R.J. Dabovich was a strikeout machine in his first professional season. Overpowering the opposition with a two-pitch mix, the 23-year-old right-hander fanned 62, and allowed just 15 hits, in 32-and-a-third innings between High-A Eugene and Double-A Richmond. The 2020 fourth-round pick out of Arizona State University put up those numbers in 31 relief outings, a workload that was truncated by five weeks on the shelf due to a mild back strain. Currently the No. 26 prospect in the San Francisco Giants system, Dabovich represented the Scottsdale Scorpions in Saturday’s Fall Stars Game.

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David Laurila: You had the highest strikeout rate (48.8%) in the minors this year. Are you at all surprised by how dominant you were?

R.J. Dabovich: “I am a little bit. I mean, I’d never really been ‘a strikeout guy.’ At Arizona State, I was a starter in my sophomore year and was like eight or nine Ks per nine. Nothing too crazy. Moving to the bullpen bumped it up a little bit [13.1 per nine], but nothing like it was this year.

“After I got drafted by the Giants, I was given this pitch plan for what they wanted me to do. They said that my K-rate would increase, but I had no idea it would jump like it did. So I definitely surprised myself by how well I executed my plan, the plan they made for me.”

Laurila: How did you end up moving to the bullpen at ASU? Read the rest of this entry »

The Tigers have been going through a prolonged down period. The last season they finished above .500 was 2016, and the intervening years have been brutal — 2021 was the first year where they won even 40% of their games since that ’16 season. This year’s team was full of interesting players, and Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson should be ready soon, but the Tigers still needed a talent infusion if they wanted to compete next year.

Enter Eduardo Rodriguez, a perfect fit for the Tigers. Rodriguez signed a five-year, $77 million deal to join Detroit. He’s the first big signing of the offseason, and the symbolism of the Tigers opening the free agency market as they open their window of contention is fun to think about, even if it’s mainly just a fun fact. The Tigers are coming! Let’s talk about three things in order: what Rodriguez brings to the table, why Detroit wanted a starter, and the particulars of his contract.

First things first: Rodriguez isn’t your average 4.74 ERA starter. He was quite poor in the run prevention department this year, but under the hood, his statistics looked far more enticing. He set a career high in strikeout rate and a career low in walk rate, welcome improvements for a pitcher who was already above average. He made 31 starts, showing no rust after missing all of the 2020 season due to a heart condition. He missed as many bats as ever, surrendered fewer barrels than the average pitcher, and generally looked like a star. Read the rest of this entry »

The National League Rookie of the Year award was announced on Monday evening, with Jonathan India taking the victory with 29 first-place votes. India was Cincinnati’s eighth Rookie of the Year, but the team’s first since Scott Williamson in 1999. That number 29 turned out to be surprisingly important personally as, to my surprise, I was the only one to give Marlins pitcher Trevor Rogers a first-place vote. I expected India to win, but not to take Andrew Baggarly’s spot as the unanimity denier that enraged a fanbase.

Arguing about awards was one of my first baseball-related activities as a teenage stathead in the mid-1990s. Being much younger and slightly more foolish than I am now, it boggled my young mind that someone could think that Mo Vaughn had a better year than Albert Belle, or that Dante Bichette was the second most valuable player in the National League. I mean, someone was wrong on the internet!

Twenty years later, I find myself, through a series of unlikely events, voting on baseball’s year-end awards. In my six years of BBWAA membership, I’ve gotten to vote four times by virtue of being in a local chapter with only about a dozen active members. The years I vote, I usually take most of the entire last weekend of the season to make sure I’ve put my best effort forward at deciphering the season’s results. If someone’s going to ask me to be an expert, I’m going to try to act like one, rather than send off my ballot based on fleeting feelings while sitting in the smallest room of my house.

Any time I vote, I write an article like this, because I believe transparency to be vital; every BBWAA vote, including Hall of Fame votes — the Association proposed this, but the Hall of Fame vetoed it — ought to be open for public scrutiny. I don’t know if I’ve arrived at the “right” answer, if such a thing is possible, but I’ve given the best answer I can that’s consistent with my worldview. That’s my responsibility to the players in question and the fans of those players.

