The Rebuild Review: What Does the End of the Tanking & Rebuilding Process Look Like? Comparing the Orioles and the Astros, Part 1

I figured that, with the lockout, now would be a good time for an in-depth breakdown. However, this article got substantially longer than I originally planned.  I didn't want to cut any of the information out, and it's not like the lockout appears to be ending any time soon. So instead, I'll be running my whole breakdown in three parts over the next two weeks or so. Check back later in the week for the next part!

I’ve seen a few headlines about the Orioles and their plans for this winter. Most of them say that the team is unlikely to spend big in free agency this year, which… I suppose is understandable. They are a rebuilding team, after all, although something about it stuck in my brain.

But the more shocking reports say that they’re considering trading John Means, which in contrast, doesn’t seem like the type of move a rebuilding would make. Means, who turns 29 in April, has had about as strong first three years as a team could hope; he finished runner up in the 2019 Rookie of the Year race, he’s already been an all-star, he threw a no-hitter last season that might be the best game pitched in team history* (no small feat on a team with the pitching history of the O’s).

*If you go by Game Score, Means’s no-hitter had a score of 99, which as far as I can tell, is higher than any other pitching performance in team history. That’s not a bad opening argument in the discussion, at least!

We can’t really know how serious the team is about this; maybe they’re actively considering offers, or maybe it’s just the principle of “anyone can be moved if a team is willing to overpay enough”. But it did get me thinking about their larger rebuilding process, which has been going on since the trade deadline of the 2018 seasons. Here we are, three and a half years later; how far along should the team be at this point? Are they really still at the “trading away stars for prospects” stage? Or should they maybe be looking at picking up some free agents?

Each rebuild is of course different, and I’m no expert on prospect evaluation. But I did want to compare it to another major rebuild, that of the early 2010s Houston Astros. Partly because both teams started from a similar place, partly because I’m fairly familiar with the Astros’ rebuild, and partly (perhaps mostly?) because Orioles GM Mike Elias was a key part of the front office of those Astros teams. They won’t be identical, but we should see at least some overlap in strategy, right?

When comparing the two, it seemed like the best place to start was during the 2010 season for the Astros, and the 2018 season for the Orioles. That makes it easy to line both of them up chronologically (since we’d be starting at a trade deadline for each team), and both represent the point where both teams really started to dismantle their existing teams (including trades of Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt, Manny Machado, and others). If we use that alignment, our general equivalencies in this scenario would be:

Astros-Orioles
2010-2018
2011-2019
2012-2020
2013-2021
2014-2022
2015-2023

And as a reminder, 2015 was the year the Astros returned to the postseason as a Wild Card team. Of course, one major complicating factor here is that we didn’t lose most of the 2012 season to a pandemic like we did 2020, but there’s not a ton we can do about that other than to just keep it in mind. However, it’s also worth considering that the Elias administration in Baltimore got an earlier start on their project than Jeff Lunhow and company did in Houston; Ed Wade was the Astros’ GM through the 2011 season, while Elias was already in place for the 2019 Orioles season. I don’t know if those factors balance everything out perfectly, but at least it’s not extremely lopsided in one team’s favor, I suppose.

So, with that out of the way, how do these team’s seasons line up? And is there anything we can learn about where the Orioles should be in the process, and what they potentially should be doing this winter after the lockout?

The 2022 Hall of Fame Season Starts with a Bang: Six Elected by Veterans Committee

Hall of Fame season is in full swing. The 2022 Baseball Writers ballot is out, and some voters have already submitted their vote (in fact, there are already 9 ballots in Ryan Thibodaux’s Ballot Tracker-and Scott Rolen already has one new voter!). And on Sunday evening, we got our first announcement of inductees for the 2022 Hall Class: the Veterans Committee would be adding six members to Cooperstown.

The selections came across two separate ballots. The Golden Days vote (covering 1950 to 1969) voted to induct Minnie Miñoso, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, and Tony Oliva,* while the Early Baseball vote (everything pre-1950) selected Buck O'Neil and Bud Fowler. I have long been critical of the Veterans Committee as an electoral process (for a fairly comprehensive list of reasons, this two-part series from earlier this year is a good starting place), so I want to congratulate them here: this is definitely a good result, in my opinion, even if it’s not perfect.

*Since I always talk about Retired Numbers, I will note here that Miñoso and Oliva are already honored by the White Sox and Twins, respectively. The Dodgers have a policy that a player must be in the Hall to be honored, which has long been the stumbling block for Hodges’s case. Either way, it’s worth noting that the Dodgers’ #14 and the Twins’ #36 were both absent from their rosters this past season, so maybe expect some movement there soon.

If you didn’t go back and re-read my old pieces, one major problem was that contrary to its reputation, the Veterans Committee had generally become too stingy in its inductions. For the last few years, they’ve started to reverse that trend and let in a number of players, including some strong snubs (and non-player Marvin Miller certainly fits into that category as well). Sure, not every induction was an overwhelming win, but I’ll take “correcting some errors and maybe inducting a few too many players” over “never inducting anyone” any day.

