The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 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.

If Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time, then the same goes for Barry Bonds as the greatest position player. Babe Ruth played in a time before integration, and Ted Williams bridged the pre- and post-integration eras, but while both were dominant at the plate, neither was much to write home about on the base paths or in the field. Bonds’ godfather, Willie Mays, was a big plus in both of those areas, but he didn’t dominate opposing pitchers to the same extent. Bonds used his blend of speed, power, and surgical precision in the strike zone to outdo them all. He set the single-season home run record with 73 in 2001 and the all-time home run record with 762, reached base more often than any player this side of Pete Rose, and won a record seven MVP awards along the way.

Despite his claim to greatness, Bonds may have inspired more fear and loathing than any ballplayer in modern history. Fear because opposing pitchers and managers simply refused to engage him at his peak, intentionally walking him a record 688 times — once with the bases loaded — and giving him a free pass a total of 2,558 times, also a record. Loathing because even as a young player, he rubbed teammates and media the wrong way (occasionally, even his manager) and approached the game with a chip on his shoulder because of the way his father, three-time All-Star Bobby Bonds, had been driven from the game due to alcoholism. The younger Bonds had his own issues off the field, as allegations of physical and verbal abuse of his domestic partners surfaced during his career.

As he aged, media and fans turned against Bonds once evidence — most of it illegally leaked to the press by anonymous sources — mounted that he had used performance-enhancing drugs during the latter part of his career. With his name in the headlines more regarding his legal situation than his on-field exploits, his pursuit and eclipse of Hank Aaron’s 33-year-old home run record turned into a joyless drag, and he disappeared from the majors soon after breaking the record in 2007 despite ranking among the game’s most dangerous hitters even at age 43. Not until 2014 did he even debut as a spring training guest instructor for the Giants. The reversal of his felony obstruction of justice conviction in April 2015 freed him of legal hassles, and he spent the ’16 season as the Marlins’ hitting coach, though he was dismissed at season’s end.

Bonds is hardly alone among Hall of Fame candidates with links to PEDs. As with Clemens, the support he has received during his first eight election cycles has been far short of unanimous, but significantly stronger than the showings of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro, either in their ballot debuts or since. Debuting at 36.2% in 2013, Bonds spun his wheels for two years before climbing to 44.3% in ’16 and 53.8% in ’17 thanks to a confluence of factors. In the wake of both Bonds and Clemens crossing the historically significant 50% threshold, the Hall — which in 2014 unilaterally truncated candidacies from 15 years to 10 so as to curtail debate over the PED-linked ones — made its strongest statement yet in the form of a plea to voters from vice chairman Joe Morgan not to honor players connected to steroids. The letter was not well received by voters, but in the three cycles since, Bonds has gained just 6.9 percentage points. As with Clemens, the resistance may be too entrenched for him to reach 75% before his eligibility runs out with the 2022 ballot.

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Episode 901

On this week’s episode of FanGraphs Audio, the gang looks ahead to the new minor league landscape set for 2021 before looking back and considering an alternate Hall of Fame timeline.

• To lead things off, Ben Clemens and Meg Rowley discuss their recent research on the reimagined minor leagues. How many people are expected to lose access to affordable, in-person baseball, and what exactly does that mean? [1:54]
• After that, Eric Longenhagen offers a thought experiment: What if Jay Jaffe had been solely in charge of Hall of Fame voting in recent years? Some induction choices would obviously have gone differently, but Eric and Jay find that the rolling ballot has real effects on later classes — in this hypothetical scenario as well as in actual history. [27:54]

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Let’s talk a little bit about outrage. How would you feel if you were Edwin Rios and this happened to you?

Outraged is the way I’d feel. Come on! There’s nothing about that pitch that says strike. 4,356 pitches were thrown over the plate and within an inch up or down from that one, and none of the other 4,355 were called strikes. This call is outrageous! It’s unfair.

Sadly, I’m not Jeff Sullivan, so I’m not going to do a post about the worst called balls and strikes of 2020. I wanted to start with that pitch as an appetizer, though, because I do enjoy the genre of “pitch that shouldn’t be a strike gets called a strike.” But forget quality — it’s overrated. Let’s focus on quantity instead.

On September 9, Tyler Anderson threw 100 pitches. He received a whopping 22 called strikes — not too shabby! It was his second-best mark of the year in games where he threw at least 50 pitches. Here’s the real kicker — 12 of those 22 weren’t in the strike zone.

Let’s look at one of those to set the stage. Here’s a pitch that got Dylan Moore looking for a strikeout:

Wait, is that haze in the background? Indeed it is — this game was played under a wildfire-induced haze. No, it’s not that Mariners game against a Bay Area club that was impacted by wildfires — you’re thinking of the Oakland-Seattle clash on September 14, a doubleheader played in and under smoky skies. It’s also not that Mariners game against a bay Area club that was played in San Francisco — you’re thinking of the September 15 decision to relocate the A’s/Mariners tilt to California to avoid the unhealthy Seattle air. 2020 sure was a doozy. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago White Sox. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been altered begin by telling you so. For the others, the blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside the org than within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there. Lastly, in effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both in lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

Editor’s Note: Yoelqui Cespedes and Norge Vera were added to this list after they agreed to deals with the White Sox on January 15.

The year 2020 has not been filled with good news as far as baseball is concerned, but on Wednesday, some arrived. After lengthy study, Major League Baseball announced that it will officially recognize seven professional Negro Leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948 as major leagues. For as overdue as the decision is, it’s first and foremost an official acknowledgement — as if one was needed — that the baseball played in those leagues at a time when MLB’s shameful color line was in effect was of comparable quality.

“In the minds of baseball fans worldwide, this serves as historical validation for those who had been shunned from the Major Leagues and had the foresight and courage to create their own league that helped change the game and our country too,” said Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, via MLB’s press release. “This acknowledgement is a meritorious nod to the courageous owners and players who helped build this exceptional enterprise and shines a welcomed spotlight on the immense talent that called the Negro Leagues home.”

Accordingly, the move will make the statistics and accomplishments of some 3,400 players part of the major league record, meaning that it has the potential to alter familiar career totals, slash stats, and distinctions, some of which will inevitably make their way into Hall of Fame deliberations.

The decision is the culmination of MLB’s centennial celebration of the founding of the Negro Leagues — specifically, the point when Rube Foster and seven other owners of independent Black baseball teams banded together to form the first Negro National League, “the first successful, organized professional Black Baseball League that provided a playing field for African-American and Hispanic baseball players to showcase their world-class baseball abilities,” to use the NLBM’s description.

The centennial, which included festivities on August 16 where players, coaches, managers, and umpires wore a special Negro Leagues 100th anniversary logo patch on their uniforms, took place against the backdrop of the widespread protests against police brutality and structural racism that followed in the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Those protests have spurred changes that have included the retirement of corporate names and logos based on racial stereotypes, an effort that spilled over into the sports sphere via commitments to rename the NFL’s Washington franchise and MLB’s Cleveland team, which have made for some bumpy rides, to say the least. Read the rest of this entry »

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The offseason remains slow, but the reliever market saw some moves this week, with a trio of free agents scoring new contracts. Greg Holland signed a one-year, $2.75 million deal to come back to the Royals, who continue to act aggressively this winter. Former Brewers lefty Alex Claudio signed a one-year, $1.25 million commitment to join the Angels, who recently traded for closer Raisel Iglesias. And speaking of the Angels, Keynan Middleton signed a one-year contract with the Mariners, who also added Rafael Montero via a trade with Texas this week.

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