Notes and Essays, Week Ending 2/7

2/1: I was surprised to see that David Weathers has the 19th most games of all time. I wasn’t aware that he pitched for that long, and I didn’t know that he was good enough to accumulate that many games. He pitched for 19 years.

One thing that is interesting is that if you sort his career by ERA+, his top four years were all in succession. They all form one interval: 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. We hear how inscrutable relievers are, how one season’s sample is inadequate for their evaluation, but look at that.

Weathers pitched for nine teams over his career, and he was no more settled in those peak years; he pitched for the Brewers, Cubs and Mets.

Regarding my instinct that you’d expect a pitcher with so many games to be of higher quality, both LaTroy Hawkins and Jose Mesa pitched more games than Weathers with worse E.R.A.s, although Hawkins beats Weathers in ERA+, 106 to 102. Weathers had a 4.25 E.R.A. Hawkins is 10th all time with 1042 games and had a 4.31 E.R.A. Mesa, for his part, had 1022 games and a 4.36 E.R.A.

Weathers also was tried as a starter unsuccessfully (69 starts with a 5.53 E.R.A.), but Mesa’s stats look quite a bit better if you confine them to after he was moved to the bullpen. From 1994 on, he had a 3.97 E.R.A. and a 114 ERA+. Teams were looking at this pitcher, the reliever Mesa, when they acquired him and then gave him the ball, and the starter Mesa was irrelevant. It’s notable that just 9% of Mesa’s career games came as a starter, yet because they comprise 36% of his innings, they affect his E.R.A so much.

If Weather’s sustained success from 2000-2003 is a point for unacknowledged consistency of relievers, Mesa would seem to be a poster child for their fickleness. He had a “down, up, down, up” array of E.R.A.s from 1994 through 1998, then finished his career with E.R.A.s of 2.97, 6.52, 3.25, 4.76, 3.86 and 7.11. Accumulating as many games as he did, injury and sample size was never an issue, so those are as real relievers seasons as any others, with Mesa’s low being 51 games in 1994 (and actually placed him 2nd in the league). But a trend with Mesa is nonetheless apparent.

1994-2002: 130 ERA+, 7.6 SO/9

2003-2007: 90 ERA+, 5.5 SO/9

Both Weathers and he have at least elements of a career arc. Within the broader static, Mesa did show a trend.

The amazing thing is that Mesa racked up 94 saves from 2003-2005 when he had no business being in the closer role. You can sort of understand what the 2003 Phillies were doing with him as closer despite his 6.52 E.R.A., as he’d saved 87 games for them over the past two years with E.R.A.s under 3.00. That he still had 3 saves in August and a save opportunity as late as September 4 for an 86-win team does raise an eyebrow, however. I admit I think of Larry Bowa as a “stick in the mud,” as someone who very much was going to adhere to the conservative notion that only experienced ninth-inning men should be allowed to close. Mesa’s tendency to circle the wagons, to pitch his best when his closer’s career seemed at death’s door, kept him long in employment in this select role.

His 3.25 E.R.A. bounce back in 2004 with 43 saves while pitching for the Pirates doesn’t immediately differentiate him from NL closers that season like Jason Isringhausen (47 saves, 2.87), Danny Graves (41 saves, 3.95), Danny Kolb (39 saves, 2.98), and Colorado’s Shawn Chacon (35 saves, 7.11). However, of the 179 40-save seasons in major league history, Mesa’s ranks 177th in SO/H (69.1 IP. 78 H, 37 SO). Only Dan Quisenberry, both 1982 and 1983, had worse ratios.

Mesa’s career WHIP of 1.472 is an eyesore. He gave up 9.2 H/9, 3.8 BB/9. A .346 OBP Against.

2/2 N1: Since they have Ke’Bryan Hayes, I assume the Reds got Eugenio Suarez to DH? In the case of a good hitter like Suarez,15 mil per year is also DH money.

It wasn’t all KBH’s doing, but the irony is that Red’s 3B-men had the lowest OPS of any position on the team last year.

Another oddity is that Suarez only has 32 carer DH games. I guess he’s never been in the right place at the right time.

