HOF Pace Tracker

[Biohazarddfl]

Excellent Bieber write up.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

[BabaORiley]

Originally Posted by Silent George;18608246

[B

Strider, Spencer
2022: 4.9 WAR Career: 4.8 WAR[/B]
All you need is this Spencer Strider highlight video. I imagine his leg kick strikeout celebration is going to become iconic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwNptD8dw2Y

The slider at 1:23 is unhittable and damn near unlayoffable when combined with his command of FBs in the upper half of the strike zone. A Pitching Ninja fave - and for good reason - I suspect Strider will, at the very least have a cult following for a few years.

Silent George, as always, thank you for your work. I'm just now catching up but I'm looking forward to the late-night journey. Much appreciated.

[Silent George]

Originally Posted by BabaORiley

The slider at 1:23 is unhittable and damn near unlayoffable when combined with his command of FBs in the upper half of the strike zone. A Pitching Ninja fave - and for good reason - I suspect Strider will, at the very least have a cult following for a few years.

Silent George, as always, thank you for your work. I'm just now catching up but I'm looking forward to the late-night journey. Much appreciated.

I, a grown ass middle aged man watched arachnophobia last night.
I, a grown ass middle aged man woke up from a nightmare about spiders.
I, a grown ass middle aged man visited a baseball card forum to calm down.

So I appreciated the late night post.

[dfenno]

As always, these are the best. Thank you.

I especially enjoyed the Bieber write-up as it justifies my collection with so much more data, logic and persuasiveness than I ever could.

[ironfireman]

Thanks for the laugh out loud watching Pujols chugging from 1st to home!
I fondly remember some 90s Sportcenter head quipping that you could almost hear the change jingling in Cecil Fielders pockets on a similar play but Albert looks like he lost his change going 2cnd to 3rd.

[MiamiMarlinsFan]

Originally Posted by Silent George

First inductee - Rick Monday

Gets my vote.

[Silent George]

A little something different today because I was thinking about how we all use definitions differently, and one of those is "fringe" Hall of Famer, and how I think specifically about Evan Longoria with this title, which may or may not be fair.

I think about him because Longoria is actually above what I use for the "floor" Hall of famer here, but that's on purely an analysis of who is IN the Hall of Fame.

I think that's a good barometer because the Hall is living, breathing, ever changing. So finding out where the Hall has established itself over the years can be a good clue about who gets it.

I use the 33rd percentile as opposed to the 25th percentile as I was originally intending because 1) closers are a thing and 2) Serving in WAR, or in seasons with fewer games is also a thing. So it's unfair to say that a player compares with another player because their total stats are the same, when one of them was off fighting nazis for 3 years.

So I bumped it from 25 to 33 to account for the players that would have also seen a bump in their stats had real life not gotten in the way. It's not scientific, but it feels right to me, and it establishes that IF we're going to assume 75% of hall of famers are deserving - and I'm comfortable with that - then the 25th percentile of actual statistics is unfairly a bit low from these outside influences.

So that's my methodology. But that only looks at players already in the Hall, it doesn't look at those out. It DOES speak to a players statistical record belonging in the Hall. It DOESN'T tell us what their chances of induction are.

Thanks to the 3 Ps - Peds and Politics and Perverts - that's not going to totally apply here either. Barry Bonds statistical record has not yet proven that he is electable, though his stats are inner, inner, inner, inner, inner circle.

But what I decided to do was to try to define "fringe" candidate by looking at a rolling 5 WAR and seeing of those people within that grouping of 5 WAR - How many have made the Hall of Fame?

And then I have to define Fringe. And I don't know how to do it yet. At first I though it was the place where we were at 50% - but that doesn't seem right for two reasons. 1 is that Fringe doesn't have a definitional statistical number so far as I can tell, but everything about it's definition tells us it's the very edge. And a 50/50 proposition doesn't seem to be the very edge to me, especially when considering the ongoing living nature of the Hall - 50/50 actually probably means you have an extremely good chance of eventual enshrinement, one that grows every year.

So I once again am going to go with 33% for fringe. It accounts for the 25% problem above - that being that historical players should have better historical records, thus when we think about modern players, they should have a slight bump up (ironically this is something that i would disagree with at some point, as I think specialization and analytics has made it harder to earn WAR - and I also think pitchers are historically screwing this thing up, and will eventually have to be completely separated from hitters)

Anyway, 33% is completely arbitrary. I have no idea where it will land. I'm writing this before I've done the analysis. The better number might be 10%, which feels much more in line with the definition of fringe - but 33 works for me, personally, because it comes closer to answering the question I care about, which is who is going to make it in my natural lifetime? Who do I have a chance to see over the next 40 years?

It's super swell that Pud Galvin got elected in 1963, but no 40 year olds advocating for Pud Galving 60 years before the Hall even existed got to enjoy it.

Here are my filters - You must be eligible for the Hall. So, you must have participated on at least one writers vote. Beltre doesn't count. Beltran does.

No one banned from baseball. They can't make it, and that hurts the data.

No one elected into the Hall but not as a player - It's the Joe Torre and John McGraw rule. Either might have made it as a player by now, but they are locked out. We aren't going to punish players because those guys were really good at other jobs.

Pitchers have pitching WAR only, fangraphs is super screwed up with pitching everything else, and I wasn't going to take the time to do the math

This is going to look at 5% intervals, if a player is mentioned it's for reference. That player will be mentioned if they fall in the middle of an interval. So 70-74 with a player name means that player is a truncated 72 (meaning a 72.8 still counts as a 72 for these purposes) Might be a HOF, might be an active player, might be a player that is on the outside looking in still.

Here goes:

125+ 10/12 83% (Bonds/Clemens)
118-122 1/1 100%
117-121 2/2 100%
116-120 4/4 100%
115-119 3/3 100%
114-118 3/3 100%
113-117 3/4 75%
112-116 3/4 75%
111-115 1/2 50% A-Rod
110-114 3/4 75%
109-113 3/4 75%
108-112 3/3 100%
107-111 2/2 100%
106-110 5/5 100%
105-109 3/3 100%
104-108 4/4 100%
103-107 4/4 100%
102-106 6/6 100%
101-105 4/4 100%
100-104 5/5 100% Blyleven
99-103 4/4 100%
98-102 5/5 100% Gaylord Perry RIP
97-101 4/4 100%
96-100 5/5 100%
95-99 4/4 100%
94-98 5/5 100%
93-97 4/4 100%
92-96 6/6 100%
91-95 4/4 100%
90-94 5/5 100%
89-93 4/4 100%
88-92 7/7 100%
87-91 5/5 100%
86-90 5/5 100% Albert Pujols
85-89 4/4 100%
84-88 8/8 100%
83-87 7/7 100%
82-86 8/8 100%
81-85 8/8 100% Beltre
80-84 12/12 100% Trout
79-83 10/12 83%
78-82 11/13 85% Pete Rose
77-81 11/14 79% Schilling/Tommy John
76-80 10/14 71% Verlander
75-79 5/9 56%
74-78 8/10 80% Kevin Brown
73-77 8/10 80%
72-76 14/15 93%
71-75 15/15 100% Kershaw/Jeter
70-74 19/20 95%
69-73 22/24 92%
68-72 23/28 82% Kaat/Scherzer/Palmeiro
67-71 22/29 76% Scott Rolen/Bobby Grich
66-70 28/37 76% Reuschel/Pettitte/Miggy/Lou Whitaker
65-69 29/39 74% Beltran/Andruw Jones
64-68 23/35 66% CC/Manny/Mac
63-67 27/37 73% Greinke/Biggio/Dwight Evans/Graig Nettles
62-66 25/38 66% Reggie Smith/Jim Edmonds
61-65 24/40 60%
60-64 26/42 62% Kenny Lofton/Sheffield
59-63 27/42 64% Utley/Dick Allen/Darrel Evans
58-62 22/38 58% Shoeless Joe/Sammy Sosa
57-61 21/35 60% Abreu/Keith Hernandez
56-60 21/35 60% Tantana/David Wells
55-59 19/37 51% Votto/Ichiro/Posey/Olerud/Jackie
54-58 23/47 49% McGriff/Chuck Finley/Dwight Gooden/David Cone/Jim Palmer
53-57 23/48 48% Jack Morris/Brett Saberhagen/Berkman/Yadi
52-56 25/56 45% Whitey Ford/Sandy Koufax/Longoria/Vlad/Goldshmidt
51-55 24/49 49% Mauer
50-54 25/51 49% Roy Oswalt/Mark Buehlre/Will the Thrill
49-53 25/57 44% Big Papi
48-52 29/64 45% Appier/McCutchen/Freeman/Betts
47-51 28/65 43% Guidry/Langston/Vida Blue/Jimmy Rollins/Fred Lynne
46-50 26/70 37% Hershiser/Altuve
45-49 24/78 31% Waino
44-48 22/79 28% Lester/Machado
43-47 18/88 20% Johan Santana/Arenado
42-46 18/92 20% Puckett/Pedroia/Bryce/Dale Murphy
41-45 21/109 19% Torii Hunter
40-44 21/113 19% Omar Vizquel
39-43 20/113 18% DeGrom/Nomar/Albert Belle
38-42 21/116 18% Dizzy Dean/Mattingly
37-41 21/127 17% Mariano Rivera
36-40 17/130 13% Harold Baines

[Silent George]

by the way, easy and fast conclusion: The tracker looks for 53.5 WAR as it's line, which is almost exactly the 50% line, especially when adjusting for election time lag. The tracker knows all. The drop-off is super steep below 50 WAR.

As for what fringe actually is? Considering the 43-47 range is 20% and the 47-51 range is over double that at 43%, 47 is a pretty good answer for the dividing line. That's around the time when you go from super longshot case to the same odds as Barry Bonds getting on base.

[rwperu34]

One thing I like about this more than anything...the 50/50 line is roughly 50 WAR.

One thing I'd like to see is all the buckets the same number of players, if it's easy enough for you to do.

[TBTC Baseball]

Nevermind.....I'm double counting with the rolling number... Numbers are my job even.

[Silent George]

Originally Posted by rwperu34

One thing I like about this more than anything...the 50/50 line is roughly 50 WAR.

One thing I'd like to see is all the buckets the same number of players, if it's easy enough for you to do.

i don't follow

[Silent George]

I apologize in advance, I had a friend commit suicide, so the following writing is definitely uninspired, stilted, like I had brain freeze. Oh well.

AGE 28 Tracked Career 17.2 WAR - 25.2 WAR
Floor Level Hall of Famer Year 4.0 WAR
Average Hall of Famer Year 4.9 WAR

McCullers Jr., Lance
2022: 0.8 WAR Career: 14.9 WAR

--Removed From List--

Gallo, Joey
2022: 0.7 WAR Career: 15.1 WAR

--Removed From List--

Berrios, Jose
2022: 0.9 WAR Career: 16 WAR

--Removed From List--

Marte, Ketel
2022: 1.3 WAR Career: 16.5 WAR

--Removed From List--

Buxton, Byron
2022: 4.0 WAR Career: 18.0 WAR

It's sort of hilarious to picture Byron Buxton in the Hall of Fame. The guy is 29 years old. He has played a total of one full season, and it was full-ish. He played 140 games in 2017, which was well before his prime. Since then he has not played 100 games in a season.

Even the Covid year, where teams only played generally 60 games, Byron couldn't come close to a full season there, getting in only 39.

Well, here's why he's tracked: Even though he makes fewer appearances in public than Halley's Comet, when he does, he's...well, I guess he's like a meteor out there.

If you combine 2021 and 2022 you get a glimpse of Buxton playing a full year: 36 doubles 47 homers 150 OPS+ 8.1 WAR throw in 15 steals.

If that doesn't make your eyes bulge, I don't know what to tell you.

When Buxton is healthy and on, dear God is he healthy and on. Talking about 2020 On September 5th - so the season was almost over - Buxton had 5 home runs, and a .679 OPS. In the next 12 games he hit 8 home runs and had a 1.271 OPS. Totally made his year. Finished with an .844 OPS because of those 12 games.

He's one of those guys that's a little impossible to assess going forward. He's coming off hip surgery, you know, like your grandma. And his play completely depends on his health. Here's an article from SI that tells you exactly what you'd expect. When Buxton is actually healthy, he's a superstar. And when he's not, he's terrible. And he's often not. https://www.si.com/fannation/bringme...extreme-slumps

OK, he's NEVER healthy. Buxton's goal was to not hit the DL in 2022. Well he avoided the DL for a while, but do you want to know when he hurt himself? April 15th. In a season that started late because of the lockout.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...c-1fefede91ed7

Buxton said recently they knew all year long it was a matter of time after that. So, cool. The goal was to not go on the DL, and that was doomed on April 15th.

