Tag: Chicago White Sox

As Jonah Heim squeezed the final strike of the 2023 postseason and Josh Sborz spiked his mitt on the mound to celebrate the Texas Rangers’ first World Series title, a thought crossed my mind: How will this change the franchise rankings?

See, the Wild-Card Era (1995 to present) franchise rankings are not a creation of my fallible mind. They are borne from a tested, trusted, completely objective, never-been-questioned, all-math, no-bias formula borrowed from football writer Bob Sturm and tweaked to fit baseball’s postseason structure.

Winning the World Series (WS): 9 points
Losing in the World Series (WSL): 6 points
Losing in the Championship Series (CS): 3 points
Losing in Division Series (DS): 2 points
Losing in Wild Card (WC): 1 point

As of last year, the scoring system also incentivizes division titles (+1 point) and penalizes prolonged losing cycles, docking teams (-1 point) each time they lose at least 90 games in consecutive seasons.

Tally the point totals for the past 29 seasons, from 1995 to 2023, and the result is the franchise rankings as listed below — along with each team’s point totals from the past decade, and average points per season. Tiebreakers are World Series wins, then World Series losses, then Championship Series appearances, then Division Series appearances, then division titles.

League American National

Division Central East West

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The Pirates’ 76-86 season in 2023 didn’t dig their hole deeper, but it didn’t get them out of it, either. Since winning the 1979 World Series, they have reached the postseason six times — three-year runs from 1990-92 and 2013-15. The team is hoping its next core will author another such run. After signing Ke’Bryan Hayes, Bryan Reynolds and Mitch Keller to extensions, the Pirates need continued progression from young big leaguers — Oneil Cruz, Jack Suwinki, Henry Davis — and top prospects Paul Skenes, Jared Jones and Termarr Johnson.

Total playoff years: 13DS, 14WC, 15WC

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

8

Last decade: 1 point (MLB rank: t-26th)

Average: -.14 points per season

The Royals bottomed out at 106 losses last season, tying the 2005 Royals for most losses in franchise history, and fell to 29th in this year’s franchise ranking as they were vaulted by the Orioles. After seven consecutive losing seasons, the Royals clearly are trying to turn a corner now. This winter, they guaranteed Bobby Witt Jr. $288.7 million, filled out their bench and pitching staff with free agents, and unveiled plans for a proposed downtown Kansas City ballpark. This fall marks a decade since the Royals ended their 29-year playoff drought and reached the World Series — then won it a year later. It remains the case that no team has made the playoffs fewer times in the Wild-Card Era than the Royals.

Total playoff years: 14WSL, 15WS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

9

Last decade: 14 points (MLB rank: t-10th)

Average: .24 points per season

With the Detroit Lions defeating the Los Angeles Rams in January for their first playoff win since 1992, the Reds now own the longest active streak of not advancing in the playoffs among the four major US men’s sports leagues. Cincinnati swept the Dodgers in the 1995 NLDS, then were swept by the Braves in the NLCS, and they haven’t advanced in any of their four playoff seasons since. The current Reds core has a chance to remove themselves from that trivia answer. The lineup has several potential stars and only one projected starter over the age of 28.

Total playoff years: 95CS, 10DS, 12DS, 13WC, 20WC

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

3

Last decade: -2 points (MLB rank: 30th)

The Orioles jumped two spots in this ranking by winning 101 games and the AL East last year, even if their playoff run fizzled fast. Adley Rutschman was AL Rookie of the Year runner-up in 2022, Gunnar Henderson won the award in 2023, and now top prospect Jackson Holliday is one of the favorites to win in 2024. The Orioles still have the best farm system in baseball, according to The Athletic’s Keith Law, even after trading top-100 prospect Joey Ortiz and former top-100 prospect DL Hall to Milwaukee for former Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes.

Total playoff years: 96CS, 97CS, 12DS, 14CS, 16WC, 23DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

8

Last decade: 7 points (MLB rank: t-19th)

The Blue Jays are one of a few teams toward the bottom of this list that would fare better if this exercise included the entire 1990s instead of starting in 1995. Toronto won back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993, but didn’t return to the playoffs for another 21 years. Though the Blue Jays have been a playoff team five times in the past nine seasons, including 2023, they’ve been swept in the Wild-Card Series in their last three tries. Even after failing to land a premier free agent this offseason, the Blue Jays have the bats, gloves and arms to be a division winner in 2024 — but so do three other teams in the AL East.

Total playoff years: 15CS, 16CS, 20WC, 22WC, 23WC

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

0

Last decade: 10 points (MLB rank: 15th)

The Rockies stayed in the same spot in the franchise rankings but were deducted a point for having back-to-back 90-loss seasons. They chased 94 losses in 2022 with 103 in 2023 — their first triple-digit loss total in franchise history. Todd Helton is a Hall of Famer, bringing back memories of the Rockies’ magical run to the 2007 World Series. The other bit of good news is that Nolan Jones could be a certified star in Colorado. But this doesn’t look like it’ll be the Rockies’ year to win their first division title. FanGraphs has their current playoff odds at 0.1 percent; their odds of winning the NL West, however, are 0.0 percent.

Total playoff years: 95DS, 07WSL, 09DS, 17WC, 18DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

3

Last decade: 1 point (MLB rank: t-26th)

The Brewers won their division last season yet still have the same points total. What gives? Well, time for a mea culpa. In auditing and updating the franchise rankings spreadsheet last month, I discovered an error. From 2001 to 2004, the Brewers lost 94, 106, 94 and 94 games, respectively, so they should have been deducted three points. I had only deducted one. To Brewers fans: I regret the error, just as the Brewers surely regret that era. As The Athletic’s Tyler Kepner wrote recently, Milwaukee has not finished last in their division since 2004. The Brewers have never won a World Series and have only one pennant (1982), but they’re reliably solid in a small market. They are now without Corbin Burnes, but they still have plenty of talent on the roster, plus Law’s No. 2 farm system.

Total playoff years: 08DS, 11CS, 18CS, 19WC, 20WC, 21DS, 23WC

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

3

Last decade: 11 points (MLB rank: 14th)

The Mariners had the pieces to be a playoff team again last season, having already exorcized demons in 2023 to end a two-decade postseason drought. But after getting hot in the second half Seattle stumbled in September and was eliminated from the playoffs with one game left in the season. On paper, they have one of the league’s best pitching staffs for 2024. The lineup still features Julio Rodríguez, Cal Raleigh and J.P. Crawford, but it has been overhauled with the additions of a new Mitch (Garver), an old Mitch (Haniger), Luke Raley and Jorge Polanco in hopes of getting more runs and fewer whiffs.

Total playoff years: 95CS, 97DS, 00CS, 01CS, 22DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

2

Last decade: 2 points (MLB rank: t-25th)

Never let it be said that this franchise-ranking formula doesn’t punish teams that subject their fans to prolonged down cycles (see also: Brewers blurb). The Nats/Expos lost five points for consecutive 90-loss seasons in the 1990s and 2000s, which they more than made up for with five playoff seasons (and a World Series title) in the 2010s. But their current rebuild has cost them another two points. There were some positive signs last year, like Lane Thomas’ 20-20 season, CJ Abrams’ second half and the law firm of (Josiah) Gray and (MacKenzie) Gore figuring some things out. Next, we await the arrival of top prospects Dylan Crews, James Wood and Brady House.

Total playoff years: 12DS, 14DS, 16DS, 17DS, 19WS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

7

Last decade: 16 points (MLB rank: 8th)

I ended last year’s blurb this way: Unless Luis Arraez bats .400, offense will likely be an issue again in 2023. He flirted with .400 until July! Offense was indeed an issue, one the Marlins addressed by adding Josh Bell and Jake Burger at the trade deadline. Losing Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara to Tommy John surgery was a massive blow softened by the performances of Jesús Luzardo, Eury Pérez and Braxton Garrett as the Marlins secured a wild-card spot. The Marlins have never won their division, and odds are against that changing in 2024, but they have enough intriguing talent to stay on the fringe of the playoff picture.

Total playoff years: 97WS, 03WS, 20DS, 23WC

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

5

Last decade: 1 point (MLB rank: t-26th)

Believers in positive regression will find no finer team to back than the 2024 Padres. The club’s late owner, Peter Seidler, spent big in his final years to bring a World Series to San Diego, and so cutting payroll was a priority this offseason. The team is now without one of the best hitters (Juan Soto), starters (Blake Snell) and closers (Josh Hader) in the game. The amount of talent they’ve lost is staggering, underscoring how strange it was to see them come up short in 2023. The lineup still has Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts locked in long-term and Ha-Seong Kim in the fold for another season. The rotation has Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, depth replenished in the Soto trade and now, after A.J. Preller’s Wednesday night blockbuster, another ace-caliber starter: Dylan Cease.

Total playoff years: 96DS, 98WSL, 05DS, 06DS, 20DS, 22CS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

4

Last decade: 2 points (MLB rank: t-24th)

The Tigers took a surprising second place in the AL Central last season, their best finish since 2016, though few confused them for a contender. They saw encouraging signs in 2023 from Spencer Torkelson, Riley Greene (when healthy), Kerry Carpenter and several pitchers, especially Tarik Skubal. They’ve added a handful of veterans this offseason — Mark Canha, Gio Urshela, Jack Flaherty, Kenta Maeda, Shelby Miller and Andrew Chafin — and have a couple top prospects approaching the majors. Better days should be ahead for an organization that hasn’t gained a franchise-ranking point (and, in fact, has lost two) since 2014.

Total playoff years: 06WSL, 11CS, 12WSL, 13CS, 14DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

7

Last decade: 1 point (MLB rank: t-26th)

We begin the way we always do, with an updated win/loss record since the 2007 name change.

Tampa Bay Devil Rays: 645-972 (.399)

Tampa Bay Rays: 1,366-1,125 (.548)

The 2023 Rays raced out to a record-setting start and still managed to win 99 games despite being without star shortstop Wander Franco and losing starters Shane McClanahan, Drew Rasmussen and Jeffrey Springs to elbow surgeries. They’ve continued team-building their way this winter — prioritizing young regulars and undervalued platoon players and relievers — and will, in all likelihood, be a handful for the rest of the AL East in 2024.

Total playoff years: 08WSL, 10DS, 11DS, 13DS, 19DS, 20WSL, 21DS, 22WC, 23WC

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

9

Last decade: 14 points (MLB rank: t-10th)

When writing a year ago “it’s hard to argue the White Sox are better than they were in 2022, and their farm system is one of the weakest in baseball,” I somehow still fell woefully short of predicting their 2023 season. The White Sox self-destructed. They fired Ken Williams and Rick Hahn, lost 101 games and moved seven veterans at the trade deadline. The positive outcome is that the farm system no longer stinks. Law ranked them 10th and noted, “This is about as good as their system has ever looked.” The same cannot be said of their major-league roster. The White Sox have had consecutive 90-loss seasons only once since 1995; they’re projected to add a second this season. They are playing for the future, as evidenced by the Dylan Cease trade Wednesday night.

Total playoff years: 00DS, 05WS, 08DS, 20WC, 21DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

1

Last decade: 3 points (MLB rank: t-22nd)

The Mets haven’t advanced in the playoffs since their pennant-winning 2015 season. After the Mets won 101 games in 2022, the 2023 season saw Edwin Díaz injured, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer traded, and the Mets missing the playoffs by nine games. They still have the highest payroll in the game, but expectations are lower this season. Spring training started with a sour note as Kodai Senga was diagnosed with a right shoulder strain. FanGraphs gives the Braves a 98.6 percent chance of making the playoffs, the Phillies at 59 percent and the Marlins and Mets tied at 29.5 percent.

Total playoff years: 99CS, 00WSL, 06CS, 15WSL, 16WC, 22WC

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

1

Last decade: 9 points (MLB rank: 16th)

The Twins blew some long-standing narratives to smithereens last fall by ending their 18-game postseason losing streak and sweeping the Blue Jays in the Wild Card Series. Then they lost Sonny Gray to free agency, traded Jorge Polanco and cut payroll. They remain the favorite in the AL Central — a division they’ve won three of the past five years — but may be leaving the door open. The Pablo López-led rotation has upside; Jhoan Duran and the bullpen are nasty; and a lineup that starts with Edouard Julien, Royce Lewis, Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa and Max Kepler is likely to do some serious damage.