2/2 N2: I was looking at the statistics of Sammy Stafura, a minor league shortstop the Pirates got when they traded Ke’Bryan Hayes. 2023 high school second rounder; 60-grade runner; walk demon; maybe some power in the making.

A weakness has been that he’s only hit .243. He has 1002 plate appearances, 819 at-bats, 15 home runs. You look at his 25.5% strikeout rate, which isn’t too bad by major league standards, and you think BAbip has been the problem. But I worked it out and his BAbip is actually quite good — .318.

What I think this points out is that, calculating the strikeout rate by plate appearances is by this point reflexive for us, but in some contexts, what matters is strikeout rate per at-bat. And because Stafura walks so much, 14.6%, his SO/AB are significantly worse than his SO/PA. It is your strikeouts-per-at-bat that affect your batting average (both regular and BAbip), naturally, not your strikeouts-per-plate appearance. If we give Stafura a typical number of walks, 73 instead of his 146, and we lower his plate appearances by the same amount, his strikeout rate jumps by 2.1%.

2/3 N1: I’m intrigued by the possible value of the “Pick” stat included in catcher player pages on Baseball Reference. Johnny Bench had 12 as a rookie in 1968, which would remain his personal record.

Bench was Bench, but I wondered whether there was some questionable defining and fudging in there. However, apparently that really was a high number. The first comparison I did was with Randy Hundley, who was second in putouts in the National League that year behind Bench. Hundley had 12 pickoffs his entire career. A career that could have been longer, yes, behind his son Todd in games in fact, but still consisting of over 1000 games behind the plate. Todd had 4 lifetime pickoffs, by the way.

Our 2025 leaders in pickoffs were Edgar Quero and Adley Rutschman. Quero certainly isn’t renowned as a throwing catcher, throwing out just 16% last year. So maybe that tells you how pickoffs play out today and what they signify. The wonderful-throwing Luis Torrens had just 1, also surprising because he seems to be firing to bases quite a bit.

I don’t think pickoffs makes Baseball Reference’s leaderboards at the bottom of catchers’ fielding statistics, unfortunately, but I checked a few other guys, opting for labor if not efficiency. Ivan Rodriguez had 12 in 1996, 11 in 1999.

Off the top of my head, I really had little idea who else might shine in the analysis. Tony Pena and Benito Santiago were both renowned for getting low/throwing from their knees, weren’t they? It turns out it was Santiago who was the pickoff maestro — had 15 while starting 122 games as a 24-year-old in 1989.

A note on the stat: it’s denoted by “picks” on player pages, but by PO in “League Player Advanced Fielding — C Baserunning. The data under both guises matches up.

What triggered all of this was my listening to Jerry Reuss’s SABR Oral Archive, which I sensed was largely an oral version of the highlights from the book he had just published (no ghostwriter listed). Anyway, Reuss suggested that maybe the highlight of his starting the 1975 All-Star game was that he got to throw to Bench. Bench impressed Reuss with the possibilities of what a catcher could add with his leadership and stood out as superior to everyone else he had or would throw to. Reuss was in awe.

I never have found Bench a super personality. Maybe this is because he is many years older than I am and has done many commercials, or maybe some people just know what they are doing on an athletic field and become different people. Their athletic confidence transfers over.

It is an undirected goal of mine to prove that Bench was even greater than his statistics. The combination of his elite power and defense, and that he demonstrated those things at such a young age, I sometimes think we’ve lost perspective on that. I wonder if Bench was a freak like Dwight Gooden, but one who made good on his promise and was able to sustain greatness for a good decade. Bill James rated him only 44th in 25 years ago, but when Joe Posnanski has him 30th five years ago, maybe one can’t expect more than that. The guys ahead of him were pretty great, too.

In terms of how much credit Bench is getting in defensive rankings, I ranked catchers by career Runs Batting (RBAT Baseball Reference). Bench is fourth, behind Piazza, Gibson and Cochrane. He is given 19.7 Defensive WAR. Among the top 15 catchers in RBAT, only Gary Carter, 14th in RBAT, has more dWAR. Among the top 30 offensive catchers, only five others are also in double-digits in DWAR: Gabby Hartnett, Bill Freehan, Thurman Munson, Bill Dickey and Buster Posey (in order of dWAR).

