The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 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.

At a moment when baseball is so obsessed with velocity, it’s remarkable to remember how recently it was that a pitcher could thrive, year in and year out, despite averaging in the 85-87 mph range with his fastball. Yet thats exactly what Mark Buehrle did over the course of his 16-year career. Listed at 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, the burly Buehrle was the epitome of the crafty lefty, an ultra-durable workhorse who didn’t dominate but who worked quickly, used a variety of pitches — four-seamer, sinker, cutter, curve, changeup — moving a variety of directions to pound the strike zone, and relied on his fielders to make the plays behind him. From 2001-14, he annually reached the 30-start and 200-inning plateaus, and he barely missed on the latter front in his final season.

August Fagerstrom summed up Buehrle so well in his 2016 appreciation that I can’t resist sharing a good chunk:

The way Buehrle succeeded was unique, of course. He got his ground balls, but he wasn’t the best at getting ground balls. He limited walks, but he wasn’t the best a limiting walks. He generated soft contact, but he wasn’t the best at generating soft contact. Buehrle simply avoided damage with his sub-90 mph fastball by throwing strikes while simultaneously avoiding the middle of the plate:

That’s Buehrle’s entire career during the PITCHf/x era, and it’s something of a remarkable graphic. You see Buehrle living on the first-base edge of the zone, making sure to keep his pitches low, while also being able to spot the same pitch on the opposite side of the zone, for the most part avoiding the heart of the plate. Buehrle’s retained the ability to pitch this way until the end; just last year [2015], he led all of baseball in the percentage of pitches located on the horizontal edges of the plate.

Drafted and developed by the White Sox — practically plucked from obscurity, at that — Buehrle spent 12 of his 16 seasons on the South Side, making four All-Star teams and helping Chicago to three postseason appearances, including its 2005 World Series win, which broke the franchise’s 88-year championship drought. While with the White Sox, he became just the second pitcher in franchise history to throw multiple no-hitters, first doing so in 2007 against the Rangers and then adding a perfect game in 2009 against the Rays. After his time in Chicago, he spent a sour season with the newly-rebranded Miami Marlins, and when that predictably melted down spent three years with the Blue Jays, helping them reach the playoffs for the first time in 22 years.

Though Buehrle reached the 200-win plateau in his final season, he was just 36 years old when he hung up his spikes, preventing him from more fully padding his counting stats or framing his case for Cooperstown in the best light. A closer look suggests that beyond the superficial numbers, while he’s the equal or better of several enshrined pitchers according to WAR and JAWS, he’s far off the standards, and doesn’t have the peripheral collection of accomplishments to bolster his candidacy. Like Tim Hudson, he may receive a smattering of support on a ballot that’s hardly crowded, but his candidacy isn’t likely to lack staying power. Read the rest of this entry »

I have the honor of casting a Hall of Fame ballot for the first time this year. Jay Jaffe does as well, each of us having joined the BBWAA in 2010 while colleagues at Baseball Prospectus. A decade later — and in Jay’s case, countless words written on the subject at hand — we are the first FanGraphs writers to be granted voting privileges.

I’m sharing my ballot in this column, but before doing so, it’s only appropriate that I tip my hat to my fellow first-time voter. As most everyone reading this knows, Jay’s JAWS system is invaluable when assessing Hall of Fame credentials, as is his must-read Cooperstown Casebook. Given his extensive research and analysis, there may not be a greater authority on the subject.

That being said, the question of what defines a Hall of Famer is inherently subjective. Following Ryan Thibodaux’s Ballot Tracker will tell you as much. With barely over a dozen made public, we’ve already seen ballots with 10 checkmarks, while others have been left blank. As a “Big Hall” guy, I’m clearly not in accord with the latter camp.

Jay and I disagree on at least one player. Barring an earth-shaking surprise, Omar Vizquel won’t get his vote. Conversely, the iconic-yet-polarizing shortstop was a no-brainer for me. The first names I checked on my ballot were Vizquel and Scott Rolen. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley talk to FanGraphs’ Craig Edwards and Eric Longenhagen about MLB’s approaching non-tender deadline, why a number of prominent players may not be offered contracts, the effect a non-tender deluge might have on the free agent market, how slowly this free agent market might move, whether owners’ claims of financial hardship should be believed, MLB’s offseason vs. the NBA and NFL offseasons, whether there’s a way to speed up MLB’s winter activity, whether the MLBPA should consider a salary cap (and floor), the tantalizing talent of Ha-seong Kim, the challenge of ranking prospects in 2020, and more.

Audio intro: First Aid Kit, "Tender Offerings"
Audio outro: Frank Sinatra, "(Love Is) The Tender Trap"

Link to FanGraphs’ top 50 free agents ranking
Link to Eric on the coming deluge of non-tenders
Link to Eric’s team-by-team non-tender predictions
Link to Craig’s crowdsourcing non-tenders post
Link to Craig on Sánchez
Link to Dan Szymborski on Kim
Link to Syndergaard’s tweet
Link to Ben on the uncertain offseason
Link to Tinkers baseball passage
Link to EW Secret Santa

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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 nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Colorado Rockies.