Total playoff years: 02CS, 03DS, 04DS, 06DS, 09DS, 10DS, 17WC, 19DS, 20WC, 23DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

6

Last decade: 8 points (MLB rank: t-17th)

Before 2022, the A’s hadn’t endured a 100-loss season since 1979. Now they’ve done it two years in a row for the first time since 1964-65. They lost a rankings point for that, dropped one spot in the rankings and will surely continue in that downward direction. Law ranked their farm system last. In 2023, Brent Rooker had an early breakout, Ryan Noda and Zack Gelof emerged and Esteury Ruiz led the AL with 67 steals. But overshadowing all of that in Oakland is the team’s desire to flee to Las Vegas and fans’ attempts to make their objections heard.

Total playoff years: 00DS, 01DS, 02DS, 03DS, 06CS, 12DS, 13DS, 14WC, 18WC, 19WC, 20DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

2

Last decade: 4 points (MLB rank: 21st)

Let’s break down the Wild-Card Era Angels by decade.

1995-99: 387-405 (.489)

2000s: 900-720 (.556)

2010s: 822-798 (.507)

2020s: 176-208 (.458)

Just as I suspected. The Angels are feeling rather fourth place-ish. They haven’t had a winning record since 2015 (their last “of Anaheim” season), haven’t made the playoffs since 2014, and haven’t won a playoff game since 2009. A 2023 recap: Arte Moreno didn’t sell the team, and GM Perry Minasian didn’t trade Shohei Ohtani before the season, didn’t trade him after the season, made a big bet as a trade deadline buyer and lost. Now the Angels trudge toward whatever is next. They have Mike Trout and Law’s 29th-ranked farm system, and no Ohtani.

Total playoff years: 02WS, 04DS, 05CS, 07DS, 08DS, 09CS, 14DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

0

Last decade: 3 points (MLB rank: t-22nd)

The Cubs hold the third tiebreaker (Championship Series appearances) over the Angels but were knocked out of the top 10 this year after being jumped by the Diamondbacks and Rangers. The Cubs ended the 2023 season one game back of a wild-card spot. The Chicago roster, though, hasn’t changed substantially since. They lost Marcus Stroman, brought back Cody Bellinger, traded for Michael Busch and signed Shota Imanaga and Héctor Neris. They also have the No. 5 farm system, per Law. The NL Central race should be compelling; FanGraphs projects all five teams between 77 and 84 wins.

Total playoff years: 98DS, 03CS, 07DS, 08DS, 15CS, 16WS, 17CS, 18WC, 20WC

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

3

Last decade: 20 points (MLB rank: 4th)

Snakes alive. They climbed three spots in this year’s ranking. They also didn’t exist at the start of the Wild-Card Era, so if we look at their average points per season they rank 10th, ahead of the Phillies by 0.01. Indeed, here come the D-Backs. They may not have won the offseason like the division-rival Dodgers, but they have Corbin Carroll and Zac Gallen and enough talent surrounding them to make noise again in 2024. As for the new arrivals: Eduardo Rodríguez fortifies a rotation that could have used one more starter last fall, Eugenio Suárez gives Arizona more thump at third base, and Joc Pederson and Randal Grichuk are mix-and-match platoon options at DH and in the outfield.

Total playoff years: 99DS, 01WS, 02DS, 07CS, 11DS, 17DS, 23WSL

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

1

Last decade: 8 points (MLB rank: t-17th)

The Phillies in the past two years have played in a World Series and come one win short of appearing in another. After flailing for most of the 2010s, they’ve built a formidable core and so far have spent to keep it mostly intact. They let Rhys Hoskins walk in free agency this winter but brought back Aaron Nola and extended Zack Wheeler. This is more or less a run-it-back year for Philadelphia. They have the horses, and they have them healthy for now. But they’ll need to click from the jump if the Phillies are going to win their first division title since 2011.

Total playoff years: 07DS, 08WS, 09WSL, 10CS, 11DS, 22WSL, 23CS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

3

Last decade: 7 points (MLB rank: t-19th)

A World Series title doesn’t guarantee you a top-10 spot in the franchise rankings, but the nine points the Rangers bagged for winning their first ring last fall got them there. It was far from an ideal season for Texas. Jacob deGrom made only six starts before suffering an elbow injury. Nathan Eovaldi and Corey Seager both missed significant time in the regular season. The team fell out of first place and nearly lost their wild-card spot. But Seager, Adolis García, Josh Jung and Evan Carter led the Rangers lineup in October, and the pitching arms of Eovaldi, Jordan Montgomery, José Leclerc and Josh Sborz did the rest. There are reasons to doubt the Rangers in 2024, but they’re about as good as they were last spring.

Total playoff years: 96DS, 98DS, 99DS, 10WSL, 11WSL, 12WC, 15DS, 16DS, 23WS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

2

Last decade: 14 points (MLB rank: t-10th)

The Guardians couldn’t give Tito Francona a storybook finish to his likely Hall of Fame career. They played .500 ball in the first half, were 10 games worse than that in the second half and finished third (or lower) in the AL Central for the first time since 2015. Their overall position on this list is incredibly respectable, especially since they’re the only one of the top 13 teams without a World Series title juicing their numbers. The Guardians have made the playoffs 13 times in the 29 years of the Wild-Card Era, won the division 11 times and captured three pennants. With José Ramírez, a young cast of hitters and a strong pitching staff, the Guardians have a shot at the AL Central crown this season.

Total playoff years: 95WSL, 96DS, 97WSL, 98CS, 99DS, 01DS, 07CS, 13WC, 16WSL, 17DS, 18DS, 20WC, 22DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

1

Last decade: 17 points (MLB rank: t-6th)

Three World Series titles will take you a long way, so the Giants are still sitting pretty here at No. 7 despite not seeing much playoff success since 2014. They backslid from 107 wins in 2021 to 81 in 2022 to 79 in 2023, leading to manager Gabe Kapler’s ouster. This offseason they signed Jordan Hicks, Jorge Soler and Jung Hoo Lee, traded for former Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray, who’s rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, and waited out the market to land free agent Matt Chapman on a remarkably palatable three-year contract with two opt-outs. The Giants, however, still seem undermanned as they face an uphill climb in a division led by the Dodgers and the defending NL champs in Arizona.

Total playoff years: 97DS, 00DS, 02WSL, 03DS, 10WS, 12WS, 14WS, 16DS, 21DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

1

Last decade: 14 points (MLB rank: t-10th)

Houston has reached the ALCS in seven consecutive seasons, played in four World Series and twice — including 2023 — fallen one win short. They are tied with the Dodgers for most points in the past decade; Houston holds the tiebreaker. They’d be in the top five in this year’s franchise rankings if not for the three points deducted for 90-loss seasons in the early 2010s. For now, they’re well clear of the Giants and Guardians and nipping at the heels of the Red Sox. In 2024, the Astros return almost the same lineup as last season, but with an offensive upgrade at catcher in Yainer Díaz. They’ll have Justin Verlander back in the rotation, once healthy. And they have two top-end closers in Josh Hader and Ryan Pressly.

Total playoff years: 97DS, 98DS, 99DS, 01DS, 04CS, 05WSL, 15DS, 17WS, 18CS, 19WSL, 20CS, 21WSL, 22WS, 23CS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

3

Last decade: 46 points (MLB rank: t-1st)

The long-term organizational momentum the Red Sox built with four World Series titles in the past 20 years has stalled. They’ve finished last in the AL East the past two seasons, with identical 78-84 records, and now they have a new chief baseball officer, Craig Breslow, but not a significantly upgraded roster. The Red Sox have strong left-handed hitters but could use some thunder from the right side at Fenway Park. With free-agent add Lucas Giolito out for the season, Boston needs another starter or two to lead the pitching staff alongside Brayan Bello. There’s still time to start spending, but the Red Sox so far have shown no urgency.

Total playoff years: 95DS, 98DS, 99CS, 03CS, 04WS, 05DS, 07WS, 08CS, 09DS, 13WS, 16DS, 17DS, 18WS, 21CS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

0

Last decade: 19 points (MLB rank: 5th)

This wasn’t necessarily the top headline of the Dodgers’ offseason, but they finally ran down the Red Sox and stole fourth place in the franchise rankings. They are a Death Star. The Dodgers have an 11-year playoff streak going, with 10 division titles in that stretch. If the franchise rankings covered only the past decade, the Dodgers would be tied with the Astros at No. 1. They’ve operated at a 102-win clip in manager Dave Roberts’ eight years in Los Angeles, and all of that was before they added [huge breath] Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, James Paxton and Teoscar Hernández, and re-signed Clayton Kershaw, Jason Heyward and Kiké Hernández. Probably a team to watch in 2024.

Total playoff years: 95DS, 96DS, 04DS, 06DS, 08CS, 09CS, 13CS, 14DS, 15DS, 16CS, 17WSL, 18WSL, 19DS, 20WS, 21CS, 22DS, 23DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

0

Last decade: 46 points (MLB rank: t-1st)

No movement in our top three for 2024, but a couple teams are in striking distance of the Cardinals this season. After three consecutive wild-card exits, St. Louis had a deeply disappointing 2023, finishing 71-91. It was their first losing season since 2007, and their first 90-loss season since 1990. The Cardinals overhauled their pitching staff this winter, bringing in veterans Sonny Gray, Kyle Gibson, Lance Lynn, Keynan Middleton and Andrew Kittredge. The talent in their lineup is still eye-popping, so with halfway decent pitching and positive regression from a few hitters the Cardinals could be back in 2024.

Total playoff years: 96CS, 00CS, 01DS, 02CS, 04WSL, 05CS, 06WS, 09DS, 11WS, 12CS, 13WSL, 14CS, 15DS, 19CS, 20WC, 21WC, 22WC

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

0

Last decade: 15 points (MLB rank: 9th)

The only one of our top three teams to reach the postseason in 2023, the Braves won the NL East for the sixth consecutive season before bowing out again in the NLDS. They’ve already won a World Series in this competitive window, but it feels like they’ve left a lot on the table. The good news for Braves fans, and bad for most others, is the team’s current core isn’t going anywhere. The Braves have built a behemoth without a top-five payroll, as reigning NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr., Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Spencer Strider, Sean Murphy, Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II all have agreed to long-term extensions.

Total playoff years: 95WS, 96WSL, 97CS, 98CS, 99WSL, 00DS, 01CS, 02DS, 03DS, 04DS, 05DS, 10DS, 12WC, 13DS, 18DS, 19DS, 20CS, 21WS, 22DS, 23DS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

2

Last decade: 24 points (MLB rank: 3rd)

The Yankees are still the class of the Wild-Card Era, though they certainly haven’t been baseball’s top franchise recently. The overall body of work is immensely impressive: In the 29 seasons included in this exercise, the Yankees have 24 playoff berths, 15 division titles, seven AL pennants and five World Series titles. (Only one title and pennant, however, in the past two decades.) In 2023, the Yankees narrowly avoided their first losing season since 1992, but their 80 losses still were their most of the Wild-Card Era. Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo and Carlos Rodón all missed significant time with injury. Gerrit Cole was the AL Cy Young and also the Yankees’ only reliable starter last season, but now there’s uncertainty regarding his health for 2024. The Yankees will have Judge, Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo across the outfield. They added Marcus Stroman to the rotation. We’ll see if that’s enough.

Total playoff years: 95DS, 96WS, 97DS, 98WS, 99WS, 00WS, 01WSL, 02DS, 03WSL, 04CS, 05DS, 06DS, 07DS, 09WS, 10CS, 11DS, 12CS, 15WC, 17CS, 18DS, 19CS, 20DS, 21WC, 22CS

Consecutive 90-loss seasons

0

Last decade (since 2014): 17 points (MLB rank: t-6th)

(Top illustration by Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photos by Justin Berl / Getty Images; Rob Tringali / Sportschrome; Matt Dirksen / Getty Images; Brian Blanco / Getty Images) 

Look, we get it.