2/3 N2: Baseball America’s rating of the fastball of new upper minors’ White Sox prospect David Sandlin’s fastball (the Oklahoma alum acquired along with Jordan Hicks in an apparent Red Sox salary dump) indicates BA’s evolution on this point. He is described as “sit[ting] at 96-97 MPH and can touch 100” but gets just a 45 rating because of context and the kind of 100 it is. Over his minor league career, Sandlin has 10.8 ks-per-9, so BA may be overthinking this a bit.

A lot of ties to velocity in this trade, what with the bragging rights that Hicks (a 101.1 sinker average in 2019, etc.) used to have. Note “used to,” although when he was starting, he was definitely taking some steam off by design.

2/3 N3: It would generally be accurate to say there hasn’t been much change in the numbers over the last 5 to 8 years, but using Statcast’s numbers, last year saw both the highest “zone contact rate” since 2016 and the second-lowest “o-zone contact rate” since the tracking of the data in 2007 (2020 was a tick lower in this). I was going to suggest that this maybe meant that both hitters and pitchers have gotten better at the same time, but lbefore going down that route, it seems more important to somehow incorporate that the 52.4% zone percentage marked a new record, although the low for that has been just 49.4%.

That, too, came in 2020. So last year’s pattern is not at all in keeping with 2020, when it would seem that low zone percentage meant low “out of zone contact” percentage as well. Analysis is complicated because we tend to think of those bad and ill-prepared COVID pitchers, but surely kids were also getting more of a look at bat in 2020, and they would have been contributing to the high whiff percentage on pitches outside the zone.

2/3 N4: Kevin Kiermaier has taken on the role of Oneil Cruz’s personal outfield coach this offseason. Interviewed on MLB network, Kiermaier pinpointed Cruz’s concentration, pitch in and pitch out, as what they need to work on. Matt Vasgersian and he were saying that of course he has the potential to produce excellent Outs Above Average, that on any given play, he can shine right now.

Statcast’s system of breaking down fielding into 5-star, 4-star, 3-star, 2-star and 1-star plays is ideally suited to investigating this claim. Having done this, a couple of things seem clear. First, Cruz has shown no potential to be special as an outfielder. But he is extremely capable of handling the 1- and 2-star plays, those that he should make at least 75% of the time. In the middle categories, dealing with very limited sample size, I am unclear on what he could be, but I think the good information we have on both ends gives us the basis for a reasonable projection.

In summary, Cruz has most of the makings of an average outfielder, granted that Outs Above Average is not the whole ballgame. If he has the makings to be average, that means he probably shouldn’t be playing center. Aside from maybe not having any other possibilities (Bryan Reynolds in center again? please, no!), the Pirates have presumably not wanted to confuse Cruz and have consequently avoided experimenting with him in a corner, but they should consider doing that. With his arm, I guess teams would hate to waste that and put him in left, so right field may be his destiny.

I’ll take you through the “star” data. I downloaded what Statcast considers outfield qualifiers. There were 89 players, and they had a minimum of 41 total chances in the “star range.” (0-star balls, balls handled more than 95% of the time, are presumably not included).

In the 5-star range, the average number of chances was 21.1. Fifty two of the guys (58.4%) made at least one 5-star play, but Cruz wasn’t among them. As luck had it, although Cruz was only 39th in outfield innings last year, he and Brenton Doyle had more 5-star chances (34) than anybody. But Cruz was shut out. The average conversion rate was 7.6%.

To show what is possible, Pete Crow-Armstrong went 19 for 32. He was a mile off by himself, but you did have the Boston guys, Abreu and Rafaela, go 9 for 24 and 7 for 26, respectively. My OAA estimate here for just 5-stars is a bit crude, because it includes the whole 0%-25% range, and I am counting each chance as 7.6%. But with that construction, of course Cruz was the very worst outfielder on the most challenging plays. So, Matt Vasgersian, do your homework.

In the 4-star category, where the qualifiers fielded 39.2%, Cruz went 2 for 4. For 3-star chances, he was about one catch under expectation: 5 for 9, when 5.88 for 9 would have been expected. His composite performance over 3 and 4 stars was 7 for 13, when 7.45 for 13 would have been expected.

