My Year in Review
I've written articles for a little over a year on Substack. How much did I get right?
Introduction
To cap off my first year of writing, I thought it’d be fun to look back at the articles I’d written during the past year. I often have written about players that I have a different take on than most other people, and that’s by design: if I were to write an article that everyone else had written, or share an opinion that is considered normal by everyone else, it’s not a very interesting discussion. My Pfaadt/Stone article fell victim to this the most, and it’s a big reason why it’s my least favorite piece by far. I avoided that pitfall earlier in the year was when I wanted to write an article about Clarke Schmidt, akin to the one I did for Josiah Gray. By the time I got around to it, though, everyone else had already written about it. I didn’t have much to add, so I decided to scrap the idea and do other ideas instead. Let’s see if some of those ideas were worth it.
Clay Holmes - My first article! I actually wrote 6 months prior to when I posted it last January, which was also when I first debated becoming a writer. I ended up changing it pretty heavily, and it’s certainly a little long-winded, even for my standards. But at a time when a lot of people were selling Holmes (some still do!), I didn’t see much cause for concern beyond the typical volatility of relievers. A 2.86 ERA and 2.65 FIP proved my confidence was well-placed, with command correction during the offseason fixing his case of the ‘yips’. The sinker/sweeper combo just plays too well to facilitate that many walks.
Trea Turner - This might be the piece of analysis I’m most proud of, despite it having the least views of any article I’ve posted. The truth hurts. At the time, Turner was consistently rated as a top-10 player, placing 9th on the consensus rankings from top 50 lists I collected, but I strongly believed otherwise, while being especially pessimistic about his long-term prospects. The key point was the difference between the public perception of his skillset, which was an accurate representation of Turner several years prior, and his actual skillset entering 2023. People saw him as a prototypical shortstop with lots of contact, speed, and sneaky 25-30 HR power when in reality, he was a whiff-heavy slugger who happened to play a decent shortstop and was also really fast. The power wasn’t some bonus to an All-Star caliber player, it’s what made him an All-Star. He rebounded towards the end of the year with a power resurgence, but the huge amount of swing and miss is a huge negative for his game, and will only get worse. A flawless stolen base record of 30:0 shows he still has those great legs, at least.
Josiah Gray - I got his cutter addition spot on, but there wasn’t nearly as much improvement, especially in terms of confidence, as I would have expected. His decent 3.93 ERA hides a 4.91 FIP and the fact that he had a lower strikeout rate, and a higher walk rate, than a year before. He cut his home run rate in half at the very least, and a BABIP of .293 might be due for some positive regression based on his career to date. The original message still holds firm: he can’t afford to walk the house if he wants to be a successful pitcher; his stuff simply isn’t that overwhelming, and his defense isn’t going to bail him out of any jams. A mediocre performance for both me and Josiah here.
2023 Top 50 Part 1 and Part 2 - I went over a lot of it in the Top 50 Recap article, but here are some general points:
I’m happy that my assessment of Machado, Turner, and to a lesser extent, Alcantara and Goldschmidt, being overhyped was correct. I think a lot of this was just recency bias from a great season, which is rearing its head again with guys like Corey Seager, especially when considering Machado and Turner. Only two of 9 rankers had Machado below 11th, and he put up less than 4 wins/650 PA in a full season’s workload. He had some hand and elbow issues, but I don’t buy the fact that altered his play much. His peripherals ended up being virtually identical to those from 2022. See above for my thoughts on Trea Turner.
My aggressive assessments of Julio Rodriguez and Adley Rutschman paid off, and I am trying to be more aggressive in my 2024 list. Corbin Carroll and Ha-Seong Kim were both considered in a similar vein, but were omitted. I never considered Gunnar for the list.
On some of my failures: Rodon ended up having unforeseen fastball regression and command issues, although he is extremely volatile as a two-pitch pitcher. Burnes didn’t bounce back to earn his top-10 ranking, but I think there’s still more in the tank there. I forgot I even put Byron “Busted” Buxton on my list, which demonstrates my current feelings about him perfectly. Shane McClanahan got hurt, breaking my heart and all my fantasy pitching staffs.
My biggest regret is omitting Matt Olson. He never got serious consideration, honestly.
I promise my top 50 list for this year won’t be as long, which doesn’t say a lot. But it will be!
