Tag: St. Louis Cardinals

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.

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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!

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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

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

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

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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

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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.