Monday, September 30, 2019

2019 Awards

The Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter is an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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AL MVP: Mike Trout, Angels

NL MVP: Cody Bellinger, Dodgers

AL Cy Young: Gerrit Cole, Astros

NL Cy Young: Jacob deGrom, Mets

AL Rookie of the Year: Yordan Alvarez, Astros

NL Rookie of the Year: Peter Alonso, Mets

AL Manager of the Year: Rocco Baldelli, Twins

NL Manager of the Year: Mike Shildt, Cardinals

Newsletter Excerpt, September 27, 2019 -- "What I'm Watching"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"The A’s are quietly putting together their playoff pitching staff, which will look nothing like the one they had in August. Sean Manaea has a 1.21 ERA in five starts. Jesus Luzardo is at 1.80 in five relief appearances. A.J. Puk has been tough out of the pen, allowing just a 652 OPS. They could do worse than line those three up in some order, with Liam Hendriks and Yusmeiro Petit, for Wednesday’s wild-card game."

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 26, 2019 -- "Competitive Balance"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"Bud Selig looked at the best competitive balance in baseball history and lied about it to make more money for him and his pals. Rob Manfred? In February, coming off a season in which six teams won or lost 100 games, he said, “There has been no meaningful change in the distribution of winning percentages in major league baseball.” Why? Because the teams are making money hand over fist. (Rob Arthur, take it away.) There are draconian penalties for spending too much money on your product, and none at all for spending too little."

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 25, 2019 -- "The Tigers Make History"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"When the Tigers go bad, though, they go very bad. There have been five 110-loss seasons in this century, and the Tigers are responsible for 40% of them."

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 24, 2019 -- "Stats Don't Matter"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"So much of postseason lore centers on workaday players who had the best week of their lives when everyone was watching. David Freese. Mike Lowell. Scott Brosius. Ray Knight. Ron Cey. I mean, that’s just the non-superstar third basemen who were World Series MVPs since I started watching baseball. What we think less about -- and what I’m getting at today -- is that teams win World Series when they do things they weren’t expected to do. The Royals didn’t hit homers, but they hit a bunch of critical ones across two postseasons. The Red Sox middle relievers weren’t good, and then for three weeks, they were great."

Friday, September 20, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 20, 2019 -- "The Jack Flaherty Game"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"The Cardinals are exactly what they look like. Their third-order record matches their real record exactly. I projected them to go 91-71, they’re on pace to go...91-71. They’ve been a disappointing offensive team -- tenth in runs, ninth in wRC+ -- and a middling pitching one (seventh in FIP) that has been saved by a strong defense (third in DER). They’ve gained some runs by stealing bases well (79%) and, by 2019 standards, often (111, first in the NL). In the year of the dinger, they’ve allowed the fewest homers in baseball thanks to both a high groundball rate (45.2%, fourth-highest in the NL) and low HR/FB (14.4%, fourth-lowest)."

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 17, 2019 -- "Fun With Numbers"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"Herget has now faced 19 batters without a strikeout. That seems like a lot to me, so I looked it up. It is, but it’s not the most of any player in 2019.

"Pitching to Contact (Most Batters Faced, No Strikeouts, 2019)

Michael Blazek     26
John Ryan Murphy   22
Jimmy Herget       19
Mike Brosseau      18
Alex Gordon        17"


Monday, September 16, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 16, 2019 -- "What I'm Watching"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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Worst NL Teams, Second Half

Marlins   19-42   .311
Pirates   21-40   .344
Rockies   21-40   .344
Padres    23-36   .390
Reds      29-34   .460


Those five teams are also five of the Brewers’ final six opponents in 2019. The Brewers, out of playoff position at the moment, have to be thinking not just about a wild-card slot but about stealing the NL Central.

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 15, 2019 -- "Twins, Killing"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"Down 5-2 in the fourth, the Twins got 5 1/3 shutout innings from Cody Stashak, Brusdar Graterol, and Trevor May, who allowed just one hit and no walks to the game’s final 17 batters. Graterol, a hard-throwing rookie who is bucking for a role as 2019’s version of Francisco Rodriguez, struck out three of the six men he faced. He needed just 25 pitches to get through his two innings, and looked for all the world like a devastating late-inning weapon."

