in bringing Dollard on board. According to Dipoto, the longtime scout and executive “had an itch” for the right-hander and was “probably the first one that rang the Taylor Dollard bell.” Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Anderson has had a hell of a baseball career. If you haven’t already heard his story, allow me to enlighten you. Anderson played Division II baseball for three years at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota before transferring to an NAIA school, Mayville State University, for his senior year. Despite being drafted by the Brewers in the 32nd round of the 2012 draft, he opted to play independent league baseball for three years. From 2015-18, he made his way up the Twins’ minor league ladder, then was traded to the Marlins that winter. Finally, he made his major league debut as a 28-year-old in 2019. His career had already been a wild ride.

Is it surprising that a player like Anderson found himself on the Tampa Bay Rays? It shouldn’t be! They saw something in him, as they often do, and acquired him and Trevor Richards at the 2019 trade deadline while trading away a talented prospect in Jesús Sánchez and another reliever in Ryne Stanek. Anderson’s performance in the first half of the season had been impressive, but upon his arrival in Tampa in August, he got even better. In 21.1 innings, he struck out 52.6% of the batters he faced, only surrendered five runs, and pitched to a 1.62 FIP. That’s pure dominance.

Anderson saw similar success in the shortened 2020 season, posting a 1.35 FIP in 16.1 innings. But since then, he has only thrown six big league innings due to a partially torn UCL in 2021 and then a bumpy recovery in the minors this season after opting for a UCL brace procedure rather than Tommy John surgery. On top of that, he dealt with plantar fasciitis. If you ever experienced that, you know that it feels like the bottom of your foot is ripping in half every time you take a step. Anyways, Anderson has gotten another opportunity, this time with the Atlanta Braves.

Right-handed reliever Nick Anderson and the Atlanta Braves are in agreement on a major league contract, sources tell ESPN. The 32-year-old Anderson is on a split deal that will pay $875,000 if he’s in the big leagues and $180,000 in the minors. He spent four years with Tampa Bay.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 11, 2022

If he does indeed end up with the big league club, he’ll have the chance to re-establish himself as one of the more lethal relievers in the game. How likely he is to do so, however, is unclear. Historically, the road back from a torn or partially torn UCL without receiving Tommy John surgery hasn’t been a great one. That doesn’t mean Anderson won’t buck the trend, but it does leave me skeptical that he can return to his previous form.

If there is a path back to success, it will need to include recovering his four-seam fastball’s shape and maybe a tick of velocity. Anderson’s mechanics fluctuated as he dealt with injuries, and it led to him releasing the baseball differently than he did during his dominant 2019-20 stretch. Below is a table of the qualities that changed between 2019 and ’21, and the resulting performance:

Anderson’s fastball was at its best when he was getting an additional half inch of extension and releasing from a lower arm slot. That isn’t all that surprising. He doesn’t have overwhelming spin or velocity, so having a release point that gave him a flatter entry into the zone was crucial for his success. Being a 6-foot-4 person with a loopy arm swing made Anderson tough to read and allowed his fastball to play up when he was able to drive his release further toward home plate. Because of the drop in his release and extension, he also lost ride on his fastball. Basically, it all fell apart.

Now, he’s left in a tough situation. Did his increase in extension cause his elbow issues, or did the elbow issues come first and lead to his fastball shape and movement deteriorating due to a suboptimal mechanical change? It’s impossible to say exactly, but what we can do is look at his mechanics and try to point to specific movements other than the arm swing itself that can explain the drop in release point and extension. I’ll start with two videos from 2020. The first is from August 7, and the second is from August 12:

Next, let’s look at two videos from 2021. The first is from September 19, and the second is from September 26:

To me, it doesn’t even require slow motion video to see what changed in Anderson’s mechanics. His shin angle is almost dead at 90 degrees (perpendicular to the ground) in 2020. That is a perfect starting point to keep your lower half anchored in the ground while creating hip and shoulder separation. He is then able to strongly plant in the ground and get to full knee extension right when he releases the ball. The stronger your base, the more control you have in your hips as you rotate down the mound. You can’t get down the mound into a low release point without holding your base well. If you don’t, it’ll look something like Anderson’s struggles in 2021.