This year’s induction is firmly in that category. I even mentioned Miñoso and O’Neil as long-overdue snubs in that older piece that I linked. I am less familiar with Fowler’s case (pre-1900s baseball, especially the earliest days of the sport, is not my strongest sub-topic), but he also seems like a very strong choice. And I don’t know that Hodges, Kaat, or Oliva were my top choices on the Golden Days ballot, but I also think they’re all fine choices, and there are plenty of people who have long considered them snubs.

Perhaps the biggest key for Kaat and Oliva: they were two of the three candidates under consideration who were still alive (the other being Maury Wills). I am not surprised that either was inducted, as both long seemed to be the sorts of candidates who would make it eventually, for a variety of reasons. And if that’s going to be the case, it’s much better to honor them while they’re alive to enjoy it. Unfortunately, that might have been a factor that hurt Dick Allen, who fell one vote short of election following his death last year.

Which kind of gets us into the second half of this topic: this year’s veterans committee really did the best that they could working around the limitations of the system, but those limits were still very present, just out of sight.

For one example, let’s go back and look at the ballot math again. I feel like I break this example out all the time, and I’ll stop beating this drum once it stops being relevant. From the Hall’s press release, we have:

Golden Days Ballot
Minnie Miñoso: 14 votes
Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Tony Oliva: 12 votes
Dick Allen: 11 votes
Ken Boyer, Roger Maris, Danny Murtaugh, Billy Pierce, Maury Wills: less than 4 votes


The voting body was comprised of 16 people, so to reach the 75% needed for induction, a player needed 12 votes. Also keep in mind that the voters met and discussed the ballot prior to casting their votes; I wouldn’t be shocked if there had been some discussion of maximizing votes in this year’s discussion.

Because it is genuinely difficult to achieve a result like this in the current system absent that, especially when none of the candidates were unanimous. Voters only get 4 votes, so between 16 voters, there are only 64 total ballot spots to go around. The four inductees this year plus Allen combined for 61 of them. We fell one stray vote shy of the maximum possible inductees.

Which kind of just highlights what’s frustrating about the process. It’s really dumb that Allen falls one vote short again.* It’s also really dumb that the next chance anyone will have to adjust this problem is in five years, the next time the committee will tackle this era (which only serves to underline the importance of getting the living players in this time). And it’s really dumb that the only way to avoid this problem would have likely come at the expense of Hodges, Kaat, or Oliva, since I imagine there were some potential Allen voters who had him as their fifth choice, and would have had to cut someone else to make that happen.

*It last happened on the 2015 ballot. I will also take a brief moment to publicize this new and amazing tool by Hall of Fame experts Adam Darowski and Graham Womack, which is the most complete record of Veterans Committee ballots that exists.

The other ballot faced similar issues, but more extreme:

Early Baseball Ballot
Buck O’Neil: 13 votes
Bud Fowler: 12 votes
Vic Harris: 10 votes
John Donaldson: 8 votes
Allie Reynolds: 6 votes
Lefty O'Doul: 5 votes
George Scales: 4 votes
Bill Dahlen, Grant Johnson, Dick Redding: less than 4 votes

This is what happens with less coordination, you get a lot of spread out votes and fewer inductees. Of course, it’s hard to argue with any of them getting serious consideration; this was especially strong bunch, thanks in part to the renewed attention given to Negro Leagues stars following their recent official classification as Major Leagues (if you’d like to learn more about any of candidates, I highly recommend Jay Jaffe’s series over at Fangraphs). Of course, even more frustratingly, the next time any of these candidates will get another chance at consideration is in ten years (since the Early Baseball group meets even less frequently than the Golden Days one).

Even with all of those frustrations still present and looming over the proceedings, it’s hard to not take this as a win. Some great and deserving players finally got their due, that’s really the most important part; and the Veterans Committee seems to be moving far away from its worst instincts. Hopefully, things keep trending in the right direction and the Hall itself finally institutes some fixes to its process, but at least in the meantime, the voters seem to have recognized some issues and how they could work around them.

A Discussion on Carlos Correa's Free Agency (Plus Some Elaborations)

Over at The Crawfish Boxes, I participated on a site discussion about the Astros’ attempts to re-sign Carlos Correa. You should go check it out! And when you’re done, I have a few more thoughts over here, expanding on my part.


One thing that I mentioned was the idea that it’s better for team building to rely on one star rather than multiple players. It’s pretty generalized, but the example I included does a good job with it: one player worth 5 Wins Above Replacement is more valuable than two 2.5-WAR players, for the same reason those two players are better than five 1-WAR players.

