Puzzlingly Warming the Stove

 

Well. Primitive of me to assume the offseason can ever start gradually. It's never a subtle, slow burn. Always just a bang. Josh Naylor re-signed with Seattle the other day, the qualifying offers went through today, and now I suppose it's on. Cause the O's and Angels just did something pretty crazy.

Okay, let's see here. Taylor Ward is one of the longest-tenured Angels aside from Mike Trout, he's okay on defense but his power ceiling's very high, and he just had his biggest year at the plate with 36 homers and 103 RBIs. This is the kind of year the Orioles would deal away someone for having, not deal for. Ward is gonna be 32, he's been healthy the past two seasons, and is still definitely a suitable lineup piece. Therefore, the Orioles trading for him is a very big move to adorn their still-young lineup with a veteran presence. 

Next year, the Orioles will be relying on Samuel Basallo, Dylan Beavers, Gunnar Henderson, Colton Cowser, Jordan Westburg, Jackson Holiday, Jeremiah Jackson and possibly even Adley Rutschman if they decide to keep him. That's a stacked roster, but it's also very young. A Taylor Ward type is a very good add-on, and one that could lead to a surprise Trumbo-in-2016 or Cruz-in-2014 type success. So I like this move from the O's perspective, just on the grounds that the Orioles need a bat like Ward, and he's better off there than in Anaheim.

However...I'm not quite sure about what they gave up for him.

So. Going into 2026, the Orioles' rotation is looking like it'll be some combination of Trevor Rogers, Kyle Bradish, Dean Kremer, Tyler Wells and Cade Povich if he decides to show up. Eflin and Sugano have left in free agency. It's not a deep bench, and four members of it have recently missed large swaths of time due to injury, leaving the only actual proven consistent guy for 2026 as...Dean Kremer. And I'd like to remind you that the Orioles do plan on competing next year. So even if Rogers, Bradish, Wells and Povich do manage to figure out A.) how not to get hurt and B.) how not to entirely shit the bed given the opportunity, looking at you Cade, that's not the kind of rotation that strikes fear into the heart of competitors. That's assuming Trevor Rogers plays like he did this year, Kyle Bradish plays like he did in 2023, and Tyler Wells plays like he's done in partial seasons. All at the same time for at least 32 games. You're probably understanding why I'm concerned.

The Orioles were going to get Grayson Rodriguez back next year after missing 2025 with arm surgery. And they just traded him to Anaheim. 

Now. MAYBE. Possibly. Mike Elias has something else up his sleeve in regards to bringing in starting talent. I really want to believe this. I'm also hesitant, because when he gives the idea that he's going to do this, all he brings in is a year of Tomoyuki Sugano, and a year of Charlie Morton. That's not trending upwards, that's treading water. In 2024, this rotation had Corbin Burnes. Now it doesn't even have Grayson Rodriguez. So I really hope he's got some other ideas on how to repopulate the rotation. There's guys out here who can make this look more impressive. Because if he doesn't, and Bradish, Wells and Rogers all go down again and all they can muster is Brandon Young, George Soriano and a barrel of hammers, he isn't allowed to play the 'well we triiiiiiied and it's haaaaaard' game. If you don't want to run a baseball club's roster, pick another vocation. 

Grayson Rodriguez will probably be fine for the Angels. I sincerely hope he's able to stay healthy there, because if he does he'll finally reach the potential he was [sigh] supposed to with Baltimore. Yeah, remember that? Around the same time as Rutschman, Henderson and Holliday were big prospects, Grayson Rodriguez was talked about in the same breath. His MLB material, especially in 2024, was worth it. I was in Baltimore this year, getting in early enough to see people walking home from a game, and they were carrying Grayson Rodriguez bobbleheads. It was his bobblehead day. Injured, yes, but he got one. Because there was that much promise. And to throw that away, even when you NEED a guy like him to keep the rotation in any way suitable...that's suspect.

Who knows, maybe this works out and Elias is a genius. I just have a funny feeling that they're gonna regret paring down the rotation shelf. Unless the return for Adley is an Opening Day rotation guy [or two], I'm gonna be baffled by them parting with Rodriguez for a little bit, Ward and all.

