With the future of Twitter uncertain, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley welcome Craig Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus and Jordan Shusterman and Jake Mintz of Fox Sports and Céspedes Family BBQ to draft the best tweets and traditions from more than a decade of content on Baseball Twitter (plus a Past Blast from 1932). (Warning/preview: Prepare for somewhat saltier language than usual.)

Audio intro: The Rentals, “Elon Musk is Making Me Sad”
Audio outro: Sparks, “Here Comes Bob”

Link to list of some tweets
Link to Martino/collusion story
Link to unread Rosenthal column
Link to Rosenthal column tweet
Link to Trout emoji EW episode
Link to Chubs EW episode
Link to Chubs tweets
Link to Chubs explainer
Link to Ben on teen newsbreakers
Link to Defector on Nightengale photos
Link to “Ralph” explainer
Link to “wall of porn” post
Link to Ben on the Castellanos meme
Link to Gmail redesign
Link to 1932 story source
Link to SABR on Cardinals ownership
Link to story about Landis and Rickey
Link to story on Rickey’s farm
Link to Jacob Pomrenke’s website
Link to Jacob Pomrenke on Twitter

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Last Tuesday’s 40-man roster deadline led to the usual squall of transaction activity, with teams turning over portions of their rosters in an effort to make room for the incoming crop of young rookies. Often, teams with an overflow of viable big leaguers will try to get back what they can for some of those players via trade, but because we’re talking about guys straddling the line between major league viability and Triple-A, those trades tend not to be big enough to warrant an entire post. Over the next few days, we’ll endeavor to cover and analyze the moves made by each team, division by division. Readers can view this as the start of list season, as the players covered in this miniseries tend to be prospects who will get big league time in the next year. We’ll spend more time discussing players who we think need scouting updates or who we haven’t written about in the past. If you want additional detail on some of the more famous names you find below, pop over to The Board for a more thorough report.

The Future Value grades littered throughout these posts may be different than those on the 2022 in-season prospect lists on The Board to reflect our updated opinions, and may be subject to change during the offseason. New to our thinking on this subject and wondering what the FVs mean? Here’s a quick rundown. Note that because we’re talking about close-to-the-majors prospects across this entire exercise, the time and risk component is less present here and these FVs are what we think the players are right now. Read the rest of this entry »

If you were waiting for a time when the discussion around the BBWAA’s annual Hall of Fame voting didn’t center around Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling, then I have good news: After 10 years of increasingly polarized debate, they all fell short of the 75% needed for election and have run out of eligibility on the ballot. They’re now candidates on the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot — a problem for another day — but they’re not part of the 28-man slate unveiled by the Hall on Monday. That’s not to say that this ballot is devoid of controversial figures, or that debates about character are a thing of the past, but we can finally move beyond the cast that hit the 2013 ballot and spent 10 years monopolizing discussions and draining some of the fun out of the whole process.

The 2023 ballot doesn’t come without controversy, particularly in relation to the top newcomer, Carlos Beltrán. A nine-time All-Star and three-time Gold Glove winner who racked up 2,745 hits, 435 homers, and 312 steals, he’s got numbers to appease traditionalists, and likewise, he checks the advanced stat boxes by ranking eighth in WAR and ninth in JAWS among center fielders, thanks in no small part to the extra value he provided on the bases and in the field. For all of that, Beltrán is the player most closely identified with the Astros’ illegal sign stealing scandal, less because his own performance benefited (his 2017 season was below replacement level) than because The Athletic’s reporting and commissioner Rob Manfred’s subsequent report placed him at the center of the efforts to decode opposing catchers’ signs using the team’s video replay system.

Whether that is an offense grave enough to cost Beltrán a chance at Cooperstown is a matter for debate; his involvement in the matter already cost him his job as the Mets manager before he oversaw a single game. He returned to baseball this past year as a broadcaster for the YES Network, though no team has considered him for an in-uniform job since he left the Mets. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

It took four position changes — from catcher to first base, then left field, right field, and finally center field — and parts of five major league seasons for the Braves to figure out where the 6-foot-4 Dale Murphy fit. Once they did, they had themselves a franchise centerpiece, a wholesome, milk-drinking superstar whom Sports Illustrated profiled for its July 4, 1983 cover story by proclaiming, “Murphy’s Law is Nice Guys Finish First.”

The title was a reference to the slugger helping the Braves to an NL West title the previous year, their lone playoff appearance during the 1970-90 stretch. “Here’s a guy who doesn’t drink, smoke, chew or cuss,” wrote SI’s Steve Wulf. “Here’s a guy who has time for everyone, a guy who’s slow to anger and eager to please, a guy whose agent’s name is Church. His favorite movie is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. He’s a wonderful ballplayer.” Let the record show that Wulf did unearth some dirt on Murphy, noting that he once got a speeding ticket for doing 35 in a 25-mph zone… while running late to speak to a church group.