The Baseball Hall of Fame is a breathtaking idea. It’s a celebration. It’s a history lesson. It’s a pilgrimage. The museum in Cooperstown is home to heroes and memories and the posters on our walls. The very notion can fill a fan with wonder, and actually being there feels like going to church, and the Louvre, and Game 7 of the World Series, all at once.

And so, we care a great deal about who gets in and who does not. Passion and debate come with the territory. In press boxes and clubhouses and postgame hotel bars, we debate these decisions among ourselves. We get it.

You’re not going to agree with all of our ballots. You’re not supposed to. This process is built around people with different opinions coming to an overwhelming consensus without establishing a definitive answer to what makes a Hall of Famer.

This year, I’m serving as president of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, and I’m confident that the vast majority of my colleagues view Hall of Fame voting as one of the great privileges and responsibilities of the job. It’s an honor to play a role in the process. It takes 10 years of BBWAA membership to become a Hall of Fame voter, and last year 389 ballots were submitted. It takes a 75 percent majority for a player to be elected. Each ballot, therefore, is a tiny piece — a little more than one-quarter of 1 percent — of the final product. We all have our say, but no one person tips the scales. The process is built on differing opinions.

Here, we’ve collected some of the ballots — and some of the internal thinking — of many of The Athletic’s Hall of Fame voters. As you can see, we disagree even among ourselves. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. — Chad Jennings

Daniel Barbarisi’s ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Joe Mauer, Billy Wagner

Looking at Mauer’s career numbers in aggregate — .306/.388/.439, 143 homers, 428 doubles, amassed over 923 games at catcher, 603 at first base, 310 at DH — it strikes me that he is one of those odd cases where the whole isn’t actually greater than the sum of its parts. The whole is excellent in its own right — those are good numbers. They’re even Hall of Fame numbers, with the right context. But they don’t fully do justice to the individual pieces that comprise it, those superlative seasons early in his career that couldn’t possibly have come from a man playing his position.

Remember what a unicorn he was? Back when he was hitting .328 and .347 and then finally .363 as a catcher, with respectable-to-excellent slugging through that whole period. Mauer and the obviously dissimilar stolen base threat Jason Kendall are always paired up a bit in my mind because they both reside in the neighborhood of “Guys who do things catchers aren’t supposed to do.”

And then he stopped doing so many of those things, and stopped being a catcher really at all, and without that all-important context for a while it felt like everybody had been robbed of watching something special; Mauer at first base was a pale imitation. Safe to say we didn’t understand head injuries well enough then, certainly still don’t, but it’s hard not to wonder how long he could have kept up that brilliant production from the catcher’s spot if injuries hadn’t been an issue.

Grading on a curve when it comes to injuries is tricky — who’s to say what this or that player could have been if it were not for some injury or another, and so it’s cleaner just to say what they actually were. But in Mauer’s case, that’s clear: a special hitter and excellent defensive catcher and pitch framer whose numbers put him among the very best to ever play a demanding position. To me, that’s an easy vote. My semi-informed guess is that Mauer doesn’t get in this year, but hopefully his time is coming soon, if only for a chance to remember how high the highs were.

GO DEEPER

Twins great Joe Mauer on the cusp of Hall of Fame with surprising support

Daniel Brown’s ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Joe Mauer, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner

As a fan of the Hall of Fame Tracker operated by Ryan Thibodaux (aka @NotMrTibbs on X), I’ve seen how his followers hate “drops” — voting for a player one year but not the next. The justifiably snarky joke is, “I guess (candidate) had a terrible year.” Har-har. For the record, I plan on voting for Bobby Abreu again next year, as he ranks 21st all-time in JAWS among right fielders, sandwiched between Hall of Famers Dave Winfield (20th) and Vladimir Guerrero (22nd). But I dropped Abreu this year as part of some strategic voting. There are players who need every checked box they can get to clear the 75 percent threshold (Sheffield, Wagner) and others who need to generate momentum as their years on the ballot wane. I surprised myself by voting so enthusiastically for Utley, but his JAWS ranks 12th all-time among second basemen and his WAR-7 (the sum of a player’s seven best WAR seasons) trails only Rodriguez among players on the ballot this year.

Steve Buckley’s ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Joe Mauer, Andy Pettitte, Gary Sheffield, Billy Wagner

The early returns suggest Beltrán won’t be getting into the Hall of Fame this year. That’s the bad news for those of us who believe he belongs in Cooperstown. The good news? He’ll likely get the call in the next two, three or four years. And he darned well better get that call, or else I’m going to be setting a world record for being a broken record.

As I wrote last year, and will do so again next year, Beltrán has already been punished for his role in the 2017 Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal. And the punishment was a whopper: Hired later to manage the New York Mets, he never even made it to spring training. When the sign-stealing verdict came in, Beltrán was out as manager of the Mets.

A.J. Hinch, former Astros manager, sat out during a one-year suspension and then was hired to manage the Detroit Tigers. Alex Cora, the former Astros bench coach who in 2018 managed the Red Sox to a World Series championship, also was handed a one-year suspension after he had already stepped away as Boston’s manager via one of those mutual-parting-of-ways deals.

But Red Sox upper management was practically in tears after making the announcement, all but telegraphing that Cora would be back in 2021. Which is exactly what happened.

Fair enough. Hinch and Cora paid dearly, even if, OK, their punishment was sitting out the 2020 pandemic season. By whatever means one measures their culpability and the ensuing punishments, they should have been invited to return.

And yet here’s Beltrán, stuck in Fly Creek — which is my way of saying he’s just outside of Cooperstown. (Fly Creek, N.Y., is only a few miles from Cooperstown.)

Carlos Beltrán amassed 70.1 WAR in his 20-year career. (Bryan Yablonsky / Getty Images)

Admittedly, we could remove the cheating scandal from the discussion and Beltrán would not be a Willie Mays-like Hall of Fame lock. But he combined power (435 home runs) with speed (312 stolen bases), won three Gold Glove awards, had 70.1 career WAR according to Baseball Reference (identical to Hall of Famers Gary Carter and Scott Rolen), and … let’s stop there because, again, it’s not stats that are keeping Beltrán out of the Hall. It’s bats, or whatever the Astros were using when they banged on trash barrels to pass along the other teams’ signals.

A year ago, I characterized the Astros’ sign-stealing caper as something you might have expected in a 1930s “Little Rascals” short but not in big-league baseball. This year I’m breaking up the routine by suggesting it was something you might have seen in a 1930s Marx Brothers movie, only with Harpo squeezing some kind of horn to relay the signals, and actor Edgar Kennedy as MLB commissioner Rob Manfred doing a slow burn after discovering the scheme. Now unless your name is Ben Mankiewicz of Turner Classic Movies, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. But that’s the entire point: What the Astros did was something out of old-timey Hollywood slapstick, and it cheapened the game.

Beltrán paid a price for that. He shouldn’t have to pay for the rest of his life.

Marc Carig’s ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Joe Mauer, Gary Sheffield, Billy Wagner

My holdovers from last year include Sheffield, Beltrán, Jones, Helton, and Wagner, the ahead-of-his-time strikeout machine. Both Mauer and Beltré got my vote in their first year of eligibility. Beltré’s inclusion is about as clear-cut as it gets. And upon reflection so was Mauer’s. Though injury forced him to first base for the end of his career, Mauer dominated during his prime as a catcher. He racked up six All-Star appearances, three batting titles and an American League MVP — feats made more impressive because he did this all while still toiling behind the dish.

Not on the list for now: Chase Utley. With 1,885 hits, Utley finished short of the 2,000-hit mark that serves as a bit of an unofficial threshold for entry into Cooperstown. He also didn’t rack up the accolades (Gold Gloves, MVPs, etc.) that you’d expect from a Hall of Famer. That said, Utley’s career arc was atypical. Also, his peak seasons at second base were awfully impressive. Utley was just short of inclusion. Of course, I once felt that way about Jones, Helton and Wagner.

Over time, I reconsidered. I suspect that one day this might also be the case with Utley.

Two candidacies I am unlikely to reconsider: Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez. While other players have been the subject of whispers and speculation regarding steroid use, I put Rodriguez and Ramirez in a distinct category. Both served multiple suspensions for violating the league’s performance-enhancing drugs policy, and both ran afoul of those rules after the sport’s reckoning with PEDs. In my mind, this is different from mere whispers and speculation, or even being named in a report.

Chad Jennings’ ballot

Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltrán, Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Joe Mauer, Gary Sheffield, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner, David Wright

As a general rule, my Hall of Fame voting tends toward peak over longevity. Jones has always been an easy choice for me, and in the past I thought long and hard about Cliff Lee before deciding the peak was just too short to check his box. That personal preference probably explains much of my ballot this time around.

With research, Mauer became an easier choice than even I expected, and my real-time belief that Utley was a Hall of Famer was only reinforced looking back at his 10-year run of excellence. I covered Utley in Triple A in 2003 and ’04, but I shouldn’t have. He lost two years on the front end of his career because the Phillies inexplicably would not commit to him. His career numbers should speak for themselves more than they do.

Wright, though, was a hard one. His career was just so much shorter than the usual Hall of Fame standard. I left an open spot on my ballot for a week, reading, researching and asking friends for advice before I finally checked the box after seeing Thibodaux’s excellent Hall of Fame tracker had Wright far too close to falling off the ballot (if he received less than 5 percent of the vote). As with Abreu, I can’t say with absolute certainty that Wright belongs in Cooperstown, but I’m confident his inclusion would not diminish the Hall of Fame. For nine years, he was an essential part of the game, and he spent much of the next decade trying like hell to return from a back injury that just wouldn’t let up. When I take my sons to Cooperstown, I won’t hesitate to tell them his story alongside so many others who have been enshrined.

GO DEEPER

Stark: One-and-done? No! Why David Wright deserves a long look on the Hall ballot

David O’Brien’s ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Joe Mauer, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner

When I checked a few days into January, there were four candidates named on at least 80 percent of writers’ Hall of Fame ballots that had been revealed, according to the tracker that Thibodaux and his staff update — Beltré, Helton, Mauer and Wagner, in that order.

I voted for each of those four along with Jones (10 consecutive Gold Gloves while averaging 34 homers and 103 RBIs per season from 1998-2007), Beltrán and Utley.

This will be my 30th year covering MLB as a beat writer, and I saw each of these players in his prime. That’s not to say I know more than any others who vote or more than attentive fans. But I know which players I saw who looked like future Hall of Famers, and by weighing my observations with copious statistics available on every player and also considering many discussions with players, coaches and managers about whom they believe to be Hall of Famers, I think I have a pretty good handle on which players are Cooperstown-worthy.

I do, however, have a stronger anti-performance-enhancing drugs stance than some voters, and that’s caused the most difficult situation of my time as a voter: leaving Gary Sheffield off my ballot. To be clear, I covered Sheffield as a beat writer both when he played for the Marlins and the Braves, and I rank him with Chipper Jones and Freddie Freeman as the greatest hitters on any teams I’ve covered in my career. (Ronald Acuña Jr. will move into that group if he keeps up his current career pace, and perhaps surpass them all.)

Sheffield has tremendous stats — first-ballot Hall stats — and I believe he would’ve been a Hall of Famer without PEDs. I also tend to believe him when he says that his use of steroid creams and whatnot while working out with Barry Bonds was more a dalliance — he says it was by accident, which I do find hard to believe — than the deep dive into PEDs that I’m convinced Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez and others took. But the fact that Sheffield was connected to PEDs in a report is enough to make me not vote for him, and he’ll likely fall short of 75 percent this year in his 10th and final year on the ballot.

As much as I liked covering him and admired him as a player, I kept him off my ballot each year because if I made an exception for Sheffield, I can’t justify not doing so for some others. Then I’d also get caught up in weighing evidence and timelines and whether a player tested positive or used before or after MLB cracked down on PEDs. Fact is, using steroids without a prescription was illegal in the United States well before baseball created stiff penalties for it. Players always knew it was wrong to use them, that it was cheating, or else they would’ve done so openly. If they didn’t know it was cheating, they should have.

