In an effort to make these very long articles more readable, I decided to split up this year’s Future Hall of Fame Hitters update into two roughly equal halves. Part 2 will be picking up right where Part 1 left off, starting at Age 30. If you missed that first article (which includes an introduction and an explainer for the methodology as well as the under-30 players), you can go back catch up on it here. The next update, focusing on starting pitchers, should start going up soon, so look for...
6 days ago • 2 min read
A quick note: This year’s Future Hall of Fame Hitters piece wound up being nearly 10,000 words. So, in order to break things up a little bit and make it less imposing, plus to buy me more time to work on the Pitchers piece, I’m going to be splitting it up. One half this week, one early next week. You will of course get an email when Part 2 goes live; thank you again for subscribing to this mailing list!!It’s once again that time of the spring, where I update my yearly Future Hall of Fame...
10 days ago • 2 min read
Last time I made a big playlist article, I mentioned that it felt a little shorter than usual, and wasn’t sure if it was a trend or something. As it turned out, it was not! I was in the mood for finding new music the last few months, and then Year-End lists gave me a lot more to dig through on top of that (I still have a bunch of stuff from those earmarked to check out once this is done). In the interest of time, I’m just going to jump right in. As always, if you like any of this stuff,...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
For the second year in a row, the Baseball Writers sent a three-person group to Cooperstown. Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia made it in their first election, while longtime Astro closer Billy Wagner made it on his tenth and final try. Those three, along with Veterans Committee picks Dave Parker and Dick Allen, will serve as Baseball’s Hall of Fame Class of 2025. It’s a pretty well-rounded bunch, spearheaded by the first Japanese player in Cooperstown history. Ichiro, in his first ever ballot,...
2 months ago • 1 min read
One thing that I thought about while writing my most recent update on Hall of Fame voting was to revisit an older topic with new information. Two years ago, I looked at Scott Rolen’s Hall of Fame chances in the run-up to the 2023 announcement. That wound up being the year that he was elected, coming up just ahead of the needed 75%, but prior to that moment, things were genuinely up in the air. Projections had him at more or less coin-flip odds of making it.The biggest uncertainty at that...
2 months ago • 1 min read
2025 Hall of Fame voting has technically already finished. For a BBWAA writer to have their vote counted in this year’s election, the vote had to be completed and returned by the final day of 2024. I’m not sure if that date is a “postmarked by” deadline, or if Cooperstown actually has every ballot in hand already, but the larger point is that everyone who has voted has already weighed in. We just don’t know it yet, and we won’t know the official final tally until the Hall’s announcement on...
2 months ago • 1 min read
For a bit now, I’ve been wanting to do more Music Monday articles that aren’t just “Playlists of What I’ve Been Listening To Lately”, but wasn’t sure what. I started kicking around a deep dive into one of my favorite bands, CHVRCHES, but the piece wound up kind of long and I never quite finished it before getting distracted with other writing. However! Last Friday, the group’s frontwoman Lauren Mayberry released her debut solo album, ‘Vicious Creature’. I’ll almost certainly write about...
3 months ago • 4 min read
The first half of 2025’s Hall of Fame election is done: on Sunday, the Veterans Committee announced that they would be sending two new members into Cooperstown’s next class, Dick Allen and Dave Parker. I’ve written quite a few pieces on this vote recently, between my two-part analysis ofthis year’s eight-player ballot and my breakdown of this election’s sixteen-member voting body. So before moving on to the upcoming Baseball Writers’ election (which will be announced towards the end of...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Hopefully by now, with some downtime over Thanksgiving week, you’ve had time to read my major piece on the Hall of Fame’s upcoming Veterans Committee ballot. If not, you can catch up on Part 1 here (covering Dick Allen, Ken Boyer, John Donaldson, and Steve Garvey), and Part 2 here (covering Vic Harris, Tommy John, Dave Parker, and Luis Tiant). The actual voting will be occurring this weekend, and in the lead-up, we finally got the last piece of information in that puzzle: who the actual...
4 months ago • 1 min read