Again, it's not like he wasn't spectacular at times around that - he hit 28 home runs in 92 games. But what am I going to tell you about a guy who was said to have a low grade hip strain and ended up missing the rest of the year and requiring surgery? What am I going to tell you about a guy who blew out his hamstring the year before?

I don't think this is Buxton's fault. His ability to come back from a blown out hamstring to put up the numbers he did speaks to his hard work. Heck, you can blame the Red Sox. If they can catch a pop up, Buxton isn't diving into 2nd base. It's a freak injury from that perspective, but from a physical perspective, it really just seems like Buxton doesn't have a body that can endure any sort of baseball with regularity.

You have to wonder if the Twins don't want to just let the guy DH, and then instead of having him run the bases, just have two medical techs out there sprinting the bases holding him in a stretcher. The problem is, Buxton has been such a spectacular defender, it's impossible to bench him. Since OAA was created, want to know who the all time leader is in Center Field? It's Buxton with 66. You may not notice him on the list. You have to remember to remove the "qualified" standard in the filters. Because Buxton has gotten his 66 OAA in THOUSANDS fewer innings than all the other leaders behind him. It's insane.

But really, what are the Twins going to do with Buxton and Correa as they age? Minnesota is going to have to do something about the autograph seekers waiting outside the ER.

Here's my quick rundown on Buxton 2023: I can't tell you how his hip is going to respond. Hips can ruin careers. But Byron Buxton has come back from 9 million injuries and has been one of the best players in baseball for a limited amount of time upon return. Why not have more of that?

We're here to talk about his Hall of Fame chances though, and here's the thing: He's on this list for a reason. He's really good and has somehow earned enough WAR that he's ahead of all but 4 other players at his age. That's incredible. You absolutely cannot count him out, because if Buxton turns out to be healthy next year and does get his 8.1 WAR on his log - then he's right there. And if he has that sort of peak for 6 or 7 years where the injuries are behind him and his incredible talent beats the learning curve, then Buxton could totally have a 2nd career Paul Molitor like production in his future.


Of course, he has to start sometime. It would be super helpful if he comes in this year totally healed from his hip injury and starts now.

Do I expect that to happen? Yeah, probably. Until around April 15th

April 10th 2 home runs
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...5-bd26edf0d2d2
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...e-60d753eb9e91

April 24th ties game in 7th - 469 ft walk off homer to win it later. Holy moly.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...e-b0b675dad31e
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-6c1d0a9858fc

May 5th - 452
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...5-594881bd9619

June 8-10
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...1-55ce58a45d86
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...c-f2bbae605768
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-34866670c81e
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...b-b2d799611fba
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...6-ca5e976268a6

July 1st another huge Walk-off - the best kind of walk off. You're losing, and then you've won.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-5d96b341cc93

Olson, Matt
2022: 3.1 WAR Career: 18.1 WAR

I don't know what to think of Matt Olson. Maybe I'm just tired from having to write a billion of these, but sometimes they feel like they are getting harder even though the players are getting more and more secure in their career standings. I mean, we're talking about 28 year olds that have minimum of 17 career WAR - that already puts them in the top class of baseball. But really, that might be a contributing factor to my unsureness on what to say about Matt Olson, but really he's been bothering me from the beginning.

Here's why. Matt Olson hit 78 extra base hits last year. He cranked 34 home runs. He drove in 103. His OPS+ was 122. That's a pretty damn good year. A lot of teams want that from their 1B. And if Matt Olson repeats this exact same year next year, he'll be off of this list.

In some sense, yeah, the Hall of Fame is a b!+ch man, regardless of what online cranks say, it's really hard to get to. You now only have to have a great career, you gotta overwhelmingly convince people you've had a great career. Then - you sexually assault one special needs clubhouse attendant, and bam! they turn against you for some unknown reason.

Matt Olson has had at bats in 7 seasons so we can look at his WAR/7 right now - which for me is when careers start getting really exciting. Here's Olson's:

5.1
4.1
3.1
3.1
2.3
0.6
-0.1

And yeah, ok so you can throw out a few partial seasons at the bottom. Forget about them. The top seasons are entirely uninspiring. 5.1 as your top WAR season isn't awesome. The only recent players to not have more than a 5.1 WAR season, and to still make the Hall of Fame are names like Baines, Mazeroski. In recent years for 20th century players in the non-closers division, that's about it. And frankly, Bruce Sutter once had a 5.2 WAR season, so we don't have to eliminate ALL closers.

The issue for Olson of course is that he's a 1B, so he gets some major defensive penalties. He's not actually a bad 1B, - he grades well and has almost never DH'd in his entire career, which is pretty amazing because he is a modern iron man. He plays e-v-e-r-y d-a-y.

He also walks a healthy amount...but not QUITE enough to make up for his low batting average. And his average isn't THAT low, especially in 2022 standards. He hit .240 last year, which isn't pretty. His career OBP is a solid but not great .343. He strikes out too much. 24% of the time he's striking out, which means he's got a guaranteed .000 average in 1/4 of his at bats - but someone with his kind of power would seem to have a higher BABIP. His BABIP last year? .274. His career BABIP? 275. This makes zero sense to me. Zero.

Perhaps the ending of the shift will contribute mightily to this. Olson's wOBA with the shift last year was .338. With no shift it was .370. That's pretty hugely significant. An Olson that can rise his OBP by 25 points is an Olson that can start picking up those 5+ WAR seasons.

But...the year before it was .385 with the shift and .352 without. So what are you going to do? Frankly there isn't enough data to know how he will do, he's shifted on minimum 80% of the time every year, and on the other side of things he's likely NOT batting with the shift when the pitcher is in a stressful situation and the defense is unable to shift.

It makes me feel that the Olson we see is probably the Olson we're going to get.

And who is that Olson? He's a guaranteed 30 HR hitter.

He's actually a hitter with such power that Statcast tells us if he wasn't playing in Oakland all these years (and now Atlanta), and was instead in a friendlier hitters park, he's actually a perennial 40 HR guy. (In fact, take out 2020, and he would have an eerie 40 home runs in 4 consecutive seasons if he played in Houston.

Where that gets us is here: Olson has 176 home runs in his career through 28. He plays in an Atlanta lineup that might guarantee him close to 100 RBI a year. Olson is actually reliable for MORE than 30 home runs a year. Even his terrible 2020 season prorates out to 38 home runs in a full season. He's under contract in Atlanta for 7 more seasons, with the 8th as team option. Those 7 years would put Olson at 386 home runs, 1,176 RBI and at age 36. Now we're talking about a player 14 home runs short of 400? A guy who also mashes doubles, and played in a powerhouse Atlanta lineup?

That's with health, of course. But the reality is, that estimate could wind up being on the low end. IF we're talking about a player still good enough to get contracts and playing time in his mid to late 30s, who by that time could be approaching 500 home runs - I think in all of baseball history we'd call that a Hall of Famer.

So he vexes me. What can I tell ya? I'm moving on now.

Career HR 150
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...d-99c34f55b299

Multi homer game 1:
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...2-1cd19b0f2140
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...5-d6a91bb2ca03

Multi homer game 2:
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...c-6e4b6c75a3f4
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...a-5467cd760c29

Splash Down Grand Slam
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-92437ccde321

Career HR 175
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...d-775af0b4b2f6

Seager, Corey
2022: 4.5 WAR Career: 26.2 WAR

Seager is such an interesting HOF candidate. He's on a floor HOF track (1 WAR over the minimum), but he's never put together a peak season. In 2017 he got 5.4 WAR at 23, following 5.1 at 22 sounds like a player who is destined for certain greatness. Those remain his highest years.

And it's not that Seager has regressed or anything like that, but situations have stopped him from having that peak.

2018 was a lost year due to injuries. 2019 was a solid recovery, but certainly not a peak. 2020 WAS a potential peak season. Seager crushed 15 homers in just 52 games, with a 150 OPS+, which would have been his career high over a full season. His 2.1 WAR prorates to a 5.7 WAR, which would have been his top season - and there are other indicators that suggest that perhaps he was actually underperforming his metrics that year, but of course it was not to be. Some guy in China ate a bat, and other bats got mad and smashed up a lab, which released a bug that would kill you if you didn't follow grocery store arrows, until some doctors came out with some medicine that would prevent you of dying from the bat thing, by killing you before you had a chance to catch it. At least that's my understanding of what happened. Naturally the worst tragedy that happened during this point was the shortened baseball season and with it Corey Seager's possible peak season.

2021? Pretty much the same. Seager could have had another peak season, but he was hit by a pitch, fracturing his hand, and causing him to miss 2 1/2 months. Seager had a great year, but a partial year. In 95 games he had 3.6 WAR, which suggests a 6 WAR season over 162. Once again, this would have been his peak season. But alas, poor Yorick, this was not to be.

Over that injury the Dodgers had picked up Trea Turner. So now the Dodgers had 2 young HOF track SSs, and they chose Turner over Seager. In some ways it was a surprise - for most teams OUR Hall of Famer is preferable to have over YOUR Hall of Famer just for fan appeal. Tigers fans would have burned down all of Detroit had they traded Trammel for Cal Ripken. And I for one, think that's awesome. That loyalty is what keeps marriages together. And now, as the divorce rate rises, Trea Turner replaces Corey Seager as the Dodger's shortstop. Yes, Corey Seager becoming a Texas Ranger is a sign of society's decline. That's my hot take.

As for 2022, what if I told you that Seager was both very lucky, and very unlucky.

First thing to notice about his 2022 season is his sudden crazy power. Seager hit 33 home runs, which, thanks to the previously mentioned injuries and such, was pretty easily his career high. On the flip side, Seager hit only .245 and his 117wRC+ was well below his career average. It's pretty easy to draw conclusions from there. Seager must have sacrificed all else in order to hit the Home Run Ball. Indeed, his average launch angle jumped up 3 degrees, which would support this theory. Corey Seager, who participated in the HR Derby, turned the regular season into his own, personal HR Derby.

But nahhh, that's not it.

Seager actually hit 5 home runs more than expected by his batted balls last year. 28 home runs still would have been his career high, but not nearly as outrageously so, especially considering his HR rates over previous years. This was definitely a product of Texas being good for his swing, as exactly 2/3 of his home runs were at home. His ISO was .211, and his career ISO is .208, so there was no huge power surge here. And that Launch angle rate? It was completely what you would WANT it to be. Seager's line drive % actually ticked up a notch. His greater percentage of fly balls came entirely from him hitting fewer groundballs.

With all that good news, what the Hell happened? Why did he hit .240?

I dunno, luck? His BABIP has never been below .301 in his career, and that was in a season with barely 100 PAs. In 2022 his BABIP was .242. And hey, that's ok if he deserved a .242 BABIP but his XWOBA out performed his OBA by 41 points. He SHOULD have done a lot better last year.

Then we can talk about the shift. It's been well talked about before, but Seager is one of the few players in the majors who is clearly losing numbers to the shift. Last year his wOBA with the shift was .326. Without it was .397. It was 60 points different the year before, too. In 2022, Seager was shifted again 92% of the time. That will be 92% lower from here on out.

So in Seager we have a guy who
1) has a swing whose power is enhanced by his home park
2) was massively unlucky on balls in play last season
3) might be the player who would most benefit from the removal of the shift

Also, for what it's worth, there are plenty of tales of players joining new teams, trying to live up to their contracts, adjusting to new pitchers and parks, etc. etc.

However you say it, Seager is turning 29. His classic prime years are about to be over, and he's yet to have that one great leading season. If he's going to have it, all signs point to it happening in 2023. If it doesn't, it may never happen at all.

First AB as a Ranger
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...6-bd7f84166e1f

First HR as a Ranger
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...1-b767ea92868a

2 HR against KC
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...a-e29a738be942
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...0-6a8f269b2dc8

5 straight games with HR ending with Career HR 125
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...a-56f7576810ea
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...0-dfade1dd3d35
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...2-9bb9fc22fcba
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...c-7d1b9763f3c2
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...f-9678392cf331

Multi HR Game against Det
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...e-0d9ed16ef41e
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...7-f14c07bd975f

Bregman, Alex
2022: 5.5 WAR Career: 30.8 WAR

The Alex Bregman career arc is one of the more interesting career lines to follow in baseball. He had barely lost his rookie status in 2017 when he became one of the young faces leading the Astros to the World Series. As exciting of a storyline as that is...it soon would not be.

Before that came up, Bregman went from contributing star, to leading superstar. 2018 and 2019 were two top 5 MVP finishes, and boy were they earned. Across the two years Bregman hit 72 home runs, had a 157 OPS+, and racked up 16.1 WAR over the two years. Those are major numbers.