MVPs: Like Nothing Even Happened

 

There's gonna be a lot of talk in the next couple years about how Rob Manfred is trying to make baseball palatable to everyone while also robbing it of the aspects that help the majority of people enjoy it. And one of the things that the opposition party will point out is that the two richest teams were able to buy the two best players in the game and then they won consecutive MVPs, after competing for MVPs in the same league for several years. 

The last time someone who was not Judge or Ohtani won an MVP was 2020, the year that the voters had only 2 months of sample size and gave awards to two guys in their 30s who were hot. The last two seasons, despite valid opposition in both leagues, Judge and Ohtani have won MVPs. Last year Francisco Lindor honestly should have won an MVP, but Ohtani's 50/50 year put that out of the question. This year, Aaron Judge won it over Cal Raleigh, which is a very controversial decision, one that even I don't really agree with. But again, these two are the stars of the game, they're both in their prime, they're both having incredible seasons and by-and-large nobody's surpassing their greatness.

Judge's season was still a great one, but it's very clear that the second half took some of the wind out of its sails. That first half he hit .355 with 35 homer and a 1.194 OPS, and in the second half he only hit .286 with 18 homers and a 1.051 OPS. He slowed down tremendously, and despite the odd postseason moment he just couldn't ride it out to the end. And while statistically Raleigh did also buckle in the second half, with an .859 OPS as opposed to his initial 1.011, he still produced enough of a power surge to lap Judge and finish the season with 60 homers [not counting the postseason ones]. There's a lot of people who talk about the sentimentality of the sport, and there's something very cool about a switch-hitting catcher leading the league in homers with 60. I'd absolutely commemorate that. Saying that it doesn't matter if he didn't hit .265 is short-sighted, because we've given Giancarlo Stanton awards for power nonsense. 

Aaron Judge still managed to hit for power and contact in a season, and led the Yankees to the postseason almost single-handedly, yet again. He also has three of these. If Cal Raleigh goes his whole career without an MVP, sportswriters are gonna retroactively go 'maybe he should have gotten it here'. But y'know. Nobody knows anything. 

Anyway, remember how people were convinced that Judge was over the hill going into the contract and now he's won 2 straight MVPs? Amazing.

Not really much to say on the subject of Ohtani, though. He's just the best. Having as good of an offensive season as last year, plus getting to pitch, and being just as good? Yeah, give it to that man, for sure. I dunno what else to say, even Schwarber'd agree that there was no shot. 

But yeah, again the season is defined by two guys getting paid the works, while a guy making much less just scrapes underneath. Tony Clark, I hope you're taking notes. 

Cy Youngs: Uncontroversially Yours

 
Here is how good of a pitching year 2025 was. We still have two very obvious Cy Young winners, while also having insanely worthy runners-up that could have won in another universe and a Zack Wheeler season that could have qualified had the injury not happened. It's not like a year where there was a clear standout performance and the writers went with Rick Porcello or some shit. No, Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal were the two best pitchers in baseball this year, and they deserve these. 

Paul Skenes getting a Cy Young in his first full season in the bigs and immediately after winning Rookie of the Year while still finishing 3rd in the Cy Young voting should tell you everything you need to know about his chops. We are still in the era where every Skenes start is must-see TV, and that's probably gonna be the case for a while. This year, Skenes' age-23 season, he posted a 7.7 WAR, a 1.97 ERA and 216 Ks, while leading the league in WHIP with 0.948. No wonder it was unanimous. Cristopher Sanchez had an amazing year, but it wasn't this good. At this point, nobody's topping Paul Skenes, because from LSU onward, Skenes has been doing shit that pitchers just cannot normally do. Now, granted, Bob Nutting, idiot that he is, doesn't seem to have any plans to sign him long-term. So this may all be just a preview for the Yankees or Dodgers to trade or sign somewhere down the road. But at the very least, he's giving Pirates fans a reason to care for the time being. It may not culminate in a full-team effort for 1st, but they've still got a one-of-a-kind pitcher, and they're savoring every moment.