Friday, September 13, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 13, 2019 -- "The AL Wild Card Race"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"The current standings say the Indians are the odd team out, and the third-order records say the Indians are the odd team out. If you examine these teams as they stand today, the rosters that will play out the season, you will probably reach the same conclusion."

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 11, 2019 -- "Christian Yelich"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"Every game counts the same in the standings, but not in the history books, not in the zeitgeist, not in the way we remember some great players and forget others. This is September, and if the Brewers aren’t likely to win the NL Central, they’re in position to snag a wild-card berth, to win a big game, to get another crack at a Dodgers team they took to seven games in last year’s NLCS. Yelich’s story, the thing we’ll talk about 25 years from now, isn’t about the .8362 bWAR he won’t get, it’s the gamebreaking double he won’t hit, the gapper he won’t take away in left-center, the scamper home with the winning run that never happens."

Monday, September 9, 2019

Newsletter Preview, September 9, 2019 -- "Dave Dombrowski Done"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter
Vol. 11, No. 77
September 9, 2019

The Red Sox lost to the Yankees 10-5 last night, running their record in this key week against the Twins and Yanks to 2-4. They had long lost any chance to win the AL East -- they can, in fact, be mathematically eliminated tonight -- and they’ve now dropped nine games behind the Rays, eight behind the A’s, and 6 1/2 behind the Indians in the AL wild-card chase. Fangraphs has them down to a 250-1 shot to make the playoffs, and that sounds about right to me. It’s over.

The team seems to agree. After last night’s game, as attention in New England more or less officially shifted to the Patriots, the Sox fired president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski. The move was a surprise for the timing; we’re not a year removed from a 108-win Red Sox team winning the World Series without dropping more than a game in any postseason series. If Dombrowski’s work since then had been lacking, both in quality and volume, it’s rare for a baseball team to move on from a successful executive this quickly. It’s an NHL move, a Premier League move, and you remember that the owners of the Red Sox also own Liverpool and wonder if they’re getting their sports mixed up.

Dombrowski may well have been a victim of that postseason run, driven by a number of randoms who had unremarkable performances both before and since. From last October:

“The fascinating thing about the Red Sox, though, is how those two elements -- the great regular season and the great postseason -- were achieved by, exaggerating only slightly, two different teams. Boston’s romp through October is illustrated nicely by a platoon first baseman who joined the team in June becoming World Series MVP. It’s not that Steve Pearce is undeserving -- he slugged 1.157 and had huge hits in Games Four and Five -- but, rather, that he represents the back half of a roster, featuring players who the Sox and their fan base had tried to bury at various times, that simply went off this month.

The Turnaround (ERAs, Selected Red Sox Relievers)

                 2018     2H    Sept    Post
Joe Kelly        4.39   4.50    8.31    0.79
Matt Barnes      3.65   6.41    5.06    1.04
Ryan Brasier     1.60   1.88    2.31    1.04   


The Red Sox were supposed to be at their most vulnerable between when the starters left the game and when Craig Kimbrel entered. In the sixth through eighth innings across 14 postseason games, the Red Sox outscored their opponents 31-14, including 11-5 in the World Series. (Seven of the 14 runs they allowed were by Eduardo Rodriguez.)”

There were two effects here, both of which served Dombrowski poorly. One is that he bought in completely to his championship roster. The Red Sox re-signed Steven Pearce while they were still cleaning up after the parade, and they locked in Nathan Eovaldi not long after that. The two have provided nothing this year at a cost of $23 million. Of the 25 players the Red Sox used in the 2018 postseason, 20 returned to the Opening Day roster. A 21st, Pearce, was injured at the time. The four who didn’t were Kimbrel, Kelly, the backup catcher (Sandy Leon, who would return), and the rental second baseman (Ian Kinsler).

Dombrowski didn’t bring in any reinforcements from outside the organization, a choice that may have been influenced by Boston’s position relative to the highest tier of luxury-tax penalties. It nevertheless burned him when the relief pitchers went back to their level and Eovaldi, shockingly, couldn’t get through a season healthy.

The second, related effect was that winning a championship set the expectations for 2019. We now judge teams by their postseason performance almost exclusively, ignoring all that came before October. A 108-54 Red Sox team that flames out in the playoffs doesn’t get praised as one of the best teams of the century. That playoff run, however, was the product of the bottom half of the roster, almost entirely disconnected from the squad that won two of every three games for six months.