During his brief 2021 stint, Anderson couldn’t find steady mechanics. I watched all of his appearances, and whether it was in the setup of the hands or the feet, they all had something slightly different. On September 19, he used a more aggressive leg kick, which led to him getting down the mound too quickly. Because of that, he reached full front knee extension earlier than in 2020. This led to him releasing the ball higher and earlier. It was a decent location, but that doesn’t mean the process was optimal.

He must have felt something was off because a week later he changed his hand setup, but it didn’t do him any good. The two things that are telling to me were his reciprocal movement to releasing the ball, and his upper back posture. In 2020, he had a controlled kickback that went right back through the center of his body as he stood on one leg after delivering the pitch while swinging his right foot around. In 2021, he delivered the ball with his upper back bending a bit too much (you can see it on the ripples of his jersey across his name), which led to his arm and right leg kicking up and back instead of towards his center of mass.

Again, it’s hard to say exactly why these changes occurred, but regardless of the cause, it’s clear Anderson was compensating. If he can return to something closer to his 2020 mechanics, then perhaps he can better optimize his fastball shape to once again play with his curveball and be a productive pitcher for the Braves. The one thing I still worry about is whether the mechanics that gave him better extension and release were unsustainable for his body. If that’s the case, it might be unrealistic to expect the velocity, mechanics, and shape to all return without re-injury. I know I’ve caveated this multiple times, but there is reason to believe Anderson is a resilient fella. After all, he has overcome the odds time and again during his career. Why should he stop now?

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been expanded and updated. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

On July 15, 2005, Rafael Palmeiro became the 26th player to collect his 3,000 hit, and joined Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray as the only players to attain both that milestone and 500 home runs. Even for a player who didn’t get as much recognition as his heavy-hitting peers in the All-Star, MVP, and postseason departments, and who had been viewed more as a compiler who benefited from playing in hitter-friendly ballparks than as a bona fide superstar, the 40-year-old slugger appeared to have secured a spot in the Hall of Fame.

Less than three weeks later, on August 1, 2005, Major League Baseball suspended Palmeiro for 10 days for testing positive for Winstrol (stanozolol), a banned anabolic steroid. Just five players had been suspended before him, none of whom was anything close to a star. For Palmeiro the suspension was all the more humbling because four and a half months earlier, he had wagged his finger in front of Congress while adamantly denying that he used performance-enhancing drugs. For as brief as his suspension was — first-offense penalties would increase to 50 games the following season — it all but ended the debate about Palmeiro’s Hall-worthiness. His career didn’t even outlast the debate; upon returning, Palmeiro played in just seven more games, struggling while enduring a persistent chorus of boos. He didn’t even finish out the season.

Palmeiro wasn’t the first PED-linked star to land on the BBWAA ballot — that distinction belonged to Mark McGwire — but he was the first to do so after being suspended. The voters were unsparing, giving him just 11% of the vote in 2011, and while his share rose to 12.6% the next year, the handwriting was on the wall. As the ballot grew more crowded over the next two years, with the arrivals of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa in 2013, and then Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and Frank Thomas in ’14, Palmeiro was lost in the shuffle. He faded to 8.8% in 2014, then 4.4% the next year, bumping him off the ballot. He’s rarely been heard from since, though he did surface a couple of times to play on independent league teams with his son, Patrick Palmeiro, most recently in 2018.

Palmeiro’s presence on this ballot is puzzling, even given that he’s got the numbers for the Hall. The fact that McGwire, who was never suspended, got the cold shoulder from the 2017 Today’s Game panel without testing positive, and that Bonds and Clemens are also on here without testing positive but with superior credentials as players, suggests a very low likelihood that the voters will tab a lesser player who was suspended. More likely, Palmeiro is here mainly as ballast, a candidate easily overlooked so as to focus voters’ attentions elsewhere. It seems probable that such a result will only reinforce the Hall and the Historical Overview Committee that builds the ballot burying him in oblivion, though if that means that Dwight Evans and Lou Whitaker — both of whom were widely expected to be included in this year’s slate after solid debuts on the 2020 Modern Baseball ballot — it’s tough to complain.

