Baseball Hall of Fame tracker 2022

Texas starts No. 1, SEC dominates top 10 in preseason college baseball rankings

Texas is No. 1 in the D1Baseball Preseason Top 25 rankings for the first time ever. In fact, this marks the first time the Longhorns have ever been ranked No. 1 in the D1Baseball Top 25, which began in 2015. Texas welcomes back numerous key pieces, including the cornerstones of an elite pitching staff, from a team that won 50 games and reached the national semifinals in Omaha last spring.

SEC powers Arkansas, Vanderbilt, Mississippi State and Ole Miss occupy the next four spots to round out the top five. The SEC leads all conferences with eight teams in the Top 25, including six in the top 10, counting No. 8 LSU and No. 9 Florida. Georgia (No. 16) and Tennessee (No. 18) also landed in the rankings out of the SEC..

Just Throw It Down the Middle

To summarize, hitters were worse off against poorly located fastballs than ever before, in a season where they saw a greater rate of them than ever before. That’s confusing, and it wouldn’t be a FanGraphs article without numerous words, tables, and charts to infer why.

One reason: Fastballs are also faster than ever before. The velocity surge, once viewed with dismay and wonder, had largely plateaued since around 2016, when fastballs averaged 93.2 mph. That average rose to just 93.4 mph by 2020, the sluggish pace suggesting a limit to what humans could achieve. But pitchers broke out of their slump last season, recording an average fastball velocity of 93.7 mph. In conjunction with a new baseball, the sudden jump could explain ...

Frontier League adds sudden-death tiebreaker to extra-innings games in 2022

The exact process: If a game is tied at the end of play (nine innings for a traditional game and seven innings for a doubleheader game), there will be one additional inning of regular play. If still tied, an inning played under International Tiebreaker (ITB) rules will be played. The ITB rules were used by MLB in 2020, where a runner would begin the inning at second base and each side would be given the chance to take the lead.

After the ITB inning, play will shift to a sudden-death tiebreaker. Here’s the description from the MLB Partner League:

Field managers will meet with umpires with the home manager choosing offense or defense. For the team on offense, the player on the lineup card immediately preceding the batter due up will ...

MLBPA drops age-based free agency proposal as negotiations on new labor deal continue: Source

The Major League Baseball Players Association dropped its request to introduce an age-based free agency system into the sport on Monday, withdrawing a proposal in one of the three major areas MLB had shown no interest in changing, a person with knowledge of the negotiations told The Athletic.

That means the amount of service time it takes a player to reach free agency — six years — is most likely going to remain unchanged whenever the sides reach a new deal. The players had previously proposed a system to get some players to free agency after five years if they had reached a certain age: 30 1/2, and then eventually, 29 1/2.

The union also revised its proposal to alter revenue sharing between the teams, another of the three areas ...

Braves, A’s Discussed Matt Olson Prior To Lockout

When — or whether — the Braves will re-sign Freddie Freeman has been one of the most pressing issues on the minds of the Atlanta fan base for the better part of a year, but the 2020 NL MVP entered the current MLB lockout as a free agent with no real indication of progress toward a return to Truist Park on the horizon. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal writes this morning that there’s obvious incentive for either Freeman or the Braves to act quickly, one way or another, once the lockout finally ends. Most notably, Rosenthal reports that the Braves indeed spoke to the A’s about a potential Matt Olson deal prior to the lockout (as had been previously suggested), adding that the talks should not be written off as simple due diligence.

An ...

Best baseball movies based on a true story

Bowman: “The Rookie” was a story that might have seemed too good to be true for Disney before it actually happened. Love the story. But the movie itself just felt average. It’s certainly not one I look forward to finding when looking for something to watch.

Footer: Next up: “42.” I saw it twice in the theater in one week, but while I’d like to say it was because I was so moved by the movie (which I was), it was more because Chris Meloni played Leo Durocher, and I needed to see that more than once.

But “42” was really well-done, and the subject matter was a tough one, given the language and abuse that Jackie Robinson had to endure while he broke the color barrier. From everything we’ve read on this piece of our history, ...