Tarik Skubal's in a similar boat, where the Tigers' GM is also floating the possibility of dealing him, foolishly. If anyone's worth the money, it's Skubal. Two straight years he's been the best pitcher in the AL, and this year he even outdid a phenomenal Garrett Crochet season by plugging in even more, with a 2.21 ERA [lower than last year], 241 strikeouts [more than last year] and a 0.891 WHIP [lower than last year]. Skubal, after some injury plagued years, has found that sweet spot, and has become the ace this Tigers team desperately needs. I don't see them going as far without Skubal, because both postseasons to date have greatly relied upon Sku getting up there every 3 days and being unhittable. Dude made 3 starts this postseason, had a 1.74 ERA 36 strikeouts. THIRTY SIX STRIKEOUTS IN THREE GAMES. Just efficient as hell, and I'm happy to see it. 

If this was a just league, with just CEOs [heh, what an oxymoron], both these guys would be getting the money that Samuel Basallo, Jackson Chourio, Michael Harris and Lawrence Butler have gotten without proving themselves anywhere near as much. But y'know...just can't find that money, right?

The MVPs are a little hazier. Well, one of 'em is. How weird is it that I'm honestly rooting for the outcome where the Yankee doesn't win?

Rookies of the Year: Sentimental Value

 

Just because I called both of these doesn't mean that I agree with them.

Of any of these awards, the Rookie of the Year award is the most likely to vex me, because the MLB has managed to make so many rules to classify what makes a 'great rookie', which they don't always follow. Like, a rookie can debut midway through the year and not get a Topps rookie card until the following year yet still qualify for the award, yet if they appear in games in one season that isn't full and make a definitive impact while they're there, they can't qualify. Luis Gil and Randy Arozarena did not deserve Rookie of the Year awards because they weren't rookies. Luckily, both Nick Kurtz and Drake Baldwin made the cutoff for Topps Update, and played almost the entire season in the majors, so there's no loopholes or anything there.

It really comes down to nuance. Can you definitively say that this player made the most impact of any first-year player in the league? One of these, I say absolutely. The other is more complicated. 

Nick Kurtz is the one I agree with, because for a month and a half he was one of the single best hitters in baseball, and finished the year with a 1.002 OPS. Kurtz hit 36 home runs and 86 RBIs in 117 games, the majority of those homers coming in an unbelievable midyear stretch. Said stretch also included an absolutely wild four-homer game against the Astros. The A's are a rebuilding team putting down a ton of great young players they can build on, and Kurtz is absolutely one of them. It's even to the point where Kurtz lapped Jacob Wilson, an early-season ROY candidate who started the All-Star game for the AL but struggled after getting hurt in said game. Wilson and Kurtz were both important to the A's season, but Kurtz is the next step for the A's towards competing again, and you can see it already. So him I completely agree with. That's absolutely the Rookie of the Year in the AL.

It's Drake Baldwin that is confusing me. Because I don't know what he really represents in regards to shifting the story of the season.

Let's look at Drake Baldwin in context of the 2025 Atlanta Braves. Baldwin is the 3rd-best Brave statistically, after Matt Olson and Chris Sale. Sale was limited by injuries for about a month or so. The majority of the Braves that would have lapped Baldwin's 3.3 WAR, such as Ronald Acuna, Spencer Schwellenbach or even Jurickson Profar, Reynaldo Lopez or Spencer Strider, were all limited by injuries. Most crucially, the team's starting catcher, Sean Murphy, who is the highest paid catcher in baseball by the way, missed some time due to injuries early, then only hit .194 the rest of the season, despite continuing to be an excellent defensive catcher. 

It comes down to this: if the Braves do not have an absolutely cursed year, Drake Baldwin does not get chances to start, and does not become a major player for this team. Further, even with the opportunities given to him during this cursed season, Drake Baldwin was only an ensemble piece of this Braves team. The Braves were not the Drake Baldwin show this season, like the A's were the Nick Kurtz show, because the Braves still relied on Matt Olson, Ronald Acuna, Grant Holmes, Michael Harris and Hurston Waldrep. Baldwin was, at the very least, reliable, hitting .274 with 19 homers and 80 RBIs, with slightly-below-average defensive numbers. He was a solid piece of a Braves team that was doomed from the start, and Baldwin made them only slightly less doomed than they already were. Considering the fact that Sean Murphy is still on this team, and is better defensively, I genuinely do not know if the Braves will get 5 to 10 more years of Drake Baldwin behind the plate, or even if that's something they want.