Born in Havana, Cuba on September 24, 1964, Palmeiro emigrated to the U.S. with his parents in 1971, when he was six years old; his father, José Palmeiro, had been an outstanding center fielder on a top Cuban amateur team in his own day. The family settled in Miami, and five or six days a week, José came home from his construction job and took his youngest three sons — the oldest, José Jr., had remained in Cuba to serve in the military — to one of the local diamonds for batting practice and grounders. As a child, Palmeiro learned to filter his father’s negative criticism, understanding how to separate the message to work harder and strive for improvement, from the delivery.

After starring at Jackson High School in Miami, Palmeiro was chosen in the eighth round of the 1982 draft by the Mets, but he bypassed the chance to sign in favor of accepting a baseball scholarship from Mississippi State University. At MSU, he starred alongside fellow future major leaguer Will Clark, becoming a three-time All-American and the first Triple Crown winner in Southeastern Conference history in 1984. In 2019, the pair were honored with statues in front of Dudy Noble Field.

The two teammates were chosen in the first round of the 1985 draft — Clark second overall by the Giants and Palmeiro 22nd by the Cubs. That same round was headed by future Orioles teammate B.J. Surhoff, and it also produced Barry Larkin (fourth, to the Reds) and Bonds (sixth, to the Pirates). Just 15 months later, and 16 days before his 22nd birthday, Palmeiro debuted in the majors, singling off the Phillies’ Tom Hume on September 8, 1986. The next day, he hit a three-run homer off Kevin Gross.

Palmeiro hit .247/.295/.425 in a 22-game cup of coffee, and after beginning the 1987 season at Triple-A Peoria, he was in the majors for good by mid-June. He hit .276/.336/.543 with 14 homers in 84 games as a rookie, then earned All-Star honors and finished second in the NL batting title race in 1988 while hitting a relatively thin .307/.349/.436 with just eight homers. The Cubs had Leon Durham and then Mark Grace at first base during those seasons, so Palmeiro played primarily in left field. After the 1988 season, he was dealt to the Rangers in a nine-player trade that also included Jamie Moyer heading to Texas and Mitch Williams to Chicago.

Palmeiro emerged as a minor star in Texas, leading the American League with 191 hits in 1990 and earning All-Star honors for the second time in ’91, when he hit .322/.389/.532 with 203 hits, a league-leading 49 doubles and 26 homers; his 155 OPS+ ranked fifth in the AL, his 5.8 WAR ninth. He set a career high with 37 homers in 1993, hitting .295/.371/.554 and ranking fourth in WAR (6.9) and sixth in OPS+ (150). The Rangers finished above .500 in four of his five years with the team, but they never won more than 86 games or finished higher than second in the seven-team AL West.

Palmeiro parlayed that big season into a five-year, $30.35 million deal with the Orioles, but not without some drama that involved his former college teammate. Though he wanted to return to Texas, Palmeiro turned down the team’s initial offer of five years and $26 million and entered free agency. The Rangers turned to Clark, who had reached free agency after his impressive eight-year run with the Giants; he agreed to a five-year, $30 million deal. “Palmeiro chose not to come off his original offer one penny; in fact, he went up,” said Rangers president Tom Schieffer while noting that he had been the team’s first choice for a left-handed power hitter.

Palmeiro was stung, particularly by the fact that his former teammate replaced him. “That’s Will,” he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “That’s the way he is. He’s got no class. Friendship didn’t matter to him. He was looking out for himself. I don’t think much of Will. He’s a low-life.”

Palmeiro publicly apologized to Clark the next day, and about three weeks later signed with the Orioles, becoming the marquee addition of new owner Peter Angelos in his quest to build a winner to fit the team’s new Camden Yards ballpark. The move brought him to the team he used to watch train in Miami, and reunited him with manager Johnny Oates, who had coached him with the Cubs.

Over the next five years, Palmeiro hit a combined .292/.371/.545 (134 OPS+) while averaging 36 homers and 4.7 WAR despite the 1994-95 strike. His 39-homer, .289/.381/.546 showing in 1996 helped the Orioles reach the playoffs for the first time since ’83. He homered in three consecutive postseason games, and got on base in all five plate appearances in the infamous Jeffrey Maier game against the Yankees in the ALCS opener, but he hit a lopsided .206/.317/.500 in 41 plate appearances during the playoffs overall as Baltimore fell short of the World Series.