Tom Goodwin, former Boston Red Sox coach, says MLB bullied coaches into getting COVID-19 vaccine: ‘There was no choice’

Former Red Sox first base coach Tom Goodwin sounded off on Major League Baseball on Friday, telling The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal that the league “bullied” coaches and other non-playing personnel into receiving the COVID-19 vaccine even if they were against it.

Goodwin, who spent four seasons on Boston’s staff before being let go immediately after the 2021 season, missed several games in close contact protocols during the regular season and had to step away from the Red Sox at the beginning of the postseason because unvaccinated staffers were not allowed to access the playing field during the playoffs. He has since been vaccinated and accepted a job with the Braves as a roving minor-league outfield instructor; he did not receive ...

Sherman: In defense of the blank Hall of Fame ballot

Understand that this is not a binary vote, like Democrat vs. Republican, where one is going to be mayor or governor or president. Each voter can choose anywhere from 0 to 10 candidates, which means there are all kinds of ranges of outcomes. But the biggest issue is the 75 percent threshold.

It is hard to get three out of four friends to agree where to go to dinner. Now try to get a few hundred people to determine what they think of whether to vote for candidates with steroid clouds, especially when those clouds come in different sizes. Factor in those who think the Hall of Fame should be small — the best 1 percent of players ever, roughly — and those who think it should be larger and spread to the top 2 or 3 or perhaps even 4 percent. ...

Ex-Yankees pitcher Sergio Mitre sentenced to prison for 2020 murder of toddler in Mexico

Former Yankees pitcher Sergio Mitre is going to be behind bars for a long time after he was convicted of murdering his ex-partner’s daughter.

Mitre was convicted of femicide after raping and murdering the 22-month-old girl named Ines after his July 2020 arrest and trial.

The heinous hurler was sentenced Wednesday night to between 40-to-60 years in prison.

Mitre, 41, pitched for four different teams in the majors between 2003 and 2011: the Chicago Cubs, Florida Marlins, New York Yankees and Milwaukee Brewers.

He won the 2009 World Series as a member of the Yankees.

Robot umpires at home plate moving up to Triple-A for 2022

obot umpires have been given a promotion and will be just one step from the major leagues this season.

Major League Baseball is expanding its automated strike zone experiment to Triple-A, the highest level of the minor leagues.

MLB’s website posted a hiring notice seeking seasonal employees to operate the Automated Ball and Strike system. MLB said it is recruiting employees to operate the system for the Albuquerque Isotopes, Charlotte Knights, El Paso Chihuahuas, Las Vegas Aviators, Oklahoma City Dodgers, Reno Aces, Round Rock Express, Sacramento River Cats, Salt Lake Bees, Sugar Land Skeeters and Tacoma Rainiers.

The independent Atlantic League became the first American professional league to let a computer call balls and strikes at ...

Kevin Frandsen is the new Nationals TV analyst on MASN, replacing FP Santangelo

Frandsen will work alongside long-time play by play broadcaster Bob Carpenter and replaces FP Santangelo, who spent some time off broadcasts last season following sexual misconduct allegations. In November, Santangelo announced that he wouldn’t be back at all in 2022….

In a statement, Frandsen thanked the Nationals, his family, and his former coworkers with the Phillies.

“Thrilled is an understatement to describe the way I feel right now,” said Frandsen. “I’d like to thank MASN and the Lerner family for this tremendous opportunity. I’d also like to thank my team of Amanda, Tenley and Daylen for their love and support. Being able to learn from and work alongside Scott Franzke, Larry Anderson, Rob Brooks and everyone in ...

MLB kills Rays’ split-city plan with Montreal

The Rays’ proposed plan to split seasons in Montreal has been killed by Major League Baseball officials, the Tampa Bay Times has learned, creating even more uncertainty about the team’s long-term future in Tampa Bay.

The decision is sure to frustrate and stun team officials, who had spent 2 ½ years on the project and were expecting approval to proceed with efforts to get open-air stadiums built in both markets. The Rays also sought approval from the players union.