Mason Miller - I didn’t know much about Miller before the season, so this article was an opportunity to share my thoughts shortly after my first deep dive into him. Unfortunately, he ended up getting hurt for the rest of the year, so there are not many results to assess yet. There are rumors that he will become a closer or long reliever, which seems like a financial decision to lower arbitration prices supported halfheartedly by injury concerns. For a team that is so deep in the doldrums, there’s no reason he can’t find a spot in the rotation for as many innings as they can reasonably give him.
Brent Rooker - The article that probably was the least correct out of all of them. I found it humorous that I could compare a 28-year-old, waived-just-a-year-before outfielder to Mike Trout, but I managed to make it a tiny bit reasonable (not really). The statement that incriminates me here is that I said Rooker would be an All-Star for years to come, which is unlikely to be true with just two months above a .700 OPS after April. However, a profile that can give 30 HR and a 137 OPS+ will give him hefty consideration every year on a team that will likely not field many candidates, giving me the potential to be technically correct. Josiah Gray was an All-Star last year, remember.
Pfaadt/Stone - My least favorite article, as said before. I didn’t have much to say that was particularly interesting, so it was kind of pointless. My analysis was spot on, because I stated the laughably obvious, and there wasn’t too much elaboration on the future. My review of it will be similarly brief.
Corbin Burnes - Burnes was getting a lot of heat for regressing in the middle of June, even though he still managed to lead the NL in WHIP at the end of the year, which I didn’t know until researching for this very article. I think he suffers from a serious amount of “anchoring,” where people are so used to his 2020-2021 form that the elite production he had in 2023 is seen as bad for his standards. He was 1st in Stuff+, 5th in WHIP and 12th in ERA+ amongst qualified SP despite far lower strikeout rates, but you’d think he was dead-average based on how people were talking about him. He’s not the 9th best player in the league, as I asserted in my 2023 rankings, and there’s probably a little more concern than I let on in this article. But I’m nowhere near done believing in the talent to bounce back with such a deep and complementary arsenal.
Luis Arraez - The concept of this article was my personal favorite. I felt like discussion about Luis Arraez’s chase for .400 was oversaturated in the media, to say the least, but I was still able to attack it from a unique angle. While many argued that Arraez had the prototypical skills to hit .400, I think the skillset to hit .400 is noticeably different than the one needed to hit for a sustainably high average, requiring discipline and power (with speed always being useful as well), rather than simply great bat-to-ball skills. It’s no coincidence that the seasons closest to .400 in the past 80 seasons for contact hitters like Gwynn and Carew were in outlier power and discipline years for their standards. Of course, low strikeouts are a prerequisite too, but that still makes a player like Ronald Acuna or Jose Ramirez a much better challenger to Williams’ throne than Arraez. FoolishBaseball deserves credit too, since a lot of the talking points here originated from his Votto video. Given that Arraez finished almost as close to .300 as .400, I’d say this article aged well.
Ryan/Lopez - When this article was first written, Joe Ryan was performing much better than Pablo Lopez, and by the time I released it, they were basically tied statistically, which makes my conclusion that Lopez was significantly better than Ryan a lot less impressive than it could have been. Worst of all, it didn’t get published before Joe Ryan’s regression™ game against the Braves, which convincingly proved my point that dropping his sweeper was a colossal mistake. I’ve been a fan of both of these pitchers for years, so I’m glad to see that both saw some success in 2023. However, I still think Ryan needs some serious strides to be taken to be a consistently competent SP in 2024 (starting with a way to get RHB out on the regular), while Pablo Lopez could be a Cy Young winner with minimal refinement.
Woo/Miller - The beginning of my love for Woocifer, a nickname that I will futilely try to catch on as long as I can. Like Mason Miller, I had no idea who Bryan Woo was until he got promoted, but my love for high VAA fastballs with deep arsenals made me instantly a huge fan. While my take that Woo was a better long-term pitcher might be a commonly-held opinion now, Miller was the far more popular commodity then, thanks to the elite vertical break on his fastball. The problem is that his fastball can’t do it all, though, and the shallow arsenal eventually caught up to him. I’m still a fan of Miller long-term, but I think Woo has a much larger chance of immediate impact. Contrary to what a lot of people say about Woo, I think he’s much less fastball-reliant than people think. He only threw the 4-Seam 47% of the time in 2023, which is a perfectly reasonable number given its performance, and grouping his 87.5 mph cutters with his 95 mph hard stuff seems more like narrative ball than analysis.