Palmeiro fell off somewhat the next year (.254/.329/.485 with 38 homers), but did win a Gold Glove for his play at first base, which rated at 10 runs above average according to Total Zone. While the O’s made it back to the playoffs again with a star-studded lineup that also included future Hall of Famers Murray, Roberto Alomar, Harold Baines, and Cal Ripken Jr., they again couldn’t get to the World Series.

After a strong walk year in 1998 during which he tallied 6.3 WAR (seventh in the league), 43 homers (sixth, and a career high) and a second Gold Glove, Palmeiro returned to Texas via a five-year, $45 million contract. He turned down a $50 million offer in order to be closer to his family, and again was reunited with Oates, who had been fired by the Orioles after the ’94 season. In the hitter-friendly Ballpark at Arlington, he set career highs in all three slash stats (.324/.420/.630) in 1999 as well as homers (47) and RBIs (148) — the last three figures all ranked second in the league — while helping the Rangers to their third division title. He finished fifth in the MVP balloting, his highest showing ever, and won one of the most dubious Gold Gloves in history in a season where he played just 28 games in the field, spending most of his time DHing.

Palmeiro hit .284/.390/.566 (140 OPS+) and averaged 43 homers during his five-season stint in Texas; his total of 214 dingers during that span were surpassed only by Sosa, Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Jim Thome. Between the high-scoring era, the hitter-friendly environment, and his increasing amount of time at DH, his total of 20.9 WAR during that stretch (4.2 per year) ranked 35th among position players — good but not as valuable as his raw numbers would suggest. On May 11, 2003 he hit his 500th homer off Cleveland’s Dave Elder, becoming the 19th player to reach that plateau.

Palmeiro turned 39 at the end of that season, and after entering the free agent market yet again, decided to return to Baltimore to chase 3,000 hits. Whether due to age or environment, his power dissipated; he declined from 38 homers and a .508 slugging percentage in his final year in Texas to 23 and .436 with the Orioles in 2004.

Prior to the 2005 season, Palmeiro was among the former teammates named as a steroid user by Jose Canseco in his tell-all book, Juiced. Canseco claimed that during his 1992-94 stint with the Rangers, he had not only introduced Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez and Ivan Rodriguez to steroids, but to have personally injected them as well. Palmeiro denied the assertion via a statement: “At no point in my career have I ever used steroids, let alone any substance banned by Major League Baseball. As I have never had a personal relationship with Canseco, any suggestion that he taught me anything, about steroid use or otherwise, is ludicrous.” In March, both Canseco and Palmeiro were among the major leaguers subpoenaed to testify under oath in front of the House of Representatives Government Reform Committee regarding the spread of steroids in baseball. Palmeiro was blunt in his testimony. “I have never used steroids. Period,” he said, punctuating his denial by wagging his finger at the panel.

That image was still burned into the collective consciousness when Palmeiro collected his 3,000th hit, a double off Seattle’s Joel Pineiro, on July 15. Just over two weeks later, all hell broke loose when MLB announced that he had tested positive for a banned substance. Palmeiro claimed to have not taken the drug intentionally and received a 10-day ban, the penalty in place at the time for first offenders. A celebration in honor of his milestone hit was canceled, and when he returned from his suspension, he was showered by so many boos that he took to wearing earplugs. That state of affairs didn’t last long. After collecting just two hits in 29 plate appearances over a two-week span, he left the team and never played in the majors again. In September, the Associated Press reported that he had been sent home by the Orioles after implicating teammate Miguel Tejada as having provided him with an allegedly tainted B-12 supplement, both before MLB’s Health Policy Advisory Committee and a Congressional perjury investigation.

Palmeiro was not prosecuted any further, but he remained haunted by the way his career ended, and continued to contend that the offending substance came from a tainted B-12 vial. He came and went on the writers’ ballot, and while he gave up on hopes of reaching the Hall of Fame, he shifted towards an attempt to salvage his reputation by staging an unlikely comeback. In 2015, at the age of 50, he made a one-game cameo with the independent Sugar Land Skeeters of the Atlantic League, for whom his son Patrick — who was born in 1990, drafted by the Pirates in 2009, and spent 2012-14 in the White Sox system following college — was playing; he went 2-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.