Rays prinicpal owner Stuart Sternberg is set to discuss the issue with media at 1 p.m. Among the questions will be whether the Rays will now seek permission from MLB to explore relocation to another market, and if Sternberg, who took over the team in 2005, will look to ...

How baseball changed forever in 1972: A timeline of MLB’s most memorable events, 50 years later

April 1
After player reps vote 47-0 with one abstention (Wes Parker of the Dodgers) in favor, the Major League Baseball Players Association goes on strike. Thus begins the first work stoppage in MLB history. Under the leadership of pioneering union leader Marvin Miller, the players strike over the issue of pension payments. The players want a 17 percent increase to reflect inflation over the prior three years and for owners to honor their commitment to cover medical costs. Owners refuse on both counts. Miller announces that players are willing to end the strike with a new pension accord or an agreement to take the dispute to arbitration. Since the union is still a relatively nascent entity—Miller became the first head of the Major League ...

The oldest player who ever hit in a game

There’s not much written about it, unfortunately, but later in his life, while coaching for the St. Louis Browns, O’Leary came in to take an at-bat in the final game of the 1934 season ... at nearly 59 years of age. Here’s more from St. Louis Browns Historical Society & Fan Club President Ed Wheatley:

“The last time Charley had stepped to the plate in a MLB game was with the St. Louis Cardinals back in 1913,” Wheatley, creator of the film “A Baseball Legacy: Fans Remember the Browns,” told me. “But in the sixth inning of that September 30th game, he came up as a pinch-hitter for pitcher George Blaeholder and slapped a single. It was his only hit in his only at-bat in the last 20 years and 360 days.”

Nobody was or has been (or likely ever ...

How a heart attack led to Hall of Famer Greg Maddux spurning Yankees for Braves

Hall-of-Fame pitcher Greg Maddux set the record straight about picking the Atlanta Braves when he was a free agent in December 1992, and it sure is disheartening for the Yankees.

According to Maddux, he had decided to sign with the Yankees, but never received an official offer because a team executive suffered a heart attack while he was in New York to cement the deal.

This new development, which was shared by Maddux this week when he appeared on David Cone’s “Toeing the Slab” podcast, contradicts decades-ago reports that the legendary right-hander had turned down $34 million over five seasons from the Yankees to sign a five-year, $28-million deal with Atlanta….

“Oh, I was there. I went there to sign with the Yankees. I was ...

Remembering Roger Samuels

Roger Samuels was born to be a pitcher.

A lefty, long and lanky. Sturdy as they come. He didn’t back down, no matter what he was up against, whether that was Darryl Strawberry and Ryne Sandberg in the batter’s box, or the unrelenting cancer that he battled over the past few years.

Roger—who passed away Monday at age 61—always gave it his best, as a pitcher and a friend. His memory is going to stick with me….

Roger was invited to big league camp in 1988, where he impressed manager Roger Craig. “He has a live arm and he looks good,” Craig told a reporter in 1988 spring training. “He’s a kid that’s really coming fast.”

The “kid” was assigned to Triple-A Phoenix. And that July, with Mike LaCoss on the shelf due to an elbow injury, ...

Rosenthal: The pressure is mounting — MLB cannot afford to lose games this season

Sub required.

The question is, what will constitute a win for the union? The owners say they are unwilling to grant earlier free agency or increase revenue sharing among clubs. But say the union achieved the following gains:

• Higher minimums and thresholds.

• Adjustments in the draft to include a lottery of more than three teams and extra picks for teams that reach certain levels of performance.

• An increase in the percentage of players with two-plus years of service who are eligible for arbitration.

• And finally, though it seems to be generating little discussion lately, a minimum payroll threshold with penalties for teams that fall below the limit, similar to the way the luxury-tax threshold works at the top.

Maybe the ...

Why does Baseball Hall of Fame voting make people so mad?

Van Bavel’s second point is that the Hall is necessarily fraught — “it’s kind of like a shrine, that’s why they call it being enshrined in the whole thing. And so when you have sacred values, those are the types of things that become moralized for people.”