Gary Sheffield is expected to fall short in his final year on the ballot. (Mark Cunningham / MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Banging on trash cans as part of a team-wide sign-stealing scandal is one thing; Beltrán was great for nearly two decades before that 2017 season when the Astros cheated during home games of his age-40 season, the last and worst year of his career. He’s also paid a price, getting fired by the Mets before he’d managed even one game. But changing one’s actual body composition through banned substances, adding massive amounts of muscle early or midway through a career — or late in one’s career when it would normally be in decline — is another thing entirely.

It allowed Bonds, already a great player before steroids, to become an otherworldly offensive machine from his mid-30s through age 42, and to rewrite and completely distort the record books, setting artificially enhanced marks that blew away many once-hallowed records, and making most career and single-season power-hitting standards all but meaningless, since most of those records will never be broken. That’s just wrong, and steroid enhancement should not be rewarded with a Hall of Fame vote.

PED-implicated players are featured throughout the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown because it’s a museum and they were part of the game. And that’s fine. But it doesn’t mean they should have a bronze plaque there.

C. Trent Rosecrans’ ballot

Carlos Beltrán, Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Joe Mauer, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner

This is my 10th Hall of Fame ballot as a voter, a significant number for a pair of reasons:

• Ten is the number of years it takes as an active BBWAA member to earn a Hall vote, which means I’ve been a member and voting as long as I was a member and not voting. That means I’m old. But it also means I’ve done this a time or two and I’ve more or less settled on a philosophy. On my first ballot, in 2015, I thought about trying to guess how others were voting and worried about the bottom of the ballot. That approach would mean I wouldn’t vote for no-doubt Hall of Famers Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson. The thought of not voting for them shaped my theory, which brings us to the other reason 10 is important …

• The rule of 10. The Hall of Fame limits voters to 10 selections per ballot. This is not a BBWAA rule, but a Hall of Fame rule. As a group, the BBWAA has asked to either take away the governor or increase the limit. Both requests were denied by the Hall of Fame. That means the rule of 10 stands and it has been a major factor in all 10 of my ballots.

So, with all that said, sorry Bobby Abreu. I believe Abreu is a Hall of Famer. I voted for him last year and in a perfect world, I’d have voted for him before (and after) then.

Alas, there are just 10 spots. The process I’ve settled on is to rank the players and draw a line at 10. I don’t necessarily vote for all 10, but all those who pass that imaginary Hall of Fame line, whether it is after two or 15, get (or would get, if there were no rule of 10) a check mark.

And so here we are. I’m not exactly sure where the Hall threshold should be, but I know Abreu is above the line and he’s No. 11 on my list, so no check mark.

Like when voting for MVP, it seems like the bottom of the list is more difficult than the top (well, once you make a decision on PEDs — my belief is all that I know is what happened on the field and the numbers reflect that. While I know some players used PEDs, I don’t know if their competitors did. In the end, MLB still counts the games they played in and their results. So, yeah, Rodriguez was the best player in the game; he gets a check from me, as does Ramirez, like Bonds and Clemens before them).

Anyway, there’s a strange line between Wagner — No. 10 on my list — and Abreu. It’s nearly impossible to compare a reliever and an outfielder, but that’s the exercise and in the end, there’s a leap of faith in my head that puts Wagner just ahead of Abreu, so Wagner gets a check and Abreu doesn’t. Yes, relievers and outfielders are apples and oranges, but the assignment is to compare apples, oranges, watermelons, grapes and the rest of the fruits. If neither player is elected this year, both should be on the ballot next year and it’s possible both get a check a year from now or neither do. That’s not because their careers have changed, but because the competition has. The Hall of Fame can stop this and employ the Binary Ballot (I’m not sure if Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has trademarked the idea of a simple yes/no vote for all players, but he should), but they haven’t yet and I don’t expect them to in the future.

That’s where we are today, as I make my (left-handed) check marks on a piece of white paper.

You can read all sorts of explainers on why a player deserves one of these check marks, and all are valid. I respect many points of view, but in the end, I lean on the theory that I am a voter, not a selector. I vote and I’d rather vote for someone worthy than not vote for someone worthy. Sadly, the rule of 10 takes that out of my hands. So, yeah, I’m sorry Bobby.

Bobby Abreu connects for one of his 2,470 career hits. (George Widman / Associated Press)

Eno Sarris’ ballot

Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltrán, Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Joe Mauer, Gary Sheffield, Chase Utley, Billy Wagner

In a sure-to-fail attempt at brevity, instead of addressing each of my votes, I thought I’d just bullet point the general thought process that begat the selections.

• I believe in being at least as inclusive as we’ve been for previous generations. We’ve voted in fewer and fewer players as a percentage of the whole with every passing decade — down from 2 percent to 3 percent of the whole to around 1.5 percent, as Mike Petriello showed on MLB.com in 2020 — and no matter what you think of the modern game and its training methods, it doesn’t sit right with me to think that players are worse now.

• I believe that before MLB had a testing policy in place in the 2004 season, league leadership was complicit in the steroid issue (the commissioner of the era, Bud Selig, is in the Hall of Fame, and that seems significant), and I’m more lenient toward players in that bucket. After testing was in place, players knew the stakes, and the numbers that I use to judge them are in question.

• I believe in wins above replacement as a framework because it’s unique in its ability to bring together all facets of the game into one number. I also consult Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system because it considers the relationship between a player’s peak abilities and their longevity. I don’t believe batting average or hits (alone) are of outsized importance within the context of all the things a player can do, and stats like RBIs and runs are typically influenced by the team’s situation.

• That said, I believe in offensive stats over defensive stats, since the former have been proven to be more reflective of true talent and the latter have only recently begun improving rapidly. A player like Jimmy Rollins — who was, by some measures, below average with the bat compared to the league when he was in it — has to have all-time elite defense to get my vote.

• I believe league trends in player usage are pushing us away from the volume that used to give players the chance to rack up the traditional benchmarks. A starting pitcher without 250 wins, a position player without 2,000 hits — I’m just not sure these things bother me as much as they might have bothered other members of the electorate in the past.

• I believe that relievers should be compared to relievers. In overall production, relievers pale against their counterparts. But if we ignore the position because of that fact, we dismiss a whole class of players who are currently throwing around half the innings in a given season.

• I believe that a player can be an elite accumulator. Consider someone like Abreu, who, as some people rightly point out, was never a top-five player in the league — in one season. But by being so consistently excellent from 1998 to 2004, he was actually the fifth-best player over that time frame. Posting matters.

Well, so much for being concise. I tried!

GO DEEPER

Rosenthal: Wander Franco situation shows risk in investing long-term in players in their early 20s

Keith Law’s ballot: Carlos Beltrán, Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Chase Utley

Hall of Fame ballot columns from The Athletic

• Rosenthal: Why Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley are both on my Hall of Fame ballot

• Kepner: Explaining my Hall of Fame ballot — a celebration of greatness

Note: Jayson Stark’s ballot column will be published next week. 

More Hall of Fame coverage

GO DEEPER

A distinguished dozen: Saluting the 12 newcomers to the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot

GO DEEPER

Jim Leyland, Hall of Fame manager: 4 things we learned from the Contemporary Era election

GO DEEPER

Smoky hotel rooms, 10-minute tirades and fatherly advice: Jim Leyland’s managerial multitudes

(Top image photos: Joe Mauer: Larry Goren / ICON SMI / Corbis/ Getty Images; Adrián Beltré: Jeff Gross / Getty Images; Carlos Beltrán: George Gojkovich / Getty Images)

Every year at this time, we marvel at the many creative ways baseball players find to make an appearance on the ever-popular Strange But True Injuries of the Year leaderboard.

So we’d like to thank this year’s baseball population for … cooking breakfast … playing the piano … and doing their best to get in and out of their hotel bathroom safely. But you know what’s especially amazing? None of those mishaps even topped this list!

Really? Yes, really. So here they come, the Strangest But Truest Injuries of 2023.

First prize: Eye confess!

We always award Injury of the Year bonus points to guys who manage to get hurt while they’re already hurt. So here’s to Rays relief warrior Pete Fairbanks, who couldn’t even cover up the Giannis imitation that got him into this mess.

When Fairbanks met with the Rays’ media delegation in June after returning from a stint on the injured list with hip inflammation, he brought a dazzling black eye with him — and one of the great How I Did This stories of the 21st century.

Turns out this could happen to you, too, if you try dunking on your 3-year-old in the pool.

“I pulled the pool basketball hoop down onto my face after dunking on a 3-year-old,” Fairbanks confessed, “to kind of teach him an early lesson in life that, when you’re in the paint, you cannot be caught unawares underneath the rim.”

To which we can only hope his son said: Send it in, Jerome!

Second prize: It’s all the alarm clock’s fault!

We’ve always thought of Blue Jays starter Yusei Kikuchi as a sleeping giant.

Little did we know!

Why did he make an early exit from a great September start at Yankee Stadium? Because he cramped up, he said, after getting “only” 11 hours’ sleep — as opposed to his usual 12 to 14 hours. So he may not lead the league in shutouts. But what the heck. You have to love his chances of leading the league in shuteye. And if this is a sleep goal of yours, T-shirts are available!

Third prize: When you (and your back) have gotta go

When Diamondbacks third baseman Evan Longoria strained his back last July, he was supposed to miss only a week or so. So why did it turn into three weeks? Because, by his account, he aggravated his back getting up off the toilet in a hotel bathroom in San Francisco.

So you thought making outs could be hazardous to a baseball player’s career, huh? Watch out for the outhouse!

Fourth prize: There goes his walk ratio

Tony Gonsolin walks off the mound, successfully, during a start in July. (Jerome Miron / USA Today)

Need more proof that most spring training drills are overrated? Dodgers pitcher Tony Gonsolin headed off to a routine fielding drill during spring training last March — and got through the fielding part fine. Turns out it was his exit strategy that he should have been working on.

He tripped walking off the field, sprained his ankle and missed the first four weeks of the season. But was it all worth it? He didn’t make an error all season!

Fifth prize: They had plenty of time to be an even greater dad

Finally, there were so many great moments in fatherhood this season … that led to not-so-great moments in trying to make it onto the field … so we’re rounding them up here. If their families print this and frame it, it should make for a lovely Father’s Day gift.

• Giants pitcher Anthony DeSclafani fractured his toe … playing the piano with his son!

• Adam Wainwright burned his finger … cooking breakfast for his son!

• Josh Donaldson sliced his thumb … while assembling a toy for his daughter!

All that seems troublesome. But hey, at least they didn’t try dunking on their kids in the pool.

The Year in Strange But True

GO DEEPER

The Year in Strange But True: MLB’s 20 most mind-blowing hitting and pitching feats of 2023

GO DEEPER

The Year in Strange But True: MLB’s Weirdest & Wildest teams and games of 2023

(Top photo of Pete Fairbanks: Patrick Smith / Getty Images)

It’s the most wonderful time of the year … except for one thing:

It’s no longer baseball season!

But that’s where we come in. It’s our not-so-solemn duty to get you through these long, chilly, baseball-free months by helping you relive the best of the Strange But True baseball season of 2023. Don’t tell us you already forgot that …

An unforgettable on-base streak ended even though the man who compiled that streak was standing on first base. … And we really did see a real human being steal third base and home on the same pitch. … And a team pitched a no-hitter despite the minor hindrance of also allowing seven runs — in the same inning!

We’re not making any of that up. We spend the whole year keeping track of wacky stuff like this so you don’t have to. So join us now as we relive The Strange But True Feats of 2023 … in five parts. Today’s installment: the hitters … the pitchers … and that Shohei guy who apparently does both of the above!

The Strangest But Truest Hitter of 2023: The Schwarbino

“Can you do me a favor?” Kyle Schwarber asked us one day in late September, though not totally seriously. “Can you write a story that tells people I actually had a good year?”