Then the scandal broke. And Bregman's repeated reference to "The commissioner made his report..." was reminiscent to Mark McGwire's "I'm not here to talk about the past." It was not spectacular. And Bregman, who does seem to be a legitimately good guy, was not received on the Interwebs as a legitimately good guy.

The next two years, through the scandal, Bregman was simply not as good. You can blame it on what you want to blame it on. He had injuries, yes. He was probably under intense pressure and stress in the wake of the scandal, yes (The Astros themselves went from 107 wins in 2019 to below .500 in 2020). And yes, there are people that want to blame it on his inability to cheat, like his entire MVP campaigns were because of a person smacking a trash can.

That idea is pretty ridiculous, but do you know what? I don't care. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. If you don't want illogical people discrediting your achievements, don't give them reason to doubt you be setting up an elaborate attempt of actually artificially inflating your own achievements. I will say forever and ever and ever Amen, that when Astros have a chip on their shoulder, or McGwire claims that steroids didn't help him hit more home runs - maybe he spent years juicing just for fun, then? Absolutely screw you. And it's not that I'm vehemently anti-Astros, I'm not. I'm not anti-Big Mac either. The absolute majesty that 1998 was in my life is my primary purpose in wanting juicers in the Hall.

But don't come to me demanding respect when you, yourself had no respect for the game or its fans. You've specifically seen to it that you've earned jack sh!t in those regards.

And look, if I feel that way, someone who doesn't hold the Hall against those sorts of players, and someone who doesn't think the Astros should be stripped of their title, you can bet actual voters will feel that way.

Now where were we? Oh, cough. yeah. As good as Bregman was for two years, that's how uninspiring he was the next two years, where he put up a combined 114 OPS+. That's not bad, but it's not getting him anywhere near the Hall these days.

And then Bregman had one of the stranger seasons you'll see:

Bregman rebounded by putting up a 133 OPS+ with 61 xbh. He once again got MVP votes. Was Alex Bregman....back?

I'm not so sure.

Here are Bregman's numbers in 2020 and 2021 next to his numbers in 2022 pretending he missed August

2020 - PAs 180 .242/.350/.451/.801
2021 - PAs 400 .270/.355/.422/.777
2022 - PAs 541 .238/.348/.407/.755

Consider the offensive dive that happened last year, 2022 looks right on with the "meh" version of Bregman. So if you were to come out of this with little to no confidence in Bregman, I don't really blame you. Because last season was made completely by the fact that he had one Hell of an August, where his slash was:

Aug 2022 - PAs 115 .362/.452/.681/1.133

Yup, you think Bregman was totally better last season because Babe Ruth took over his body for one month.

Now, this isn't to say that you shouldn't believe in him. Bregman has had those two awesome years. You take anyone's best month away from them and guess what? They are going to look a lot worse. But this wasn't an across the board recovery, and it's fair to wonder which side of the line is the real him.

Here's why it's important from a Hall perspective. I don't think people realize how close Bregman already is to being a legit Hall of Famer. He earned 5.5 WAR last month. Let's stack up Bregman's WAR 7 against the average Hall of Famer

HOF - BREGGY
7.4 - 8.1
6.7 - 8.0
6.1 - 5.5
5.7 - 4.4
5.2 - 2.1
4.8 - 1.4
4.3 - 1.2

For those scoring at home, Bregman's top 4 years adds to 26 WAR, and the average HOF's top 4 years adds to 25.9 WAR.

Essentially Bregman is 3 seasons of averaging 4.7 WAR away from having an average HOF peak. And he's turning 29. In theory that might be pretty easy to do, especially if last year is around his true level. Another way of looking at it is that he doesn't even have to do that well - I mean, there is an entire bottom half of the Hall too.

The question is then simple, which Bregman are we going to see moving forward? Is he still like the Bregman of 2020 and 2021? Or is he more like the MVP candidate Bregman of before?

Well, here's what I have to say about that:

If you're expecting to see 40 home run Bregman make a return, well I have bad news for you. 40 HR Bregman was a fluke. Of the 45 Homers he hit that year, including the playoffs, he outperformed his batted ball metrics by TWELVE home runs. Essentially, he was dunking long fly balls down the line.

Once you understand that Bregman isn't quite as good as his stats were that year, AND that this year was a deflated year for offense, let me give you a key statistic to keep in mind for Bregman.

This is his expected xwOBA percentile - that is, the OBA his batted ball profile says he should have had the last few years. This percentile tells us where he is relative to the league, and thus good league offensive years and bad league offensive years go out in the wash. It's you versus your peers in how well you hit the ball. That's it.

His MVP years, his xwOBA percentiles were 88% and 88%

The two years he fell off, his percentiles were 54% and 53%

In 2022 his percentile was 85%.

Also, if you look at his OBA trendline over 250PAs, it doesn't move. It suggests that August was actually a makeup for some bad luck, and not a pure outlier in itself. He's been hitting the ball the same. He's not as powerful as you thought he was, he NEVER was, that short left field porch has it's perks (he didn't hit a single home run anywhere near center in any park, and his longest hit all season was 412 feet), but his job is to use it and he does it well.

In other words yeah, the great malaise is over. He is not the mirror image of Christian Yelich. Bregman is probably going to add a few more Hall worthy seasons to his total. Throw in 2 rings, at least 1 of which is respected - and yeah, I think he has a rather easy path to a Hall argument. If Bregman puts up good numbers for the next couple of years, he's going to get a mega 7+ year deal. And if he gets that, he's going to be on a relatively smooth path to 60+ WAR.

Unless, you know, August really did make his entire season a mirage. Then you can throw him in the trash.

Career HR 125
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...1-0ca887af4f9b

The game that made his season
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-473fc34e9e58
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...a-d0efafef6a75
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...2-42d67ae1ccda
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...1-355f74301d5b

Never forget
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-0a8ac633f506

Lindor, Francisco
2022: 6.8 WAR Career: 42.0 WAR

Lindor is the youngest player on this list that you could say has already earned his way into the Hall of Fame. Now no, he hasn't played 10 seasons yet, so this is assuming even if he falls into a volcano the Mets will drag his magma encrusted body onto the field once a year to get him the 10 year requirement.

I understand that seems crazy for a player with 8 seasons under their belt - how could ANY player clinch the Hall in that time? And I get it, and it's not like I think Lindor is a first ballot Hall of Famer if he retires today, I just think two things: If Lindor disappeared right now, he would eventually be elected by a vets committee at a minimum. And more likely, knowing what we know about his trajectory and contract, he's going to coast into a HoF career. His peak, is already plenty worthy.

Here he is alongside Dale Murphy and Don Mattingly, two players who are argued that they should get in the Hall in spite of short careers because of their high peaks (and two players who are gaining more and more support in the committees):

WAR/7
Don Mattingly 7.2, 6.1, 6.1, 5.3, 3.7, 3.3, 2.9 = 34.6
Dale Murphy 7.1, 7.0, 6.0, 5.7, 5.6, 4.6, 2.6 = 38.6
Francisco Lindor 7.8, 6.8, 6.1, 5.8, 5.3, 4.2, 4.0 = 40.0

Throw in the fact that Lindor's other year was 1.9 WAR in 2020 - which prorates to over 5 WAR in a full season, and you can see how easily he has shredded his way to the Hall of Fame.

It's almost impossible for him not to get there, based on his numbers. Now of course, Lindor might ask Mike Clevinger if there's anyone he knows anyone he could be set up on a date with, but when it comes to pure numbers, Lindor can regress incredibly and still make the Hall.

Lindor's calling card is that he's one of the premier defensive SS to ever play the game. He's going into his age 29 season and he's already 57th all time in DEF value among SS.

Just a hair above him is Jimmy Rollins, the 4 time Gold Glover, who just got 12.5% in HOF voting. And Rollins offensive value is rated 1/4 of what Lindor has accrued already.

He is the all time leader in Outs and Runs Above Average since those statistics came into being.

To be fair, Baseball Reference uses different metrics for their defensive WAR - in my opinion they use inferior metrics - but Lindor is still a 36 WAR player over there, so he's doing OK folks.

So that's defense - 57th all time at SS. But we're talking about SS, where generally the best defenders in baseball are playing. They aren't generally the greatest hitters. And while Lindor is not a premium MLB hitter - he's already tied for 29th all time in offensive value too.

Overall we're talking about a 28 year old SS who might be in the top 25 SSs of all time before he turns 30.

Like I said, Lindor is now basically at the point of his career where he can mail it in, pad some stats for a while, and coast into the Hall, at least at some point. And he's going to get that opportunity, too.

Lindor is making 34 million dollars a year for the next 9 years. If he completely screws the pooch over those 9 years and averages just 100 hits and 10 home runs a year over those years, we're talking about a SS with 2,000 hits and 275 Career homers. You can see those numbers and see just how easy it's going to be for Lindor to get to 2500 and 350.

There might be people that doubt that about Lindor. His 2020 wasn't superb - he was essentially a league average hitter, and he followed it up with his 2021 being, once again, a league average hitter.

In 2022 he posted the 2nd best wRC+ of his career.

So, it was an improvement. His 26 homers weren't anything like the nearly 40 he hit in his younger days, but it was real.

His offensive resurgence was due to the number of balls he barreled suddenly exploding back to his offensive peak days. His 42 barrels were the 2nd most of his career, and it's easy to see the results of it. Lindor hit 16 "no doubter" blasts, whereas he had 13 in the two years prior combined. His other long drives were in line with his previous years, which is why he wasn't back in the 30s. He got the no doubt homers, but he missed the ones that just snuck over the wall. It's a strange predicament to have.

The barrels make his stats seem like he got lucky last year. I'm not so sure about that. His numbers were a bit all over the place, nothing has been moving in the same direction, but the general tale of the tape is to say that you can forget the struggles of his peak seasons, and his 2020-2021 trough. The real Lindor is in the middle. If you liked 2019 Francisco Lindor, that's the guy you saw in 2022, just in a worse offensive environment.

It's backed up by his consistency through the year. In April-May he had a .790 OPS. In June-July it was .781. In August-October it was .791. You have to trust that sort of consistency. One season is a small sample size in theory. But when you can look at one season, and break it up into microcosms like that, it suggests a real level. The numbers don't have to settle anywhere. That's just who he is.

That's important because when you're projecting out Lindor to say how far can he go? You can conservatively start him off as someone who is roughly 15% above league average as a hitter. The previous two years, that were just a tad above league average, you couldn't do that. You had to think a little above average was going to sink below average fairly quickly. 2022 puts his trajectory in a whole new view. He's going to be above average into his 30s, and average for a while after that. At that point we won't be talking about Lindor as clinching an eventual Hall bid, we'll start talking about him being a sure fire writers ballot guy. Maybe, eventually a 1st ballot guy.

ZIPS backs this up, projecting him as a 5 WAR guy over his next 3 years. Zips is conservative of course, so it's telling it rates him so highly. If he is 5 WAR over his next 3 years, he's going to exit his prime with nearly 60 WAR, and still have so many years of compiling ahead of him.

That's where I see him going. We're looking at an average HOF player, maybe better. He's a guy who might hit 70 WAR in his career, and he's one of the safest bets out there. Too bad he a damned Met.

Multi homer game From both sides of plate (The Eddie Murray)
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...7-757e8e0d28af
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...9-c72c1b8a55e0

500th career RBI
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...3-26233c1a3a0f

440 - SOOOO close to an Apple dunk
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...e-ec225b1f9392

Career HR 175
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...e-4c15fffe7677

Go ahead grand slam
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...6-60c54845d49d

[rangersfan17]

Whoa.... very sorry to hear that.

Take care of yourself, whatever you gotta do. As much as we appreciate it, the HoF Tracker comes second to mental and physical health.

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

[ironfireman]

Great write up as always. Wonderful insight and humor!
Sorry to hear about your friend. You are not alone. Suicide just #@#@#@#@ing sucks.

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by Silent George

i don't follow

Take everybody above 80 WAR (the top 52, if my count is correct) and put them in one bucket and see what % are in (94%...49/52 if my count is correct). Then make the second bucket the next 52 and see how many of those are in. Rinse, repeat, until you're out of players. Can look at average WAR for the bucket as well.

Sorry for your loss.

[Silent George]

AGE 29 Tracked Career 21.3 WAR - 29.1 WAR
Floor Level Hall of Famer Year 3.9 WAR
Average Hall of Famer Year 4.8 WAR

Syndergaard, Noah
2022: 2.2 WAR Career: 21.0 WAR

--Removed From List--

Story, Trevor
2022: 2.4 WAR Career: 23.7 WAR

Well, this isn't a happy story. Cough. Cough.