Between a confluence of suspected PED users on the ballot and a growing attention to off-field infractions, that’s never been more true. The Hall of Fame has become a forum for discussing not just what we value in a baseball player, but what can and can’t abide in a beloved public figure.

“So many of these candidates, you crack open their candidacy and it’s a referendum on one idea or another as to what defines a Hall of Famer,” says Jay Jaffe, a FanGraphs writer and ...

Dodgers promote former MLB reliever Brandon Gomes to general manager as L.A. reshapes front office

The Los Angeles Dodgers have promoted former big-league reliever Brandon Gomes to general manager, the team announced Tuesday. Gomes had been an assistant general manager since 2019. The Dodgers had been operating without a general manager since Farhan Zaidi left to join the rival San Francisco Giants in Nov. 2018.

“He’s had such an incredible impact on everything he’s touched,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman told Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times. “He’s moved pretty quickly, but you could argue that he could’ve moved even quicker.” 

Gomes, 37, retired as a player in 2016 and joined the Dodgers the following year. He quickly ascended from pitching coordinator to director of player development to vice ...

What would a Mets trade package for Luis Castillo look like?

If the Reds decide to trade Castillo this offseason, a reasonable ask would be one top prospect who is also a top 100 prospect in baseball, and one other prospect inside a team’s top 10.

For the Mets, Francisco Alvarez and Brett Baty will be off-limits in pretty much any trade. So inquiring teams can forget those two.

That means that for Castillo, a fair offer from the Mets could be SS Ronny Mauricio (ranked No. 3 on SNY’s Top 20 Mets prospects list and No. 53 on the MLB Pipeline Top 100) and RHP J.T. Ginn (ranked No. 5 on SNY’s Top 20). And the Mets would need to sign Castillo to an extension to make that deal worthwhile.

One issue with the above could be the fact that the Reds have highly thought of SS prospect Matt McLain, who could ...

If the Blue Jays truly believe in the dynamic duo of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, now is the time to get the deals done

Guerrero is now four seasons away from free agency — just as Tatis was when he signed last spring — but because he qualified as a Super 2 player, he will go through arbitration four times, while the Padres shortstop would have only gone through three. As a result, Guerrero is positioned to out-earn Tatis through their third through sixth service-time seasons. With a projected salary of $8 million in 2022, he’d very conservatively platform to $12 million, $16 million and $20 million over the next three years for an estimated total of $56 million — roughly double the $27 million Tatis is slated to earn over the same span.

Given those numbers, the question then becomes how to value the free-agent years portion of an extension, which ...

After 14 seasons, Francisco Liriano hangs up spikes

Liriano pitched his way to an All-Star selection in 2006, his first full season, and he was a mainstay of the Twins’ rotation for parts of seven season before being dealt to the White Sox at the Trade Deadline in ‘12 with free agency looming. He chose to sign with the Pirates, where he enjoyed the most successful years of his career.

In his first four seasons for the Bucs, Liriano was exclusively a starter, pitching under a 3.50 ERA in each season of Pittsburgh’s postseason-bound campaigns from 2013-15. He started the Pirates’ first playoff series since 1992 and secured the first postseason series win since the ‘79 World Series.

However, after a couple of half-seasons in Toronto between 2016-17, Liriano ended the ‘17 campaign ...

The history of baseball’s revenue streams

This player-dominated league was in turn replaced by the owner-dominated National League of Professional Baseball Clubs (i.e., the modern National League). Ticket prices were standardized at 50 cents, or roughly $11.50 today. This was slashed in half when the NL merged with the rival American Association in 1891 (read: bullied them out of existence), although any lost revenue was more than accounted for by the new rules permitting teams to schedule games on Sunday and sell alcohol to fans — not to mention the immense benefit to the bottom line that a monopoly on professional baseball represented.

Ticket sales, concessions, and stadium merchandise: for most of the history of Major League Baseball, these were the main sources of revenue ...

With Jon Lester’s retirement we ask: How do you define a Hall of Fame starting pitcher?

Put another way: Adjusting for the diminished frequency of starts resulting in wins, the equivalent of 300 wins in 1901-10 would be 185 starting pitcher victories, based on how pitchers were deployed.