Because it’s not just the one 5-WAR player you’re getting in the first scenario; you still have to fill those other roster spots that the two-player and five-player options. There’s no option to just run a 24-man or 22-man roster. And if you’ve done your job right, those other roster spots should be worth more than 0 Wins, so the actual trade-off is 2.5+2.5 versus 5+(something else).

Of course, the catch here is all hypothetical and cost-independent. When teams have managed to circumvent this, it’s been by more efficiently allocating the same resources. To provide another oversimplified example, if the team that goes for the 5-WAR player doesn’t know what they’re doing and does get a 0-Win player as back-up, while the 2.5-WAR players have higher ceilings (maybe they’re coming back from injury, or have untapped potential or something, so the 2.5 estimate is inaccurate). Of course, that’s a trade-off that will depend heavily on the specifics.

That’s part of the problem with the shortstop question here. We don’t really know the cost specifics yet. Free agent negotiations are complicated. Carlos Correa might want a Lindor-size deal, like Cody reported in the original article, but he’s not the only party deciding this. Another team has to decide to give him that, and while there are other teams trying to sign him to bid the eventual winner up, there are also plenty of other shortstop options for those other teams to consider this winter, including Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, Trevor Story, and Javier Báez. And of course, we largely aren’t going to be privy to any of these processes.

We are dealing with a lot of unknown variables here*, which is why I tend to retreat to the abstracts for now. Or, like I pose during the article itself, it’s especially easy to say “I don’t want Correa Correa at $300 million over ten years, let’s just sign Trevor Story instead” when you don’t actually know what the market for Story is. We can make guesses, like maybe Story will sign for below-market because of his 2021 season, but there might be multiple teams who have that same thought and bid him up anyway (especially if all of them think he’ll bounce back, which might in turn improve his ask).

*And none of this is even getting into whatever changes to the game’s financial structures the new CBA institutes. I’ll be working with what’s in place when necessary for lack of a better option, but the main balance I’ll be getting at is the balance of Player Value versus Dollars Spent, which should be relatively unaffected by any changes.

So, as an outside observer with few specifics, I tend to go with the broadest case; sign the best player you can. In that regard, Seager (who’s a year older) is the only one who matches Correa in peak and age, even with both of their injury concerns. Semien has matched their peaks, especially recently, but he’s four years older than Correa, so any deal for him will be missing out on his ages 27 through 30 seasons and likely comes with more risk as a result. Story and Baez are both two seasons older (so again, you’re losing two peak seasons to work with), and you need to contend with their own questions (Story’s downturn last year, Baez’s lack of a batting eye). Maybe one of them sees their price drop as a result of those issues, maybe there’s something teams see in them that make their specific risks manageable, but again it’s hard to know all of that right now.

And for my final point of the article, there really isn’t anyone like Correa or Seager for the next few years. I had to do a brief scan in real time to keep up with the discussion, but even with more time to go over it, the pickings look pretty slim. Here’s the 2022-23 Free Agent Class; the only players with recent MVP-level performance (leaving aside the players with options, since those will likely be picked up) are Trea Turner and Aaron Judge. Turner as a free agent will be three years older than Correa as a free agent, so you’re again missing out on three peak seasons in whatever deal he signs (in addition to not having a star in his spot for the 2022 season). Judge is a year older than Turner.

The next year is a stronger class, but there isn’t a clear better choice. José Ramírez and Matt Chapman are the most obvious picks, but they’ll be coming off their age thirty seasons (so again, you’re missing out on four years in your deal and forgoing a star for the next two seasons). Cody Bellinger will be 27, but has… whatever has been his issue for the last two seasons; even if he returns to MVP-form, I’d find this two-year valley much more worrisome than Correa or Seager’s injuries. Maybe Manny Machado will opt out of his deal following his age-30 season, but I certainly wouldn’t be putting all my eggs in that basket this early.

(I guess if you make it to 2025, you have a shot at 26-year-old Juan Soto, but even then, you’re gambling on the Nationals not locking him up before then, on top of all other uncertainty that comes with being a free agent deal that will not be starting until four seasons from now. And for the Astros, at that point, Kyle Tucker and Yordan Álvarez’s free agencies will be looming in the next winter, although Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman’s deals will be coming off the books at that point as well.)

As I said in the piece, if it makes you feel better, you can think of it as an incentive to spend on Correa now; there are no stars like him the next few years, no one to worry about missing out on in the meantime. Absent the specifics of the negotiations (a big asterisk, to be sure), there’s no reason not to be trying hard to lock him up right now.

Buster Posey's Retirement Accentuates the Fast-Shrinking Number of 2000s Players

I knew there were going to be a lot of shocking moves this winter, but I certainly didn’t predict Buster Posey retiring on the first official day of the offseason. The former MVP was set to start his thirteenth season next year just after his 35th birthday, but the longtime Giants catcher instead decided to turn down the option year on his contract, even after San Francisco picked it up. It’s especially surprising given how strong his 2021 season was (particularly after sitting out the 2020 campaign) but there’s something to be said for going out on a high note.

