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 »

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 Colorado Rockies.

Batters

If you’ve already seen the Steamer projections that currently make up our depth charts, you’re probably not surprised by the numbers that ZiPS predicts. You may also not be shocked if you’ve seen the Rockies in recent years, a team with an offense that has been buttressed by a couple of MVP candidates every year, now with those MVP candidates removed from the roster or in their decline phases. Steamer has the Colorado lineup a shocking five wins worse than the next-worst team, Cincinnati; the Reds are closer to the 17th-ranked Phillies than the Rockies.

C.J. Cron was an uncharacteristically clever signing by the Rockies. They actually sought out a type of player who may now be undervalued by the market generally: a league-average first baseman. The problem is that league average is still “just” league average, not something that is the foundation of a solid offense. Cron ought to be decent, Ryan McMahon still has some upside left, and Brendan Rodgers is probably the only Rockie with true breakout potential. Outside of these three players, there’s just not much salvageable about the offense, nor any particular reason for optimism about anyone in the minors in 2022 even moving the needle. There have been some genuinely lousy lineups in baseball that ZiPS has projected, but this might be the most depressing of them.
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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 Philadephia Phillies.

Batters

Perhaps there’s a bit of recency bias in play since I just wrote about them, but the Phillies as an organization feel a lot to me like the Angels do. Both have significant high points on their roster: the Angels with Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, and Anthony Rendon, the Phillies with Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto, Aaron Nola, and Zack Wheeler. But both teams share some less desirable qualities: ownership that seems to spend mostly in short bursts; major, obvious holes that go unanswered for years; and an unfortunate lack of reinforcements from the minors.

Entering the 2020 season, the Phillies ranked dead last in our positional rankings in center field. The projection was not far off, as they got a .637 OPS out of the position. They did little to address the problem after 2020, and though they did a better job thwarting the projections than the year before, I doubt anybody seriously thinks Travis Jankowski or Matt Vierling is going to be a great long-term option out there. Odúbel Herrera was already showing decline before his release, and the team has done just about nothing at the position since. In left, Andrew McCutchen was never better than simply a temporary stopgap; now that he’s gone, the Phillies don’t have a better idea. There’s still more of the offseason to come, but as of now, fans should be apprehensive about these two positions.
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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.

Torii Hunter could go get it. Fluid and graceful while patrolling center field, he was renowned for his leaping, acrobatic catches and his willingness to sacrifice his body. He made a strong enough impression upon those who watched him that he won nine Gold Gloves during his 19-year career, more than all but three center fielders, namely Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr., and Andruw Jones. Hunter earned the nickname “Spider-Man” for his ability to climb outfield walls to steal home runs — something he did more than just about anybody else during his career — though one attempt to do so at Fenway Park left him with a broken ankle, and another a concussion.

“I’ll do anything to get that little white ball. I’ll put my life on the line,” Hunter told Sports Illustrated’s Albert Chen in 2005, sounding very much like the football player he was during his high school days in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Hunter rose from difficult circumstances in Pine Bluff, including a father who was addicted to crack cocaine and friends who fell into the dead-end life of drugs, guns, and gangs. His athleticism helped him escape, though when he entered professional baseball as a first-round pick of the Twins in 1993, his talent was more raw than most. Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres announced Bob Melvin’s 2022 coaching staff earlier this week, and the group is at once progressive and diverse. Notable among the new hires is 27-year-old hitting coach Michael Brdar, who comes to San Diego via the San Francisco Giants organization. Asked about him in Zoom session, Melvin — himself a newcomer to the club — told reporters that Brdar “Talks a language that I don’t talk; he talks the language that younger hitters are talking now.”

Clarifying that he does “talk it a little bit,” the 60-year-old, three-time Manager of the Year went on to say that “You need to be able reach these guys and speak their language.”

Following up on the question posed by MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell, I asked Melvin how much the hiring process has changed since he first joined the managerial ranks in 2003.

“I came here from Oakland, where we did everything pretty much in-house,” said Melvin, whose 11-year tenure with the A’s followed managerial stints in Seattle and Arizona. “We would look in-house to begin with; that was just kind of how the organization flowed. This was a little bit of a different process, knowing we were probably going to bring some guys in from the outside. We wanted it to be diverse in age, we wanted it to be diverse in thinking. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the holiday season. Maybe you are traveling (stay safe), maybe you just need a break from your family. Either way, the always wonderful Jon Tayler and I will try to help get you through it with a brief (for us, at least) holiday mailbag edition of Chin Music. We talk about Twitter weirdos, MLB mailing lists, the risks of tanking, the 2013 draft, the Angels, name mispellings [sic], space travel and oh so much more. As always, we hope you enjoy, and wish you all a safe and lovely holiday season.

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

Warning Two: There is explicit language.

Run Time: 1:13:46

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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.

As I continue to play catch-up with my coverage with the holidays approaching, it makes sense to take a fresh look at a trio of pitchers who have done just enough to remain on the ballot. Mark Buehrle, Tim Hudson, and Andy Pettitte all cleared the 200-win mark during their exceptional careers while producing some big moments and playing significant roles on championship-winning teams, but none ever won Cy Young awards, produced much black ink, or dominated in the ways that we expect Hall-caliber hurlers to do. When Buehrle and Hudson debuted last year, I was skeptical that they would even clear 5% and retain their eligibility, but with the ballot traffic having thinned out, enough voters — particularly those on ballots that went unpublished — found room for them to do so, though the results were hardly resounding. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 954

This week on FanGraphs Audio, David Laurila is joined by Jill Gearin, radio voice of the Visalia Rawhide.

David and Jill discuss adjusting to broadcasting in the Arizona Fall League, interning in the Red Sox radio booth, and the occasional challenges of broadcasting solo from the press box with only your own eyes for aid. We also hear what it was like to cover a Visalia team that went from first to worst, as well as anecdotes about some of the fun minor league promotions they get up to in cattle country.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 28 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 Angels.

Batters

The good news: the Los Angeles Angels have Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. The bad news: the Los Angeles Angels play a sport where you have to give almost as many shots to Luc Longley and Stacey King as Jordan and Pippen. The Angels are a very star-driven team, and if something terrible happens to a star or two, it’s going to be hard to eke out first place in a division with four plausible contenders. If you can ensure that Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Anthony Rendon, and Noah Syndergaard all have full, healthy seasons, I think this is the team that can make the Astros sweat the most this summer. If not, I think the Angels’ playoff relevance will be on life support by the trade deadline. That is, assuming that Rob Manfred’s dystopian fever dream of every mediocre club getting a chance to knock off a 100-win team in the postseason by winning two of three games comes to pass. Read the rest of this entry »