I'm actually pretty happy about this. Because there's not much analysis needed here. Trevor Story is very likely to fall off the Hall of Fame tracker this year, and at his age, it's extremely difficult to get back on. His Hall of Fame hunt looks pretty much over.

First of all, there would be long odds even if Story were in good shape. He would need an Aaron Judge like season to get himself on pace - he's 9.1 WAR off as of now. And that's to get to the Hall of Fame floor. And do you know who has a really hard time beating the odds? Iffy candidates who made their name as a hitter in Colorado.

Story deserves better than that. There's a reason he's on this list, after all. To start, a lot of his value comes from being a very solid SS. Furthermore he showed off his athleticism last year when he also played a very good 2B. It's not that easy to switch positions folks. There's actually a lot of differences in the position. For Story to have made the transition quickly enough to put up 6DRS and 10 OAA in his first year at 2nd in an injury riddled season shows you why the Red Sox didn't have an issue moving him back to SS.

Oops on that plan. More on that a tad bit later.

Story was a solid offensive player who had great numbers thanks to Coors Field, where, like everyone else, he easily outhit his road numbers. Story has never had a season on the road with an OPS above .800. And that's fine - Coors certainly hurts the road numbers of their hitter. Story was a pretty reliable 120 OPS+ player. Which is pretty awesome for a SS who also puts up good fielding metrics. But when a guy hits 35 and 37 homers a year, and bats over .290, you logically assume his wRC+ is closer to the 140 range.

But who was the player the Red Sox decided to sign? One with a major worrying sign. Story has always been Mr. Strikeout. Dude loves to swing and miss.

In 2021 Story, and keep in mind he was playing in Colorado, decided to swing at a lot more balls, and swing at a lot fewer strikes.

He actually made contact at an impressive rate on those balls! But that's how you get pop ups and groundouts. And that's what happened. His hitting ability plunged as his chase rate skyrocketed. His line drives dropped. His center field % went up. These are all the OPPOSITE of what you want a player to do in Boston. So the Red Sox signed him to a long term deal to play his decline years in Boston.

The Red Sox must have also recognized this was happening, and they almost immediately corrected this trend. All of those figures reversed in some way or another. The problem is that when you're messed up, it's really hard to correct that without messing with something else. So they fixed Story from making weak contact on bad pitches, and instead of making bad contact, Story just decided to not make contact at all.

He swing at fewer strikes. And when he did decide to swing at strikes, his missed them more than before.

You know those movies about how someone is terrified of reverting back to their former self? Here's Story's K% through the years:

31.3
34.4
25.6
26.5
24.3
23.4
30.8

Hoooooo that jump there at the end. You wanna know why Story hit .238 last year? It was probably a minor miracle it was that high, frankly. When you hit .238 on fewer than 70% of your at bats, that's actually not all that bad! His BABIP was .309. He just never actually put balls in play!

And to be fair, like I said, things were really looking up. Swings are hard things to change. Story was hurt, and hurt, and hurt again.

He wasn't going to put up Coors numbers, because he wasn't in Coors, but the fact of the matter is he played good defense and put up league average offense. And the year before he played good defense and put up league average offense. He did it in a completely different way, Hell, he did it at a completely different position, but Trevor Story was pretty much what Red Sox fans should have expected from Trevor story, minus the constant injury time.

And when you consider how bad his April was - and that he had a .770 OPS post April (career .739 road OPS), they probably had a reasonable hope that Story was on his way to getting back to being a 120 OPS+ player - or at least one that was better than league average. That was the hope.

And then GOODBYE XANDER! It was time for the Trevor Story SS era to being in Boston! He'll show em! Last year was an adjustment year!

Oh. Uh oh. Something in his elbow hurt. Surgery time.

The Red Sox are "not banking" on a return.

Story, because he's a jerk, is intent on playing in 2023. If he just gave up the year, I could take him off the list, and I wouldn't be writing this at 1AM, but this story SUCKS, as so here I am. @$$hole.

What's hilarious about this is that it's pretty much as worse case scenario as the Red Sox could have in this situation.

STORY thinks he can play this year. This isn't unusual for players. Teams tend to say, "This will take 6-9 months to recover from," and players tend to think "But I'm a magical being! I'll be full strength by Tuesday." So I'd probably listen closer to the team on this one. But let's pretend Story is correct, since his insistence that he'll play is the entire reason I feel required to write this. OK, he can play. Can he play SS? Can a guy who frequently ranks as having a poor arm for a SS play SS with a surgically repaired elbow? Nahhhh. I don't imagine he can. Those Story at SS plans may be over for good now. Let him use his great range at 2B where he can actually throw someone out. Get a SS from somewhere else. Hey, San Diego seems to have a few options!

Even worse, Story thinks that if he can't play the field, he can still come back earlier and DH. You know, like Trevor Story is Bryce Harper or something. Because what every team dreams of is riding to a championship on the back of a guy who was a league average hitter for the two years BEFORE he had elbow surgery. I'm sure he'll be awesome.

Story was disrespected a bit his first year in Boston. Dude was a league average hitting 2B with great defense. 2.4 WAR in 94 games? Story was a prorated 4 WAR player while also taking a daily beating from the fans. You had to feel bad for him.

Well now, I think we can forget him earning the respect he deserved. I doubt Story is coming back this year. I doubt the Red Sox are going to have the sort of season where Story could make a difference. I doubt many Red Sox fans are going to care, frankly. Mostly though, if he comes back or not, I really doubt I'll ever have to write a recap post on Trevor Story's hall chances again. At least, thanks to Boston management, he can afford a ticket.

500th career RBI
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-ca0a0d378957

May 20th 1 HR 4 RBI
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...b-4b579f646c1b

May 24th 1 HR 4 RBI
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...a-cfddf545028a

May 26th 1 HR 4 RBI
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...5-9a7cd15742c8

Career Game
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...b-69c9bf8b193a
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...4-159326b7579b
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...2-ab64c915afa7

Baez, Javy
2022: 2.0 WAR Career: 23.8 WAR

Well Baez has proven to be a disaster as a Tiger, and I just don't see why the entire world didn't see this coming. I especially have no idea why the Tigers didn't see this coming.

Baez has a lot of things going for him so far as the Hall of Fame goes. 1st, he was a leading part of one of the most famous teams of our generation - the curse breaking 2016 Chicago Cubs. He was the MVP of the NLCS that year on top of it. When you talk about players getting World Championship rings, only the 2004 Red Sox team might get more bonus points than the 2016 Chicago Cubs.

Baez also has the look of a Hall of Famer. He has the ability to make spectacular, highlight reel sorts of plays. His tagging ability has to be the best in baseball - I mean, who even notices a player's tagging ability? Baez has put himself above and beyond in that regard. When people get excited to watch you tag a runner - I don't even know how to describe it. But he adds flash and excitement to some of the most routine and glossed over plays in baseball. And while he does that tagging, he's also the same way sliding. Baez does a trick slide as good as any player in baseball. When he's trying to avoid a tag, watching his hands move are like watching an expert cups grifter on the city streets make some poor moron look like a food. Baez is also the author of this play ---> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO4h-fH_vu8

Now let's be clear, a PROPER view of that play is "The Pirates player is a tremendous moron, and Baez was actually kind of dumb himself." - but the view of Baez in the wake of that play was as an absolute genius, reverential, what a magician! (The local news broadcasts literally listed him as Javy Baez, Magician."

I could write a 10 page essay on how overblown that play was, but Baez does have that Jeter jump throw, that Griffey backwards hat, that Ozzie flip thing about his essence that people go wild for.

And Baez combines that with having actual, amazing, Hall of Fame level baseball skills.

What Baez does not have, at all, is skills that age well in any way. It was apparent he was well out of his peak before he went to Detroit, and Detroit was pretty much one of the worst places for a player like Baez to go. Go he went, anyway.

Baez put up decent seasons in 2016 and 2017 as a player who was basically a great complimentary piece on some very good Cubs teams. The next two years, Baez at 25 and 26, the heart of his peak, he was spectacular. He was a middle infielder hitting 70 XBH a year, keeping his batting average near 300, stealing double figures in stolen bases, and playing spectacular defense - and I can't even stress how spectacular. Do you know what his DRS was in 2019? 31. Thirty freaking one.

But Baez's entire success hinged on him being at the top of his game. Put simply, he is the definition of free swinger. Which is fine at the peak of his powers, because when Baez would hit a ball, he would hit in hard, and on a line, and he would get hits. So Baez could survive striking out 25% of the time - because his BABIPs were in the .340s.

Baez added a lot of value with his hitting, his running, and his defense.

But defense and running start disappearing quickly in your late 20s as your body starts gaining mass. And hitting? When you strikeout 25% of the time and you walk 5% of the time, the moment you start to decline at all, those numbers get exacerbated. There's nothing to fall back on. All of your value requires you to maximize the amount of time you're hitting the ball hard. If that starts to dip, you simply don't have the walks or the lucky BABIP hits to make up for it.

So in 2020, this process started. Baez's Ks jumped to over 30%. And his wRC+ went to 57.

And yeah, yeah, covid year. The next year Baez's wRC+ was 117, and in a year that he struck out even more.

That doesn't really tell the tale of what happened to him though. He started the year with the Cubs before being traded to the Mets.

Cubs - K% 36.3% BABIP .330 wRC+ 104
Mets - K% 28.5% BABIP .390 wRC+ 143

I mean yeah, he started making more contact, and all of that contact fell in.

Someone - maybe the Tigers - must have realized that Baez's jumping K rate was alarming, and that when you start striking out in literally 1 out of 3 plate appearances, you're not giving yourself the opportunity to actually produce, like, ever.

Baez cut his Ks to 24.9% But to everything there must be a trade off. Baez didn't start walking more. Baez didn't suddenly just decide to hit more balls. He just, instead, made a lot more softer contact.

What's worse is that his softer contact wasn't just a product of focusing on more contact. Baez actually swung at fewer strikes. His strike swinging % dropped EIGHT POINTS. One of the biggest free swingers in baseball swung at strikes at about the league average. He did make a lot more contact, that was a CLEAR focus for him. Baez's strike contact percentage jumped 7 points.

But then we have to talk about balls.

Baez, who is routinely in the 1st percentile for most times chasing pitches, well friends, he was still in the 1st percentile. Baez, who was already the worst player in baseball at chasing absolute crap, chased a higher percentage of pitches AND hit more of those pitches. You want to know how much solid contact you can make hitting a ball that the pitcher intends to be a pickoff throw? Not much.

Baez's average exit velocity dropped over 2 MPH to 87.9MPH, the lowest in his career. Even worse so far as measuring actual power numbers goes, his top line numbers - that is how hard he can hit the ball when he really barrels it - all plummeted.

Throw in a down offensive season in baseball, where plenty of homers and doubles turned into outs, and THEN factor in that Baez moved to Detroit, a pitcher's haven in the modern game (Baez wound up with 5 fewer home runs than projected thanks to the home cooking), and what happened?

A .238 average. The guy who used to babip in the .340s, instead pulled out a .292.
A .278 On Base Percentage. It's like he had an allergy to being safe.
A .393 Slugging Percentage. It's always good when power hitters don't SLG .400.

Add to this that 2022 was Baez's first full ever with fewer than 10 steals, and his defense graded out so badly - I mean so badly, you have to actually blame it on a fluke. Like Javy Baez did not have a -10.5 UZR last year, right? That number has to normalize next year, right?

Maybe it will. But next year will be his age 30 season. Baez at a minimum isn't anything like the defender he was in his prime. Baez is lost at the plate, and when he's lost he brings you zero value. That's not going to get better over time. He's not going to start walking more. He's not going to strike out less without sacrificing power. And power...in Detroit? I mean, why even try?

He's in Detroit until 2027 if he wants to be. He's playing for something though. Baez has a buyout this year. I'm telling you this guy has to sell himself out completely. Balls to the Wall. So that he can get a comparable contract somewhere else next year. Because Baez would be a FOOL for giving up an additional 100 million in guaranteed dollars. But if he spends the rest of his career in Detroit, he's going to lose his best Hall argument of all. The guy is fun to watch on the field. I mean, do you remember seeing him play this year? Do you remember he's still around? He's disappeared in Detroit.

That's something I'd be HAPPY to do for his kind of cash, but if Baez wants a Hall case going forward, he needs to be on camera, winning baseball, dazzling people with plays, and most of all crushing hits all over the park. I'm betting he can improve on last year. But I'm betting not for long. The end comes quickly for his type of player. If he's truly lost a step, like everything says he has, then he might be doomed. If he was just bored and frustrated, we'll see how much he can recover. There's at least solid reason to think that's possible - all of Detroit was a disaster area last year. That team was a total and complete mess. Baez's crappy 93 OPS+ was SECOND IN THEIR LINEUP.