Sure. Why the heck not? It can be hard to know what to make of a leadoff hitter who finished the season hitting .197 with 215 strikeouts. So allow the Strange But True Feats of the Year column to help with that. It beats calculating those December wind-chill factors.

He’s the most unique leadoff monster of all time! Does it seem kinda Strange But True to see a team look at a .197 hitter who leads the league in strikeouts and decide: “Here’s a good way to win the World Series. Let’s have that guy lead off?”

Well, that’s what the Phillies did with the Schwarbino. On one hand, it allowed him to become the first man in the modern era to roll up at least 500 leadoff plate appearances in a season in which his average never made it to the Mendoza Line. (Previous record for lowest full-season average: .211, by Eddie “Sparky” Lake, for the 1947 Tigers.)

But wait. On the other hand, after the Phillies moved Schwarber into that leadoff spot to stay on June 2, they went 65-41 in games in which he led off. Which means they played like a 99-win team when he occupied the top slot in their lineup. So whatever. That worked! Here’s a perfect Strange But True example of how …

He was a leadoff earthquake waiting to happen! For 108 games in 2023, Schwarber was the first Phillies hitter to step into the box. He got a hit to lead off exactly 21 of those games. He hit a single to lead off only six of those games. So you think that was a problem?

Um, not so much. His OPS leading off games still wound up at 1.056. Does that sound good? It should, since it was merely the highest OPS, as the first batter of the game, in the history of a franchise that has been around since 1883 … because, apparently, all those leadoff walks (21) and leadoff Schwarbombs (11) can also be helpful. Which reminds us: If we just talk about his whiffs and his average, we’re leaving out some stuff!

He was also Ruthian! You know what else apparently can be helpful? Piling up massive amounts of homers (47), RBIs (104), runs scored (108) and walks (126). You know who has had that season? Oh, only Babe Ruth (six times), Mark McGwire (twice), Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Barry Bonds and Aaron Judge (once). And also …

Kyle Schwarber.

Which meant even more all-time Strange But True stuff was possible. Such as …

He was pretty much as productive as a guy who hit .306! Let the record show that, according to Baseball Reference, Schwarber finished with an OPS+ of 122. And how Strange But True is it for a guy who batted .197 to have an OPS that was still 22 percent better than league average? Well, it’s the highest OPS+ in history by a qualifying hitter whose average started with a “1.” So there’s that. But there’s also this:

Bo Bichette in 2023 — .306 AVG, 123 OPS+
Schwarber in 2023 — .197 AVG, 122 OPS+

How can that be possible? Excellent question. I’m not in charge of OPS+ calculations, but I’m guessing it has something to do with this: The guy who hit .197, amazingly, had a higher on-base percentage (.343) than the guy who hit .306 (.339)! That can happen when one guy draws 99 more walks than the other guy. But nevertheless, here come more Schwarbarian shockers. …

He hit .197 … and still led his team in runs scored! Does that seem hard to do? You should answer yes, because here’s the complete list of players since 1900 who have done that, on any team, with an average below .200, over any full season:

Kyle Schwarber, 2023 Phillies
List ends here — but not this list …

He had 100 more whiffs (215) than hits (115) … but still led his team in runs scored! You’ll love the rundown of all the special offensive forces who have ever finished a season with at least 100 more strikeouts than hits:

Adam Dunn (twice) … Joey Gallo (three times) … Chris Davis (2018) … and Schwarber (2023). What. A. Group. But … how many of those legendary whiffers also had 108 runs scored or led their team in runs (or both)? Here’s that complete list:

Kyle Schwarber, 2023 Phillies
List ends here

Stay out of the WAR Zone — Not surprisingly, Schwarber says even his teammates had all kinds of fun messing with him over his wacky stat line.

“There was a time,” he recalled fondly, “at some point this year, that I was a negative WAR player. So we were all laughing about that.”

Hey, his good news was that, by season’s end, he did in fact climb out of that negative-WAR zone. The bad news was, thanks to glovemanship issues that the WAR gods couldn’t ignore, he climbed to a final figure of only 0.6 WAR. Which meant …

Was it really possible for a man to mash 47 homers and surpass 100 RBIs and 100 runs scored, yet still be worth less than one win above replacement? Eh, we guess so. But had it ever appeared possible before? That would be no.

Incredibly, the only previous, similar monster season to lead to a WAR number under 3.0 was produced by another Phillies masher of some renown — Ryan Howard, in 2008. Somehow, the Baseball Reference WAR room looked at that Howard season — which included a staggering 48 homers, 146 RBIs and 105 runs — and calculated that to be worth just 1.8 WAR. Clearly, WAR can be confusing like that sometimes.

So in the end, did Kyle Schwarber care about his average or his whiffs or his WAR? Nope!

“I mean, did I picture myself doing this, hitting what I’m hitting? No,” he said. “I’m the first to tell you it’s all kind of interesting. … But you know what? At the end of the day, for me, if we’re getting a win, I’m happy.”

Our favorite Strange But True Ohtani-isms of 2023

What can’t he do? Will Ohtani play quarterback next? (Kirby Lee / USA Today)

It’s almost a reflex action to start every Strange But True column with the regularly scheduled Shohei Ohtani highlight reel. But since you’ve been treated to, like, 988 other Ohtani stories in the past week and a half, we’ll let him hit second in this lineup.

Oh, and also: We’ve already dug deep into the wildness and weirdness of that $700 million contract … and compared him to Mookie Betts/Gerrit Cole … and reminded you how many consecutive hits he’d have to give up before his career batting average would drop below the average of Unhappy Hitters Who Have to Face Ohtani. So no need to do that again.

Which means we can just use this space to shake our heads again over our favorite Strange But True Ohtani moments from 2023. Ready? So … on with the Shoh.

He never stopped making Tungsten Arm O’Doyle jokes possible — Do we need to re-tell, for the final time, the origin of the hilarious saga of Ohtani/Tungsten Arm O’Doyle? OK, we’ll make it quick. It began two years ago, with this then-innocent tweet.

every time I see an Angels highlight it’s like “Mike Trout hit three homes runs and raised his average to .528 while Shohei Ohtani did something that hasn’t been done since ‘Tungsten Arm’ O’Doyle of the 1921 Akron Groomsmen, as the Tigers defeated the Angels 8-3”

— ℳatt (@matttomic) May 18, 2021

Now, 2 trillion references later, Tungsten Arm O’Doyle can go down as one of the 21st century’s greatest fictitious legends. And Ohtani now can go up the freeway to Chavez Ravine to leave him in the dust. But in 2023, his last season in Orange County, the Angels kept Tungsten Arm on all of our radar screens, with stuff like this:

• Opening day — Ohtani the pitcher: six shutout innings, 10 strikeouts. Ohtani the hitter: reaches base twice. Tungsten Arm subplot: Angels still lose, 2-1, because … Tungsten!

• Aug. 18 — Ohtani the slammer: Hits a single in the first inning and whomps a grand slam an inning after that. Ohtani the teammate: Watches his team turn its first triple play since 1997 to keep this game tied in the ninth. Tungsten Arm subplot: Angels get an Ohtani slam and a game-saving triple play … and still lose to the Rays, 9-6, because … see above.

• Sept. 3 — Ohtani the track star: Steals his 20th base of the season, in what turned out to be the final time he reached base this year. Ohtani the historian: Becomes the first man in National League/American League history to join the 20-Steal/10-Win Club since the unforgettable Adonis Terry did it for the 1890 Brooklyn Bridegrooms. Tungsten Arm subplot: Angels still lose, 10-6, to an Oakland team that was 54 games under .500, because, clearly, this was their final chance to get Tungsten Arm O’Doyle into the fake headlines … so the baseball gods demanded they make it count.

Ohtani, the tri-cyclist — Back on May 9, 1918, someone named Babe Ruth went 5-for-5, with a triple, a single and three doubles, while pitching into extra innings before finally losing to Walter Johnson. The Babe never had another game with a single, double, triple and any pitches thrown. But on April 27, Ohtani had a game like that, in a win over Oakland. Here’s why we mention it:

He was the first pitcher with a single, double and triple in any kind of game in 36 years (since Danny Darwin did it in 1987) — and only the third in the past six decades. You know who didn’t have any games with a single and double and triple this year, despite the fact that they weren’t distracted by having to throw a single pitch? Oh, only Ronald Acuña Jr., Mookie Betts, Julio Rodríguez, Bobby Witt Jr. and about 1,000 other guys who otherwise appear seriously multi-talented.

Ohtani, the box-score filler-upper — Then there was June 27. Ohtani the pitcher: Faces 24 White Sox and strikes out 10 of them. Ohtani the hitter: Takes three swings all night … and gets three hits, two of them homers.

Here, at no extra charge, is your handy-dandy list of dudes in the division-play era with a double-digit strikeout game and a multi-homer eruption in the same game: Rick Wise (1971), Madison Bumgarner (2017), Zack Greinke (2019) and … Ohtani.

Ohtani, the 493-foot delivery man — Then, three days after that two-homer, 10-K game, a man who had a better strikeout ratio than Gerrit Cole this year launched a home run that was projected by Statcast at 493 feet, but actually, according to NASA scientists we just made up, reached Earth’s orbit. Don’t believe us? You can watch it! (And you should.)

Ohtani, the all-time twin-bill king — Finally, what do you say we salute the greatest doubleheader performance in baseball history (as declared by Strange But True World HQ, acclaimed as the ultimate authority on this subject, as of two sentences ago)?

July 27 in Detroit. Ohtani the pitcher: Throws a one-hit shutout in Game 1 of this doubleheader. Ohtani the hitter: Mashes two home runs in Game 2 of this doubleheader.

Question from those of us who write Strange But True Feats of the Year columns: Who the heck does this? Who the heck has ever done this?

The answer, according to the Elias Sports Bureau (via MLB.com’s resident Ohtani historian, Sarah Langs): That would be nobody, of course. How many men have ever thrown any kind of shutout in one game of a doubleheader and hit even one homer in the other game of a doubleheader? One man — named Shohei.

But a one-hit shutout in Game 1 and two home runs in Game 2? That’s not something you would expect to see in the major leagues. That’s out of the Marvel Superhero League.

Special bonus note from Langs: The last human before Ohtani who twirled a shutout in one game of a doubleheader and then started at any other position in the other game? George H. (Bambino) Ruth, on July 17, 1918. But no home runs for the Bambino that day!

Christmas special Strange But True Ohtani video treat — What can’t Shohei Ohtani do? If you watch this video, it’ll be obvious that the answer is: Not a freaking thing.

Nice Catch Sho! ✅
Shohei Ohtani catches his own helmet while at bat in Anaheim. Atta Boy! 🤩#大谷翔平 #Ohtani #Angels #GoHalos pic.twitter.com/5m2Hy0lDvG

— Anaheim Sports (@AnaheimSports1) May 7, 2023

Our 10 favorite Strange But True Hitting Feats of 2023

No fooling: Trayce Thompson had a day on April 1, but then what happened? (Jonathan Hui / USA Today)

WITHOUT A TRAYCE — Just as we all expected, the first three-homer game of 2023 didn’t come rocketing off the bat of Aaron Judge or Matt Olson. Instead, it was the work of the Dodgers’ Trayce Thompson, a man whose brother (Klay) is slightly more famous for his 3-pointers than he is.

Nevertheless, in his first start of the season, on April 1, Trayce became the first Dodger in history to stuff a grand slam, three-run homer and solo homer into the same box score … and then … to make sure columns like this remain in business … that same guy went 40 days between hits (April 19 to May 30) … batted .148 over the rest of the season … and hit as many big-league home runs over the next six months as he hit that one day … because baseball!

THEIR SECOND FIRST ACT — In an April 13 visit to Yankee Stadium, the Twins just might have fired off the Strangest But Truest back-to-back homers ever. You know what their Nos. 1-2 hitters, Edouard Julien and Carlos Correa, did that day? They went back-to-back in the first inning. But that’s not the Strange But True part … because that has happened before.

You know what had never happened before? That would be a team’s 1-2 hitters going back-to-back in the first inning … but not to lead off the game. Turns out it’s helpful to feats like this if their teammates work a convenient little nine-run first-inning bat-around into their busy schedule. Whaddaya know.