But for the 2-star and 1-star plays, Cruz proved himself. He had 24 and 25 chances in the two categories, respectively, and went a composite 45 for 49. The composite rate for qualifiers on 2-star plays was 85.5%, and Cruz was right with it, at 87.7%. He fielded 1-star balls 24 for 25, beating the 93.2% expectation by 0.7 balls.

Where the conversation around him does apply has to do with Cruz’s errors, those 0-star balls. Cruz and Andy Pages made 11 errors last year, while no other outfield erred in double digits. I don’t have Cruz’s breakdown for muffing and throwing errors specifically, but I do know that Pirate center fielders made 13 errors, 11 of which were of the fielding variety. So there was some lack of concentration there we can point to, or at least some flubbing of easy balls.

And it is interesting that Oneil bunched his errors. They do not appear to have been random, He committed ones on 3/29, 4/1 and 4/4, then on 5/23 and 5/25, then on 8/1 and 8/3, then on 9/12 and 9/14.

That actually doesn’t sound like a guy not paying attention to me, it sounds like a guy pressing. But he also had error-less streaks of 29 and 27 games, and two other error-less streaks of 19 games.

I wish him well, and yes, logically, it sound seem like with his speed, he should be able to make difficult plays, and that consistency should be the biggest challege in going and gettin’ em. But I’m not sure that’s the way defense really works, that speed equals capacity and is a limiting factor, and that’s not what is showing up in Cruz’s data right now.

2/4: The Outs Above Average evaluation seems to go back to 2016, and as it long as it can be accessed, I imagine that dividing plays into catch-probability categories is easy. So that system, too, goes back to 2016. Pete Crow-Armstrong’s 19 five-star plays last year just shattered the previous record, which was Billy Hamilton’s 12 in 2016. Hamilton only played in 115 games and had only 72% of the chances that PCA had, but running a superior percentage as PCA did in a larger sample of course adds to the accomplishment. So total plays made, and not just percentage, counts for something with a low-probability statistic like this. Other seasons of 10 or more five-star plays made: Byron Buxton, 2017, 11; Jacob Young, 2024, 10; Adam Engel, 2017, 10; Adam Eaton, 2016, 10; Max Kepler, 2016, 10.

Kepler clearly has lost range. If we take the 7.6% conversion rate I found for 2025 qualifiers as the average, Max followed up his 2016 with five above-average seasons out of six, including 20% and 18% seasons. But from 2023 on, he’s 1 for 51 on five-star. He just got suspended for PEDs, so he has his hands full with other problems….

Trent Grisham was 16 for 60 in his first four years (26.7%) but is 5 for 51 over the last three (10%). He could take a tangible step toward improvement by losing weight, but I still think 2022 has come and gone for him. Last year’s 1 for 21 was probably partly brought about by injury, though.

2/5 N1: Despite making several lists of top-100 prospects just two years ago, right fielder/designated hitter Yanquiel Fernandez was exposed to waivers by the Rockies, and the Yankees took them up on it. What is peculiar about Fernandez’s record is that he went from ranking at the 90th percentile with his mere 14.0% strikeouts in the Pacific Coast League to striking out 29.9% of the time in 147 plate appearances with the Rockies. In 2024 in the minors, he also had quite a good strikeout rate,19.5%.

Looking at Baseball Savant’s breakdown of his 44 strikeouts at the major league level last year into fastballs, breaking balls, and changeups/splits, 21 came on breaking balls. Fernandez had only a .265 OBP overall and 4 home runs, but that he had a positive run value on 4-seam fastballs also suggests where the problem lay.

Regarding that 90th percentile claim about his strikeout rate in the Pacific Coast League, Fernandez had 271 plate appearances. I took the top 100 guys in plate appearances, going down to 247 plate appearances, and Fernandez had the 10th-best strikeout rate.