He's a player we've seen go from a losing Cubs team, to setting on fire when he went to a winning Mets team. Personally I think that has a lot to do with his demise last year. But is that changing anytime soon in Detroit? Nah. He's probably toast. A player who will be spoken of like a Hall of Famer - "You should have seen Javy Baez play..." - but a player who won't get anywhere near Cooperstown, and I imagine will be banned from Pittsburgh.

First hit in front of the new fans
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...b-df7085723a75

The same game. You'll never see anything like this again. Walk Off
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-a9a71b94dfcb

First Tigers homer also the 150th of his career
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...a-3a63327a9b62

Grand Slam. 459 feet.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...3-63141afe3a8f

Defensive "highlights" - most of these are routine or even bad. Why they were made into a video, I have no idea. But some are SPECTACULAR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anPXpszgnSk

Chapman, Matt
2022: 4.1 WAR Career: 24.0 WAR

Matt Chapman would have been a great Hall of Fame case study for the evolution of voters had the A's actually called him up in a reasonable time. Chapman didn't get any MLB experience until halfway through his age 24 season, at a time when the average Hall of Famer would have already accrued 10 WAR.

So yeah, to catch up, he'd have to be some sort of God. Then you mix in the 2020 debacle, and it's a minor miracle Chapman has the stats to be on this list at all.

Chapman is a fascinating hitter. He is the ultimate grip it and rip it hitter - but he has a remarkable sense of the strike zone.

Chapman struck out in 27.4% of his at bats last year. Yet he only chased pitches out of the zone 21.7% of the time, 98th% percentile in baseball.

That means basically that Chapman instantly knows if it's a strike or not, and if it's a strike he closes his eyes and spins the bat around like he's the Tasmanian Devil. If it hits the ball, great. It's become a dangerous high-speed projectile. Most of the time Chapman ends up in a 3 foot pit at home plate where he's accidentally drilled himself into the ground.

The ironic part of this approach is that when Chapman gets a strike - he's less likely to hit it than the average MLB hitter. He's slightly less likely to swing, and significantly less likely to make contact. As a result, he's incredibly below average in production. -33 runs below average last year when thrown a strike because of the high likelihood that throwing a strike produces, well, a strike. And those are bad things for hitters.

But because he doesn't swing at bat pitches, he was FOURTY runs above average when you throw him a ball. Overall he's a pretty meh 8 runs above average overall, in one of the strangest combinations you can possibly find for someone whose a power hitter. I'm not sure you would find different results if you replaced Chapman with the naked cardboard cutout of the owner in the Major League movie. Except that teenage me definitely thought she was well above average.

Chapman has the beginning of a solid Hall of Fame peak, with seasons of 6.3, 5.7, 4.1, 4.1 - pretty damn impressive when you consider his first full year was at 25. Unfortunately, his first full year was at 25, which means to truly build a Hall of Fame resume, the dude has to have minimum 3 more HOF worthy seasons, and frankly it would take about 5 more for him to be a serious candidate. Considering we're talking about a player who will be in their age 30 season next year, you can imagine how likely this is. Also when you consider that we are now 4 years improved from his true peak, how's it going to happen?

Most of the projection systems side with me, but Zips, it does not. And it thinks Chapman is going to post 5.5ish WAR next year, which would be a pretty insane bump. I can't tell you why that is, but part of it might be that Chapman's been pretty ridiculously unlucky with his home runs. He hit 4 home runs fewer than expected last year, and is now a solid -12 for his career. That sort of luck has to turn right? Maybe it's that zips sees that he made ridiculous strides in his hitting metrics last year. Everything got better, and it's sort of crazy how much better for a guy who should be leaving his peak. Chapman made much more contact WHILE improving his exit velocity by 2.5 mph. That's not unusual necessarily, but it's 23 year olds who do it, not 29 year olds.

So I think there's a solid chance Chapman could actually not be done surprising us with his production. And maybe Chapman will end up reaching fringe HOF levels. And if that happens, don't we have to give him extra credit? He mashed in the minors and the A's didn't call him up. That's not HIS fault.

But alas, I really can't get passed one thing. He's a .240 lifetime hitter now. And that's before his decline. And for the life of me, I can't imagine with his shortened career that there is any chance in the world that he's going to have such good fielding metrics, and high enough WAR, or smash enough home runs, or charm enough writers, that anywhere near 75% of people are going to get behind a sub-.240 hitter for the Hall of Fame.

It should probably happen someday. The game is changing radically. The importance of batting average is falling by the way side. But if someone is going to be in the Hall batting .235, they are going to have done it hitting 600 home runs, being a great defender, and getting called up to start when they are 21 years old and going at it until they are 38.

In the meanwhile, his batting average is a little like the opposite of a beauty contest. As much as we try to say talent, and poise, and academics, and Q&A are what REALLY matters to a beauty contest. A whole lot of voters aren't going to be able to let go of the fact that his batting average is not abreast to that of the typical Hall of Famer, if you catch my drift.

Still, Chapman is one of the cooler and more unique players across baseball. He's fun to watch, and I for one am rooting for him - even if I'm staring at Miss Virginia instead. You should see how she handles a bat.

I love triples to the crazy part of Fenway
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...3-c4fe2796f3ae

multi homer game 1
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...e-c7c2b38a6746
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...5-8cbc3f4b88be

multi homer game 2
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...9-48ccfba1130c
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-412ff312d968

I just really like that this homer gave the Jays a 3-0 lead. And by the end of the game is was 28-5.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...f-c618a3d2b4f8

Nola, Aaron
2022: 6.3 WAR Career: 29.9 WAR

Aaron Nola has to be the least appreciated pitcher in baseball.

Were you aware his 6.3 fWAR led all pitchers in baseball? You probably were not. Yes it was more than Sandy Alcantara, who easily led on the B-Ref side of things, because Fangraphs has a reliance on FIP.

I'm pretty open that I'm good with Cy Young NOT being decided on FIP, because FIP might tell you you didn't deserve to give up that bloop single - but give up that bloop single you did. Nothing can change that.

However, you have to particularly feel for Aaron Nola, who has a career ERA of 3.60 but an FIP of 3.28 and an xFIP of 3.27.

OK, both of those numbers are the same? That means Nola has been unlucky.

And maybe unlucky isn't the write word to use. Aaron Nola has been put in a hitters park in Philadelphia, and been given a team behind him so bad at defending things you'd think they were all French. LeSchwarber ain't gaining you a lot of outs with the glove.

Nola had a 3.25 ERA in 2022...against a 2.58 FIP
Nola had a 4.63 ERA in 2022...against a 3.37 FIP

The Phillies are screwing him. Even more so with Nola being one of the best pitchers in baseball, pitching on a World Series team, and going 11-13 on the year.

8 pitchers threw 200 innings last year. Nola was one of them, he finished 2nd with 205.
10 pitchers had 200 strikeouts last year. Nola was one of them, he finished 4th with 235
While throwing the 2nd most innings in baseball, Nola walked 29 batters.

29 batters. 29. Aroldis Chapman walked 28 batters in 36.1 innings.

163 pitchers walked more batters than Aaron Nola last year - who threw the 2nd most innings remember!

5 X 30 tells us there are about 150 starters in baseball at any given time. And yet, 163 pitchers walked more hitters.

This shouldn't shock you, but Nola led MLB in lowest bb/9 (1.3).

And remember, Nola struck out 235 hitters. Want to know what his fastball sits at? 93. He's in the 26th percentile for fastball velocity. But he's striking out 235 hitters.

This shouldn't shock you, but Nola led MLB in highest k/bb (8.1).

Oh, and Nola gave up 19 homers all year. Thanks to pitching in Philadelphia, 12 were at home. Statcast says he gave up 4 "no doubt" homers on the year. FOUR! While doing nothing but throwing strikes with a well below average fastball.

Really, I don't know why fans aren't smart enough to pile on this guys bandwagon. At least he'll have Trea Turner behind him next year. Turner is an average SS - and average is a huge bump up for the Phillies who were a cool -13 DRS on the year. Considering Nola pitches more innings than anyone, and also gets 43% ground balls, why we've already saved him a few runs next year.

And then there's the compounding interest of baseball. How much more, and how much better will Nola be when he's not throwing extra pitches under stress in the 2nd inning because his SS has the range of a fully armored medieval knight?

Nola's league percentages are awesome to look at. He's negative in velocity, like I said. And he's negative in one other thing: barrels. That's partially a product of being one of the slower pitchers in the league, so if he screws up and throws a meatball, or if he's behind in the count - a rarity - it's easier for a batter to size one up. But he's mostly negative in barrels because it's a counting stat, and he just happens to throw more innings than basically anyone else. His barrels/PA is above league average - and THAT'S deceptive because it's per PA - and he doesn't walk anyone!

I feel like I could go on and on about Nola. The guy is a stud, and no one seems to realize it. The Phillies are talking about making him a Phillie for life - which would make me nauseous if I were a pitcher (but not as a connoisseur of cheese-steaks, which more accurately describes me). But Nola is obviously fine with it, if you're paying attention. But part of me wishes Nola would go somewhere more pitching friendly, or somewhere that prides itself on defense, because I think the results of that would be something along the lines of shock like when you find out that guy you thought was a go nowhere loser in High School makes millions of dollars a year playing video games now, and it occurs to you he was always awesome and you are the real sucker here.

Here's one last one for you. We're doing this Hall of Fame Pace tracker thing, right? Nola is on pace. 29.9 WAR, and it takes 29.1 WAR to be on pace.

OK, he's on pace, but barely.

Nola just finished his age 29 season. There's not another pitcher in his 20s who is actually on pace right now.

All the praise I've given Nola has been based on the pitcher he already is. If he continues to be the pitcher he already is, he's a HOF pitcher for his era (which we must judge differently from eras where pitchers were allowed to throw 250 innings a year). If Nola really is taking a step up, and is gonna be one of THOSE types of late career guys, watch out. There will be a time - like with Scherzer, Verlander - where people won't even remember that he wasn't thought of in legendary terms.

If Nola is going to age like a Verlander, a DeGrom, a Scherzer, watch out. The best is yet to come. Is that possible? Well yeah, I mean 2022 was his best season after all. If 2022 stays his best season, and he performs at this level for a few more years? Yeah, he's actually going to be the modern version of a HOF pitcher. People just have to come around to figuring this stuff out. Slowly.

7 innings, 1 hit 0 runs against Milwaukee. Just 89 pitches
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...d-15abf51d3624

His other start against Milwaukee? 8 shutout.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...1-6879a6e05bb0

Shutout against the Reds. 101 pitches. So close to a Maddux
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...f-2af1dcc0c71a

His nastiest pitches
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...3-af7f97155e1b
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...c-e56a5f25de1c
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...4-9a6467c115f1
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...4-d2c2a53841ec
(on review this one was a K, which is just awesome)
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...0-ff393c45b505
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...0-0f38f68de731

Turner, Trea
2022: 6.3 WAR Career: 31.6 WAR

Think about all of the great SS playing the game today. Want to know which one has the highest WAR since 2019? This guy.

I think people realize Trea Turner is very good. I don't think they realize he's one of the elite players in the game today. He's inner circle.

You don't believe me? Here's his career history.

Trea Turner was drafted by the Padres (and the Pirates before that) and proceeded to absolutely destroy every level of the minor leagues, before somehow being chosen as a PLAYER TO BE NAMED LATER (!!!) in a 3 way trade that included Wil Myers. The trade was sneaky, and underhanded, and mostly forgotten about today. Turner wasn't eligible to be traded at the time because of his recent draft status. But the other teams wanted their players. The Rays weren't trading Wil Myers unless they got Steven Souza from the Nationals. The Nationals weren't doing that until they got Trea Turner from the Padres.

So, in an underhanded clearly skirting the rules move, Trea Turner was agreed upon, wink wink nudge nudge, but wasn't named until he was eligible to be traded in the middle of next year.

Turner was pissed at San Diego for using him in this way. His agent considered filing a grievance. In the meanwhile MLB changed the rules around trading draft picks to where they could be dealt within their first year, and the matter was dropped.

Several years later San Diego would offer Turner a $342 million dollar deal to play in San Diego. He turned them down for less money to go to Philadelphia. No one mentioned how San Diego once manipulated his situation years before, and how it upset him at the time - but do you think it probably played a part? Do you think Turner trusted San Diego executives enough to sign on to a decade of playing time with them? I sure don't. And now he is in Philadelphia.

One consequence of the deal was that Turner was playing in an organization that never intended to bring him up to the majors. So he started the year in AA, destroyed AA, and unlike other prospects that would have gone to AAA or the Majors once it was apparent they were too good for the level - which was basically Turner's situation from day 1 - he sat in AA.