FEEL THE PINCH — In baseball, as in life, it’s never just about how it starts. It’s about what happens when you enter the game. For more proof of that profound, age-old saying, which the great philosophers have been sharing since, oh, about half a paragraph ago, you should look at the 2023 stories of Elias Díaz and Andrew Knizner.

• Elias Díaz is a catcher for the Rockies. He turned 33 years old last month. And since the rules required somebody on the Rockies to be an All-Star, that somebody was him.

Remember his huge All-Star moment? How ’bout a game-winning, lead-flipping pinch home run to hand the NL the All-Star game. Awesome. But here comes the Strange But True part:

Pinch-hit All-Star home runs — one … in one swing.

Pinch-hit regular-season home runs … in 15 pro seasons, nine big-league seasons and 2,166 trips to the plate — zero!

Timing truly is everything.

• Andrew Knizner has spent most of his five-year big-league career as Yadi Molina’s backup catcher in St. Louis. But on May 17, quite the Strange But True plot line busted out. One minute, he was pinch running for Paul Goldschmidt (look it up!) in the eighth inning of a 9-1 game. Next minute, the Cardinals were batting around … and then this happened.

What you just saw was A Man With No Position smoking a grand slam. And only two other players in the past 65 seasons have done that. One was Rajai Davis in 2008. The other (Gene Stephens) did it in 1959 after pinch running for Ted Williams. But that isn’t even the Strange But True part.

The Strange But True part was that Andrew Knizner, a man who has never hit a slam while actually playing a position, hit this slam off Mike Brosseau, who doesn’t normally give those up because he’s an infielder. Which means … a guy with no position pounded a grand slam off a position player. And if you’re not more grateful than ever now for these Strange But True Feats of the Year columns, I don’t know how you made it this far into this one.

PLEASE IGNORE THE VIDEO EVIDENCE — A classic Strange But True thing happened to Padres shortstop Xander Bogaerts on May 3: His career-high 30-game on-base streak was broken despite the weird technicality that he was standing on first base when it ended.

Geez, it sure wasn’t his fault. He hit what looked like a single to right field. It wasn’t caught in the air by an outfielder, just like most hits. But unfortunately for him, the most confused man in San Diego happened to be his teammate Juan Soto. … Who missed the part where the baseball bounced … and hustled back to first base … where he found Bogaerts wasn’t as happy as usual to see him.

And that’s how a man who was standing on a base saw his on-base streak disappear, right before his eyes. However many times Bogaerts wondered in 2023 why he ever left Boston, we’re guessing that was one of them!

NICKEL BACKS — Is Five Hit Fever something a guy could catch just hanging around the batting cage? We ask because Marlins hit machine Luis Arraez definitely caught it this June. How Strange But True is this:

Arraez in June: three five-hit games in 16 days.

Miguel Cabrera in his 21-year career: two five-hit games in 2,797 games.

Strange but 100 percent true.

But we also asked about Five Hit Fever because of …

The Angels: They mysteriously went five years — despite employing Mike Trout and Ohtani for all five of them — without having any stinking hitter on the roster figure out how to get five hits in a game … until Hunter Renfroe finally unfurled their first quintuple since 2018 in a June 24 blowout of the Rockies. How even? But wait, Here comes the …

Strange But True Epilogue: So how long after that would it take for an Angel — any Angel — to deliver their next five-hit game? It was quite the wait … of two batters … until Mickey Moniak got his fifth hit of the day in that same inning. Because … Five Hit Fever! Catch it.

THE WILD BLUE YAN-DER — If you’re familiar with the work of Cubs catcher Yan Gomes, you’re probably aware he’ll never be confused with Usain Bolt, let alone Dee Strange-Gordon. But in the Strange But True world we live in, anything is possible, even for a man who ranked 449th in the majors this year in average “sprint” speed.

So naturally, on July 20, at age 36, Gomes did something no catcher his age (or older) had done in the past 95 years: He hit two triples in one game! But that’s not all, because he actually hit triples in two plate appearances in a row. Now here are two reasons we might be interested in something like that:

1) How many other catchers hit two triples in a game not just this year, but the year before that … and the year before that … and the year before that? Anybody out there guess none? Excellent guess!

2) How many triples has Gomes hit on any of the 201 other days he has been allowed to play baseball by the Cubs over these past two seasons? That, too, would be none … in 708 trips to the plate.

But in the middle of all that, this same guy smacked a triple in two at-bats in a row? C’mon. How can you not love the total random wackiness of …

Baseball!

Reds rookie sensation Elly De La Cruz wasted no time in providing Strange But True material. (Orlando Ramirez / USA Today)

IT’S ALL CYCLICAL — We could have worked the Reds’ human tool kit, Elly De La Cruz, into this column about 12 different ways. Did you know he hit a baseball this year harder (119.2 mph) than any ball hit by Aaron Judge? That seems like a cool thing to do for the fastest dude on the field.

But that’s not even what De La Cruz is doing in this sentence you’re currently reading. Nope. How about this:

On June 23, he hit for the cycle — in the 15th game of his career.

On July 8, he stole for the cycle — by stealing second, third and home in the same inning.

And even though stealing for the cycle is a thing we just invented, it’s still a thing you need to be in awe of, if only because he also stole third and home on the same pitch.

3D tracking — Elly De La Cruz steals third and home on the same pitch

Elly strobed every 1 second starting with the pitcher’s first move pic.twitter.com/bjbmgjnk5H

— David Adler (@_dadler) July 9, 2023

Last Red to steal for the cycle — Greasy Neale, in 1919!

Last Red to hit for the cycle — Eric Davis, in 1989, which meant all the other teams had fit 110 cycles in between Reds’ cycles!

Players in the live-ball era to do both 15 days apart (or quicker) — Elly De La Cruz … and that’ll do it for that list.

Other players in the past 98 seasons who did both in the same year — Exactly one, and it was … um … Wil Myers? He did it in 2017. But that, in this case, is not the Strange But True part.

Because you know what else happened the day De La Cruz hit for the cycle and started all this? The Reds released a guy named … Wil Myers!

VLAD YOU STOPPED BY — Don’t ask us how Vlad Guerrero Jr. didn’t make this column just for fielding a groundball in May, getting the baseball stuck in the webbing and then flipping the whole glove to the pitcher for an out that proved, once again, your glove will not let you down. Except that wasn’t even his Strangest But Truest feat of that week.

Just your ordinary, super casual 3-1 groundout 😅 pic.twitter.com/ZVeDIMwBb6

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) June 1, 2023

For his greatest Strange But True classic, we take you to May 23 in Tampa Bay, when one of the goofiest games of the season busted out … in large part thanks to Vlad.

Ever heard of a team scoring nine runs in one inning — all against position players masquerading as pitchers? That. Really. Happened. In the ninth inning of that game. For the first time in the history of this sport.

And the “pitcher” who was responsible for most of that carnage was Rays first baseman Luke Raley. But in the midst of all those rockets Raley was serving up, he at least shared this nutty little moment with the fearsome Vlad Guerrero Jr., right after taking the mound in the eighth.

Luke Raley strikes out Vlad Guerrero Jr.! pic.twitter.com/d856XYH5tW

— Bally Sports Sun: Rays (@BallyRays) May 24, 2023

So Vladdy could have made the Strange But True Feats of the Year just for that, except … have we mentioned there was a nine-run ninth inning in this game? … So what were the odds of the Jays’ lineup turning and turning and turning … until here came Vlad to bat again in the ninth inning … only to find Raley still pitching, with the bases loaded? Want to guess what happened in the rematch? Yeah, it did.

Does it get much Stranger But Truer than a guy striking out and mashing a slam in the same game against the same position player? That would be hard seeing how it had never, ever happened … until Guerrero showed up at home plate.

SUSPENDED ANIMATION — What’s even stranger (but truer) than a Mookie Betts 5-for-5 game? How about a suspended Mookie Betts 5-for-5 game!

That’s a thing that happened during the Dodgers’ August visit to Cleveland. And here’s the part that propelled it into this column:

Aug. 23 — Mookie goes 2-for-2 (with two singles) before half a billion raindrops cause a slight intermission in his hot streak.

Aug. 24 — Mookie gets three more hits (single, single, double) after the game finally resumes.

All right, now here’s what makes that a Strange But True all-timer: For the rest of time, history will try to convince us that Mookie had a five-hit game on Wednesday the 23rd … even though many human witnesses exist who could tell you that three of those hits actually met the bat on the “wrong” day (Thursday the 24th).

So how Strange But True was that? So strange that, according to our friends from STATS Perform, only one other player since 1901 has ever gotten five hits or more in a suspended game … with more than half of them coming on the “wrong” day. But the other (Tom Paciorek) did it in a 26-inning game (on May 8-9, 1984). Which would be 17 more innings than it took Mookie Betts — our official Strange But True Time Traveler of 2023.

Ozzie Albies and the Braves did a number on the Mets on Aug. 12. (Brad Penner / USA Today)

WE’VE GOT YOUR NUMBER — The Braves’ whole season could have made this list, because in case you missed it, they somehow had a higher slugging percentage as a team (.501) than bashers like Bryce Harper (.499), Rafael Devers (.500) and José Ramírez (.478) had by themselves. But instead, we’re going to zone in on Aug. 12, our favorite Braves Strange But True day of the year.

They scored 21 runs in Game 1 of a doubleheader against the Mets that day. But that wasn’t the Strange But True part. The Strange But True part was how they divvied up those 21 runs. By which we mean they had …

One guy with one RBI (Ronald Acuña Jr.).

Another with two RBIs (Sean Murphy).

Another with three RBIs (Austin Riley).

Another with four RBIs (Matt Olson).

Another with five RBIs (Nicky Lopez).

And yet another with six RBIs (Ozzie Albies).

Which meant everyone else who played had no RBIs. And that caused way too many of you to say to yourselves: Hmmm, could that ever have happened? And also: You know who we should ask? The Strange But True column!

So we reached out to the great Katie Sharp of Baseball Reference to look into that very question. On one hand, she did find one team that ran off that 1-2-3-4-5-6 RBI box-score trick. On the other hand, that team was Kiki Cuyler’s 1925 Pirates (against St. Louis on June 22, 1925). Which means it happened as recently as 98 years ago.

But wait. That team actually had two players with two RBIs and two players with one RBI. So you know what that means? It means that, since RBIs became an official stat in 1920, this Braves game was the first time in history that six hitters on one team went 1-2-3-4-5-6 in the RBI column … while nobody else on their team was driving in any runs. And that, for all of you who played 1-2-3-4-5-6 in the Powerball that night, is why we love …

Baseball!

GO DEEPER

Are the Braves the greatest offense in baseball history? They’re making quite a case

Our 10 favorite Strange But True Pitching Feats of 2023

Adam Wainwright tips his cap to the St. Louis crowd on the night of his 200th victory. (Jeff Roberson / Associated Press)

FOUNTAINS OF WAINO — We’ll miss Adam Wainwright. This is, after all, a column dedicated to mixing fun with all the beauties of baseball. And we can’t think of any player, over the past two decades, who got that concept any better than the Cardinals’ curveball king.

So what was more perfectly Strange But True than the 200th and final win of Wainwright’s wonderful career? Here’s what made it the kind of game Strange But True Feats of the Year columns latch onto:

• He spun seven shutout innings — for his only scoreless start of the year.

• He won this game, 1-0 — for his first 1-0 win in nine years.

• His catcher, Willson Contreras, hit a home run to drive in the only run — the first time he’d ever done that as a Cardinal. But now let’s keep going, because we’ve barely scratched the surface of the Strange But Trueness.

• Back on Opening Day of the 2014 season, Wainwright won the 100th game of his career. He went seven shutout innings in that game, too. But hold on. There’s more.

• How do you think the only run scored in that 100th win? Would you believe on a home run by his catcher, Yadi Molina? Yep, the same way he won No. 200.

• But wait. There’s still more. How many other pitchers in history have ever won their 200th game 1-0 on a home run by their catcher? Right. That would be none.

