Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss Ben’s decision regarding his Hall of Fame ballot, and how to handle Hall of Fame voting in the future. Then (38:05) they complete their series of discussions of Korean baseball drama Stove League by breaking down the last four episodes (13-16) and reflecting on the series as a whole.

Audio intro: Blood Red Shoes, “Count Me Out”
Audio outro: Sloan, “Your Dreams Have Come True”

Link to latest HoF election projection
Link to 2016 Ortiz comments
Link to 2020 Ortiz story
Link to first EW Stove League discussion
Link to second EW Stove League discussion
Link to third EW Stove League discussion
Link to Pengsoo Wikipedia page
Link to stream Stove League via Viki

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In 2021, I once again had an opportunity to interview numerous people within baseball. Many of their words were shared in my Sunday Notes column, while others came courtesy of the Talks Hitting series, the Learning and Developing a Pitch series, and an assortment of Q&As and feature stories. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations, with the bolded lines linking to the pieces they were excerpted from.

———

“I knew that I had a high BABIP, but I had no idea it was the highest in history. Once he told me, it wasn’t like I was coming back to the dugout thinking, ‘Man, I think I’m having some bad luck.’ It was actually on paper, as a stat.” — Mitch Keller, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher, January 2021

“Always trying to hit the ball way out in front is a recipe for a lot of strikeouts. Yeah, you’re going to hit some home runs, but you’re so susceptible to being pitched to that you limit the times in a game that you can truly do damage. You’re limited to the type of pitchers you can hit and the type of pitches you can hit.” — Dave Magadan, Colorado Rockies hitting coach, January 2021

“The guy that probably had the most power was actually Dean Palmer. He could hit a baseball a long ways. But Cecil… what he did was just incredible. And a lot of my home runs were with the bases empty, because I usually hit behind him, and he’d cleared them all. I hit with the bases empty a lot.” — Mickey Tettleton, 1980s-1990s slugger, January 2021

“An individual with a much lower spin rate, but a spin direction closer to 12:00 — high spin efficiency/active spin — can achieve significantly higher vertical break values than an individual who generates a much higher spin rate, but a spin direction further from 12:00.” — Eric Jagers, Cincinnati Reds assistant pitching coach, January 2021 Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the retirement of Kyle Seager and the lockout implications of a recent report about player payrolls, then discuss an assortment of listener-nominated, team-centric topics that they had previously overlooked on the podcast in 2021.

Audio intro: Spooky Tooth, “Kyle”
Audio outro: Hockey Dad, “I Missed Out”

Link to list of most HR in final season
Link to Seager ovation video
Link to payroll report
Link to story about Ryu and Manoah
Link to Korean story on Ryu and Manoah
Link to Blooper/Duvall video
Link to more Blooper/Duvall videos
Link to Romine/Romine story
Link to Casali story
Link to second Casali story
Link to Flexen story
Link to Lindor/McNeil report
Link to Zimmerman ovation video
Link to story on Harrison’s taunting
Link to Suárez FanGraphs post
Link to story on Cruz callup
Link to Cruz highlights video
Link to Mauer/Morneau hockey video
Link to FanGraphs post on Robert
Link to stream Stove League via Viki

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. 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.

The irony of graduating from being a virtual Hall of Fame voter to an actual one at this particular point in time has not been lost on me. Last year, my first as a voter but my 20th as an analyst, 18th while armed with the system that became JAWS, and 11th as a member of the BBWAA, featured a comparatively mediocre crop of first-year candidates, a few shocking discoveries about popular holdovers, and a whole lot of polarizing debate. The end result was the voters’ first shutout since the 2013 ballot. Talk about an anticlimax!

As I noted at the outset of this year’s election cycle, the possibility of another shutout has loomed large, and the arrivals of David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez just as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa reached their final year of eligibility guaranteed that everyone’s favorite topic, performance-enhancing drugs, would remain at the forefront of discussion, not only during this election cycle, but so long as A-Rod remains on the ballot. See you in 2032? Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 955

This week, we get stories from a baseball lifer before a casual chat about some teams that could use a little help.

• At the top of the show, David Laurila welcomes Manny Acta, former major league manager, current third base coach for the Mariners, and founder of the impACTA Kids charity foundation. David asks Acta about growing up in the Dominican Republic and dreaming of becoming a ballplayer, and what coming to the United States at a young age was like. We also hear personal stories about baseball greats like Billy Wagner, Tuffy Rhodes, Brad Lidge, Roy Oswalt, Tim Redding, and Frank Robinson. [2:39]
• After that, Dan Szymborski and Ben Clemens discuss the Phillies and the Angels, two clubs with promise if they can fill some holes. Dan and Ben discuss those teams’ lopsided outfields and some free agent pitchers who could help them, as well as the Cardinals’ own impressive outfield. The conversation then shifts to Tyler O’Neill hitting the ball very hard, free agent Carlos Martínez, and players who felt like they should have hit for more power than they eventually did. [36:17]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 57 minute play time.)

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Batters

What can you say about the Dodgers? Most of the lineup from last year is returning, and most of that lineup is very, very good. That a 106-win season can feel slightly disappointing comes down to how the San Francisco Giants played rather than how the Dodgers did. The projected lineup ranges from average to MVP-worthy, with no apparent holes.