2/5 N2: Based on this little silly study, even in terms of ball field balance, knowledge of the cycle of life provides us with little consolation when a good ballplayer passes away. Based on bWAR, I took the top 10 position players and top five pitchers who died before January 1, 1996, and looked to find the best players born on the same day each died. The 15 players (this group confirms that WAR skews old) were Ruth, Cobb, Speaker, Wagner, Hornsby, Collins, Gehrig, Ott, Mantle, Lajoie, Young, Johnson, Nichols, Alexander and Grove. I found only two successors with 5.0 bWAR or more: Jeff Fassero, 23.8 bWAR, born on the day Hornsby died; and Mike Jorgensen, 9.0 bWAR, born on the day Ruth died.

Pretty good career for Fassero. A 22nd-round pick, and didn’t debut until he was 28. Lasted well into his 40s. Pitched to a 120 ERA+ in over 1000 innings from 1994-1998, and was third in the NL with 222 strikeouts in 1996.

Finding those top bWAR players deceased before 1996 revealed a couple of honorable mentions I wouldn’t have guessed. George Davis (1890-1909) was 14th among position players, Luke Appling (1930-1950) 19th. Appling was a shortstop and Davis was, too, although there is a mild resemblance to Wagner in Davis’s career arc, and shortstop didn’t become his position until 1897 (when Honus was a rookie and mostly a center fielder, by the way).

2/5 N3: If Ben Lindbergh used to struggle with keeping Taylor Ward and Tyler Wade straight, what hope would he have before Tayron Guerrero and Taylor Guerrieri? Both were pitchers with brief major league careers ending in 2019. Guerrero was six-foot-eight, Guerrieri a 2011 first-round pick of the Rays who pitched at the major league level for the Blue Jays and Rangers.

2/5 N4: If we just look at pitching, I wonder how Shohei Ohtani stacks up next to Babe Ruth? Ohtani has 15.2 bWAR as a pitcher over the last five years. He is one of 17 pitchers with 15.0 bWAR or more, and 14th specifically. But of this group, in terms of ERA+, his 151 is the best. I don’t think I can in good conscience put his 475.1 IP and 151 ERA+ ahead of Zack Wheeler’s 908 IP and 145 ERA+, or ahead of Max Fried’s 798.1 IP and 146 ERA+. But I think he could rate as high as 3rd, particularly if you see his low workload as misleading, what with the missed season and a half in here.

That has always been my sense of Ruth — that he was maybe the third best pitcher at his peak, although really more like the third best in the American League than the third best in baseball.

2/5 N5: The DH being extinct means a new time. Since the rule’s introduction, it has not been a straight descent in pitcher’s batting opportunities, though, as all starting pitchers had to hit once in a while when interleague play was the law of the land and pitcher batting still was continuing in the National League. From 1973-1997, though, even a starting pitcher need never bat if he played for an American League club.

So, that got me thinking, who was the best pitcher never to bat? I am afraid I have gotten addicted to bWAR, so will try to answer the question that way.

Trying to cast a bit of a wide net initially, the prompts I set up in Stathead were American League bWAR total, with debut season as early as 1971 (a couple of years before the DH) and last season as late as 1999 (a couple of years after interleague play started).

Depriving you of suspense, the answer, by bWAR, is actually the guy I would have guessed — Ron Guidry, 47.9 bWAR. But before I talk about Guidry, some fun near misses, from guys who actually had more WAR than Guidry.

Within my parameters, Dave Stieb had the most WAR, 56.5. Stieb debuted well after the beginning of the DH, never pitched as a National Leaguer, and in fact made all but 4 of his 443 appearances with the Blue Jays. But initially, it seems like his remarkable return in 1998 from a four-year retirement might have cost him this place in trivia. Stieb threw 50.1 innings that year over 19 games, and pitching against the Braves in relief on June 28, he did in fact bat, grounding out to the pitcher.

But he actually disqualified himself in 1980. In a 5-5 game against the Twins, Stieb came in and played left field in the top of the 15th inning. The Twins scored twice. In the bottom half of the inning, Damaso Garcia drew one of the only 12 walks he had on the year from 140 games to begin for the Blue Jays, and then it was up to Stieb, who flied to center. The Blue Jays failed to score, and the Twins won.

