Kaegel, 81, wrote for the Granite City Press-Record in Illinois in 1964 and spent 12 years covering the Cardinals for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and more than two decades covering the Royals for The Kansas City Star. He edited The Sporting News from 1979 to 1985 and spent more than two decades covering the Royals for MLB.com. He covered all 162 games in 2011, four years after a liver transplant.
They can start the rebuild once it's too late, once there's little to trade for starter yeast. The Phillies started a little late -- it was clear at the 2014 trade deadline that they should have been sellers, but instead they held on to superfluous veterans such as Antonio Bastardo and Marlon Byrd. Even the pre-Klentak GM, Ruben Amaro Jr., said recently that in hindsight, he would have pushed to start the transition earlier. But they traded Bastardo and Byrd just a few months later, and by the time they tore down in earnest the next summer, they still had a lot of players other teams coveted: Cole Hamels, Ken Giles, Chase Utley.
Cincinnati Reds Face MasksIt was December 2014, and Dick Allen had been on the ballot for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame 17 times. And each time he had lost definitively, never getting more than 19% of the vote.
San Diego Padres Face MasksJeff Passan: As partial as I am to the Carter/Alomar/McGriff/Fernandez blockbuster trade in 1990, the only answer is the Texas Rangers signing Alex Rodriguez to a 10-year, $252 million deal at the 2000 meetings in Dallas. It's the single most consequential contract in sports history.
Pittsburgh Pirates Face Masks The Hall of Fame announced last week it was postponing the upcoming Golden Days Era Committee elections to next year. When the committee next meets in the autumn of 2021, though, it won’t just be a referendum on Allen’s career, but an opportunity for the Hall to confront the fraught history of systemic racism in baseball.
Kansas City Royals Face MasksAs we anxiously await the approved vaccines for COVID-19 and other advances in its prevention and treatment, the life-saving potential of face coverings simply can’t be overstated. I know that many people are tired of this message, and, unfortunately, mask-wearing has been tangled up in political perspectives at this time of deep divisions in our country.
Baseball writer Jay Jaffe has developed a stat called JAWS (Jaffe Wins Above Replacement Score). By averaging a player’s career WAR with their total WAR from their seven best seasons, JAWS is often used to determine the worthiness of a player for the Hall of Fame. Allen’s JAWS is 52.3, 17th-highest among third basemen in history, although slightly lower than the average for the third basemen already inducted (55.7). Jaffe still believes Allen deserves induction.