In December 2017, Palmeiro told The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal that he was planning another comeback with the intention of returning to the majors. “Maybe 12 years later, if I can come back and prove I don’t need anything as an older player with an older body, then people might think, OK, maybe he didn’t do anything intentionally,” he said.

Though he was in better physical shape than in 2015, a return to the majors proved to be a pipe dream, but Palmeiro did rejoin his older son (his younger son, Preston, was born in 1995, drafted by the Orioles in the seventh round in 2016 and spent ’22 with the Angels’ Double-A Rocket City affiliate) as a member of the independent Cleburne Railroaders of the American Association. This time, in his age-53 season (!), he played 31 games and hit .301/.424/.495 with six homers. His May 21 homer made him the oldest professional player to homer, while on July 13, he and his son both homered (the latter twice).

53-year-old Rafael Palmeiro's still got some dingers left in him ? pic.twitter.com/ts1fU6mkeh

— SportsDay Rangers (@dmn_rangers) May 22, 2018

Alas, knee problems that resulted in surgery limited his play, and while he intended to continue the following year, both he and Patrick were released in the spring.

…

Setting the steroid saga aside for the moment, Palmeiro’s dual milestones suggest he belong in Cooperstown. Save for the banned-for-life Pete Rose, every player who reached the 3,000 hit mark prior to Palmeiro was elected to to the Hall on his first try, though since then, Biggio needed three tries, and Rodriguez came nowhere near election (34.3%) in his ballot debut last year. Meanwhile, all of the previous members of the 500 home run club save for McGwire were elected to the Hall of Fame as well, though it took four ballots for Harmon Killebrew to gain entry and five for Eddie Mathews. Since then, six other PED-linked players (Bonds, Sosa, Gary Sheffield, Manny Ramirez, and Rodriguez) have failed to gain entry, with Thomas, Thome, Ken Griffey Jr., and David Ortiz the only ones to make it.

The common knock against Palmeiro — that he racked up his numbers under extremely favorable conditions and was never considered a star — doesn’t entirely hold up under scrutiny. His total of four All-Star appearances is indeed low for a potential Hall of Famer, but he received MVP votes in 10 seasons, and while he cracked the top 10 in those votes just three times, that still means he was considered among the league’s best hitters in half of the seasons he played. He scores 178 on the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor metric, which measures how likely (not how deserving) a player is to be elected, with 100 rating as “a good possibility” and 130 “a virtual cinch.” For what it’s worth, Palmeiro didn’t derive a great advantage from his home parks, hitting .285/.375/.527 in Chicago, Texas and Baltimore, and .291/.366/.502 elsewhere, a fairly typical split.

Of course, we’ll never know the extent to which PEDs affected Palmeiro’s performance, and we don’t even know for how long he was using them. He wasn’t setting the world ablaze during the season in which he tested positive, and we don’t know whether he used the drugs during his prime — a time when offense was at its highest point in decades, and PED use was on the rise as well — or simply made a mistake as his career was waning. Was he caught red-handed after years of relying upon the drugs? Was he set up by a teammate? We don’t know and I’m not sure we ever will. That said, I don’t think it’s going too far out on a limb to suggest that even knowing those answers isn’t likely to get Palmeiro into Cooperstown, and that he will instead remain a cautionary tale.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Scott Boras’s opinions about postseason pitch clocks and a neutral-site World Series, discuss Meg’s NL Rookie of the Year vote (14:16) and the rookie class, and then conduct two drafts: the eighth free-agent-contract over/under draft (35:37), and the fifth World Series odds movers draft (1:29:46), plus a Past Blast (1:48:40) from 1929 and a postscript.