“Pearce, Kelly, Barnes...Rafael Devers was benched during the Division Series due to Alex Cora’s concerns about his defense. This after a second half in which Devers battled a left hamstring strain and questions about his defense, conditioning, and development as a hitter. He ended up hitting .294 in the postseason and making a key stop in the ninth inning of Game Four.

The Sox needed everything they got from the middle of the roster because the front of it didn’t play well. Mookie Betts, the likely AL MVP, hit .210/.300/.323. Xander Bogaerts hit .224/.303/.310. Andrew Benintendi hit .268/.328/.339, and it was that good a line thanks to a number of bloopers and cue shots in the Series. The Red Sox offense in the postseason was driven by the bottom of the lineup, not the top.

OPS by Batting Order Slot, Red Sox Postseason

       Reg   Post

1st   1028    623
2nd    759    587

3rd    871    888
4th    968    828
5th    796    719
6th    684    639
7th    667    916
8th    607    464
9th    704    917


That’s Jackie Bradley Jr. carrying the players on either side of him. Bradley Jr. hit .200, but it was an incredibly loud .200, with two doubles and three homers, all of them in enormous spots.

It was much the same on the pitching side. Chris Sale, who will finish second in the AL Cy Young balloting, got the last out of the Series, but in his three playoff starts he never got more than 16 outs and had a 4.73 ERA. Craig Kimbrel had six postseason saves; he allowed runs in four of them and had a 5.91 ERA overall.”

The run the Red Sox made was driven by the flawed back half of a roster playing out of its mind for four weeks. Flags fly forever, and I take nothing away from those Red Sox. The lesson Dombrowski seemed to learn, and again this happened in the context of the worst penalties any team has ever suffered under the payroll limiters, was that the back of his roster was to be kept together. It was running it back with that group, rather than looking to improve upon it, that set the 2019 season in motion. If the middle relievers don’t have the best month of their lives all at the same time, and the 2018 season goes down in a hail of Astros comebacks, the 2018-19 offseason almost certainly plays out differently.

Was that a firing offense? I think it’s rash to say so, given that Dombrowski had a 30-year track record within the game leading up his bad offseason. Forgive me for returning to this again, but MLB has put rules in place that by themselves aim to cripple the teams that have the most success. Some are able to work around it, at least for a while, but when you’re looking for scapegoats for the 2019 Red Sox, you alight on Rick Porcello and Chris Sale and Dombrowski before landing pretty quickly on the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The 2020 team, now helmed by a front-office collective, will face similar challenges, as the payroll appears to be pushing against the tax threshold even if J.D. Martinez opts out, and it will be $20 million over it if he doesn’t.

Boston's four titles in 15 years have served to mask considerable instability and even chaos in how the Sox have been run under John Henry. Theo Epstein was more or less run out of town by ownership after 2011, and Terry Francona was let go with him, despite two World Series in eight years together. Ben Cherington inherited the GM job and lost a season to ownership’s foisting Bobby Valentine on him. In Cherington’s second year, with John Farrell managing, the Sox won the World Series. Not two years after that, though, Cherington was let go, and then Farrell followed after the 2017 season. Now, not a year after a title, Dombrowski is gone. I understand the argument that it’s worked, given the 2013 and 2018 championships, but we don’t talk about John Henry like he’s a lost Steinbrenner cousin, and maybe we should.

As for Dombrowski, well, he’ll be unemployed for exactly as long as he wants to be. At 63, he may decide that’s forever. One thing to keep in mind is that while he made his bones building for the long term in Montreal, Florida, and Detroit, of late he’s been a quick-change artist. He successfully dealt prospects for veterans and pumped up the payrolls in Detroit over the second half of his tenure there, and then did the same in Boston. He’s probably no longer the guy you hire to start a decade-long project, but rather, the one you hire when you’re ready to move from building to winning.

Eyeballing the landscape, it’s hard to find spots where a team has a positive short-term future due to a good MLB roster and a deep farm system, and is also unhappy enough with its current situation to make a GM change. The best farm systems in the game belong to the Padres, Rays, Dodgers, and Braves, and of those only the Padres’ A.J. Preller seems remotely like a candidate to be replaced. The Indians have a championship core, but a weaker system and I can’t see Dombrowski going to a team that won’t spend.