And then he was traded to Washington. And the deal made Washington keep him in AA too. For 10 whole games. Kid develops fast! Turner then went to AAA and destroyed everything around him there too. Probably because he should have already been in the majors. Probably he knew this. Probably 7 years later he told San Diego brass that they were welcome to self-copulate if you know what I'm saying.

Turner got a cup of coffee that year, and was at that moment immediately behind the times when it came to HOF production.

Stranger still, Washington started him in AAA the next year. Who knows why. Maybe that was contract manipulation too. But he spent his days in AAA with a wRC+ of 142 (which was basically what he averaged throughout the minors) while management was like "hmmm we're not sure...."

And finally, just over halfway through the year, he came up, and proceeded to get 2nd in ROY voting to a full season of Corey Seager. Turner, of course, had a MLB wRC+ of 146, and golly gee wilikers, I think he proved he belonged.

Turner earned 3.8 WAR in a bit less than half a season. You can do the math yourself. We're talking about a 7.6+ WAR guy, who was instead behind the HOF pace because of managerial sneaky fun times.

The next year was more of a struggle, but only by Turner terms. Injuries caused him to slump a bit, and miss 1/3 of the year, and he still put up 2.9 WAR. Prorated would mean you're looking at another great year, but the reality was Turner was now going into his age 25 season and had yet to play a full season in the majors.

That happened at 25, and in spite of lackluster offence (105 wRC+) his very good defense gave him a 4.9 WAR season. He was basically a 5 WAR player at a year we'd look back and say "too bad" about. He was a star, but no one realized it.

2019 he broke out. And while he again missed 40 games, his 4.2 WAR and 117 OPS+ meant that if anyone was paying attention, it was another year where you could see that with a full season he would be a superstar.

The truth was, he was only beginning to break out.

And, because his career seems to be snake bitten, Turner did completely break out. In 2020. In a 60 game season. Turner turned in a .982 OPS. He led the league in hits and triples and added in 12 homers. All while playing solid shortstop. He earned only 2.7 WAR, which would have been 7.3 WAR, but Covid covered up how amazing he was.

Finally in 2021 and 2022 Turner got to play full (his only time missed was because of actually catching covid) seasons and pulled down 6.8 and 6.3 WAR respectively. in 2021 he led the league in hits AGAIN, and even led the league in total bases. That's...that's good. He's a superstar. He should reasonably have 2 7 WAR seasons, and a handful of other 5 WAR seasons to go with his 6 WAR seasons, but circumstances stopped that. And those circumstances have halted his fame too.

Turner has received MVP votes in 3 seasons, but he's only been an All-Star in two. Tell me how impressive that is. Way to go, fans.

And now Turner finds himself in Philadelphia, a hitters park, surrounded by big time hitters. You should probably be excited for Trea Turner.

He's entering his age 30 season, and decline comes fast. Turner is one of the fastest runners in baseball - no really, his sprint speed is 99th percentile, so he's truly on the short list for fastest runners here, but speed is one of the things that goes first. Defense is also one of those things, and Turner does appear to be sliding in that arena. He plays for the Phillies though, so there's no real need to move him off of SS, and if they ever need to they can shift him to pretty much any other position because it's going to be manned by some sort of worthless Easter Island statue posing with a glove.

But his offense - it's amazing. He is a line drive machine, with %s above 20% going back to 2018. He has the wheels to beat out infield hits. And he has the power to hit 20 homers from a premium position. And he's going into a league with limited pick-offs and bigger bases. He's like the Raptors from Jurassic Park, and now the electric fences are out of power.

Turner doesn't walk a lot - but he does walk enough that it's not a terrible negative. He gets on base because he hits. His career BABIP is .344, and his strikeouts are quite low compared to the league, and that's how you get a guy who has led the league in hits twice. He's one of the few players in baseball that might break 200 hits once of these years.

And now he has an 11 year deal. Are you kidding me? He has 1,000+ hits, 124 career home runs, 230 career stolen bases, and 11 guaranteed years of at bats in a hitters park.

Again, simple math tells us averaging just 100 hits a year gets him to 2,000. You can bet it's going to be more like 150, and he will be a 2,500 hit short stop with 250 career home runs, and who knows how many stolen bases with the new rules. He's putting up 6 WAR seasons with regularity, I don't see why he wouldn't have another in him. Maybe more. People just don't seem to understand that not only is he the real deal, he may have been the best player to move this off-season. If he can stay healthy I wouldn't be shocked if he ended up approaching 70 WAR through the life of his contract. Saying this about a player that didn't have a full season until he was 25, that's amazing. And I might be crazy, but I don't think so. I think he's been showing up since he stepped into a professional park on day one that he was one of the best players on the field. I think the world hasn't known it because idiots are the ones running this thing. And they are often blind to the obvious.

That much is over. The baseball people obviously know about him now, and his path is pretty clear. He's headed to the Hall with any semblance of a normal career curve - and people, who are always dumb and behind the times, are about 5 years away from being shocked at how good he's been all along. Happens every damn time.

Angels have to watch the Dodgers get a player that doesn't completely fall to dust after they get him
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...4-7c7ae377b064
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...e-eebecc81f814

20 game hitting streak
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...5-38e46f27a587

439 from a SS
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...2-0598ac887c69

1000the career hit, absolutely smoked
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...d-34047934bbde

100th RBI ending the season with a bang
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...3-2bdd493cf319

The Watch Him Run Collection
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-950994fd7810
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...f-1d418a340e0f
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...0-0ba97ef1ee53
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...0-27a39b132a76

Bogaerts, Xander
2022: 6.1 WAR Career: 34.2 WAR

I think it's been long lost in the exploits of Aaron Judge, and Shohei Ohtani, and before that Yander Alvarez, that Bogaerts was a serious MVP candidate pretty well into the 2022 season. On June 18th he was hitting .342, and was a 300/400/500 hitter overall. Xander fell from those heights, no huge surprise, but ending the year with 6.1 WAR is nothing to sneeze at. For that accomplishment he gets to spend the next decade in beautiful San Diego. It's a pretty good deal.

Bogaerts has a great Hall of Fame base - he has 1410 hits, 308 double, 156 homers, and 34.2 WAR through his 20s. That makes him around a top 25 SS all time, BUT what he has that a lot of other SSs didn't have at his age, is a fresh e-l-e-v-e-n year deal that means he's guaranteed to get at bats into his 40s.

And so once again, you do some very simple math. If he just averages 100 hits a year, that's over 2500 for his career. The other side of looking at that is that he has an outside chance of reaching 3,000 hits for his career. You wouldn't normally say this for a 29 year old with 1410 hits. But again, he has 11 freaking guaranteed years. It's amazing what sort of unintended consequences happen in baseball, and that luxury cap and new CBA contract created a new strategy of simply paying a playing a lower salary until they are 145 years old. And the net result of this is a Pujols like career - Pujols never makes 700 home runs if his contract with the Angels ended at 36. But getting to play into his 40s meant that Albert got the chance to compile for years even with substandard performance.

Just to use Albert, because he is a great example for this - Albert from age 31 to 42, so one year older on both ends than the Bogarts contract - went through a huge batting average slide in those years, injuries, a covid shortened season, and eventually part time play. He ended those years with 1484 hits.

Give that to Bogaerts and you have 2894 career hits. That's pretty painfully close and painfully far from 3,000. For SSs historically, as long as you aren't a roider like ARod - or a crazy abuser like Omar Vizquel, once you reach 2600 hits, like 8 other SSs have done, you're in.

And that's purely on hits. Bogaerts 156 HRs are already ahead of half of those 8. So yeah, all Bogaerts has to do is stay reasonably healthy and reasonably productive and he's in. So what are the chances of that?

Well, considering that the 6.1 WAR is his career high, he must be doing pretty OK right now. He's not a 30 year old whom you are worried the best is already behind him.

Now - that 6.1 WAR is partially an illusion.

Let's quickly go over the DRS that Xander has posted every year since his rookie year in 2014, to his 2022 season:
-5
-3
-10
-11
-8
-9
-4
-5
5

Yeah, that last one isn't a typo. It's a positive 5. And so Bogaerts career high WAR is because his defensive metrics happen to be a tremendous outlier in his career. And considering he did this tremendous outlier in his age 29 season, what do we think the chances are that this will repeat?

None. The chances are none.

So Bogaerts at some point is going to have to move down the defensive spectrum, and he'll be doing that around the same time as a guy named Machado, and lets not forget that if Bogaerts really is going to spend 2023 at SS, that means that Tatis has also begun that assent. It's a pretty interesting video game simulation the Padres are playing here. How many square pegs can they fit in round holed at the same time? But in this case we aren't really worried about his total WAR here. A healthy Bogaerts looks like he has an upper 50s floor, and give him a magic number and he's going to be fine.

And he'll be fine because while the defense is a mirage - Bogaerts gets his value from his offense. And his wRC+ through his prime has had a low of 129, a high of 140, and he had a 134 last year. That's incredibly consistent, so it's very easy to predict nearly those consistent levels into his early 30s.

Yes, there's the OTHER elephant in the room, which is Bogaerts is leaving a hitters haven like Fenway Park, for a non hitters haven like Petco.

OK, Fenway was very friendly to Bogarts. He had a. .886 OPS at home and a .779 OPS on the road. Last year that was the difference between a scary hitter, and a run of the mill decent hitter. That was last year. His career mirrors just the same. Gulp.

But...players do tend to play better at home. AND home has at least cost him a few home runs, thanks to line drives off the Monster instead of blasts over it. San Diego, which isn't a hitters home run haven, still seems to suit him better as Statcast tells us Fenway has cost him a half dozen home runs over his career as compared to Petco.

Still, those are home runs. Bogaerts path to fame and glory isn't really through the long ball. His fly ball % is actually below the league average. He lives off of BABIP from a great line drive %, his BABIP was .362 last year, which is just fun. The metrics will tell you that BABIP was lucky, and ok, maybe it was. But his power numbers were down even though his top line hitting %s were fine, which means he's probably ok and going to hit the ball harder next year. And he's going to do it in a larger park where line drives have an easier time falling. I suspect he's not going to be awesome - especially with defensive decline - but he's not going to crumble either. He'll hit near .300, and he'll get at least 150 hits closer to a magic number.

All, and I mean Alllllllll of the projection systems have him nosediving into .260s for his average. And it's just so dumb. They do this because, like I said, you'd think that Bogaerts is going to regress because of luck. You think things like this because Bogaerts over performed his xwOBA last year.

You want to know how many years Bogaerts has over performed his xwOBA? All of them. Every single year.

When that's the case you have to stop assuming a player is going to crash to your calculations, and accept that there's something they are doing that your math problem just isn't catching. And considering, like I said before, that his top numbers were STILL great, I suspect we'll see an ISO rebound next year also. If you're looking at Bogaerts and doubting him again and again and again, the problem is on you. Not him. I imagine he's going to put up a typical season again next year, only now he's going to do it on a powerhouse playoff team. The immediate future is pretty bright for Bogaerts.

And if he did suddenly learn how to field, burn him for being a witch.

It's a crushed double, but the actual reason to watch this is the Devers "slide"
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...f-0c28721c0a13

Career #150
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...d-6669c1e87add

Remember when I told you about his line drives? and his top line? 113 mph grand slam.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...9-a9ec58ade956

A nice goodbye to Boston fans
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...d-cb25d92ba944

OK, his actual last at bat, which is just as fun to think of as a goodbye
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...4-8adbd3e1a45d

Ramirez, Jose
2022: 6.2 WAR Career: 41.2 WAR

He's good. He's so f-ing good. Somehow, someway he continues to be a bit under the radar. Perhaps it's because he plays in Cleveland for a team where no one really remembers their new name anyway. Perhaps it's because his career took a rather slow start in the majors. But he's so f-ing good. He's a future Hall of Famer. End of post.

OK, I'm sure I can't get away with that. Ramirez's 41.2 career WAR - while high - isn't as high as others, so perhaps you'd be wondering why I'm telling you he'll be a Hall of Famer, and I'm telling you that because he's just so f-ing good, and that's not about to go away.

Remember that Ramirez spent part of 3 seasons not impressing anyone. It's not entirely fair, he was 20, 21, and 22 years old - but he was given a sizeable number of at bats in that time, and really wasn't very good. And the first year he was good - his age 23 season - he hit 11 home runs. Yawn.

The fact of the matter is he was young and developing his power. He his 11 home runs, yes, but he hit 46 doubles and 3 triples along with it. 60 xbh is basically the magical number to indicate someone is smashing the ball all over the yard.