But perhaps the most surprising aspect, for me at least, was realizing that Posey was part of a dying breed: players who debuted in the 2000s.* Technically, Posey only played in seven games in the 2009 season, but it counts, and we need all the help we can get in this category. It doesn’t feel like it should be that rare quite yet; it wasn’t that long ago.

*“2000s” here refers to the first decade after 2000, which doesn’t have as clear a name as the 2010s or 2020s. Thus, I’ll just be sticking with “2000s” or “‘00s” for this piece.

And yet, as of 2021, MLB is already down in the double digits when it comes to players from the ‘00s who received any playing time. That feels a little shocking, right? I’m not alone here? We aren’t that far into the following decade yet, it’s still only 2021. This seemed like it was something worth looking into. After all, I have experience here; I wrote something a few years ago looking at who would be the final player from the 1990s (that answer ended up being a tie between Adrian Beltre and Bartolo Colon, by the way; both of them made it to 2018 in the Majors, although Colon continues playing internationally). How does the situation now compare to what I saw then?

I’ll need to do some adjusting, of course, since my last piece was in 2014, closer to the middle of the decade. But our 2021 total still feels abnormally low; going by a search on Baseball-Reference, there are only 75 active players who debuted in the 2000s. And even that feels like a generous ruling, given that the search turns up players who didn’t play in 2021 for a variety of reasons (including injuries like Justin Verlander and Cole Hamels, players who sat out like Homer Bailey and Chris Davis, as well as the suspended Robinson Cano). Even if you expand the search to include players who retired during the 2021 season but were active at some point, you pick up Jordan Zimmermann (2 games with the Brewers) and Jay Bruce (10 games with the Yankees), but that still only brings us to 77 ‘00s players in the 2021 season.

In comparison, there were still over 100 players from the 1990s still active for the 2011 season: 105 just counting players who debuted in 1990 or later, plus 1980s debuts Jamie Moyer and Omar Vizquel, who both lasted until the 2012 season. So it’s not just my memory, we do appear to be losing 2000s players faster than we did 1990s players (and 1980s ones, apparently?).

New Sporcle Quiz (Best Active Players Without a World Series 2021 Edition), Plus Bonus Trivia!

The 2021 World Series has concluded, meaning that I can publish the newest edition of my annual Sporcle series, Best Active Players Without a World Series. I’ll have a little bit more below the break, but I want to give everyone a chance to try it without any spoilers first. I’m also including a link to my other recent World Series-related quizzes for those who missed them, as well as a newly-created playlist containing all past versions of my Best Active Players series for anyone who wants to see how it’s evolved over the years (and also has some time to kill; this year is my eighth entry onto the list, with every season but 2015 accounted for):


Best Active Players without a World Series, 2021 Edition
Expansion Teams by World Series Performance
World Series Matchup Grid

World Series Matchup Grid (Hard Mode)

Full Best Active Player without a World Series Playlist


(Also, for those who want to hunt for extras, there are five bonus answers on the quiz, all players who are technically active, but who didn’t play on a Major League roster in 2021. Good luck, and make sure to come back here after for some more fun facts!)

New Sporcle Quiz: World Series Matchup Grid

With the conclusion of the NLCS, we now know the World Series matchup this year: for the first time since the Astros were moved to the American League, they will be playing the Atlanta Braves in the postseason. This gives us the 70th unique set of World Series teams in history.

With that, I have once again attempted to put this information into the format of a Sporcle quiz. I’ve tried before, but no past version has quite been as intuitive as I would have liked, so I keep trying. This year is probably the closest yet, with the help of the Grid feature: Can you pick every World Series Matchup? That version will check the answers by team as you go, which almost makes it more like a logic puzzle. If you’d like a harder version that doesn’t do that, I have also prepared a Hard Version of the quiz, which will only check your answers as right or wrong at the end of the quiz (whether that’s by hitting 100%, running out of time, or giving up).

It’s probably the closest I’ve come to what I want, but it still isn’t all the way there. I was sort of hoping to set it up like a logic puzzle, where you only need to fill in the spaces that have occurred, but the Grid format doesn’t quite work that way. So instead, I made it so every answer is either an O or an X, and instructed players to start the quiz by filling in every space with an X and work from there. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good workaround.

I’ve also updated the other quizzes in my World Series Trivia Playlist to add in an Astros-Braves matchup where it's necessary, and I’ll make one more pass upon the series’ conclusion to note the winner in the few that include that info. In the meantime, feel free to try them all out (including my full directory of Sporcle Quizzes)!

New Sporcle Quiz: MLB Expansion Teams by World Series Performance

As has become tradition with me, I've been spending the time in between innings and such during the playoff games to research and create Sporcle quizzes, and I should have a few coming in the next few days. However, with the Astros clinching the AL Pennant, it seemed like a good time to launch the first of them: Can you match the MLB Expansion Teams to their World Series track records? It might need another update soon, but I figured it would be better to spread out my World Series quiz ideas, so this one can go up now. 