Frank Tanana was next up on the WAR list, 0.1 behind Stieb, but adding in Tanana’s 0.7 with the National League Mets in his final season, he passes him. That is a bit like a worker bee stinging a victim but killing itself in the process, though. Obviously, playing with the Mets, he wasn’t going to get out of batting. In terms of performance, he acquitted himself fine, going 9-for-58 with a double and a triple.

But he probably didn’t want to get out of batting, because like Stieb, he’d already found a way to work himself into the batters box. Two years earlier, in 1991, Tanana was pitching and beating the White Sox 16-0 when Tony Phillips was moved from designated hitter to shortstop, leaving Tanana as the hitter in the original shortstop (Alan Trammell’s) position. Batting in the 8th inning, Tanana struck out, but did go on to complete the shutout, which was the penultimate one of his career.

Jimmy Key (49.0 WAR; 1984-1998) is another who was good enough and came close but fails the purity test. The only thing that trips him up is an 0-for-2 with a sacrifice hit 1997, a year in which he started 34 games for the Orioles and earned his spot on the All-Star team with very good first-half and season statistics.

Dennis Eckersley was produced by the prompts, but I had to take the wheel and override, on account of his 1984-1986 stint with the Cubs, and an AB in 1996 with the Cardinals.

So that left Guidry. Among countless other associations, Guidry is known to some of us for having gone to center field in the resumption of the pine tar game. Down to their final out in the bottom half of the inning, Guidry’s spot came up for the Yankees, but there were limits to their protest, and Oscar Gamble was sent up to pinch-hit for Guidry, grounding out.

Guidry also does not have a blank offensive record, so I suppose it can be debated whether he does in fact qualify for this. He was used on occasion as a pinch runner and scored 4 runs over his career. Three of those runs came in 1977, with the entertainment-obsessed Martin the manager. Guidry was used four times as a pinch runner that July.

Over 1977 and 1981, Guidry hit in the World Series, too. He didn’t get a hit in seven at-bats but had two sacrifices. He didn’t hit in the World Series in 1978 because that was a DH World Series,

Extending the requirement to include the postseason, I believe the record for highest bWAR without a plate appearance belongs to Mark Gubicza. He is, to me at least, a surprise winner, what with his career 132-136 record and 109 ERA+. That was a 24-year span with no DH in the AL, so I thought this would turn up somebody better than Gubicza, but I suppose the World Series hurdle should not be underestimated. Gubicza had 37.4 bWAR, which is backed up by his 38.6 fWAR. He actually profiles as having been an excellent pitcher for a time but in the ‘90s had only periodic success.

Gubicza had his own near misses. His career wrapped up in the interleague play year 1997 with the Angels, but he pitched just two games, both against the Indians in April. With the postseason review, the Royals’ 1985 World Series participation seems to have been more likely to ensnare him. Gubicza started 28 games for the Royals that year and in fact won game 6 of the ALCS, but in the Series, he didn’t pitch, with the team going with Danny Jackson, Charlie Leibrandt, Bret Saberhagen and Bud Black instead.

2/6 N1: I would say that the 5-inning win requirement for a starting pitcher probably needs to go at all levels. But in any event, it definitely has become obsolete at the minor league level, and should be done away with. What an absurdity to have it, when at the low minor league levels, pitchers are pretty much not permitted to go 5 innings! In the Class A California State League last season, eight pitchers registered 7 wins or more, but only five were majority starting pitchers. Good work if you could get it, being the first guy in, not that anybody is paying attention to won-loss record at the minor league level. But the Dodgers Domingo Geronimo, who worked 26 relief games without starting, went 8-0 with a 6.06 E.R.A.

Of course, if you let won-loss record be stupid, it will be stupid. The concept would remain and the normal integrity restored if the innings requirement were just dropped. Not paying attention to won-loss record is simply the best response under the circumstances, but these don’t have to be the circumstances.

2/6 N2: Even if I know better, looking at what used to be gaudy strikeout rates for pitching prospects and thinking they are going to do big things makes me feel good. A reality check is in order. There were nine pitchers drafted in the first round in 2024, and thheir minor league SO/9 in 2025 ranged from 9.0 (Pirates’ Levi Sterling) to 14.7 (Trey Yesavage), with an average of 12.0.