If you broaden the search, though, you do see some landing spots. The Blue Jays and Tigers are more like the places Dombrowski landed earlier in his career, and perhaps bad fits for someone eyeing his first Social Security checks. They’re longer burns, and behind the front-line young talent, there’s not a ton of depth for trading. To the extent that the Marlins have any history, it was built by Dombrowski, and heaven knows Michael Hill hasn’t done much to secure his job. Again, though, I can’t see him going into a long-term build.

Reach back into Dombrowski’s career, though, and you’ll find that before he began building his own name in Montreal, he spent a decade on the South Side of Chicago, working his way up through the organization from the minor leagues. More than 30 years after he was fired by Ken Harrelson, an early sign he must have been good at his job, the White Sox seem like a strong fit for his talents. They have a core at the MLB level that is coming together. They have prospects who will be joining that core but enough minor-league depth to provide fodder for trades. It’s been a decade since they’ve reached the playoffs, and the current GM, Rick Hahn, has been in his post for six seasons without producing even a .500 team. In the same way that Dombrowski came in to profit off the work Cherington did in Boston, he could do the same with Hahn’s building blocks in Chicago.

This isn’t to say Hahn’s job is in trouble, but just to point out that if Dombrowski wants to move into his next job quickly, like Theo Epstein before him, the Windy City may be his most inviting landing spot.


Saturday, September 7, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 7, 2019 -- "Bad Tigers. Bad."

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"This is probably the low-water mark for the Tigers, who should get better starting pitching in 2020 and almost have to have a better offense. Until we see the tide turn, though, it’s fair to wonder how much more time Al Avila should get. He simply hasn’t brought in enough talent to accelerate the rebuild."

Thursday, September 5, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 5, 2019 -- "Fun With Numbers"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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"That’s Acuña's peer group, with Mays at the top, Beltran the midpoint and Davis the downside risk. He’s a player who, at 21, is at the height of his powers. He leads the NL in steals and in runs scored. He’s hit 36 homers. He’s a plus center fielder, a Gold Glove candidate, playing the corners because Ender Inciarte is his teammate. Like almost all players of his era he has swing-and-miss in his game, 163 strikeouts. But on a rate basis he doesn’t stand out (25%) and his K/UIBB, 163/63, is essentially average, better than that for a player with his power."

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 4, 2019 -- "Diamondbacks"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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--

"Can the Diamondbacks finish this run with a playoff berth? As mentioned yesterday, they have just two series left with contenders, and neither may end up that helpful. The Mets are now behind the Diamondbacks in the standings, and the Cardinals could end up winning the NL Central. Outside of those games, the Snakes are set up nicely: seven games with the slowly-shutting-it-down Padres, six with the Reds, three hosting the Marlins. If you figure 87 wins gets you an extra game, the Diamondbacks need to close 15-8. Given the soft slate, that doesn’t seem unreasonable."

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 3, 2019 -- "Labor Day Check-In"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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--

"Anyway, we’re left with the Cubs and Cardinals fighting for the NL Central title, always the dream scenario but one we very rarely see play out. The Cardinals will continue to have the opportunity to beat up mediocre teams, as they still won’t see a contender until September 13, when the Brewers -- who may not be a contender at that point -- come to town. Then they finish with a gauntlet: hosting the Nationals, a trip to Wrigley and Phoenix, and home for the final three games against the Cubs. The seven games these teams play head-to-head almost makes the playoff odds moot, as each controls its destiny in those contests. Just writing it up now, I can feel myself getting excited for that series at Wrigley in two weeks. It’s probably the biggest one left on the schedule."

Monday, September 2, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, September 2, 2019 -- "Justin Verlander"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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"Verlander’s ability to weather career crises and continue pitching at a high level is a big part of his story. He reached the majors one month before Felix Hernandez did, and I basically wrote Hernandez’s career eulogy last week. In 2006, he won the AL Rookie of the Year award. Across both leagues, nine pitchers got Rookie of the Year votes in 2006; only Anibal Sanchez is still in the majors.

"While starting his career in 2005, Verlander is fifth in the 21st century in innings, and will be third by the end of the season. He’s second in strikeouts and will be first come early 2020. In 2007, when he was 24 years old, his four-seam fastball velocity was 95.0 mph. This year, at 36, it’s 94.9 mph. You don’t want to see the comparison to King Felix."