Blake Snell - Before writing this, I was out on Snell, but the results that I uncovered made me surprisingly far in. His approach is so unique, like the extremely-regimented fastballs up, breaking ball down approach that bears his name, and that makes him a fascinating player to analyze. It’s too recent to say much on this article (or any of the following ones, frankly) since they were written after the season ended, but I suspect Snell will have a Gausman-esque trajectory of being underpaid, then turning into someone remarkably consistent given their repertoire. I was a fan of Gausman entering 2021, but I didn’t believe in him to keep the pace; I don't want to make the same mistake here. Outlier approaches can command unexpected results, and Snell is dictionary definition of a pitching unicorn.
Cody Bellinger - My opinion on Bellinger can’t really be evaluated yet, but the 3-year/$80 million contract that he recently signed with the Cubs certainly can. I wouldn’t be shocked if he chose not to opt out of his 2nd year at $30 million, given that most teams weren’t willing to cough up $20 million a year for a long-term deal in a fairly weak FA class. Next year, the market will be stacked with talent, and it’ll be even harder to convince teams to bring him in. I still don't see how the power sustains itself with his new approach, and that was the primary reason for his All-Star level offense in 2023 and subsequently large contract demands.
Tarik Skubal - Skubal has reportedly messed with his slider and curve, which are probably the two most problematic offerings in his repertoire at the moment. I highlighted his slider as a ‘consistent’ offering, with the ability to dominate left-handed hitters, so I presume the change is to make it more hospitable vs. RHB, but it probably will end up being quite minor. I mentioned the curve as a pitch that would be great to get more into the fold to introduce a third speed range, and another option to beat the righties that he has many more problems against. It also seems like he’s retained his velocity gains from last year, and perhaps upped it even further, hitting 99.5 mph in his first Spring Training appearance; a great first step toward repeating that dominance. A lot of people cite his weak schedule as the propellant to his success, but that feels like lazy analysis - he performed very well with a less-refined repertoire in his 117 ⅔ 2022 innings, and was actually better statistically against winning clubs than losing ones during that season.
BP Annual (Pirates) - It’s not part of my Substack, but it was a critical part of my writing this past year, and is certainly the highlight of my short writing career. I’m still surprised that I was offered the opportunity, but I hope my work was strong enough to command its place amongst so many other talented writers. For someone who likes to drone on and on in these articles, 150 words or so per player is a tough mark to meet. I wrote most of the player summaries for the Pirates’ major-league roster, and the book is certainly worth purchasing if you haven’t already.
2023 Top 50 Retrospective - I spent a lot of time on this one, because I thought it was important to strike the proper tone between being critical and giving leniency for being judged on takes you had 10+ months prior. When I first came up with the idea of this article, I envisioned it as more of a review of my own list, but the comparison to other lists necessitated a huge preamble about my methodology, and I underestimated the complexity and length of it all. It’s performed well so far, which is weird to say given that it’s more of a “rambling about a random spreadsheet I made” article than a baseball analysis one. If I do one for 2024, let’s all hope that MLB Network doesn’t break the scale this time.
Conclusion
I think I had a very strong year overall, writing and otherwise. Most of my articles ended up aging quite well, I got invited to write in the BP Annual, and my (barely) fantasy-adjacent writing got me into TGFBI. When I first started writing on the Substack, a large part of my rationale was to have a body of work to demonstrate my ability to analyze baseball when applying to baseball positions; I’ve never considered myself to be a writer, or to be good at writing. But writing so much in the past year about my passion has allowed it to evolve into more of a fun exercise than a portfolio-building one, which is a piece of cool character development.
The next article will be the first part of my Top Players for 2024, covering ranks 1-25. I like doing ranks 1-25 first since slots 26-50 are much more difficult to rank, but that doesn’t mean I won't have a couple of surprises in there. For example, my #1 player hasn’t been ranked there on any other top 50/100 list I’ve seen so far.
I’m going to be aggressive and say it releases by Wednesday. Let’s see if I can keep that promise.