Thanks to the trade that brought Trea Turner to LA, the question of what to do at shortstop over the long haul was put off for another year. The Dodgers didn’t really seem to make any kind of a big push to bring back Corey Seager, but that’s a testament to just how awesome Turner is. There are only two shortstops in baseball I’d rather have on a long-term contract: Fernando Tatis Jr., and Wander Franco. Suffice it to say, the Dodgers do not — and will not — have access to either of those two young stars. Even in the worst-case scenario, though, a Turner departure after 2022 would result in the team temporarily having a Chris Taylor–Gavin Lux middle infield. That’s still likely a roughly average pair, not a major disaster. Read the rest of this entry »

Joey Wiemer began tapping into his tools this year. Explosive but raw coming into his first full professional season, the 2020 fourth-round pick out of the University of Cincinnati slashed .293/.403/.556 and went deep 27 times in 472 plate appearances between Low-A Carolina and High-A Wisconsin. Moreover, he belied his 6-foot-5, 230-pound frame by swiping 30 bases in 36 attempts. It came as little surprise when the Milwaukee Brewers named the 22-year-old outfielder their 2021 Minor League Player of the Year.

Wiemer — No. 2 on our just released Brewers Top Prospects list — discussed his breakout in the penultimate week of the Arizona Fall League season, where he was playing for the Salt River Rafters.

———

David Laurila: You exceeded most expectations in your first professional season. What changes have you made as a hitter?

Joey Wiemer: “A lot of it has been cutting down on my head movement and getting lower in my stance. My thought process was mostly the same. Swing-wise, my hands… I’m really athletic when I hit, so I’m trying to think mechanically, as opposed to just competing. That’s in my cage work. In the game, it’s about trusting what I do in the cage.”

Laurila: Can you elaborate on your stance?

Wiemer: “I’m lower and more widened out, with more of a toe-tap as opposed to the big leg kick I used to have. I started working on that in independent ball, during the 2020 season. I went out and played some indie ball so I could get some live ABs, get some reads, to really feel that change. And honestly, my swing is quicker now than it was at the start of this year. I have more hand movement, preload. I feel like everything is more direct now.”

Laurila: Whose suggestion was it get wider? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Milwaukee Brewers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about their holidays, how the omicron variant is affecting sports and personal decisions, and how analyzing COVID case counts is (kind of) akin to analyzing baseball stats, discuss the pace and prominence of signings of former major leaguers by KBO and NPB teams, the results of 2021 interleague play, and Shohei Ohtani’s showing in a New York Times quiz about notable people from this year, and answer listener emails about minor league signings during the lockout, Ohtani’s Hall of Fame chances, redrafting Derek Jeter or Ichiro Suzuki, and an evolving Hall of Fame, plus a Stat Blast (1:22:30) about how long it took for every player from given MLB games to leave the league for good.

Audio intro: Vince Guaraldi, “The Great Pumpkin Waltz”
Audio outro: John Williams, “Duel of the Fates”

Link to Will Leitch on omicron and sports
Link to thread on omicron and boosters
Link to story on the week after Christmas
Link to MLBTR’s KBO posts
Link to MLBTR’s NPB posts
Link to Phantom Menace duel video
Link to Tom Tango’s league quality post
Link to year-by-year interleague records
Link to Russell Carleton on interleague records
Link to Rob Mains on interleague records
Link to Rob on NL DHs in 2022
Link to 2016 interleague roundtable podcast
Link to NYT notable people quiz
Link to Ohtani’s AP award
Link to story on Astros drafting Jeter
Link to Ichiro’s high school hitting appearance
Link to Ichiro’s high school pitching appearance
Link to Stat Blast inspiration thread
Link to 2014 Stat Blast game
Link to 2013 Stat Blast game
Link to 1945 Stat Blast game
Link to 1906 Stat Blast game
Link to 2009 Stat Blast game
Link to Drake LaRoche retrospective
Link to 2006 Stat Blast game
Link to 1949 Stat Blast game
Link to stream Stove League via Viki

 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
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 Twitter Account
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 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

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

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. 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.

More so than Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, or Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez is the poster child for the era of performance-enhancing drugs within baseball. Considered “an almost perfect prospect” given his combination of power, speed, defense, and work ethic, the 6-foot-3 shortstop was chosen by the Mariners with the first pick of the 1993 draft, and reached the majors before his 19th birthday. In short order, he went on to produce unprecedented power for the position via six straight seasons of at least 40 homers, two with at least 50, and three league leads. Along the way, he signed a 10-year, $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers in January 2001, at that point the largest guaranteed contract in professional sports history.

In a major league career that spanned from 1994 to 2016, Rodriguez made 14 All-Star teams, won three MVP awards and two Gold Gloves, and became just the fifth player to reach the twin plateaus of 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, after Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Eddie Murray, and Rafael Palmeiro. Along the way, he helped his teams to 12 postseason appearances, but only one championship. Though he sparkled at times in the postseason, he also went into some notorious slumps that only furthered the drama that surrounded him.

Always with the drama! Rodriguez’s combination of youthful charisma, success, and money magnified his every move, and his insecurities and inability to read the room guaranteed further tumult the more intense things got. Because of his proximity to Derek Jeter, first as a friendly rival within a trinity of great young shortstops that also included Nomar Garciaparra, and then as a teammate once the Yankees became the only club that could afford his contract, Rodriguez became an easy target for tabloid-style sensationalism long before he dated Madonna and Jennifer Lopez. His inability to get out of his own way only intensified once he got to New York, even before his PED-related misdeeds put him in the crosshairs. Read the rest of this entry »