The 2021 Hall of Fame Ballots are out. Mike Clevinger is having Tommy John surgery and will miss the entire 2021 season. Drew Smyly has a deal for one year at $11 Million.
Speculative Links
Elite reliever Josh Hader might be available for the right kind of return. The Detroit Free Press seems to think the Tigers should trade away a bunch of pitchers. Here comes a tidal wave of non-tenders. Several of the Angels relief pitchers fit the profile. This is a list of the 2021/2022 Free Agents for those who are thinking ahead.
Random Links
Here is a call to ditch the three batter minimum rule. I am not sure I would go so far as to call it the dumbest rule change for 2020, but it did not accomplish the result for which it was designed. Tim Tebow still hasn’t given up.
The bat’s bigger than she is, but she flips it like a pro.
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
Over at CBS Sports their 5 man panel is split on where Bauer ends up. Three said us, two said the Padres.
I’m surprised that even one said LAA. I wonder if they know something.
Fingers crossed.
Everyone knows we need pitching – so that might be their thinking (if they don’t have inside info – and the Angels are notoriously tight-lipped on these things).
Yankees or Mets will go all in on Bauer.
That little girls swing is amazing. My youngest daughter is like a lumberjack up there chopping wood!! We had her trained out of it with a hitting coach, but then covid struck and she has reverted to bad habits.
That girls swing is a thing of beauty.
I like how she keeps her eyes laser focused on the ball, all the way in and all the way out.
after looking at the Hall of Fame ballot I don’t see anyone I’d vote for. Although I have to admit I’m softening in my opinion on Bonds. Maybe even on Clemens a little bit.
Schilling and Buerhle (and Vida Blue) are kind of comparable, with Buerhle being the lowest of the three in my opinion. After the Baines mistake Torii looks pretty good, especially if you go by WAR.
You don’t get awarded an MVP or Cy Young Award if you only had two months of excellent performance during the season. What separates the elite from the merely good is consistency. Likewise, an appointment to the Hall of Fame requires a consistently great career. That’s why I like to base my initial judgment on HoF candidacies on how many seasons during their career were they a top five player in fWAR at their position (or top 20 for a SP, top 10 for a RP, top 2 for a DH).
Here’s how the current batch stacks up:
Barry Bonds 17 times
Roger Clemens 16 times
Manny Ramirez 10 times
Scott Rolen 10 times
Curt Schilling 10 times
Sammy Sosa 9 times
Bobby Abreu 8 times
Andrew Jones 8 times
Todd Helton 7 times
Jeff Kent 7 times
Billy Wagner 7 times
Andy Pettitte 6 times
Gary Sheffield 6 times
Tim Hudson 5 times
AJ Burnett 4 times
Mark Buehrle 3 times
Shane Victorino 3 times
Barry Zito 3 times
Aramis Ramirez 2 times
Nick Swisher 2 times
LaTroy Hawkins 1 time
Torii Hunter 1 time
Omar Vizquel 1 time
Michael Cuddyer 0 times
So where is the cutoff for the HoF? I put it at eight times. This is where players like Roberto Alomar, Jim Fregosi, Tom Glavine, Goose Gossage, Tony Gwynn, Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez, Joe Mauer, Ron Santo, and Robin Ventura landed. Eight of the 23 retired players who have made it to level 8 are currently in the HoF.
Level 7 is where players like Andre Dawson, Willie McCovey, Jim Palmer, Jack Morris, Ryne Sandberg, Willie Stargell, Jim Edmonds, Kenny Lofton, Graig Nettles, David Ortiz, and CC Sabathia ended up. Only 8 of the 40 retired players who have made it to level 7 are currently in the HoF.
note: my data base only includes players from 1961 to the present.
Your database only goes back to 1961…. so you’re missing all the truly meh Yankees who are in the HOF. But good news, we can still get Andy Petitte’s extremely better than some player’s numbers career in there cause PINSTRIPES! Maybe he can open the door for all those other juicers who are waiting, cause the only guy I see legitimately getting in is Scott Rolen.
I was comparing Schilling and Buerhle against Hall of Fame pitchers when I noticed that phenomenon. Waite Hoyt, Red Ruffing?
Apparently post season performance was part of the calculus used to elect these gentlemen into the Hall. Hoyt, for example, had 6 complete games in 11 World Series starts, a 1.83 ERA in 83.2 post season innings, and a 5.3 post season K/9 that eclipsed the 2.9 regular season K/9 he created over his career.
Ruffing was elected in his final year on the ballot even though he fell 18 ballots short of the required 75%. It was discovered that there were names of players on that ballot whose eligibility had expired and may have siphoned off votes that Ruffing and Joe Medwick needed to be elected to the Hall, so additional voting was agreed upon, and Ruffing subsequently secured enough votes for election.
thanks for the info on both!
Not making a rule to keep the batter in the box between pitches is the Dumbest Rule Not Invoked. Remember Kole would have to walk in front of the catcher and over Homeplate the n around the Blue all the while adjusting the velcro on his batting gloves and finally getting in the box with his left hand raised before getting set. Put the runner on second in the 12th inning would work for the fans at the game and for teams trying to save pitching. The 3 batter rule is just flat out stupid. 7 inning doubleheaders was a little weird but since fans were not involved and that games were played everyday it worked. But in the future I hope they go they way of Pitchers batting.
Theo Epstein leaving the Cubs, just announced.
Not available till 2022
“Expects a third act” so he’ll be somewhere in 2022. Mets? I know they hired a new guy…no, I *think* they did. Anyway the new owner will likely want Theo.
I don’t think they have yet. Sandy Alderson is the interim head, in charge of looking for the permanent head among other things. I imagine he could be interim for a while longer…
It’s already mid-November and Clevinger “will be undergoing” not “already has undergone” TJ surgery. The 18-month time frame would put his return around the all-star break in 2022, with a chance he could miss all of 2022.
Most pitchers seem to recover in a 12-14 month time frame these days, not 18. That said, pitchers returning from TJ surgery are often on an innings limit, so I am guessing the most he would pitch in 2022 would be ~100-110 innings.
The Padres essentially traded their players/prospects for somewhere between 1/2-3/4 of one season of Clevinger.
I see even pitchers we drafted AND traded away cannot escape the TJ bug.
The 3 batter minimum rule isn’t the dumbest rule for 2020, the automatic runner at 2nd in extra innings IS the dumbest rule.
I absolutely detested both of those rule. BUT, the runner on base rule did at least generally lead to shorter games and accomplish its goal. The three batter rule, if anything, lengthened many games when a reliever obviously didn’t have his stuff and was left in to struggle.