Audio intro: Whitehorse, “Best Bet”
Audio outro: Aimee Mann, “Mr. Harris”

Link to Boras’s pitch-clock comment
Link to Boras on the World Series
Link to Ben on the rookie class
Link to Chris Gilligan on the rookies
Link to Tango on the WARs
Link to EW wiki on drafts
Link to competitions/drafts sheet
Link to Ben Clemens on RP signings
Link to MLBTR top 50 FA
Link to FanGraphs top FA
Link to Keith Law’s top FA
Link to qualifying offers
Link to Stathead on tall hitters
Link to WS odds spreadsheet
Link to Fanduel odds
Link to DraftKings odds
Link to 1929 story source
Link to Jacob Pomrenke’s website
Link to Jacob Pomrenke on Twitter
Link to Craig Wright on few SB
Link to NL RotY results
Link to AL RotY results
Link to Dan S. on Strider
Link to Ben N-S on Rutschman
Link to Tango’s math

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
Subscribe to Stathead (Code: WILD20)
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

The National League Rookie of the Year award was announced on Monday evening, with Michael Harris II of the Braves taking home the honor. Harris earned the hardware by collecting 22 of 30 first-place votes from the BBWAA writers, convincingly beating out teammate Spencer Strider, who only collected eight (and was left off one ballot completely), including mine.

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 an astonishing 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 — and as such, a secret ballot is not appropriate the way I believe it is for, say, a presidential or parliamentary election.

In my previous Rookie of the Year ballots, I gave my first-place votes to Corey Seager, Pete Alonso, and Trevor Rogers. The last one basically ruined my social media for a week. I had expected more writers to pick Jonathan India, but I felt (and still do) that Rogers had a slightly stronger case for the award. While it wouldn’t have changed my vote, I freely admit that I would have preferred to be one of three or five Rogers voters rather than end up being alone!

As usual, I will now endeavor to explain why I voted for the players I voted for. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not sure if you know this about me, but there are two things that I’ve always loved to do. First, I like to make things about me, even if the connection is tenuous. Second, I like to go over my own past decisions and see if there’s anything I can learn from them, hopefully without being too self-serving. I have great news – well, for me at least. Two free agent signings last week – Robert Suarez to the Padres and Rafael Montero to the Astros – have given me an opportunity to do both.

Of course, I don’t want to give either player short shrift. Both are excellent in their own right, late-inning relievers coming off of effective 2022 seasons and high-leverage postseason work. Egotistical as I am, I can’t completely ignore them and only talk about myself. As a compromise, I’ll start by profiling each player and their new contract. From there, we’ll move on to discussing why neither was on my Top 50 Free Agents ranking, and what I think I did wrong in making the list. Read the rest of this entry »

The RosterResource Depth Charts and Payroll pages are officially in offseason mode, meaning that all free agents have been removed from their 2022 teams and a projected 26-man roster for Opening Day 2023 is displayed. Additionally, our Free Agent Tracker, Offseason Transaction Tracker, Injury Report, and Closer Depth Chart are also live.

As roster moves occur and news is reported, each feature will be updated almost immediately. Here’s an explanation of these very important offseason features.

Roster/Depth Chart

These visual interpretations of each team’s projected roster and organizational depth are always updated to reflect the latest news around the league. It’s important to note that the offseason pages project an Opening Day roster. Once we incorporate 2023 statistical projections — you can always see the latest here and here — you will notice that certain players currently listed in the Minor League section have a significant amount of projected playing time and are expected to play an integral role during the upcoming season. The same goes for players who are on the Projected Injured List or, in the case of Fernando Tatis Jr., on the Restricted List for the first 20 games of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though Dansby Swanson checks in at number eight on our recently published top 50 free agent rankings, it feels like no one knows just how much to believe in him. Obviously, that’s not completely true. I’m sure Swanson strongly believes in himself. There’s a Re-sign Dansby Swanson petition on Change.org; I bet the 12 people who signed it believe in him quite a bit too. The rest of us, however, fall somewhere in the middle.

Swanson had a career year in 2022. His 6.4 WAR was 12th best in all of baseball, and 3.0 above his 2021 total. While the big jump is encouraging, it also makes him a regression candidate. Of the 83 position players with 500 plate appearances in both 2021 and ’22, only four improved their WAR total more. Aaron Judge improved by 5.9 WAR in 2022, and it’d be extremely unreasonable to expect him to put up anything like a repeat performance. The next three players, Eugenio Suárez, Nolen Arenado, and Manny Machado, were all bouncing back from a down year in 2021. Like Swanson, all three saw their BABIP improve by at least 40 points. Swanson was the only player of the group whose WAR in 2022 was three wins higher than in their best previous season. Read the rest of this entry »