It will of course be added to the Sporcle Quizzes Page here, as well as my World Series Trivia Playlist. And of course, I've already updated my surprise hit from last year, World Series with an Expansion Team. In case you were curious, after over 1000 plays, that quiz's current most-guessed answer is 2001 (just over four-fifths of players have gotten that right), while last place is 1973 (just a touch over one-third have that one).

The Amazing Annual Postseason Trivia Round-Up, 2021 Edition

Another year, another round of playoff trivia

!

We’re back to normal this year, after last year’s expanded sixteen-team double-Wild Card Round affair, but there’s a ton to cover here, even without any last-minute tiebreakers. So let’s start with our normal first point:



DROUGHTS

If you’re neutral towards all of the teams in the postseason, one way to pick a bandwagon rooting interest can be to support the teams with long title droughts. If that is your usual strategy, though, I’m sorry to report that this year’s remaining teams represent slim pickings.

For our third straight postseason, the average and median drought lengths of the teams playing in October are shorter than those in the previous postseason. In fact, this season represents the second lowest both figures have been since the dawn of the Wild Card era, with only 2009 (9.75 year average drought to 15.6; 8 year median drought to 11) featuring more recent winners.

The Brewers, who haven’t won it all since they were founded in 1969 and are thus facing their 53rd year without a title, are far and away the leaders in this category. Of the twelve teams with three decades or more between their most recent title (or the founding of the franchise), the Brewers are the only ones still in it this year. In fact, our next longest active streaks still playing, the Braves (26 seasons) and Rays (24), represent the exact mid-points of the league, as the fifteenth and sixteenth-longest active winless streaks.

In contrast, half of the teams represented have won it all in the last decade (the Dodgers in 2020, the Red Sox in 2018, the Astros in 2017, the Giants in 2014, and the Cardinals in 2011), with the final two (the Yankees in 2009 and the White Sox in 2005) not far behind



PLAYERS WITHOUT A WORLD SERIES

As per usual, I will be putting out my yearly Sporcle Quiz, on the active players with the most career Wins Above Replacement who haven’t won a title, once the World Series wraps up. Or another way, we're looking at the top 100 active players by WAR who haven't yet won the World Series (I'll shorten this in my writing sometimes, because this is a mouthful to reiterate every time). The Nationals and Dodgers were heavy on top veterans during their championship runs, which helped clear things out a little bit, but some retirements have helped to restock Baseball-Reference’s Active Player leaderboard.

Once again, my rules are that anyone who played a game at the Major League level in 2021 is eligible, so I include a few players who technically retired during the season, as well as players who are active but won’t be on their team’s postseason roster (including players who will be suspended for October). I won’t publish the full list of names just yet to help preserve some surprises for the quiz itself, but if you want to see which specific players are on the playoff teams, I’ll include them in a section below. For now, though, here are the overall counts.

Every team but the Red Sox brings at least one player without a World Series title with them in some form or another, while the Yankees will provide far and away the most rings to titleless players, with half a dozen of them gracing their 2021 roster at some point.

None: Red Sox
One: Dodgers
Two: Astros, Braves, Brewers, Cardinals, Rays, White Sox
Three: Giants
Six: Yankees



EXPANSION TEAMS

The 2021 Playoffs will include a few expansion teams, between the Brewers, Astros, and Rays. Had the Mariners and Blue Jays succeeded in upsetting the Yankees and Red Sox, we’d be seeing even more. However, even in that scenario, due to their uneven distribution between leagues, the chances of our third All-Expansion Team World Series would ride entirely on the success or failure of the Brewers. As is, it’s still unlikely, but by no means impossible.


UNIQUE MATCHUPS

Our playoff set this year is pretty well-decorated; the Yankees, Cardinals, Red Sox, Giants, and Dodgers are five of the six teams with the most World Series wins and appearances (only the A’s are missing). Those five teams together account for 62 championships and 113 pennants (in the World Series era), with the other five bringing our net totals up to 69 wins and 133 appearances.*

*In fact, it’s genuinely difficult to construct a set of ten teams with more titles. If you swap the A’s (nine championships) out for the Astros (one), the Pirates or Reds (five each) out for the Brewers (zero), and the Tigers (four) out for the Rays (zero), you can get us up to 86 wins, the maximum possible in the current playoff format. If you wanted to maximize pennants, you would keep the A’s and Tigers, but swap the Orioles in for the White Sox and the Cubs in for the Pirates or Reds, resulting in 165 total pennants among the ten contenders.

As you might figure with a set like this, unique matchups are a little harder to come by. But they still aren’t impossible! In fact, there are even a few matchups between original, non-expansion teams that could happen for the first time. Specifically, the Braves facing either Sox team or the Cardinals and White Sox meeting up would represent the first of their kind.

