If Harper was medically retired tomorrow, he's not a hall of famer. It would be a David Wright situation.
If Harper can play well into his mid 30s then he'll make it.
Widely reported. It's not known. I don't think AA has ever commented on that.
All we know is that he was offered a 5 year extension and turned it down.
I'm not sure that's the case. He just didn't win enough hardware or develop a rock-solid reputation on either side of the ball.
Like, Yadier Molina was a 10 time AS and 9 time GG.
Posey 7 time AS, MVP, ROY, five time SS.
Russell had 4 AS, one GG, one SS.
His offensive reputation was sandbagged by batting average bias and on the defensive side the fancy stats loved his framing but I don't think traditional baseball people thought of him as like, almost the best defensive catcher in baseball, even though Fangraphs would say he was top 3 for most of his career.
Brian McCann is in the exact same boat as Russell.
If you look at the catchers in baseball historically then you can make a really strong argument that McCann and Russell deserve to be in the hall of fame. But isn't that kind of like the argument for putting relievers in there?
We simply do not know the complete story
The public comments by Shapiro might have come after AA had made it clear in some way that he wasn't sticking around
I am not sure that Shapiro really wanted control over the MLB side of things. From what we have seen he's not super interested in that.
Martin was also wildly successful in some of the soft, "team leader" ways
The guy made the playoffs in... 2006, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2019
Have you ever looked at Anthony Bass?
I don't want to be offensive but I am pretty sure he's gay, so he just has to do this stuff from time to time to hide his Grindr lifestyle. I mean he looks super gay.
It's a good point.
There are certain kinds of hitting talent that take longer to stabilize to the true talent level. This means that players who possess these talents may be unfairly discriminated against when/if they struggle for short periods of time, depending on the stage of their career.
These are some commonly used "50% stabilization points" for offensive stats:
80 BIP: GB rate
80 BIP: FB rate
600 BIP: LD rate
820 BIP: BABIP
60 PA: Strikeout rate
120 PA: Walk rate
240 PA: HBP rate
290 PA: Single rate
1610 PA: XBH rate
170 PA: HR rate
910 AB: AVG
460 PA: OBP
320 AB: SLG
160 AB: ISO
So to illustrate... in 160 AB you might have a good idea that a certain player can hit for power (ISO) and make contact (K rate), causing a team to give them more leash. But if a player of equal or greater talent does not excel in those areas you might cut him because his skills take longer to give you confidence. Maybe he is an OBP guy... 460 PA. Or worse, a guy who has a knack for hitting Line Drives for AVG with a high BABIP.
None of this is wrong. Lucky hits tonight.
But, Kikuchi is probably one of those "effectively wild" types. Even when he's decent it's not gonna be clean.