To me, the NL's Rookie of the Year this year was Cade Horton. Dude popped into the Chicago rotation midyear, went on an incredible run, became one of their most indispensable pitchers, and made them the low-key wild card juggernaut they became. To the point where they honestly struggled without him in the playoffs. Cade Horton is a big piece of why the Cubs made the playoffs, and a big piece of why they didn't make it to the World Series is that Cade Horton wasn't there every three games. That guy made or broke a season of a major competitor, and that's a more accurate ROY to me. Baldwin was very good for a mediocre team, and took full advantage of the opportunity given to him. 

I knew he'd win Rookie of the Year because sportswriters love that sentimental stuff. Baldwin appeals to the idea in many writers' association guys' heads of 'the guy that pops in unexpectedly and saves the team'. And they don't think it through enough to ask if he really actually saved the team. The people who voted Drake Baldwin to win the Rookie of the Year fell in love with the idea of Drake Baldwin over what Drake Baldwin actually was. And yes, there are lots of Braves fans who can speak to how Baldwin excelled this year, and how he was one of their best pieces, but even they'll admit that he has his limitations, and even they'll admit that they're not sure how much of a ceiling he has. So it's really a vexing outcome.

I could be very wrong, and Cade Horton could be the flash in the pan I was thinking Baldwin would be. But just from where I'm sitting, I think this is a move that won't age well. Still, congrats to both winners. May the glory never end. 

Topps Cards That Should Have Been: 1999 Harold Baines

 

It always amuses me which short-term stops Topps misses. 

Harold Baines played for only five teams over the course of his career, and it feels like more because he played for the White Sox and Orioles multiple times in a 20 year period. The last several years of Baines' career was a constant volley back and forth between Chicago and Baltimore, oftentimes both in the same year. Not that Baines' material was an issue, as Baines routinely hit loads of RBIs and a bunch of 25-homer years along his lengthy career. It was mostly just one team losing momentum and the other getting him for a playoff spot, and then back again.

The only time from 1993 til 2001 that Harold Baines played for a team that wasn't the Orioles or the White Sox was the tail end of the 1999 season, a season that began with some of the last great numbers of Baines's career, a .322 average, 24 homers and 82 RBIs in 107 games in Baltimore. And let's be clear, Baines did all of this as a 40-year old. However, during the waiver wire period in August, the Indians, still needing a surefire DH bat in the years since Eddie Murray's departure, took a chance on Baines for a stretch run, and traded two never-to-develop minor leaguers to the O's to get him. 

Baines's time in Cleveland was short but somewhat memorable. The regular season didn't add a whole lot to his full season effort, he hit .271 with 1 homer and 23 RBIs, at the very least enough for his third 100+ RBI year, and his first since he was 26 years old. Not quite Orioles hot, but still productive. The postseason is where Baines really hits his stride for the Indians. In 4 games, over the course of a contentious ALDS that the Red Sox would eventually win in 5 games, Baines hit .357 with 1 homer and 4 RBIs in 14 at-bats. Somehow, a 40-year-old DH was enough to keep the Indians alive until Game 5. Even if it was futile, the Cleveland massive would not forget this. 

After the season, Baines would re-sign with Baltimore, then be dealt back to Chicago, where he'd finish his career a year and a half later. Topps only had time to make a card of Baines in a Cleveland uniform in 2000 Stadium Club; there would be no luck for the flagship set, not even for a Traded set. Despite the lack of true photo options, I did manage to make a fitting 1999T issue for Baines, filling in the gap of a career that has otherwise been well documented on Topps cards.

Second Wind for a Second Win

 

My initial takeaway from last night's game is that nobody wanted that World Series to end. Everybody wanted the win, and everybody wanted to do whatever necessary to make it happen. Every pitcher gave everything they had left, from the starters, Scherzer and Ohtani, to every past starter who made a relief appearance, like Glasnow, Bassitt, Bieber, Snell, Yesavage and especially Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who stamped his ticket to an MVP by being as good last night as he was Friday night [somehow]. Nobody wanted this to be easy.