Below, I’ve also thrown in some preliminary ZiPS five-year projections for the players I voted for. Projections were no part of my voting, so consider it a bonus for watching me torture the English language as if it were Cary Elwes on a bathroom floor. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the FanGraphs staff and I previewed the top 50 free agents on this winter’s market. It takes two to tango, though (pending the development of my experimental one-person tango), which means the teams looking for players matter just as much. Over the course of this week, I’ll preview the needs of each team in baseball, starting with the NL and AL East and continuing westward throughout the week.

As much as possible, I’ve tried to be realistic. Yes, the Orioles could sign Carlos Correa, Marcus Semien, Freddie Freeman, Starling Marte, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, and Marcus Stroman in pursuit of a playoff berth next year. They not going to sign even one of those players, though, and I’ve focused on what a team should do given real-world budgets. You won’t see the Rays listed as a landing spot for free agents in the market for $100 million contracts, or anything of that sort. As much as possible, this list is what teams might actually do. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Golden Days Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. It is adapted from a chapter in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For an introduction to the ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Dick Allen

“Dick Allen forced Philadelphia baseball and its fans to come to terms with the racism that existed in this city in the ’60s and ’70s. He may not have done it with the self-discipline or tact of Jackie Robinson, but he exemplified the emerging independence of major league baseball players as well as growing black consciousness.”⁠ — William Kashatus, The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 2, 1996

At first glance, Dick Allen might be viewed as the Gary Sheffield or Albert Belle of his day, a heavy hitter seemingly engaged in a constant battle with the world around him, generating controversy at every stop of his 15-year career. It’s unfair and reductive to lump Allen in with those two players, however, for they all faced different obstacles and bore different scars from the wounds they suffered early in their careers.

In Allen’s case, those wounds predated his 1963 arrival in the majors with a team that was far behind the integration curve, and a city that was in no better shape. In Philadelphia and beyond, he was a polarizing presence, covered by a media contingent so unable or unwilling to relate to him that writers often refused to call him by the name of his choosing: Dick Allen, not Richie. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, veteran reliever Joakim Soria hung up his spikes. In his typically understated fashion, he didn’t so much as announce his retirement as have it done for him, through his agent and a Ken Rosenthal tweet.

Soria was a two-time All-Star. He pitched for nine teams during his 14-year career, racking up 15.4 WAR and 229 saves, alongside a tidy 3.11 earned run average. In his first spell with the Royals, Soria established himself as one of the sport’s premier closers and was a bright spot on several forgettable Kansas City teams. He never quite recaptured that early-career form after an elbow injury in 2012, though he remained a dependable late-inning reliever for most of the last decade.

For all his success, Soria’s unusual path to stardom remains perhaps the most notable part of his career. Born to schoolteachers in Monclova, Soria grew up in Mexico. He signed with Los Angeles as a teenager, but pitched only four times for the Dodgers, all in the AZL back in 2002. After going two seasons without appearing in a game, Los Angeles released Soria in 2004 and he spent all of the 2005 season in the Mexican League. After posting solid but hardly spectacular numbers, San Diego took a flier on him. He only threw 11 innings in Low-A that next summer, though, and the Padres understandably left him off of their 40-man roster. Read the rest of this entry »

Kendall Graveman surprised me with something he said during the ALCS. Talking with the 30-year-old, then-Houston Astros reliever, I learned that it was only recently that he truly learned a breaking ball. As the now-free agent put it, “I didn’t throw one forever, really. I didn’t know how to spin it.”

He spun a lot of good ones during the 2021 season. Throwing more breakers than at any point in his career, Graveman had 61 strikeouts and allowed just 35 hits in 53 relief appearances comprising 56 innings. Toeing the rubber for both the Seattle Mariners and the Astros — he switched teams shortly before the July trade deadline — he logged a 1.77 ERA and a 3.19 FIP. Opponents slashed just .130/.193/.196 against the right-hander’s slider.

Graveman signed a free agent deal with the Mariners in November 2019, six-plus after entering pro ball as Toronto’s eighth-round pick out of Mississippi State University. Why did it take him so long to master the intricacies of such an important facet of his craft?

“Some pitching coaches have a very good understanding of how to teach something, and I ran into some people over in Seattle who taught me how to throw a breaking ball,” said Graveman. “Since when I was young, I would cup out of the hand and that would get me on the outside and not creating good spin. That’s as opposed to throwing it like a fastball. We started taking it out like a fastball and letting the wrist be loose, and started seeing positive signs with the spin.”

I asked the Alexander City, Alabama native if he could elaborate on the adjustment. Read the rest of this entry »