Of course, “wins” and “losses” were already imperfect statistics for judging pitcher performance based on elements beyond the pitcher’s control, including offensive support and the defense behind him. Still, the shifting nature of the starting pitcher’s role, which will affect other cumulative stats such as WAR, innings, and strikeouts, will make it ever more difficult to use current Hall members as a basis for judging future Hall-worthiness.

“Are you going to judge all the modern-day pitchers based on the past or the present, ...

Source: HOF broadcaster Dave Van Horne retiring

Longtime Marlins radio voice Dave Van Horne is “effectively retiring,” according to a report in The Miami Herald.  A source confirmed the news to MLB.com, though the club has not commented on the report.

Van Horne, 82, will not pursue work elsewhere, and he finishes his broadcasting career with 56 years worth of experience—53 at the Major League level, including 21 with the Marlins. He was the 2011 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the highest honor for a broadcaster. His signature home run call of “Up, up and away!” was a fan favorite….

Van Horne’s career began in the International League in 1966, where he broadcast Richmond Braves games for three seasons. During Van Horne’s years in Virginia, ...

Seiya Suzuki rumors: Boston Red Sox among 10-12 teams involved; OF still plans to sign after MLB lockout

Suzuki still plans to sign with an MLB team when the lockout ends, he told The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly in a wide-ranging interview. The outfielder, who was posted by the Hiroshima Carp, has heard recruiting pitches from 10 to 12 clubs and the Red Sox are among them. When the lockout ends, he will have about 20 days to decide where to sign.

“The Red Sox are known to have strong scouting links to Suzuki, and in an interview with a Japanese TV station earlier this month, former Boston pitcher Koji Uehara tried to squeeze an admission out of him that he was bound for Fenway Park,” Baggarly wrote.

Baggarly reports the Mariners and Giants have also been involved in talks with Suzuki and adds that the Dodgers, Padres, Yankees, Rays ...

Tampa Bay Rays bullpen catcher Jean Ramirez died by suicide; ‘Suffering in silence is not OK,’ family says

Tampa Bay Rays bullpen catcher Jean Ramirez died by suicide this week, according to the Tarrant County (Texas) Medical Examiner’s Office.

Ramirez, 28, died Monday near Fort Worth, where he attended high school. Ramirez played three minor-league seasons for the Rays and served as their bullpen catcher since 2019. He aspired to a coaching job in the major leagues.

Rays manager Kevin Cash called Ramirez an “incredible teammate and friend,” in a statement released by the team. “He brought so much passion and energy each day to our clubhouse and bullpen, and his love for the Rays and baseball was evident to all who interacted with him. He had the biggest heart and most infectious smile. Jean will be deeply missed.”

Ramirez died Monday ...

Melky Cabrera retires after 15 seasons

Cabrera began his MLB career 17 years ago as a member of the New York Yankees and spent five seasons in the Bronx before moving on to the Atlanta Braves and then the Kansas City Royals.

Cabrera was on the move again in 2012, joining the San Francisco Giants where he enjoyed the best season of his career, hitting .346 and making the National League All-Star Team where he won game MVP. However, Cabrera was handed a 50-game suspension one month later after testing positive for a banned substance and was forced to miss the rest of the season. He was MLB’s hits leader at the time of the penalty while the Giants went on to win their second World Series in three years.

The Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, native then signed a two-year, $16 ...

Breaking Down The MLB Top 100 Prospect Incentive Proposal

But because of that, including a Top 100 Prospects designation in the incentive seems unnecessary. To get a sense of how many players would be affected, we looked back at the rookie of the year balloting from 2010 to present. Of the 72 players to rank in the top three of Rookie of the Year balloting since 2010, 54 (75%) were Top 100 Prospects coming into that season. There were a few players (like Jose Iglesias and Jaime Garcia) who had ranked previously as Top 100 Prospects but not in the year before they landed ROY votes. For these purposes they are considered as not making the Top 100.

Of the 18 players who weren’t in the Top 100, five (Luis Garcia, Cristian Javier, John Means, Devin Williams and Jake Cronenworth) are still quite ...