The next year he jumped to 29 home runs - but he ALSO jumped to 56 doubles and threw in another 6 triples. FOLKS THAT'S 91 XBH. To give you some perspective, last year Aaron Judge had 90 XBH.

His development over those two years was nothing short of Ruthian. Literally. Ruth hit 11 home runs in 1918, and followed it with 29 in 1919. I'd love to see if any other players in history can match that progression.

Ruth hit 54 the next year, so that's where the comp ends. Ramirez hit his career high 39, threw in 38 more doubles, and besides his injury plagued 2019 season, where he was merely good, he's one of the most consistent smashers you'll find in the game. I'm trying to find a comp, but he really reminds me of watching Rafael Palmeiro hit, in the sense that he puts up numbers that are stunningly consistently awesome, but he's not nearly as respected on the national scale. And also there are rumors that he can't keep an erection.

Anyway...

In 2022 Ramirez went back to leading the league in doubles with 44, added another 29 home runs, drove in 126 RBI, and oh yeah - he's a great baserunner. Something I'm shocked at every time I notice. He stole 20 bases, being a 20-20 player for the 4th time in his career, and one of those was 30-30.

Now look at his peak 7 seasons against the average HOF, and remember he's just turning 30:

Yr Av JR
1 7.4 8.1
2 6.7 6.7
3 6.1 6.5
4 5.7 6.2
5 5.2 5.3
6 4.8 3.5
7 4.3 3.2

OK, look again. The guy is turning 30 and he basically has completely overtaken all 7 individual peak years of the average Hall of Famer.

And I have news for you. That 3.2? That year was 2020. His wRC+ was 167. That 3.2 prorates out to an 8.6 WAR season.

So I'll say it again for those in the back. We are talking about a sure fire, no doubt, Hall of Famer, if he even comes CLOSE to having a normal age distribution curve.

(For the record, on Baseball Reference, for JAWS he's listed as the 35th best 3B of all time, already, with no credit given for prorating 2020 naturally.)

How Ramirez does this is by hitting balls weaker than most of the league. His EV is in the 25th percentile at 87.5 mph. His hard hit % is only in the 32%. These aren't exactly strange numbers for Ramirez - it's sort of how he's always been. His longest HR was only 422 feet!

But he's an artist at the plate. He has excellent bat control, and he waits for his pitch. The man doesn't chase bad balls, and he doesn't miss good ones. He hits 91% of balls that he swings at in the strike zone. As a result when he does hit them, he HITS them. 95% for max exit velocity. Add to that that he pulls balls to the short fence (left or right as a switch hitter which is even cooler) about 10% more than league average, and he hits 5% more fly balls than league average, and well...you get a whole lot of doubles and home runs.

He does have a counting stat problem. His early career struggles, and stupid Covid, have left him with 192 home runs and 1,155 hits going into his age 30 season. What that means is that if he was to somehow double his career - which would give him an incredible 80 WAR - he'd still have fewer than 400 home runs and fewer than 2500 hits. And, let's face it, he's probably not going to double his career production in his 30s.

He also has a contract problem. Ramirez has a ridiculously team friendly deal that expires after his age 35 season. So, unlike other players on this list that are guaranteed at bats for a half a decade or more - Ramirez is going to have to Josh Donaldson himself around the league for however long he can to compile numbers.

It's a problem, but I don't see it as a tremendous problem myself. The way the electorate is changing to recognize the excellence of players like Scott Rolen - Ramirez coasting into 60 WAR territory should be more than enough. And when you considering just how good he has been over the past few years, you'd be a fool to bet otherwise. Indeed ZIPS is going to hammer you down as you age, but they still give Ramirez 15 WAR over the next 3 years. That's a 33 year old with 57 WAR. Like I said, anything close to a normal decline and that peak is going to get him in.

In the meanwhile, here's what you can do. You can turn on an Indians game. I know, I know, it's blasphemy. No one goes and no one watches. But at the plate he's an absolute wrench, and you'll want to say you watched him as much as you could. Because if you've been missing out on how awesome he's been all these years, you're truly missing out on one of the best to play the game in this generation. Most of the players you'd put above him haven't had half the amazing seasons he's had. All praise Jose Ramirez.

Grand Slam
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...d-8eea3664e8de

And another
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...0-0a3452902cc0

Multi homer game of Ohtani and the Angels
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...2-8358dd0cd76f
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-8119336f246b

Who doesn't love a bases loaded triple?
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...f-a184b21bfbaa

Career HR 175
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-394747cb044f

Multi homer game against DET
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...4-c9cbd6c14c48
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...f-2343ba864581

Multi homer game against SD
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...7-0575609ef3d7
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...d-6c2dcf038391

Last AB of the season is the league leading 44th double with hustle and a split
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-4abc336d068f

Go ahead HR in playoffs
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...1-1595cbd32797

Harper, Bryce
2022: 2.4 WAR Career: 44.2 WAR

Bryce Harper (along with Mike Trout) have changed my perception of society. When you're a little kid, every single adult seems like a put together adult. At least they did to me. Every single adult had the right answer to what should happen at any moment. As you get older you start realizing some adults are just screwed up. And soon you realize that it could be any adult at any level, in fact it's most adults and it's ALL adults at something.

So you can talk to a brain surgeon, an astrophysicist, a lawyer, or what have you. And you discover that a brain surgeon might be awesome at operating at brains, but their favorite movie is Hot Tub Time Machine 2. This is a person who might be good at their craft, but that doesn't extend to other things in life, where they are pathetic. That's one level. Another level is that you might talk to the astrophysicist, and they'll tell you that Pluto is a planet. And you'll discover, ok, you're somehow an astrophysicist, but you must be a stunningly bad one, because there are basic facts about your own craft that I know that you don't appear to know.

And then there's level 3. And that's when you have a lawyer, and this is a position of which in a general stereotype you consider a smart person who, I mean, they HAD to go to and pass law school. And then this lawyer will tell you that the 6th amendment was actually a demand by aliens to be inserted into the constitution in 1994 or else they would destroy Earth, and literally every book had to be edited to pretend it was in the original Bill of Rights, which was named the Bill of Rights because Bill Clinton was president at the time this charade had to happen, and it actually establishes humanity's right to exist from alien tyranny. These are the most popular people on Twitter. This step is where you discover someone is bat f*ck insane, you have no idea how they got to their station of life, except you've discovered stations of life actually have very little meaning, and pretty much anyone could have done anything as long as they have a good amount of luck and know the right people. OR that are idiot savants. And that lawyer could be a ridiculously good lawyer, who would otherwise be homeless and in an asylum.

You can have any combination of the above also - including all 3. And that's pretty much your only shot at becoming President.

But it's this last combination that I've discovered with Harper and Trout. That people can watch baseball day in and day out. They can collect cards. They can go to games. They can make 6 figure incomes and spend it all on their favorite team. They have ticket stubs from their front row World Series trips. They can name you the 1984 starting lineup of pretty much any team. They know the jock size of every player in the minor leagues. They are aware of all rule changes, uniform changes, seating capacities, everything. And they don't know jack sh!t about the game.

And that's because, my friends, however dedicated we are to baseball, we are FAR more dedicated to feeding our own egos. We are far more dedicated to closing our mind, and taking everything that ever passes in front of our face and manipulating it to conform to our own point of view. Every single person, including yours truly, has built some level of fantasy world for themselves to live in, and we fight to the death to make sure that nothing pernitrates the façade, and nothing changes our original point of view that was probably formed when we were 14 in some middle-school cafeteria. This is the truth of life. This is what we all experience every day. This is the equivalent to the thinking that actually we're pretty good drivers, but every other driver on the road is awful and should have their license taken away. It's all ego masturbation coping.

That is why people can have baseball as their number one expertise in life, and still declare a player like Bryce Harper to be a no good, overrated bum who has no chance at the Hall of Fame. They decided this when Harper did something they didn't like when he was 19, and that's the way it must always be.

And when Bryce Harper makes the Hall of Fame - which is pretty much as nearly certain as it can be, until we find out that in 15 years anyone who ever had long hair is evil and should be cancelled - they will still not have changed their mind, but instead be stunned at how low the standards for the Hall are, and how stunningly stupid the voting party is.

I mean, the previous cycle could apply to 75% of inductees, but Bryce Harper is definitely vying to be the best of those players. The fact that there is shockingly large number of people that feel this way about Trout too, will no doubt take the cake whenever he is done. If they both end up on the same ballot, there will 100% be people whose entire baseball world will be turned around when both players easily make it in, and then it will be the Principal Skinner meme all over again. "Is it possible that I don't know anything about baseball? No, it's 100% of everyone else who is wrong!"

OK, well, I've written enough about Bryce Harper right? Without actually writing anything about Bryce Harper?

Yes, people are insane. They are crazy. And yes, if one person actually reads this, chances are they are insane. I mean, what compelled them to read this in the first place?

But come on now. You want some traditional arguments? Harper has won 2 MVP awards. He's been an All Star 7 times. He won Rookie of the Year. He's twice won the Silver Slugger.

He's led the league in homers, he's batted over .300 3 times, He's driven in 100 runs or more twice.

He's 15 home runs from 300. He's just over 100 hits from 1500, and he's just going into his age 30 season.

Let's get a bit more advanced. 3 times he's had an OPS over 1.000. His career OPS+ is 142. He has a .963 OPS in the playoffs. He was the MVP of the 2022 NLCS where he hit a legendary home run.

And he's under contract for 9 more seasons. That's 9 more years of compiling numbers. At 18 home runs a year - the amount he hit last year - that gives him 447 for his career, and 2,333 hits. And he's most likely going to beat that.

That's the easiest way to look at this sort of thing when players enter their age 30 season by the way. It's the Griffey test (or the Pujols test). Meaning, what if they totally Griffey their out years? Would they still compile the numbers necessary to make the Hall?

Giving Bryce Griffey's numbers from age 30-38, the years Bryce is under contract - and then only giving Bryce half of Griffey's age 30 year since Harper is to miss half of next year, Harper would exit age 38 with 478 home runs, and 2,246 hits. Maybe Bryce has another contract to try for 500 or not. It doesn't matter. That player is in the Hall of Fame, and that's with Bryce getting the aging curve of the poster child for disappointing aging curves and injuries.

Yeah, there are other, more severe players we could use. Andruw Jones comes to mind. And while Jones decided to use his 30s to capture fewer fly balls and more fat cells, you'll note that even he was at least hitting pretty well until his retirement - and his numbers would have looked a lot better had he been signed until he was 38.

It sucks that Harper has to miss so much time for an injury that wasn't really limiting his hitting. It's a terrible twist of fate that losing the World Series - and thus extending his season, also put off surgery and made it so that there is less Harper to play in 2023. He's 30 now, so it is time for that Roller Coaster to start it's final descent, and we don't know what speed it will be at.

But Harper crushes last year with the injury, and so it's pretty damn likely he's going to crush again after the injury. And it's pretty damn likely we can expect some good numbers into his mid 30s. Covid took away a prime year. This injury is taking away another. But when it's all said and done, all that hype about how good Harper was going to be, is going to prove to be true. Harper is joining the 500 home run club. And those weirdos who think that's a disappointment, or that he somehow will accomplish that without being all that good - well, they are living in their own fantasy world. They may think they are watching baseball, but they are really just turning on their own delusions.

Career HR 275
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-cc9f2fd97f21

Not a walk-off but might as well have been
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...d-5cb0f40d8c5a

Destroys the Angels
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...c-a682b3a659b0
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...3-fdc25bf2b056

And then a game tying slam in the bottom of the 8th against the Angels
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...a-64e6fb543adb

460 off the scoreboard. The sound of it hitting it is just sublime
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...9-3747db2e3e36

"The Swing of His Life"
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...f-0a3b4d70805c

Machado, Manny
2022: 7.4 WAR Career: 46.6 WAR

This stretch of players is almost boring to write about. Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts, Jose Ramirez, Bryce Harper, now Manny Machado, next Mookie Betts. Yawn. These guys are so clearly on a Hall of Fame track, it shouldn't be debated. This is the age 30 season for them, and they are all hitting such amazing peaks. I can't even stand to think of what Hall of Fame ballots are going to be like then with the 10 player limit.

Yes, Manny Machado is clearly on the Hall of Fame path. He's more than 10 WAR ahead of the pace of the AVERAGE Hall of Famer. And also, he just clocked in a 7.4 season, so he's clearly in his prime.