Batters

This is one of the worst teams in the majors — certainly the worst that seems blissfully unaware of that fact. The Rockies have two position players they can count on to be good, and one of them, Nolan Arenado, is no guarantee to start the 2021 season with Colorado. Even after a weak 60-game stretch in a year everyone would like to forget, if the Rockies do shop Arenado, they will get significant interest in the market. But would they actually close a deal? I’m not sure they will be realistic about the effect his contract and the unknown of an opt-out will have on trade offers. Regardless, ZiPS expects a bounceback season as he continues to make his mid-career Hall of Fame case.

If the Rockies do trade Arenado — and maybe even if they don’t — it would be hard for them to avoid trading Trevor Story if they actually do go for a full-on rebuild. Colorado has had poor fortune with some of its top offensive prospects, but Story has been one of the best kinds of surprises: a player who got far less press as a prospect than others in the organization (despite being a high draft pick) but kept hitting as he went up the ladder, got to the majors first and left the competition scrambling to find other positions. One of those players, Brendan Rodgers, is at risk of going the way of Ryan McMahon, in that he’s done everything he could in the minors to earn a chance in the majors only to find the team casually disinterested in distributing the necessary playing time.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2020 playoffs were contested by the largest playoff field in MLB history. While the expanded tournament certainly felt like an oddity, in the context of a shortened season, the format was tolerable for both fans and executives. The sabermetrically inclined readily conceded that a 60-game sample was insufficient to separate contenders from pretenders, all seamheads got to enjoy a few more games in a year with too few of them, and owners made more money. In a difficult situation, an imperfect solution proved a surprisingly elegant way to give everyone something they wanted.

The question is whether that format is here to stay.

One the one hand, you can understand why the league and its owners will be tempted to chase profits and advocate for the expanded field going forward. Per Sportico, the extra games this fall netted MLB an additional $100 million – $4.5 million per contest. Collectively, owners made less money than usual in 2020 and this is not a group that suffers rainy years with any equanimity. The prospect of another fanless season has the billionaire class antsy.

But while an expanded field worked in a pandemic-riddled season, my sense is that most — though obviously not all — fans don’t really want it to stay. A September column in the Washington Post titled “If baseball keeps these grotesque expanded playoffs, it will have lost its soul” is probably overstating things but there’s a sizable number of baseball fans who are very turned off by the idea. If nothing else, the lousy ratings from the early-round games suggests that Americans are hardly banging on the table for a 16-team dance. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2017, Christian Yelich finished his last season as a Miami Marlin with a 117 wRC+. That figure, along with the help of his owner-friendly contract, was enough to make him a highly sought-after trade chip — valuable enough for Milwaukee to send the then-No. 13, No. 52, and No. 87 prospects in baseball to acquire his services. Yelich was widely recognized as an excellent baserunner and at least a passable defensive outfielder. But the Brewers were acquiring him for his bat, and they felt his offense from the previous season helped justify the price they were paying.

Fast forward three years, and there are a different set of expectations for Yelich. This winter, he’s coming off a season which he finished with a 112 wRC+, not far from that final season in Miami. But after back-to-back seasons in which he posted a 170 wRC+ and 15.4 WAR — both tops in the National League in that timeframe — and finished in the top two in the MVP voting, that number now looks like a disappointment. There were some positive aspects of his 2020: He walked more than 18% of the time, and while his .225 ISO was below the standard he’d set in his previous two seasons, it still leads all of his Marlins seasons by a substantial margin. But while that helped him maintain an above-average wOBA, they obfuscate a season full of bizarre and unexpected developments for the 28-year-old outfielder.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s often said that there are no bad one-year deals, and the Braves have made a particular habit of using them to augment their young rotations — a habit that predates Alex Anthopoulos’ arrival as their general manager. After a season in which they fell one win short of their first trip to the World Series since 1999 despite a rotation thinned out by major injuries, the Braves have been been aggressive in pursuing that short-term approach. After signing Drew Smyly to a one-year contract last week, they’ve inked Charlie Morton to a one-year, $15 million deal, the same amount of money he would have been paid in 2021 had the Rays not declined his option in late October. Though a quirk of timing caused him to miss inclusion in our Top 50 Free Agents list, he’s the first major free agent to come off the board.

