The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. It was initially written for The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books, and subsequently adapted for SI.com and then FanGraphs. 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.

It happened so quickly. Freshly anointed the game’s top prospect by Baseball America in the spring of 1996, the soon-to-be-19-year-old Andruw Jones was sent to play for the Durham Bulls, the Braves’ High-A affiliate. By mid-August, he blazed through the Carolina League, the Double-A Southern League, and the Triple-A International League, and debuted for the defending world champions. By October 20, with just 31 regular season games under his belt, he was a household name, having become the youngest player ever to homer in a World Series game — breaking Mickey Mantle’s record — and doing so twice at Yankee Stadium to boot.

Jones was no flash in the pan. The Braves didn’t win the 1996 World Series, and he didn’t win the ’97 NL Rookie of the Year award, but along with Chipper Jones (no relation) and the big three of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, he became a pillar of a franchise that won a remarkable 14 NL East titles from 1991-2005 (all but the 1994 strike season). From 1998-2007, Jones won 10 straight Gold Gloves, more than any center fielder except Willie Mays. Read the rest of this entry »

Caleb Kilian made giant strides in 2021. Unranked as a San Francisco prospect at season’s start, the 24-year-old right-hander now profiles as one of the most promising arms in the Chicago Cubs system. The NL Central club acquired Kilian, along with outfielder Alexander Canario, in exchange for free-agent-to-be Kris Bryant at the July trade deadline.

The degree to which Kilian stepped up this year is apparent in his numbers. Pitching almost exclusively at the Double-A level, the 2019 eighth-round pick out of Texas Tech University put up a 2.42 ERA while allowing just 75 hits and 13 walks in 101 1/3 innings. Augmenting his signature plus command with increased velocity and an improved pitch mix, he punched out 112 batters.

Kilian’s repertoire revolves around a sinker and a cutter, the latter of which he began developing in the rookie-level Arizona League.

“It was early, almost right when I got there,” explained Kilian, who had pitched in a pair of College World Series with the Red Raiders. “When I got to pro ball, my slider was kind of just a worse curveball, so the Giants recommended a cutter. That way, I’d basically be throwing what felt like a fastball — same arm speed, just a different grip. I supinate with the ball anyway, so by turning it in my hand, it kind of just comes out naturally with cut.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago Cubs. 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 »

Graham Spraker will be available when this year’s lockout-postponed Rule 5 draft is eventually held. The 26-year-old right-hander wasn’t added to the Toronto Blue Jays 40-man roster prior to last month’s deadline. While this was not exactly a surprise — the former 31st-round draft pick out of a DII school has never graced our prospect rankings — Spraker is nonetheless coming off an eye-opening season. In 31 relief outings, all but one of them at Double-A New Hampshire, the erstwhile Quincy University Hawk logged a 2.62 ERA and fanned 65 batters in 46-and-two-thirds innings.

Spraker’s breakout culminated in an award-winning stint in the Arizona Fall League. Pitching for the Mesa Solar Sox, the righty threw 11-and-a-third scoreless innings, allowing just four hits and a pair of walks, with 17 strikeouts. He was named the AFL’s Reliever of the Year at the conclusion of the campaign.

All that aside, just who is Graham Spraker?

“I am who I am,” the righty responded when asked about his pitching M.O. “I’ve changed a lot every year. I’m a pretty adaptable player — that’s why I’ve had success — but I feel that I’ve found a good blueprint now. It’s something I’m going to try to stick to for the rest of my career.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the slow drip of baseball news during the lockout, why MLB’s competitive balance gets a bad rap, the Rays’ historic collective minor league winning percentage, and the difficulty of evaluating individual defense in the age of Statcast-based and non-Statcast-based metrics. Then (33:09) they continue their series of discussions of Korean baseball drama Stove League by breaking down Episodes 9–12. (Note: No spoilers beyond Episode 12.)

Audio intro: Superchunk, "Slow"
Audio outro: Michael Nesmith, "Propinquity (I’ve Just Begun to Care)"

Link to James Smyth’s parity thread
Link to Rob Mains on 2021 parity
Link to Ben on competitive balance
Link to Organization of the Year announcement
Link to story on record Rays winning percentage
Link to story about winning and player dev
Link to best minor league records of the 2010s
Link to story on Astros’ minor league winning
Link to Sam Miller on the best farm systems
Link to FanGraphs farm system rankings
Link to Effectively Wild Secret Santa
Link to The Rumor podcast
Link to first EW Stove League discussion
Link to second EW Stove League discussion
Link to basepaths bubble tunnel photo
Link to Stove League teaser video
Link to Stove League review
Link to stream Stove League via Kocowa
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. Originally written for the 2016 election at SI.com, 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.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance over collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a hard slider learned from teammate Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 800 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA. Read the rest of this entry »

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 Cleveland Guardians.

Batters

The overlying theme here is a state of averageness, and that’s not so bad. For a number of years, Cleveland’s outfield situation has been rather bleak, generally toward the bottom of the league, with little investment to make it better. This is the first time in a while that ZiPS sees some hope there. No, the Guardians didn’t pull a 180 and sign Starling Marte and Michael Conforto, but the likely players manning the outfield have better projections than most of those used out there in recent years. The most notable are Myles Straw and Steven Kwan, both of whom get projections that, in an entire season, put them a skosh above average. ZiPS doesn’t think they likely get any surprise star performances, but it’s a better situation.

The two likely meaningful breakouts in the roster are Nolan Jones and George Valera. ZiPS is happy with the latter’s entrance into the high minors, but there is concern about the former; that ceiling gets a lot lower if he doesn’t improve on 2021 and an unexciting .787 OPS for Triple-A Columbus. One can’t blame the ankle injury that ended Jones’ season, either, which was significant enough that he couldn’t play through it.

The middle infield is a similar story as the outfield. ZiPS sees more upside remaining for Andrés Giménez, and Amed Rosario is far from a problem. First base is a weak spot, with the computer holding out little hope for Bobby Bradley. It was a lot easier to excuse his underwhelming numbers when he was 22, but he’ll be 26 next season, and he didn’t even hit Triple-A pitchers all that convincingly last year. Speaking of players with offense that displeased ZiPS, let’s just say “Austin Hedges” and leave it there.
Read the rest of this entry »

There’s no lockout on the podcast, which means Chin Music keeps going. This week I’m joined by returning co-host C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic and even without much baseball news, we find plenty to talk about. We begin with a non-update on the lockout and discuss how we’ve each gotten a bit more pessimistic about how this thing ends. Next, since the lockout means no Winter Meetings, we instead dip into our memory banks for a few fun stories from Meetings past, while sharing what we miss (and don’t) about the annual event. Finally, as there was Hall of Fame news this week, Jay Jaffe joins the show to discuss the six newly elected inductees, as well as some new faces on this year’s ballot. Then it’s your emails on minor league team purchases, the potential for an international draft, and domain squatting, followed by a few light-hearted and easy-on-the-brain Moments Of Culture.

As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Music by Rid Of Me.

Have a question you’d like answered on the show? Ask us anything at chinmusic@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Warning One: While ostensibly a podcast about baseball, these conversations often veer into other subjects.

Warning Two: There is explicit language.

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