American League Hinge Guys!

Every year, we try to find fun new ways to do the Baseball Previews. This time around, I’m starting with a rundown of each team’s Hinge Guy — the player the season hinges on.

Plus, I’m expanding a JoeBlogs favorite feature “That Guy Was Good” and giving you a TGWG for every team in baseball. This took so much longer than I expected. But it was a blast.

We’ll start today with the American League.

AL West

California Angels – Mike Trout, Right Field

Here’s a case where, honestly, I don’t even know what it means to be a key player for the Angels. This is a deeply flawed roster, and the Angels’ farm system is once again finished in the bottom of the team rankings. But, we will watch Mike Trout because he’s the greatest player of his generation and he says that he’s healthy, and the Angels moved him from center to right field to keep him that way. Trout has not played 130 games in a season since 2019 — he finished second in the MVP award that year. Can he be that Mike Trout again? It’s the best reason to tune in.

Bonus “That Guy Was Good” — Lyman Bostock

Lyman Bostock, the father, is listed in the big league record books as one of the seven players to hit .400 since 1940. The one everyone knows is Ted Williams, of course. The other six were Negro Leaguers. Historians have found 73 at-bats for Lyman Bostock in 1941 when he played for the Birmingham Black Barons. He cracked 34 hits, giving him a .466 batting average.

The numbers don’t really matter here — Lyman Boston, the father, was an elegant left-handed hitter, and according to legend, he was a mentor to a young Birmingham kid named Willie Mays.

“My father helped teach Willie,” his son, Lyman Bostock, said. “But he never taught me.”

Lyman Bostock, the son, was also an elegant hitter. In his first full season in 1976, he hit .323. The next year, he hit .336 and finished second in the batting race to his teammate Rod Carew. Bostock was often compared to Carew, and after the 1977 season, he signed what was then a jaw-dropping five-year, $2.7 million deal.

He got off to a terrible start with California. He was hitting sub-.200 in mid-May and told owner Gene Autry he didn’t deserve his salary. “I’m not worth it,” he said. Autry insisted on paying, and Bostock gave the money to charity until he got hot, which he did as June began. Boston hit .331 for the next four months and was firmly on the path to superstardom.

On September 23 of that season, Bostock went two-for-four and scored a run in the Angels’ loss at Chicago. That evening, he was sitting in the back of his uncle’s pickup truck in Gary, Indiana when a man fired a shotgun at the car — aimed, apparently, at Bostock’s uncle. Buckshot struck Bostock in the head. He died three hours later. “Mr. Bostock,” the police sergeant told reporters, “was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“He enlivened our clubhouse and took us out of the darkness of defeat,” Ken Brett would say of his old teammate. “But he was a winner.”

Houston Astros – Christian Walker, First Base

The Astros seem to me like 2 a.m. as a once raging party; you look around and go, “Wait, who is still here?” Yordan Alvarez is still the center of attention. Jose Altuve’s still here, though weirdly he’s in left field now. Framber Valdez is still here, but he seems a bit peeved that the Astros didn’t even try to sign him. The team feels a bit like a jumble, but they are seven-time defending division champions with plenty of fascinating players. One of those is Christian Walker, who spent the last three years in Arizona doing a persuasive impression of Paul Goldschmidt. He averaged 29 doubles and 32 home runs over those three seasons and he won three Gold Gloves. He turns 34 on Opening Day, but the Astros made a sizable bet (three years, $60 million) that he’s still got a lot left.

Bonus “That Guy Was Good” — Glenn Davis

I once got into a multi-hour, drag-out argument with a friend over this eternal question: Who is better, Glenn Davis or Nick Esasky? They were both 1980s-era, right-handed, power-hitting first basemen from Florida. They were almost exactly the same size (6-foot-3, 200 or so pounds). It was clear to me then that Davis was better. It is clearer than ever to me now.

Davis has one of the wilder backstories in baseball history. He was born Glenn Davis, that’s his name, but after his parents divorced, he went through a difficult time and has said that he even pondered suicide. He was befriended by an assistant coach on the high school baseball named George Davis Sr., who took Glenn Davis home. The family basically adopted him, and Glenn Davis became best friends — more brothers than friends — with George Davis Jr., who is better known to baseball fans as Storm Davis. In 1979, the Baltimore Orioles drafted both Storm (seventh round) and Glenn (31st round) with the intention of turning them both into pitchers.

Storm signed and in 1982 became a key pitcher for the Orioles World Series champions.

Glenn went to college instead, worked on his hitting, and was a first-round pick of the Astros in 1981. In 1986, he finished second in the MVP balloting to Mike Schmidt when he hit 31 home runs and drove in 101 RBI. Davis was just as good in 1988 and ‘89.

Then there’s this odd statistic: Glenn Davis hit 190 career home runs … and not one of them was a grand slam. He has the record for most homers without one.