• And how many other 1-0 games in Wainwright’s career did he win on any kind of RBI by his catcher? Right. That would also be none.

Baseball. It’s the best.

NUMBER SCRUNCHING — In baseball, we love big numbers. But here at Strange But True World HQ, we also love little numbers. The littler the better, in fact. So here’s a toast to these tiny numbers from 2023.

1 — Does it seem impossible for a pitcher to record a one-pitch strikeout? Ha. Are you familiar with the weirdness of baseball? All it took for Phillies reliever Jeff Hoffman to pull that off, back on July 28, was about three trillion raindrops in Pittsburgh. Then he marched in after a rain delay, inherited a 1-2 count on Jared Triolo, got him to swing through a slider and voila!

We have a one-pitch strikeout in Pittsburgh for Jeff Hoffman, thanks to all those raindrops! pic.twitter.com/VdSspudMmm

— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) July 29, 2023

3 — Do first innings get any neater or cleaner than the three pitches it took Giants starter Anthony DeSclafani to zip through his first inning on May 28 against the Pirates? Wait. Don’t answer that too swiftly.

Three pitches. Three outs. But also … one extra-base hit (by Tucupita Marcano, on the first pitch of the game). Luckily, the next two pitches went: Line-drive out … fly-ball double play. The most baseball thing ever.

0 — Finally, hard as we’ve been trying not to pick on the Mets in this column, it doesn’t get much Stranger Than Truer than a walk-off balk, issued by a pitcher (Josh Walker) who threw zero pitches. But that was the Mets season in glorious micro-Met-rocosm.

Here’s that deal. Walker rolls in to relieve Grant Hartwig in an Aug. 1 tilt with the Royals. Tie game. Two outs in the 10th. Leans in for the sign. His PitchCom glitches out. And … oh no!

The umps called a balk to score the walkoff run in extras despite the Mets arguing that they were having pitch on issues pic.twitter.com/mJvCHmrIjp

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) August 2, 2023

We’ve been keeping track of pitch counts for the past 36 seasons. In the 80,000 games or so in those 36 seasons, only one other pitcher has ever managed a no-pitch “balk-off” to end any game: Mike Stanton, for the Nationals, on July 15, 2005. But whatever it took in 2023, it felt as though the Mets were gonna find a way to Met!

CRAZY EIGHTS — Who had a Stranger But Truer 2023 than Lucas Giolito? It was wacky enough that he ping-ponged from the White Sox to the Angels to the Guardians in a mere 36 days. But that wasn’t even the Strange But True part.

The Strange But True part was he found a way to allow at least eight runs in a game for all three of those teams. The “good news” for Giolito: He was not the only guy ever to do that for three different teams. But the bad news was, the last pitcher to do it was Bill McGee … in 1899!

DOMINGO’S PERFECT STORM — If baseball made any sense, all perfect games would be thrown by true aces. So if Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw are ever in the mood to go 27-up, 27-down some day, we’re cool with that. We’d even sign off on occasional guest perfectos by Corbin Burnes and Max Scherzer — because at least we could understand how that’s possible.

Instead, we are continually reminded that baseball makes no sense. And could there be any more proof than this: The only perfect game of the past decade was authored this season by world-famous non-ace Domingo Germán of the Yankees. And can we all agree that’s just ridiculous?

Six days before Germán’s perfecto (June 22 versus Seattle) — He faces 23 hitters, gives up 10 runs, gets only 10 outs and never even retires three in a row! (The attractive box-score line: 3 1/3 IP — 8 H, 10 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 4 HR, 93 pitches to get 10 outs!)

Six days later (June 28 at Oakland) — The same human faces 27 hitters, gets all 27 of them out! (The much more presentable line: 9-0-0-0-0-9, 97 pitches to get 27 outs!)

We were so befuddled by this, how could we not ask our friends from STATS if it was as illogical and unprecedented as we suspected? The answer: Well, you could probably guess the answer.

This was baseball’s 20th perfect game since 1909. There was one slight difference between German’s gem and the other 19: He was the only one who faced at least 23 hitters in the previous start and never once retired three in a row … because of course he was!

Michael Lorenzen celebrates the no-hitter with his Phillies teammates.  (Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)

THE LORENZEN EXPRESS — At least Domingo Germán didn’t throw any other no-hitters this year … but Michael Lorenzen did … because why the heck not! He was traded by the Tigers to the Phillies on Aug. 1. He no-hit the Nationals eight days later.

No need to mention that after the no-hitter, his ERA over the final two months was 8.01. Doesn’t matter. He no-hit his way right into the Strange But True Feats of the Year column. Here’s why:

Steve Carlton — spent 15 years pitching for the Phillies, won four Cy Young awards, led all left-handers in baseball in WAR over those 15 seasons, made the Hall of Fame … and pitched zero no-hitters.

Michael Lorenzen — had spent eight days as a Phillie, had never thrown a pitch for the Phillies in Philadelphia before that night, was out of the rotation five weeks later … but has achieved trivia immortality as the answer to a version of this question: Who’s the only Phillie to pitch a no-hitter in Philadelphia since Roy Halladay?

Wow. Baseball. Is it amazing, or what?

DREAM WEAVER — You should know that Luke Weaver did not throw any no-hitters for the Reds this year (or for his other two teams — the Mariners and Yankees — either). But he, too, did exemplary work in proving our recurring thesis about baseball: It. Makes. No. Sense.

On one hand … From May 31 to July 8, Weaver made eight starts for the Reds. You decide how that went.

• His ERA: 8.66

• Slash line of hitters he faced: .342/.392/.613

• What that means: He basically turned the entire league into 2012 Miguel Cabrera (who hit .330/.393/.606 that year).

So that was a disaster, huh? Um, don’t answer yet, because …

On the other hand … how’d the Reds make out in those eight starts? Would you believe …

They went 8-0!

You’d think we were making that up, right? And then you’d remember … this is the Strange But True Feats of the Year column!

BOX-SCORE CORNER — You don’t need us to point out that certain trips to the mound are Strange But True material. You just need to consult the box scores. They tell you all you need to know about games like this …

Ben Lively, Aug. 1 at Wrigley — In the Cubs’ 20-9 thrashing of the Reds, Lively was more like Ben Deadly:

4 IP, 13 H, 13 R, 13 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 4 HR, 1 HBP, 94 pitches to get 12 outs!

So what’s up with that? You know how hard it is to give up 13 hits and 13 earned runs but not even get 12 outs? Nobody had done that since Les (not a McDonald’s entrée) McCrabb … on April 16, 1942! … But you know how much harder it is to give up 13 earned runs and four homers? So hard that, since earned runs became an official stat more than a century ago, just one pitcher has done that. His name: Ben Lively.

Luis Cessa, April 16 versus the Phillies — We’re not sure how this column turned into a Reds Rotation’s Greatest Hits collection. But it wouldn’t have been possible to compile these Strange But True Pitching Feats of the year without this sparkling start by Cessa:

3 IP, 14 H, 11 R, 11 ER, 3 BB, 0 K, 1 HR, 1 HBP, 1 WP, 88 pitches to get nine outs.

So what’s up with that? Before we could even look this up, loyal reader Allan Wood beat us to it. You know how many pitchers since 1900 have given up that many runs and that many hits but not even gotten 10 outs? Just one. Right … Luis Cessa.

Josh Fleming, May 28 versus the Dodgers — Meanwhile, in non-Reds box-score developments, Fleming’s final start of the year for the Rays was a classic in more ways than one:

6 IP, 12 H, 10 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 3 K … and 5 HR!

So what’s up with that? Ha. Trick question. You won’t believe it. Yes, this man gave up 12 hits, 10 runs and five looonnnggg balls — but it was all worth it. Not just because he saved the bullpen, but also because … his team won (11-10)! He’s the first pitcher to get bruised for that many runs, hits and homers in a game his team won since the legendary Dodger, Ralph Branca, was allowed to stick around for all nine innings in a scenic 17-10 game in Pittsburgh on June 25, 1949.

Chase Anderson gave up an unlucky 13 runs to the Angels in an infamous third inning. (John Leyba / USA Today)

CUT TO THE CHASE — Every trip to the mound at Coors Field is an opportunity, all right — an opportunity to wind up in the Strange But True Feats of the Year column. So congratulations to Chase Anderson, for doing his part in a messy little 25-1 loss to the Angels on June 24.

Here is how he kicked off a fun little 13-run third inning that day:

First pitch — Mike Trout home run.

Second pitch — Brandon Drury home run.

Third pitch — Matt Thaiss home run.

That’s three pitches, three home runs. And you don’t see that much. In fact, home runs on three pitches in a row, at any point in any inning, is a thing that’s happened only one other time to any active pitcher … and it was the same pitcher.

No kidding. Back on Sept. 17, 2020, when Anderson was a Blue Jay, he served up three in a row to the Yankees in the fourth inning. And that would make no sense at all, except it’s …

Baseball!

NO-HIT PANDA-MONIUM — We don’t ordinarily take these Strange But True expeditions into the wilds of the minor leagues. But we’re making an exception here for the beloved Rocket City Trash Pandas, of the always-entertaining Double-A Southern League, because …

The good news: On April 9, the Trash Pandas did one of those things that are supposed to feel like a dream come true — by throwing a no-hitter, in an all-time minor-league classic, against Chattanooga. But now comes …

The not quite as good as that news: They managed to throw that no-hitter and lose, which doesn’t happen much, even in the Southern League. And that isn’t even the Strange But True part, because you should definitely read on to …

The not even as good as that last thing news: They pulled off the rarified feat of throwing a no-hitter … and allowing seven runs … but also … allowing all seven of those runs in the same inning.

How Strange But True is it to give up seven runs in a no-hitter? Oh, you know. No big-league team has ever done it. And the only other time it’s known to have happened in the minor leagues was Aug. 31, 1948, in the late, great Pony League, when Louis Blackmore of the Wellsville Red Sox did it in a game in which there wasn’t much need for anybody to get a hit … since he also sprinkled in 17 walks that day!

So is that how the Trash Pandas did it? Eh, not exactly. Their attractive seven-run inning … in the middle of a no-hitter, remember … went like this:

Walk … walk … infield-fly rule popup (one out) … walk … strikeout (two outs) … walk (one run) … three-run error on the center fielder (four runs – oops!) … new pitcher … hit-by-pitch … hit-by-pitch … hit-by-pitch (five runs) … walk (six runs) … run-scoring wild pitch (seven runs) … hit-by-pitch … strikeout (three outs).

So what are the odds of giving up seven runs in a no-hitter, no matter how many innings it takes? This took some math. But here goes …

In the last 105 big-league games in which a team gave up no hits, you know how many runs those 105 teams gave up? That would be six — in all 105 of those games combined! But somehow, the Trash Pandas gave up seven … in one inning. And if you’ve never seen anything like that, we can help with that too!

90 seconds of how to NO HIT a team…but give up 7 RUNS and lose. 😳 pic.twitter.com/aClXzUfyJS

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 9, 2023

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Weird & Wild: Marveling at the Trash Pandas’ no-hitter loss and the Rays’ winning streak

THE GHOST OF HARVEY HADDIX — But the Milwaukee Brewers don’t need to check in with any Trash Pandas to know that throwing a no-hitter can be overrated. They lived it Sept. 10 — in one of the Strangest But Truest games of any year.

For nine innings that day, Corbin Burnes and Devin Williams no-hit the Yankees in the Bronx. Then reliever Abner Uribe stomped out of the bullpen and made it 10 hitless innings. If the Brewers had just remembered to score a run or 12 in those 10 innings, they’d have had a way better time.

Instead, this game kept going — through the 11th inning, through the 12th inning, into the 13th inning — during which … the Yankees went from getting no hits in any inning to getting at least one hit … and scoring … in every inning, from the 11th through the 13th, because … it’s baseball … and … it makes no sense.

So on a day when the Brewers gave up no hits for 10 innings, they still lost, 4-3. And how Strange But True was that? You’ve come to the right place.