I'm going to go back and back to this well - and I should, it's the centerpiece of a lot of Hall of Fame debates, but here's his WAR/7 against the average HOFer

YR Hof MM
1 7.4 7.4
2 6.7 7.0
3 6.1 6.6
4 5.7 6.2
5 5.2 5.0
6 4.8 4.3
7 4.3 2.6

And he's turning 30. And that top one was last year, so his decline hasn't started. And that 2.6 was Covid, which would prorate to a 7 WAR season, which would mean if the 2020 year was full, then Machado would equal or better every single year of the peak of the average Hall of Famer A-L-R-E-A-D-Y. Case closed. End of post.

Last year was his 6th All Star Game, and his 4th top 5 MVP appearance.

Folks, these are the full career numbers of a Hall of Famer. All that's left is for Machado to pad his stats. Seriously.

Machado is 6 WAR away from passing the floor Hall of Fame total of 52.5, which he could do next year. He crossed 1,500 hits last year. He's approximately 3 years away from getting 2,000. Next year he should get to 300 homers. It's within reason he'll reach 1,500 runs and RBI for his career.

He also sort of gained some intangibles last year. He has his peak year, and let his team to the playoffs in a year in which Fernando Tatis was seen as a villiain who let the team down. Machado became the hero that overcame odds and led the Padres to the postseason anyway.

Let me give you some historical perspective about Machado through his age 29 season. Here's 3B by WAR (A-Rod had not yet played 3B)
1. Eddie Mathews - 68.3
2. Ron Santo - 56.1
3. Frankie Frisch - 53.4
4. George Brett - 50.7
5. Mike Schmidt - 50.0
6. John McGraw - 48.8
7. George Davis - 48.1
8. Scott Rolen - 47.8
9. Miguel Cabrera - 47.2
10. Manny Machado - 46.6

Miguel Cabrera is the only non-HOF on the list, and of course he'll make it.
Frankie Frisch was a 2B, but he occasionally played 3B so he's in this pull.
John McGraw is in the Hall as a manager, but he probably would have made it as a player as well.

Then consider he lost something like 4.4 WAR to covid - that would put him at 51. Ahead of Brett. Ahead of Schmidt. Any questions?

No, I'm not saying he's better than Brett or Schmidt. Both of those players had astounding runs in their 30s. Machado has a long way to be that good.

But he doesn't have a long way to get in the Hall.

So how hard is it going to be? Well, the metrics say he was way lucky in 2022. Those are just the facts ma'am. He out performed his xwOBA by 45 points in a year where the typical hitter should have been a bit under.

But hey, that's why it's called a peak season. All of his metrics actually put him pretty much in line with his career norms. And a normal year for Manny Machado is a Hall of Fame worthy year.

Next year he's in a lineup with Soto, and Bogaerts, and Tatis, eventually, maybe, unless he has another haircut. And who knows, perhaps Matt Carpenter will still be some sort of mythical beast. He's going to be in a loaded lineup. He's going to get pitches to hit. He's going to be just fine. And eventually he's going to be enshrined. Perhaps he'll invite Tatis to the ceremony too. I bet not.

Swell game.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...d-316dd9949cda
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...9-23c17bb3c248
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...3-8548cae2bf10
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...8-2bc85ed0dd22
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...f-4965893c81ea

Beat the Marlins 2-1, and here are the 2:
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...c-66e7f1f1d982
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...1-357a5264048d

Career hit 1500
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...9-d7215a67428e

463. Ahhh, Colorado
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...c-7a336c9301b9

Added a double to this 2 HR game - 2nd was career HR 275
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...9-7b6882462b33
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...5-55011a424983

Why yes, I'd like to see 3 ABs against Julio Urias. Do you know what this guy did to his FIP?
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...c-259077aa7c91
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...9-6628f1be4086
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...6-b46529a904de

Welcome to SD, Juan Soto, I'll take it from here
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...f-fe00833e1b28

Betts, Mookie
2022: 6.6 WAR Career: 50.1 WAR

Did you know Mookie Betts is going to be an incredibly interesting player to watch next season?

He's not an incredibly interesting player to debate the HOF merits of. He's going in the Hall of Fame. Mookie Betts Will take a plate appearance, likely in game 1 of the 2023 season, and at that point he can retire and - ok, not 5 years later, but probably 8 or 9 years later he'd be elected into the Hall because that's how incredibly high his peak has been. He's crossed the 50 WAR threshold before 30. The average Hall of Famer has 36.2 WAR through 29. Later on I'll be writing about Josh Donaldson - who has had an amazing career, and has a solid Hall argument - who has 46.2 WAR through age 36. Betts can sit out 3 years and still be on average HOF pace. Let's look up what position player in the Hall he's closest to through 29...

Ha! It's George Brett with 50.7 and 50.0 for Mike Schmidt. So let's just bring them up for a 2nd straight post.

He's just so far ahead of the curve. Mookie Betts ranks 35th all time for WAR for position players through age 29. That, of course, is track for inner Hall. And yes, like a lot of players around this age, he absolutely lost a prime year to Covid. He should be about 4 WAR higher with a full year. That would put him above Joe DiMaggio. You know, if we give credit for Betts for missing 100 games from Covid, and completely ignore that DiMaggio had missed 2 years at that point fighting for the freedom of the planet. Mookie Betts is better than Joe DiMaggio. That's what I'm declaring people. It's not my fault, it's just math.

Anyway, a quick rundown of his credits to date: Betts crossed 1,250 hits last year. He also got his 300th double, his 200th homer, and his 150th stolen base (It's really hard to post stolen base videos, which is why I haven't, but believe me it pisses me off.) 6 All star games, 1 MVP, 6 top 10 MVPS, 6 Gold Gloves, 5 Silver Sluggers, 1 Batting title, 3 times leading the league in runs, and a partridge in a pear tree. Wait, on recount he actually has 2 of those mothers.

Betts is under contract for another decade, and so he's going to rack up some serious numbers in that time.

And now we get to the weird part. You see, this gets brought up a lot with pitchers - how pitchers go from throwers to pitchers. So even if they lose their fastball, they can still get batters out. They can become masters into their later years, etc. etc.

It's the same thing for hitters. I have touched on this a bit with Jose Ramirez and with Manny Machado. They aren't just hitting the ball hard now - in many ways they are hitting the ball less hard. But they have maintained their extremely high peak and their placing in the league because they are hitting the ball more effectively. That's my best explanation.

And oh boy, Mookie Betts fans, don't look at the metrics, because they will scare you.

Max exit velocity is a great indicator of the potential a player has. You can hit the ball 94 MPH every single at bat (this is called the Ke'Bryan Hayes) and you will lead the league in exit velocity, and you will have terrible power numbers. So Max exit velocity tells us what you can pull out of your bag of tricks. We know that's your range. The higher that is, the more potential there is to harness.

Here is Mookie Betts Max exit velocity percentile for every year going back to 2016:

2016 - 96
2017 - 85
2018 - 77
2019 - 66
2020 - 54
2021 - 52
2022 - 48

Tell me, is this nuts? He hit the ball harder than almost EVERYONE. And now half the league can hit the ball harder.

Betts hit 35 freaking home runs in a down offensive year for baseball - his career high!

And none of those balls traveled farther than 421 feet.

Here is his "No Doubter %" - that is balls that he hits that go so far and so high that they are basically a home run no matter where you hit them:

2016: 54.8
2017: 54.2
2018: 69.7
2019: 58.6
2020: 27.8
2021: 29.2
2022: 22.9

Ya see that? Ya see it? He's just sneaking ball after ball over the fence, and somehow doing it more than ever before.

The secret to his success is that his top end might be declining. Or rather, clearly IS declining - but he barrels the ball so freaking often, 86th% in the league, that he gets a ton of 95-105 mph extra base hits.

Of course, this can't go on. At some point you age and your power declines to turn those doubles and homers into more long fly outs, and it doesn't matter how skilled of a hitter you are anymore. You're going to drop off a cliff. It happens to every player.

So Mookie? Well he went to Driveline this season to analyze his swing. And duh, the diminishing top power must have stuck out rather glaringly. As a result he has worked this offseason to add 8 pounds of muscle.

Now, will this work? I dunno. Sometimes we've seen players lose flexibility and thus gain injuries. Every spring we get "best shape of their life" reports that we get overly excited about for a player who is gong to be released by May.

But if it does work - what happens when a player like Mookie Betts, who is already hitting his career high in HR with a diminished skill set - gains strength? I mean seriously, what happens?

An ethical dilemma, that's what. Because that's something I really want to see, and also screw the Dodgers.

2 against the Pads to start his year:
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...b-e1e0003055ed
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...a-c5f7c7eae284

And 2 more
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...b-9a410cbce143
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...7-4b93ac06c09c

And now the Cubs get it
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...4-3ae89993fb92
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...9-544e76c55c41

200th career home run, featuring the classic call "He gets Wood again." Been there, pal.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...a-0ee9100a1750

Hit # 1,250
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...6-287432a4bcdd

Finally, Miami, just as they thought they were winning a game.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...1-000fd761d104
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...a-a83e51397497

Mookie Betts had never had a walk off hit, until now.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...4-1a0d5f54075d
And then it disappeared when it was later changed to a fielder's choice.

So he waited another 2 months for this pinch hit appearance:
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sport...b-f6b6933fb1d2

[Silent George]

Originally Posted by rwperu34

Take everybody above 80 WAR (the top 52, if my count is correct) and put them in one bucket and see what % are in (94%...49/52 if my count is correct). Then make the second bucket the next 52 and see how many of those are in. Rinse, repeat, until you're out of players. Can look at average WAR for the bucket as well.

Sorry for your loss.

if I remember this when I finish the players I'll try to double back.

[TBTC Baseball]

Amen to the Bryce Harper “rant”. Shocked that Nola is on track with WAR to be in the conversation.

Baez always looked like he was going to be a fast burn player, and glad Cubs got to see him at his brightest.

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by Silent George

if I remember this when I finish the players I'll try to double back.

Thank you.

I find it interesting how similarly you and I think about things like this. For example, the Griffey test is one I use quite often. I may be slightly different in that I think of it relative to what the player did in his 20s, but for someone like Harper that's not much different that just using Griffey's rest of career numbers.

I've also got the Adrian Beltre test (formerly the Brian Downing test) which is if a player improves that much in their 30s relative to their 20s, do they make the HOF?

I think Beltre highlights the HOF conundrum quite well. A lot of people don't realize how valuable it is (from an HOF perspective) to get into the league at an extremely young age and stay mostly (or extremely) healthy. I also don't think a lot people realize quite how many HOF cases are decided by what the player does in their 30s and how long they are able to last.

I had a debate a few years ago re: Paul Goldschmidt and Justin Upton. My friend argued that Goldy was a much better bet. I said Upton was just as likely...it's going to depend on who lasts longer. Obviously Goldy is going to win that one, but it wasn't quite so obvious in 2018.

[hammertime]

Originally Posted by Silent George

Ramirez, Jose
2022: 6.2 WAR Career: 41.2 WAR
and oh yeah - he's a great baserunner. Something I'm shocked at every time I notice. He stole 20 bases, being a 20-20 player for the 4th time in his career, and one of those was 30-30.

Yeah this is nuts.

[BigSlim16]

I knew Aaron Nola has good, but I didn’t realize he was that good. Thanks George

[rfgilles]

I find myself going back to this thread continually to see what Silent George says about players I am curious about.

Great stuff.

[bdejong1]

Masterful write-up yet again

[LVDan]

No question Nola is underrated. From a hobby perspective having him possibly play out his entire career on the team that drafted him can only help. When I got back into cards in early 2017 he and Snell were my first two notable stashes. Blake payed off with the CYA in 2018? And Nola has been an impressive slow burn. I wish I had back some of the rare RCs of him I owned at one time including a clear RC/10 and a long gone sapphire gold/5.

[Silent George]

Originally Posted by rwperu34

Thank you.

I find it interesting how similarly you and I think about things like this. For example, the Griffey test is one I use quite often. I may be slightly different in that I think of it relative to what the player did in his 20s, but for someone like Harper that's not much different that just using Griffey's rest of career numbers.

I've also got the Adrian Beltre test (formerly the Brian Downing test) which is if a player improves that much in their 30s relative to their 20s, do they make the HOF?

I think Beltre highlights the HOF conundrum quite well. A lot of people don't realize how valuable it is (from an HOF perspective) to get into the league at an extremely young age and stay mostly (or extremely) healthy. I also don't think a lot people realize quite how many HOF cases are decided by what the player does in their 30s and how long they are able to last.

I had a debate a few years ago re: Paul Goldschmidt and Justin Upton. My friend argued that Goldy was a much better bet. I said Upton was just as likely...it's going to depend on who lasts longer. Obviously Goldy is going to win that one, but it wasn't quite so obvious in 2018.

I think if McCutchen and Longoria had their careers flipped to that they ended their career on a high note instead of a long decline, their hall chances would jump 50%