Additionally, the Brewers have never won an NL Pennant (their one World Series appearance came as an AL team), so every matchup involving them would be unique. And since the Nationals and Phillies both missed out, any matchup involving the Rays or Astros will be unique should the Dodgers miss out. Also, while not World Series matchups, it’s also worth noting that the ALDS round will include a rematch of the 2005 World Series (the Astros and White Sox are facing off), and should they both make it to the NLCS round, the Cardinals and Brewers could give us yet another rematch of the 1982 World Series.

In stark contrast, the Dodgers have faced every potential AL opponent, and the Brewers are one of three NL teams the Yankees have never faced in the World Series (the other two being the Rockies and Nationals, who each have one pennant to their name). And the Giants have faced all three original teams present, but are missing both expansions.

Also, thanks to the age of so many teams involved, we could be seeing a rematch of a number of classic series. The Yankees and Dodgers have met eleven times, more than any other World Series opponents. But the Yankees and Giants (seven times) and Yankees and Cardinals (five times) are the second- and third-most-common World Series pairings, and Yankees-Braves and Red Sox-Cardinals are two of the four matchups that have happened four different times (only missing here are the A’s-Giants, and Tigers-Cubs).

Unique Matchups
Rays-Braves
Rays-Brewers
Rays-Giants
Rays-Cardinals
White Sox-Braves
White Sox-Brewers
White Sox-Cardinals
Astros-Braves
Astros-Brewers
Astros-Giants
Astros-Cardinals
Yankees-Brewers
Red Sox-Braves
Red Sox-Brewers

One Time
Rays-Dodgers (2020)
Red Sox-Dodgers (2018)
Astros-Dodgers (2017)
White Sox-Dodgers (1959)
White Sox-Giants (1917)
Red Sox-Giants (1912)

Multiple Times
Yankees-Dodgers (1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956, 1963, 1977, 1978, 1981)
Yankees-Giants (1921, 1922, 1923, 1936, 1937, 1951, 1962)
Yankees-Cardinals (1926, 1928, 1942, 1943, 1964)
Yankees-Braves (1957, 1958, 1996, 1999)
Red Sox-Cardinals (1946, 1967, 2004, 2013)

(spoilers for Best Players Without a World Series below)

The Future of the 3000 Strikeout Club, 2021 Edition

Earlier this year, I published updates to some articles I did a few years ago, detailing the chances of current players reaching the 500 Homer and 3000 Hit milestones. I meant to do one for 3000 Strikeouts as well (since the last time I touched that was way back in 2015), but it slipped my mind. However, this past weekend, Max Scherzer became the nineteenth member of the club, which in turn reminded me that I had never actually gotten around to writing that piece.

So let’s fix that! I’ll be using my method and numbers from last time to keep things simple. If you haven’t read one of these pieces before, the gist isn’t too complicated: first, I looked at how many strikeouts each eventual 3000 Strikeout pitcher had at each age (so, their totals through their age 23 seasons, then through their age 24 seasons, and so on). Next, I sorted them from highest to lowest and broke them into quartiles, and compared those quartiles to the overall number of liveball pitchers who fell in those ranges at that age. So if the range of the second quartile of the 3000 strikeout club at age 25 was 500 to 750 strikeouts, I looked at how many total pitchers also fell in that range, and then found the percent that eventually reached 3000 as a fraction of that total.*

*One note here: instead of just a lowest quartile, I broke out Phil Niekro’s rate as a totally separate outlier, since he was such an anomaly in how late he started and lasted. So that’s the reason each set includes both a “Lowest” and “Second Lowest” threshold.

And to clarify, this piece (like the others that I’ve done) aren’t necessarily guarantees that all of these players will pull it off. Rather, it’s intended to give a different perspective on the future of the milestone than just eyeballing the active leaderboard. Essentially, I’m looking at where past members of the club were at each age, and looking for players that look similar. A key part of reaching any milestone is staying productive into your 30s, which is not something every player can manage. Instead, we’re looking at which players are best positioned to do that in each age bracket, and giving a perspective of how many other players could or couldn’t keep it up from that age on. So with that, let’s get started.

 

Can a Contract Still Be "Bad" if You Win the World Series? Examining Some High-Profile Cases

I saw an interesting discussion the other day that got me thinking about things; in this case, it was people wondering if Patrick Corbin is the worst contract in the Majors at this point.

For those who haven’t followed the Nationals outside of their trade deadline sell-off, Corbin has had an extremely rough 2021, with 14 losses and a league-worst (among qualified pitchers) 5.98 ERA in 155.0 innings. If you go by Baseball-Reference’s Wins Above Replacement, Corbin has cost his team 1.5 Wins this season, the fourth-worst mark for a pitcher behind only Jake Arrieta, J.A. Happ, and Matt Shoemaker. Of course, Arrieta, Happ, and Shoemaker are only making a combined $16 million this year; Corbin, meanwhile, is signed through 2024 and will make roughly $108 million from 2021 through then.