But then you think of the outcome, and the way we got there, and you're handed a different idea entirely: everybody wanted the World Series again because everybody, bar the few that made it a game, was absolutely exhausted. The Jays put up a graphic midway through of Max Scherzer and Bo Bichette, the two that made this a 3-1 Jays lead for most of the game, and both of them had substantial missed time in between the regular season and part of the postseason. Scherzer had the bye and didn't make the ALDS roster. Bo was out for a couple months and didn't get here til the World Series. Both had big moments last night, Bo with his 3-run bomb and Max with his dominant start. A lot of other Blue Jays did not rise to the occasion, and Vlad, Kirk and Barger were given moments to win it and couldn't. Even on the Dodgers' side, the big pieces, like Ohtani, Freeman, Muncy and Betts, didn't factor into this as much.

Cause they were all absolutely fried from seven months of this shit. And it had finally gotten to them. Remember back in the day, when hitters didn't swing on every pitch and pitchers didn't throw hard on every pitch, when the postseason only lasted like a week and a half? This shit is not sustainable anymore.

But because this season now lasts that long, the guys who were cold have enough time to get hot again and be the heroes in the last moments of the season. That explains Andres Gimenez, who was listless for a while, having a hero moment. That explains Yamamoto, whose Cy Young case fell off expediently as the season went on, becoming unstoppable in October. And that explains Miguel Rojas, who hadn't hit a home run in over a month, and had barely gotten any hits in the postseason, being the man to hit the game-tying home run off of Jeff Hoffman in the ninth, as the Jays were two outs away from hoisting the trophy themselves. Rojas had the game of his life last night, and for a career workhorse who always keeps his head down and does his job, and is a favorite to manage after his career, Rojas being the hero is a very cool thing. It's not a flash in the pan guy, it's not the obvious choice. It's a reliable, hardworking guy who needed recognition. 

There were so many incredible moments in that game. Pages making the catch in center field after subbing in. Vlad turning a double play. That insane moment where it looked like Will Smith could have blown the game by lifting his cleat off the plate for a millisecond. Then Smith getting to be the hero. And then the Kirk GDP that ended the game. I was exhausted in the seventh inning but I needed to know how this ended, and even if I'd have preferred a Jays win, I cannot stay too mad at that outcome. The Dodgers won by never giving up and continuing to pound a team that was inches from taking it themselves.

Now...there's a lot about this that I'm very concerned about. Like the fact that we only got this game because of a very dubious dead ball moment in Game 6 that could have tied the game. And the fact that this is the exact outcome that Rob Manfred wants, because it strengthens the case in favor of a salary cap, which will no doubt lead to an avoidable standstill, the likes of which we already have enough of at the moment. And the fact that I literally wrote a post when the Dodgers got Roki Sasaki, saying 'there's no need to play the season at all, as they just bought a ring', and literally no one else could stop them despite obvious flaws. The Dodgers' bullpen could have lost them this Series, and they gamed the system so that they barely had to use it at all. 

The way to stopping the Dodgers is not stopping the Dodgers. The way to stopping the Dodgers is encouraging the other 29 owners to do exactly what the Dodgers have been doing to win. This season proved that that's how you win World Series, you outspend the competition and reward players. Nobody else wants to do that. Especially guys like John Fisher and Bob Nutting and the Pohlads and...and I could go on. These people have no desire to actually spend money on their baseball teams, and Manfred has no incentive to make them, because of the amount of leverage he has over the players' association because of this Dodgers win. And hey, people watched! They watched cause a lot of them wanted the other outcome, but they sure watched. The only thing that may not be in Manfred's corner heading into a potential lockout  in a year or so, is that, uh...somebody that famously enjoys rewarding billionaires may not be too keen on a California team being that good at winning right now. 

It is absolutely true that this outcome can be both a very good, and exciting one, and also a disastrous one for the future of the game. I'm mostly saying this because I genuinely don't know what's going to happen next year, and there's a lot of doomerism out there where people are convinced there isn't gonna be a 2026 season, let alone a 2027 one. Maybe I'll be able to enjoy this more in hindsight then.

Anyway. Congratulations to the Dodgers, and Dodgers fans. A lot needs to be fixed for me to enjoy this more, but I definitely enjoyed this World Series. Now to the waiting. Hopefully it's not that long.