Now, maybe these guys are, by and large, going to do big things; the good news is that, in most cases, these rates were much better than the minor league average. The six ‘A’ or ‘A+’ leagues had an average k rate of “only” 9.3; the three AAs, 9.1.

A strikeout an inning used to be really hard to come by. We know that 250 innings, while it represented a full load, didn’t used to a prohibitive requirement. But Sandy Koufax in 1961 was the first pitcher to ever work 250 innings and strike out one an inning (he did that right before the Dodgers moved into Dodger Stadium, and right before expansion, by the way). Before 2000, only 16 pitchers had done the trick. Today, the innings requirement would trip guys up; the strikeout requirement would not.

Nolan Ryan had five 250+ IP, 1+ k/inning seasons. He was retired before 2000, so that was his final total. Next with two such seasons were Koufax (the 382 ks in ‘65 his other season), Sam McDowell, J.R. Richard, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.

One such season: Jim Maloney, Bob Veale, Luis Tiant, Tom Seaver, Frank Tanana, Mario Soto, Mike Scott, John Smoltz, Kevin Brown.

2/6 N3: Jon Heyman reporting this morning that “Jasson Dominguez looks to be ticketed for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.” The old numbers game, but it will mark an unusual trajectory for someone who stole 23 bases and did everything else pretty much average offensively last year. Today, we more often see the emergency send-downs of clear major league players mid-season amid a bad slump, but rarely is a guy even of Dominguez’s lower established caliber demoted at the start of a season. The Yankees will probably point out that his fielding and right-handed hitting are in need of much improvement, but if he could work on those things at the major league level last year, there is no reason he couldn’t this year as well.

2/7 N1: There were only 23 position players last year born in the 1980s. It would be best not to be overconfident with something like this, but Freddie Freeman, born on 9/12/89, seems the strong favorite to be the last. George Springer (born a week after Freeman) is perhaps second in the betting, although his mere two seasons with 150 games reveals that he is not the most durable sort. A sleeper? Miguel Rojas (b. 2/24/89). So, oddly, the three guys I would consider the top contenders all played in last year’s World Series.

Interestingly, pre-1990 pitchers dominated pre-1990 position players on rosters last year, as there were 54 of them. In listening to Jerry Reuss’s oral history, I think he said, via David Smith, that only 40% of players in history are pitchers, although obviously they have taken up more of the pie in recent years. But the 70% of pitchers is very specific to this cohort. It still stood out that most of these pre-1990 pitchers are clearly on their last legs, and some (David Robertson, Clayton Kershaw, Kyle Hendricks, Kyle Gibson, I think Adam Ottavino) have already retired.

The pre-1990 pitchers in best form right now are Sonny Grey, Seth Lugo, Jacob deGrom, Chris Sale, Chris Bassitt and Aroldis Chapman. Unless you want to go to Kenley Jansen, born in 1987, there’s no conflict between best current performance and the youngest candidates; those six were all born in 1988 or 1989.

There will be real irony if deGrom ends up being the last pitcher born in the ‘80s to pitch in the major leagues, given the reputation he has of being a mercurial pitcher whose availability has been sporadic. The same could perhaps be said of Sale. Let’s remember that deGrom hasn’t racked up big totals, though, not only because of injuries, but because he was almost 26 when he debuted. This framework takes no heed of that.

DeGrom, Lugo and Bassitt were all on the 2022 Mets, incidentally, where Ottavino, Max Scherzer and Carlos Carrasco actually qualified as the team’s pitching elder statesmen, with this group waiting in the wings, although none would graduate to the ‘23 Mets.

Come to think of it, there is an easy way to make my “last legs” point that 54 1980s pitchers gives a false impression of their collective health (they would be best to have their affairs in order). Look at the distribution of their year of birth.

1989 23

1988 12

1987 9

1986 3

1985 2

1984 1

1983 3

1980 1 (Rich Hill. My God! Almost the ‘70s!)

2/7 N2: I have reported on Yasiel Puig’s statistical exploits this winter in Venezuela and also followed him when he was in Korea last season. He has now been convicted in Los Angeles of lying (officially “obstructing justice”) in a federal investigation of a sports betting probe. He was found not to be forthcoming about betting with a bookie and could face jail time.