Sacramento Athletics – Mason Miller, Relief Pitcher

The Athletics are about to start one of the weirdest stretches in baseball history. They’re not only going to share their home park in 2025 with the Sacramento River Cats (the River Cats are actually opening the season at home, not the Athletics), but they’re going to do this indefinitely. Nobody has any idea when or if the A’s will actually move to Las Vegas someday. They are a club in limbo. And the strangest part of all is: This team has some talent. Brent Rooker was one of the best hitters in the game last year. Lawrence Butler has shown some superstar promise. Young Jacob Wilson has been wowing everybody at spring training. There’s some solid starting pitching. And then Mason Miller is an absurdity; at his best he might be the most unhittable pitcher in the game. Someone will want to make a movie out of this season.

Bonus “That Guy Was Good” — Mark Ellis

Mark Ellis received one third-place vote in the Rookie of the Year balloting in 2002. I tell you this because it is the one bit of recognition he got in his entire career. He was never an All-Star. He was never a player of the week. He never won a Gold Glove, never won a Silver Slugger, never a comeback player of the year. He did finish 10th in batting average one year, 2005, but even that comes with an asterisk: He didn’t get quite enough at-bats to qualify.

Mark Ellis flew exactly as high as a player can rise without showing up on anyone’s radar.

Make no mistake, Ellis was a darned good player. He was a world-class second baseman — his lack of Gold Gloves says more about the voters than his defense — and he ran the bases smartly, and he hit with a little pop, and he was the player his teammates pointed to. I find it funny that Ellis was college teammates at Florida with fellow scrappy infielder David Eckstein. Eck got a lot more hype. But Ellis was the better player.

Seattle Mariners – Julio Rodríguez, Centerfield

This one feels a touch obvious, but the Mariners have been on the brink of a breakthrough for a few years now — and having Rodríguez step up into best-player-in-baseball class feels like a vital part of actually breaking through. The hard part? Overcoming the hitter’s dungeon that T-Mobile Park has become. Julio’s WAR has gone down each of the last three years, and the difference has been his home numbers:

His road line has been consistent: .290/.348/.479. But at home …

2022: .285/.344/.548

2023: .267/.323/.461

2024: .242/.291/.364

Yikes. Seattle has some exciting starting pitching — Logan Gilbert, Luis Castillo, Bryce Miller, Bryan Woo and, hopefully soon, George Kirby. They have some interesting lineup pieces in Victor Robles, Randy Arozarena, Cal Raleigh and J.P. Crawford. But for a good while now, it’s been clear that if the Mariners are going to break this almost 50-year World Series drought, they’ll need to be powered by Julio.

Bonus “That Guy Was Good” — Alvin Davis

Here are five things about Alvin Davis. One, Bobby Bonds used to babysit him as a kid. Two, he became the first Mariners player to win any baseball major award when he took Rookie of the Year in 1984. Three, after five consistently good years, Seattle’s legendary announcer Dave Niehaus began calling him “Mr. Mariner” — in large part because Davis’ persona reminded him a lot of Ernie Banks. Four, he’s still considered a legend in Fairbanks, Alaska, after his one season as an Alaska Goldpanner. And five, in 1991, he was warming up before a game and once of his throws got away from him, skipped by his partner and hit me in the foot. “I’m really sorry, man,” Davis said to me. “The older I get, the more unreliable my arm.”

Texas Rangers – Wyatt Langford, Left Field

It feels wrong not to go with Jacob deGrom here — a healthy season from deGrom could go a long way toward another World Series run. But I’m going with Langford. He entered 2024 with so much hype, then he got off to a rocky start (and got hurt), and for the last month of the year, he went bananas — he hit .300 and slugged .610 in September along with seven doubles, eight homers and seven steals. Langford has Julio Rodríguez/Gunnar Henderson kind of offensive talent, and if he kicks it up a notch, the Rangers’s lineup — already stacked with Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, Adolis Garcia, Evan Carter, and now Joc Pederson against righties — could be the best in the league.

Bonus “That Guy Was Good” — Charlie Hough

Goldie Holt played minor league baseball for more than 20 years, from 1924 to 1947. He was a little guy, maybe 5-foot-7, and he played whatever position they wanted him to play in Charlotte or Ponca City or Portland or Spartanburg or Memphis. Outfield. Second base. Third base. Wherever. He even pitched a few innings in Yakima late in his career. He’d picked up a few tricks along the way. He had learned how to throw a pretty nifty knuckleball.

In the winter of 1969, Goldie was working with the Dodgers, and he was on the dusty backfields in the Arizona Instructional League looking over some of the pitchers when he noticed a pitcher on the side messing around with a knuckleball.

“Kid,” Goldie barked. “You’re doing it all wrong.”

That kid — and it’s hard to believe he was ever a kid — was Charlie Hough. He was 22 then, and he was coming off a rough year in Albuquerque and his shoulder hurt like hell. “I couldn’t even DREAM of throwing 90 much less actually throw 90,” he would say. Hough was beginning to see a future of working at the Hialeah racetrack near his childhood home. He was not the first pitcher to turn to the knuckleball in desperation. But, unlike most, he seemed to understand the pitch’s rhythms right away.