Morton, who turned 37 on November 12, is coming off a regular season in which he was limited to nine starts and 38 innings due to a bout of shoulder inflammation that sidelined him for three weeks in August. The Rays kept him on a short leash, but as the postseason reminded the baseball world, that’s how they roll. Morton pitched more than five innings just once (5.2 on August 4 against the Red Sox), and he topped 90 pitches just three times, maxing out at 94. He was used similarly in the postseason, and looked quite good, particularly in a pair of scoreless starts against the Astros in the ALCS; he threw five innings and 96 pitches in Game 2, then an ultra-efficient 5.2 innings while allowing just two hits on 66 pitches in Game 7. His removal while cruising along in that latter game foreshadowed manager Kevin Cash’s ill-fated decision to pull Blake Snell in Game 6 of the World Series, though in Morton’s case things turned out in the Rays’ favor. His lone postseason dud came in Game 3, when the Dodgers roughed him up for five runs in 4.1 innings.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here at FanGraphs, we devote a lot of time to analyzing baseball. I flatter myself to think that our analysis, in some cases, helps shape the way you consume the sport. Measured in that way, however, we fall far short of the influence that your local broadcast of choice exerts. We may grace your brainwaves for a handful of minutes every day, but every time you watch a game on TV, the announcers are granted three hours to shape your view and enjoyment of the sport.

In fact, I would venture that no one group contributes more to your enjoyment and understanding of baseball than your most frequently-viewed broadcast crew. Despite that, it has been over four years since we last compiled a ranking of broadcast groups. Starting Monday and continuing until today, we will post a series of surveys, one for each major league franchise. We will then use the results of these surveys to compile a comprehensive fan-based ranking of all television broadcast crews.

When you peruse the section for your team or teams of choice, you will find a link to a poll. That poll covers three categories, as well as an overall ranking. In addition, there is a separate space for any additional comments you would like to make. The eventual ranking of broadcast teams will be quantitative, but I will include relevant comments from this section in my writing of those rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

The legend of Steve Dalkowski is well known. Arguably the most famous player to never reach the big leagues, the Connecticut-born left-hander is said to have thrown harder than anyone alive… and he had little idea where the ball was going. Pitching primarily in the Baltimore Orioles organization, Dalkowski walked 1,236 batters — and fanned 1,324 — in 956 minor-league innings. His star-crossed career, which spanned the 1957-1965 seasons, inspired the “Bull Durham” character Nuke LaLoosh.

Dalkowski died this past April, and a handful of months later a biography of his roller-coaster baseball life was published: Dalko: The Untold Story of Baseball’s Fastest Pitcher, by Bill Dembski, Alex Thomas, and Brian Vikander. In late October, Vikander — a longtime pitching coach with expertise in both biomechanics and mental skills — was a guest on Justin McGuire’s always-insightful Baseball by the Book podcast. What I heard prompted this interview, which was conducted over the phone last week.

———

David Laurila: How hard did Steve Dalkowski throw?

Brian Vikander: “In my opinion, he threw over 110 mph. I base that on a couple of things. The first is that there’s not one individual — not one — who has ever come forward and said that he was not the hardest thrower, the biggest arm, in the history of baseball. You’ve got guys who saw ‘Rapid Robert’ Feller, Ryne Duren, Rex Barney, Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax…and everybody says it was Dalko. You can debate 2-10 in any fashion that you want, but he’s No. 1. Hall of Famers said it. Earl Weaver said it. Pat Gillick said it.”

Laurila: A lot of people reading this are going to think, “That’s anecdotal; where is the proof?” They’re going to doubt that Dalkowski ever threw that hard.

Vikander: “Well, right now we’ve got 108.1 on Nolan Ryan’s release point on a fastball, so we’re asking people, credibly, to give us two miles an hour. That’s not that big a stretch. I went down to ASMI, in Birmingham, Alabama — they are the consultants for Major League Baseball on all things kinematic in the sequencing and energy production for arms — and spent a few days. I was with seven PhDs from MIT, and they were all telling me that I don’t know what I’m talking about. But then on the third day, everybody came around. They said, ‘That theory that you have proposed, Brian, doesn’t guarantee anything, but it does put forward the possibility that this guy could have been in that rare air and actually done it.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest head-scratching Scott Boras quote, a disheartening Shohei Ohtani interview and Ohtani’s two-way future, Charlie Morton leaving the Rays to sign with the Braves, and the items from the 2020 season preserved by the Hall of Fame, then (28:06) talk to Ema Ryan Yamazaki, director of the documentary Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams, about the history and significance of Japan’s Koshien high school baseball tournament, the legends Koshien creates, the cultural conflict over coaching in high school baseball, the abuse of amateur players, how Ema chose her subjects, how Ichiro Suzuki influenced her career, the cancellation of Koshien in 2020, the contrast in the pandemic responses of Japan and the United States, and the future of Koshien.

Audio intro: Metronomy, "Reservoir"
Audio interstitial: The Strokes, "I Can’t Win"
Audio outro: PUP, "Reservoir"

Link to article with Boras quote
Link to Ohtani interview
Link to newsletter with Hall of Fame items
Link to Koshien screening info
Link to rent Koshien
Link to Koshien trailer
Link to Japan Times review of Koshien
Link to Ema’s website
Link to 2013 piece on pitch counts at Koshien
Link to 2018 piece on pitch counts at Koshien
Link to Kuroda story
Link to Human Rights Watch report
Link to story about canceling Koshien in 2020
Link to EW Secret Santa

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 Sponsor Us on Patreon
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 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

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