On one hand … teams that spin off nine hitless innings tend to win a lot. In the division-play era (1969-2023), 150 teams have pitched exactly nine innings of hit-free, run-free domination in either a regular-season or postseason game. The record of those teams is a perfect 150-0. OK, sure.

Or 10 is also cool … because no team in the modern era has pitched exactly 10 hitless, scoreless innings in a game and lost, either. The record of teams that do that: 4-0 … as we’d all expect. However …

On the other hand … here comes the Strangest But Truest no-hitter fact ever: No team has ever taken a no-hitter into the 11th inning … and won that game! This is true. Those teams are now 0-4. Really.

So if your favorite team ever finds itself throwing a no-hitter in the 11th inning, don’t say we didn’t warn you. It may seem like a beautiful thing while you’re watching it. But in reality, it’s more dangerous than you think, just because it’s …

Baseball!

(Top photo of Kyle Schwarber: Rich Graessle / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Nine weeks from today, we’ll find out who gets to live out the weekend of a lifetime next July in magical Cooperstown, N.Y. Spoiler alert: Adrián Beltré’s friends and loved ones had better make those dinner reservations ASAP!

But there were 25 other names on the 2024 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot that was announced on Monday. And when I looked over those names, I could already see the storylines forming in my brain.

So here they come — my Five Things to Watch on the latest, greatest Hall ballot.

1. Can Adrián Beltré make ballot history?

Could Adrián Beltré really become the first position player to get elected to the Hall of Fame unanimously? It’s a fascinating question to contemplate, isn’t it?

Derek Jeter missed by one vote. Ken Griffey Jr. missed by three. Ty Cobb was four away. Cal Ripken Jr. was eight away.

Babe Ruth wasn’t unanimous. Willie Mays wasn’t unanimous. Henry Aaron and Ted Williams weren’t unanimous. It’s bizarre even to type those words.

But Hall of Fame voting is in its ninth decade of making way too little sense. So even if the voters of the 21st century seem a lot more rational than their predecessors of 50, 60 and 70 years ago, there are always questions. Don’t expect that to change between now and Jan. 23, when the results are announced.

So let’s ask again: Is it possible that Beltré could join the great Mariano Rivera as the only unanimous Hall of Famers? I’ll take the “under,” but seriously, what reason could any voter find to not check Beltré’s name?

Who could not vote for a third baseman with 3,166 hits? Can’t answer that … if only because no true full-time third baseman ever got that many. (George Brett finished with 3,154 hits. Paul Molitor topped 3,300 but spent more time at DH than at third.)

Who could not vote for a third baseman so smooth that he owns five Gold Glove awards and the most career Fielding Runs of any third baseman in history not named Brooks Robinson?

Who could not vote for a third baseman who once won a home run title, led his league in hits and was still winning Gold Gloves and collecting MVP votes at age 37?

Who could not vote for a third baseman who rolled up 93.5 career WAR, according to Baseball Reference? You understand that puts Beltré in legend territory, right? He ranks 25th in WAR among all position players whose careers began after 1900. And every non-Hall of Famer in that group is in the team picture of the All-PED team.

I’m sure somebody will find a reason not to vote for him. But even if Beltré isn’t unanimous, he could still rack up the highest first-ballot percentage by a third baseman in history. Brett was at 98.2 percent. Mike Schmidt was at 96.5. If Beltré isn’t somewhere in that range, I can’t wait to hear the reasoning from those voters who leave his name unchecked.

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2. Are we finally going to have a Hall of Famer who spent his whole career on a Rocky Mountain High?

Todd Helton is on the verge of election. (Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

Four elections ago, Larry Walker knocked down the big billboard at the Colorado state line that used to say: THE ROAD TO COOPERSTOWN — YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE. So now that the road is finally open, is it Todd Helton’s turn?

Helton spent 17 seasons playing for the Rockies. He finished his career with a .316/.414/.539/.953 slash line. You know how many players whose career started after 1930 have topped that? Exactly two: Ted Williams and Stan Musial.

So do we even have to ask whether Helton would already be a Hall of Famer if he’d put up those numbers anywhere else? That’s obvious.

But what’s also obvious is that Coors Field is like no place else. And Helton is the first player ever to play his whole career in Colorado and find himself on the precipice of the Hall of Fame. So even if the Coors Cooperstown Curse isn’t what it used to be, has it magically evaporated all of a sudden? Don’t be so sure of that.

Nevertheless, there’s an excellent chance Helton’s time has arrived. He was the biggest shooting star on the ballot last year, jumping by an amazing 20 percent. So he missed election by 11 votes last year, his fifth on this ballot. And history tells us that pretty much everybody who comes that close gets his ticket to Cooperstown punched the next year.

In the past 50 elections, only 10 other players returned to the ballot after coming up short by 11 votes or fewer. Of that group, just Jim Bunning didn’t get elected the next time he was up. And Bunning got his plaque eventually (via the Veterans Committee).

So Todd Helton is going to be the first career-long Rockie to make it onto that podium. The drama over these next two months is whether that happens now or later. And “now” is an excellent bet.

3. Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley: Together again?

Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley will reunite on the Hall ballot.  (Hunter Martin / Getty Images)

They were the Trammell and Whitaker of their generation. Will Hall of Fame voters value that?

Not so long ago, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley hung out in the middle of the infield for an incredible 1,227 games together, the most in National League history. And not all of those games were in Philadelphia, by the way. (They also teamed up for 14 games for the Dodgers at the end of the 2015 season.)

But now it’s time for them to make yet one more cool reunion — on the new Hall of Fame ballot.

It’s Utley’s first year on the ballot, and he’s as intriguing as any first-timer on the list. It’s Rollins’ third spin through the process. And at first, I thought: Hey, that’s fun. But then my next thought was: Wait. Has this ever happened? Have two longtime double-play partners ever taken a ride together on the Cooperstown Express?

I knew, you see, that Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker somehow never appeared on the same ballot. That’s the voters’ fault, not theirs, of course. Whitaker remains one of the writers’ worst one-and-done’s ever, getting bounced following his first election in 2001 after receiving just 2.9 percent of the vote. Which meant he was missing in action once Trammell arrived in 2002.

So I had to turn to my friends at STATS Perform to see if there was any parallel in history to Rollins and Utley. And let’s start with this: No double-play combination in the history of baseball ever played as many games together as these two guys and then showed up on the Hall ballot together. Wow.

STATS’ Tom Paquette dug deeper on this. Besides Rollins/ Utley and Trammell/Whitaker, he found only six double-play duos in the modern era (1901-present) that played at least 1,000 games together. But to find the last time any of those combinations appeared on the same Hall ballot, you have to go back nearly 40 years.

Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio spent 1,035 games in the same infield in the 1950s and ’60s. Then, between 1979 and 1984, they made it onto six Hall ballots together, a streak that ended with Aparicio’s election in ’84.

Before them, you have to travel back another four decades to find any other member of the 1,000-Game DP Combo Club that appeared on the same ballot. The only other was the fabled Joe Tinker/Johnny Evers tag team. But don’t look for any YouTube footage on those two. They played their last game together for the Cubs in 1913. Then they appeared on six Hall ballots in the 1930s and ’40s.

So is it possible that Rollins and Utley are in for a longer ride than six years? Since Rollins has eight years of eligibility left, it’s theoretically possible. But is one of them going to get elected by 2031? Or both of them? Or neither? Good question. And if that answer is one of them, then which one?

Rollins has the more traditional selling points on his side: An MVP trophy, four Gold Gloves, more than 2,400 hits, 200 homers, 400 steals and 857 extra-base hits. And how many other shortstops in history can say that? That would be none. Yet he attracted only 50 votes last year. So is he going to find another 242 votes out there? That seems hard.

Utley, meanwhile, has a very different case. He’s basically an analytics cult hero, whose monster peak (six seasons, from 2005-10, in which he averaged 7.6 WAR) has the potential to make him a popular name to check, especially when you add in all the winning his teams did.

But Utley never even got to 1,900 hits. And the writers haven’t elected a player with under 2,000 in almost 50 years (since Ralph Kiner, in 1975). Yet if I had to place a friendly wager on this, I’d still bet Utley gets more votes this year than Rollins.

You know what would be really interesting, though? What are the chances these two can somehow elevate each other’s candidacy — just by generating perspective and conversation about who’s more deserving? It’s a question worth asking, if only because I’ve always wondered what might have happened if Trammell and Whitaker had gotten the chance to do that.

4. Will Billy Wagner and Gary Sheffield run out of time?

Billy Wagner received 68.1 percent of the vote in the last election. (Ronald Martinez / Allsport)

It’s Gary Sheffield’s 10th and final year on this ballot. It’s Billy Wagner’s ninth, so he has two more shots at this. But is that enough time?

Fourteen years after he took his final ferocious hack, Sheffield attracted 54 more votes last year than he’d gotten the year before, so he’s now at 55.0 percent. Thirteen years after his final save, Wagner’s vote count rocketed upward by 64 votes last year — the biggest one-year jump by any reliever in Hall voting history. He made it all the way to 68.1 percent.

If one of them is going to make it to 75 percent, Wagner is the obvious favorite. He was only 27 votes — 6.9 percentage points — away from election last year. So are there really 27 voters so dug in on keeping him out of Cooperstown that he can’t find those votes? History would suggest that’s highly unlikely.

Five previous relievers — Trevor Hoffman, Goose Gossage, Bruce Sutter, Hoyt Wilhelm and Rollie Fingers — have crossed the 60 percent barrier with at least two years left on the ballot. All five of them got elected within two years.

On the other hand, Hoffman was at 67.3 percent in 2016 and still came up short the next year. So does Wagner have a 7 percentage point leap in him this time around? We love election night drama, right? That story has all the makings.

Sheffield, meanwhile, has a bigger mountain to climb because he’s trying to do something extremely rare. Over the past 50 elections, only one man has made the unlikely pole vault from 55 percent (or lower) in his next-to-last year to getting elected at the buzzer. And that was Larry Walker, who was at 54.6 percent with one year to go — and then eked in by six votes on his final turn.

But does a guy with Sheffield’s ties to performance-enhancing drugs, vague as they might be, have that sort of jump in him? Seems unlikely, but we’re about to find out.

5. Can Joe Mauer channel his inner Ernie Banks?

Joe Mauer was the AL MVP in 2009. (John Biever / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

Once upon a time, in a baseball galaxy far, far away, there was a future Hall of Famer named Ernie Banks. Just like Joe Mauer, his career was divided between time at two positions. Just like Mauer, he was special at one, not so much at the other.

In his nine seasons at what was then looked at as primarily a defensive position, Banks was the greatest hitting shortstop of his time. But then, in part two of his career, when he moved to an offensive position (first base), let’s just say he didn’t remind anybody of Willie McCovey.

So what happened when Banks finally appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot? He cruised to first-ballot election in 1977, with 83.8 percent of the vote. And why do we tell this tale of Mr. Cub at a time like this? Because it seems instructive to how voters could view Mauer in his first go-round on this ballot.

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Joe Mauer ‘humbled and honored’ to be considered for Cooperstown

In his 10 seasons as a catcher for the Twins, Mauer did stuff at the plate no catcher had ever done. Three batting titles. An MVP award. A 135 OPS+. That’s not just greatness at that position. That’s historic greatness — for a full decade, remember.

But then concussions forced him to spend the last five seasons of his career at first base. And you know how that went. In his time at first, Mauer batted only .278, slugged a minuscule .388, never made another All-Star team and never showed up on a single MVP ballot. So now that his debut on the Hall ballot has finally arrived, here’s the question:

Why wouldn’t the voters treat him like they once treated Ernie Banks? At a position where he played 10 seasons, Mauer was clearly way over the Hall of Fame line. So how heavily does he deserve to be penalized for honoring his contract by playing another position, where he wasn’t That Guy?

On a ballot that’s jammed with so many fun first-ballot names — Beltré, Utley, David Wright, Bartolo Colon, Matt Holliday, etc. — nobody is a more fascinating candidate to watch than the pride of St. Paul, Joe Mauer. But where is his vote total headed? That, my friends, is the reason columns like this exist.

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(Top photo of Adrián Beltré in 2012: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)