Of course, position players Eugenio Suarez (-2.7 WAR) and Hunter Dozier (-2.9) have been even worse, and both are signed to longer term deals, albeit still for less than Corbin (and Cody Bellinger and Jarred Kelenic have also been slightly worse, although neither made it beyond arbitration). And another complicating factor is that it’s debatable if Corbin is even that bad, as Fangraphs’ version of WAR places Corbin at a much better 0.0 WAR, thanks in part to a much better FIP (5.47) and xFIP (4.34) rates. And none of this is getting into whether Corbin can rebound, as it wasn’t that long ago that he was making All-Star Teams and picking up Cy Young votes.

Of course, I think the single biggest argument against Corbin being the worst contract is his key role in winning the 2019 World Series. He finished eleventh in Cy Young voting that year, finishing with 202 innings of 135 ERA+ (or a 77 FIP-*, if you prefer) before becoming a key cog on the eventual champs as they leaned heavily on their rotation to avoid exposing a weakened bullpen. Even if he never returns to that form, Corbin played a key role in bringing home a flag that will fly forever (and for a franchise and a city that were both in long World Series droughts, at that).

*A reminder, since I don’t always use it; FIP- works like ERA+, but inverted; so a 77 mark would mean a FIP 23% better than league average, since 77 is 23 points lower than the 100-average.

I’m not sure if there’s a set quantity of “value” that a World Series championship brings in evaluating how good a contract is, but my gut says that if a player played a crucial role in bringing home a title, at the very least, any “WAR shortfall” over the course of their contract should be forgiven. For a long time, my test case for this idea was Barry Zito and his seven-year, $126 million deal* with the Giants, which ran from 2007 to 2013.

All-Star Game Trivia: Who Were the Best All-Stars, Worst Snubs, Most Extreme Repeats, and so on

I guess publishing an article about All-Star Game trivia during the week of the All-Star Game is usually preferable, but there’s not much you can do when the inspiration comes to you during the All-Star Game itself (“the inspiration” in this case being “my brother started asking me questions I didn’t know the answer to during the game”). I guess I could sit on this idea for a year and run it for the 2022 game, but that seems a bit like overkill, and I’m not sure I trust myself to remember it for that long. So instead, let’s just take a look back at the different extremes when it comes to making the All-Star Game.

The obvious starting point is “who has made the most All-Star Games”, which, for anyone not aware, is Henry Aaron. The late Hammerin’ Hank made 25 different All-Star teams across his 23 years in the Majors, only missing in his first and final seasons. For anyone looking at those numbers for a typo, it’s worth mentioning that there were two Games per year from 1959 to 1962 (this will come up later), during which time Aaron went 8-for-8.

Stan Musial and Willie Mays also made two games all four years, which is a big part of their runner-up totals of 24 All-Star selections. The highest total for a player who couldn’t double up like that is Cal Ripken Jr., who made the Midsummer Classic in nineteen different seasons (which is still two behind Aaron and one behind Mays and Musial). Meanwhile, Mariano Rivera leads all pitchers with thirteen Games, with Tom Seaver right behind him at a dozen. Kind of a big step down there. Anyway, all of that is easy enough to find with a basic search, so let’s move on to the more complicated stuff. I’ll separate it into position players and pitchers.

Hot Corner Harbor's 10th Anniversary! A Retired Number Series Retrospective

June 2nd is Hot Corner Harbor’s anniversary, and this year in particular represents ten years since I started it, so I wanted to do something special. Part of the reason I started this site was to host my Retired Numbers Series, which was something I hadn’t seen anywhere else and felt like it needed its own place. I took a month or so to practice before starting it initially, and obviously kept writing here after the main series wrapped up, but it’s still closely tied to the creation of Hot Corner Harbor, so I figured revisiting it in some way would be an apt anniversary celebration.

So join me now, as I reflect on all of my observations and predictions from over the course of the Retired Number Series, and compare them to how the last decade of new retired numbers has shaken out, from 2011 to present. First, let’s look at the teams that have retired a number in that span:

Appreciating Evan Longoria

I have wanted to write something longer about Evan Longoria for a while, but I could never find an excuse enough to make myself do it. Since his trade to the Giants four years ago (jeez, has it really been that long?), he’s been... fine, but really just fine. Not great or anything. And he makes yearly appearances in my “Future Hall of Fame” articles, but those are usually pretty long, and I don’t want to delay those by going super in-depth for every single player mentioned; they’d turn into novels pretty quickly

But Longo is off to a great start in 2021, his best in years, in fact, so I wanted to take advantage of that to finally write about how good his career has been. When I look at his stats every year for the Future Hall pieces, I’m always struck by how good he has been over his career, particularly relative to the accolades that he’s received in that time.