He dominated Spokane as a starter and reliever in 1970 and got the call to the big leagues where people immediately compared him to Hoyt Wilhelm.

“I don’t know how Wilhelm grips his knuckler,” Hough said. “But I’d like to stay around the majors as long as he has.”

Charlie Hough pitched in the Major Leagues for the next 25 years.

American League Central

Chicago White Sox – Nobody

Look, I could tell you that their key player is Luis Robert Jr. because they need him to play well enough to flip him for some future hope. I could tell you their key player is one of those bullpen guys — Fraser Ellard, or Mike Clevinger, or Gus Varland — in 2024, the White Sox had the worst record when leading after six innings in baseball history. Those are wins just waiting to be cashed in. But the reality is that no one player can change where the 2025 White Sox are going, and none of their prime prospects are starting in the big leagues. The White Sox will probably be better because they can’t be worse, but, alas, this will be a long, long road back.

Bonus “That Guy Was Good” — Ozzie Guillén

Bill James wrote this about Ozzie: “A gregarious, friendly player whose abilities escape the statistics, perhaps more so than any other player I ever saw.” That’s how I saw him, too. He never walked, didn’t hit for power, and his stolen base success rate was below average — but the guy would just find ways to beat you. He was a fantastic defensive shortstop, he found ways to take the extra base, and somehow he always seemed to hit better when it mattered most.

During his rookie season, as Tom Seaver was going for his 300th win, Guillén told Tom Terrific “Don’t worry. I’ll knock in the winning run.” Sure enough, he drove in Oscar Gamble to give the White Sox the lead and Seaver cruised from there. That was Ozzie in a nutshell.

Cleveland Guardians – Cade Smith, Relief Pitcher

Relief pitchers can come from anywhere. Cade Smith is a 6-foot-5 Canadian who was drafted in the 16th round by the Minnesota Twins back in 2017 but chose instead to study biology at the University of Hawaii. He wanted to become an ophthalmologist. Nobody drafted him in 2020 — the draft was only five rounds — but the Guardians convinced him to put off medical school and sign. As a 25-year-old rookie last year, he was absurdly dominant (he allowed just one home run in 75 innings). Cleveland will rely on their bullpen twin towers, Cade Smith and the more heralded Emmanuel Clase, to repeat in the Central.

Bonus “That Guy Was Good” — Doug Jones

This is probably a false memory… but I could swear that I once saw a collectible “Doug Jones toilet seat” for sale in a Cleveland memorabilia store. I can’t find it anywhere on the Internet, but I remember wanting one pretty badly. Dougie was a wonder. His fastball was San Diego temperature slow and his changeup was slower than that. In the Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers, his pitch selection is listed as follows:

1. Slow Fastball

2. Change

3. Different Change

And yet, he pitched 16 years in the big leagues and saved 303 games, 128 of them for Cleveland when he was already in his 30s. They called him the “Sultan of Slow” and “Mild Thing,” and he embraced it, loved it. Bob Uecker had a famous line about how it’s easy to be a star like Stan Musial when you hit .330 every year; try doing it when hitting .200. Well, it’s easy to be a closer when you have Mariano’s unhittable cutter or Goose Gossage’s heater. Try getting batters out for all those years with an 80 mph fastball and progressively slower changeups.

The way I remember it, by the way, the toilet seat was a tribute to the idea that Jones threw poop. Somehow, he fooled the world’s best hitters with poop again and again and again.

Detroit Tigers – Jackson Jobe, Starting Pitcher

OK, so here’s what I’m thinking about the Tigers: Last season ended so magically — and Detroit baseball fans came so alive — that I worry there’s an expectation that will be tough to meet. The offense still looks below average (they really need a nice season from Gleyber Torres) and pitching after ace Tarik Skubal is a bit of a hodgepodge. What they need, I think, is a breakthrough superstar. Jobe can be that. He’s the best pitching prospect in the game, and he pitched well enough in the spring to make the rotation. His innings will be limited, of course, but if he can be electric 20 times this season, that might be just what the Tigers need to skyrocket to the next level.

Bonus “That Guy Was Good” — Willie Horton

Willie Horton was the youngest of 14 children. His father was a coal miner in Virginia, but he moved the family to Detroit to try and find a better life. The better life was easy to find. “He could find work because he was too old,” Horton would say. He quit school in the 10th grade to help support his family. His high school baseball coach, Sam Bisher, came to the house with a new pair of shoes and clothes and convinced Willie to come back. As a senior, he hit a home run in the city championship game at Tiger Stadium. Not long after that, the Tigers gave him a $50,000 signing bonus. They called him “Willie the Wonder.”

It’s one of baseball’s great joys that Horton’s nicknames through the years went from “Willie the Wonder” (he drove in 104 runs at 22) to the “Ancient Mariner” (he drove in 106 runs for Seattle as a 36-year-old). Horton was one of the American League’s most durable sluggers for more than 15 years and one of the game’s fiercest competitors.

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