Murphy won the first of his back-to-back MVP awards in 1982 as well as the first of his five consecutive Gold Gloves, and made his second of seven All-Star teams. He would spend most of the 1980s as one of the game’s best players. Alas, knee problems turned him into a shadow of the player he once was while he was still in his early 30s, and he played his final game in the majors at age 37. Read the rest of this entry »

While the top of the celebrated free agent shortstop market has yet to roll into motion, the end of last week saw a flurry of action a little lower on the positional power rankings. The Yankees agreed to a one-year, $6 million deal with Isiah Kiner-Falefa, locking up his final season of team control. And as Friday afternoon progressed, four other teams linked up for an exchange of shortstops. A shortswap, if you will.

Gio Urshela went from the Twins to the Angels for 19-year-old pitching prospect Alejandro Hidalgo, Kyle Farmer went from the Reds to the Twins for minor league pitcher Casey Legumina, and Kevin Newman went from the Pirates to the Reds for reliever Dauri Moreta.
Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I contemplated baseball as a carnival game. It gave me great joy because I think there should be more silly games in the world. It also gave me great joy because I got to spend hours watching beautifully located pitches, on a loop, for work. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend trying this yourself – bosses are wild these days – but trust me, it’s really fun.

Another thing I really enjoyed in writing that article was watching batters react to those perfectly placed pitches. One, in particular, stuck with me, so I snuck a piece of it into the piece. Here’s the full clip. In it, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has either just realized he had a huge cryptocurrency position on FTX or been called out on strikes:

I love it. I love it so much. It makes me even happier that he wasn’t right. That was a strike! Everyone loves to think they’ve been wronged. Everyone has their own perspective. Vlad’s perception of the strike zone is surely that it smaller than the actual zone. In this case, the difference between perception and reality led to a delightful expression of disbelief. Read the rest of this entry »

Nolan Jones might be ready to break out in Colorado, and turning 4 o’clock into 7 o’clock is how he would go about doing it. His time in Cleveland over — the Rockies acquired the rangy 6-foot-4 outfielder from the Guardians earlier this week in exchange for Juan Brito — Jones heads west with a swing that is, by his own admission, compact in the cage and too long in the batter’s box. Striking an effective balance between the two is an ongoing goal and a key to his future success.

“I’ve got really long levers, so I’m trying to simplify my moves and make them more efficient,” Jones told me earlier this summer. “Like anybody else, my moves become bigger in the game, and when your limbs are long, a two-inch move in the cage can become a six-inch move. My swings in the cage are those toned-down moves. I’m trying to be shorter to where, when they get bigger in the game, they’re right where I want them to be.”

Reaching his potential has been a frustrating endeavor for the 24-year-old. Selected in the second round of the 2016 draft out of Philadelphia’s Holy Ghost Preparatory School, Jones has ranked as Cleveland’s top prospect multiple times, and he was No. 51 in our Top 100 as recently as the spring of 2021. What has largely held him back is a penchant to swing-and-miss, a trait that accompanied him to the big leagues this season. Along with a .244/.309/.372 slash line over 94 plate appearances, the rookie had a 33% strikeout rate and a worst-on-the-club 71.6% Z-contact rate. Given the Guardians’ preference for hitters who can consistently put the ball in play, Jones no longer fitting into their plans comes as no surprise. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about redefining the MVP award, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s unearthed baseball blogs, Billy Beane’s new role with the A’s, and the Braves’ spinoff from Liberty Media, plus a Past Blast from 1931. Then (30:27) they bring on listener and top-tier Patreon supporter Peter Bonney to discuss his baseball background and answer listener emails about baseball economics and the leaguewide effects of low-spending owners, an open-ended player to be named later, batters weeping intentionally, the art of arbitrary endpoints, PitchCom voice actors, how many MLB games are available via video, a team award for the regular season, how to order umpires by accuracy in the World Series, holistic Hall of Famers, and having to win three straight games to win the World Series.

Audio intro: Night Beats, “Crypt”
Audio interstitial: The Claudettes, “Dozing in the Crypt”
Audio outro: The Mother Hips, “Payroll Peter”

Link to AL MVP results
Link to NL MVP results
Link to The Ringer FTX explainer
Link to Bloomberg on FTX
Link to Milky Eggs on FTX
Link to SBF’s baseball blog posts
Link to SBF’s first post
Link to SBF’s first pitcher-roles post
Link to SBF’s second pitcher-roles post
Link to SBF on fetishization of the old
Link to Dave Cameron’s pitching post
Link to SBF’s 2021 Twitter thread
Link to story on FTX lawsuit
Link to Ohtani/FTX press release
Link to Manfred on FTX
Link to MLBTR on Beane
Link to Liberty Media announcement
Link to Travis Sawchik on the Braves
Link to 1931 story source
Link to SABR on night baseball
Link to Jacob Pomrenke’s website
Link to Jacob Pomrenke on Twitter
Link to Peter’s THT articles
Link to Peter’s umpire presentation
Link to Peter’s Fenway presentation
Link to Peter’s company
Link to Kwan on strikeouts
Link to The Gist on polarization
Link to Sawchik on PitchCom
Link to Pujols homer reel
Link to Dayn on a team award
Link to the Stat Blast song
Link to the EW emails database
Link to Ryan Nelson’s MVP tweet
Link to MLBTR on Bellinger

 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

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