For instance, did you know that he’s only made the All-Star team three times? But in his case, that’s more of a way to illustrate why using them as a career overview can be dumb and misleading. Which makes sense, in a way. After all, we hear hours of griping every year about how the rosters are bad; Longoria has just been on the losing end of that equation a lot. For example, he didn’t make the team in 2011 or 2013, despite finishing in the top ten in MVP voting both seasons. Those are the most obvious whiffs, but you can do that for a number of his other seasons as well if you’re willing to drill down a little more.*

*For instance, take 2016. Evan lost out on a spot via the Final Vote to Michael Saunders, of all people. And there were plenty of other worse players taking up spots, too; sure, Eduardo Nuñez and Eric Hosmer were locked into spots via the one-per-team and fan-vote rules, but there was also Mark Trumbo, Ian Desmond, tons of relievers, etc.

But all of that isn’t going to come across when he retires (and, let’s be real, when he hits the Hall of Fame ballot, where it will especially matter). I’m hoping he can ride this hot start to a spot this year to maybe make up a little bit for those snubs, but it’s still just one season. And on a larger scale, I can already see plenty of other ways that voters are going to unfairly come up short in evaluating his career, for similar, less-than-thought-out reasons, and I would like to go against those narratives now, hopefully before they’re fully settled.*

The Future of the 3000 Hit Club, 2021 Edition

Last time, I used Miguel Cabrera’s various milestone bids to investigate which younger players might one day be making their own attempts at 500 home runs. While Miggy is much closer to that mark, he’s also within spitting distance of the other big offensive milestone, 3000 hits. So today, let’s apply those methods once again to look at who might one day be approaching that other mark.

As a quick catch-up, we’re essentially looking at how many hits each member of the 3000 Hit Club had at each age, compared to how many non-3000 Hit players matched them at those ages, to determine a current player’s chance of one day joining the former group. If you want a more specific example of this, feel free to refer to the last article. Also, as mentioned last time, Baseball-Reference changed their search feature since the last time I looked at this, so for now, I’m stuck reusing my numbers from a few years ago (although the actual values likely haven’t changed much in the years since, for what it’s worth).

With that out of the way, let’s dive in!



Age 22 Median: 323 Hits, 14.16% of players go on to 3000 hits
Age 22 Third Quartile: 118 Hits, 4.01% of players go on to 3000 hits

It doesn’t necessarily mean a lot at this age, but Juan Soto is already pretty far ahead of the 3000 club median, with 361 hits to his name, and that total will only increase in the coming months. And while it’s not the most meaningful milestone, it’s also true that a 14% chance isn’t anything to sneeze at either, especially for players this young! Elsewhere in the league, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (238) and Fernando Tatis Jr. (202) are also above the third quartile mark already, and while Tatis is a bit of a stretch, Vlad could definitely still pass the median before the season is over. Dylan Carlson (66) also has a decent chance to reach the third quartile milestone this year.

The Future of the 500 Home Run Club, 2021 Edition

We are very close to some upcoming batting milestones, and both of them are from the same person. Miguel Cabrera has had a very slow start in 2021, but with 489 home runs, 2881 hits, and at least two and half years under contract on a Tigers team that doesn’t expect to be competing any time soon, it seems safe to assume he’ll be given every opportunity to become the seventh member of the 3000 hit-500 homer club. He may even reach both of them this year, although it would take a bit of a rebound to pick up 119 more hits this year.

As is the case when big milestones are imminent, I’ve seen people speculating about future members of the club, and a surprising number of them seem pessimistic about the future of both clubs. I could understand that about the 300 win club, but not either of the batting milestones. Sure, there aren’t many players on the immediate horizon, but both clubs have gone through lulls in new members before. You just have to be willing to look into the future a bit.

Which is something I’ve done before! So I figured, it’s been a few years, why not update those numbers a little and look at how active players’ paces match up to the members of the club? For those who aren’t familiar with the last article, I used a process similar to my yearly Future Hall of Famer piece. I start by looking at how many homers each member of the 500 club had at each age, and marking the median totals (as well as a few others, like the first and third quartiles, and the lowest and second-lowest totals). Then, I see how many retired players in those ranges fell short, which allows me to see the percentage of that group that went on to make 500 homers.

(To use made-up numbers for an example, say one quarter of the 500 club, or 7 players, had 100 homers by age 23, and half of the club had 50. If 10 players in history had 100 homers by that age, and 7 went on to 500 home runs overall, our odds for players with 100 homers by age 23 are 7 in 10, or 70%. And if 14 players fell between 50 and 99 homers, and 7 of those are the ones who went on to 500, then the odds for players in that quartile are 7 in 14, or 50%.)

This should be a much better way to visualize which players are actually on-pace than basic active leaderboards (take, for instance, Robinson Cano, who is fourth place among active players with 334 dingers, but is also 38 years old and has roughly zero chance to stick around for another 166). Unfortunately, I couldn’t update my figures from last time due to changes to Baseball-Reference’s search tools, but these numbers are an estimate anyway, so they should be good enough for our purposes.