Sixty-one days until pitchers and catchers … and here’s your daily splash of joy.
Why do you love baseball?
Brilliant Reader Bill: “Bo Jackson’s throw.”
Brilliant Reader Lisa: “That time, a few weeks into the season, when you have gotten to know your team’s new roster well enough to be able to recognize each batter by their batting stance alone.”
Brilliant Reader Curtis: “Sitting in the sheet-metal outfield seats of the old Arlington Stadium after a lengthy rain delay, soaked to the bone, watching Nolan Ryan jog on the warning track — because of course he was going back in the game after the rain delay.”
Brilliant Reader Cory: “Was not much thought put into this photo. Meant to be the requisite ‘look how good my seats are’ to send to my family and make them jealous. Would not realize the significance till years later, scrolling through my phone, and it gave me chills. That’s Skaggs on the mound, Adenhart Jersey on the fan in the seats in front of me. … Arte, please sell the team. Because I want to love the Angels again.”
If you would like to send in the reason why you love baseball, we’d love to hear it. And in that spirit, we’re also now collecting photos and artwork too — old snapshots, ballpark scenes, favorite scorecards, kids’ drawings, ticket stubs, whatever captures the joy of the game for you. Some people are sending song lyrics. Some are sending poems. It’s utterly wonderful. Just send along your baseball joy to [email protected].
So, those of you following along will know that I planned on doing something fun in The Clubhouse this Friday — I said I would count down the 50 players (if I can find them), I would have voted in ahead of Jeff Kent for the Hall of Fame.
Well … because I’m me and you’re you, this led to me creating a new Hall of Fame formula (inspired by Tango, of course) that basically looks at players’ true greatness. That is to say, it only measures two things:
Seasons where the player finished in the top 10 in the league in WAR.
Career Wins Above Average.
That’s it. I mean, there’s a little more to it, but basically that’s it.
And, I’m not going to lie: I LOVE this formula. It might be my favorite one ever. I love it because, with lots of fiddling and adjusting, it not only gives me a Hall of Fame ranking I like, it also gives me NUMBERS I like. What I mean is that I have been able to tinker with the formula enough that 100 points is a fully qualified, absolutely belongs in the Hall of Fame. I’d say from 60-100, you’ve got most of the borderline cases — some of them are less borderline than others because the formula doesn’t get everything (no formula does — this is just a guide, obviously).
But my favorite part is that at the top end of the formula, you’ve got players who are, for example, 4x Hall of Famers! I’ll leave you to guess for now who the 4x, 3x, and 2x Hall of Famers might be. You’ll probably guess right.
Anyway, this formula has given me a pathway to do some super cool stuff … so what I’m going to do is make the JDI (Joe Dominance Index) a feature of The Clubhouse for the next two weeks. We’ll talk about those players who are ranked ahead of Jeff Kent (there are a lot). We’ll talk about the highest-ranked players not in the Hall (we’ve got some surprises!), and, yes, the lowest-ranked players in the Hall (probably less surprising).
Should be a ton of fun … and of course I’d love for you to join The Clubhouse if you haven’t yet. These are the folks who make JoeBlogs possible … and we have a really good time. Right now, you can join (or give a gift membership) for $10 off the regular price.
The Orioles Sign Pete Alonso
Pete Alonso is the kind of player fans fall in love with. Why? Well, there are a lot of reasons … but for starters, look at the bold black ink all over his Baseball Reference page. At different times in his career, he has led the league in games, home runs, RBI, doubles, grounded into double plays, hit by pitches, and intentional walks.
Much of this can be explained by the first part, the games part. Pete Alonso has been more or less indestructible. He has played in 98% of the Mets’ games since he came into the league in 2019. He has played in all the games the last two seasons.
He’s always there.
Now, he takes that stellar attendance record to Baltimore, where the $155 million gamble is that at age 31, he can keep on keeping on for five more years (or at least the better part of five years). I know a lot of people are skeptical that he can. Some of the players he’s most similar to through age 30 — Chris Davis, Glenn Davis, probably Alvin Davis, maybe Khris Davis, possibly Jody Davis, really all the Davises except Chili Davis — did fade hard after turning 30.
But for those of us who have watched Pete Alonso in the Home Run Derbies, it’s possible that this guy just has a different metabolism. I guess we’ll find out.
What interests me more is this question: What does a team owe its fans? The New York Mets famously have an owner in Steve Cohen who is a diehard fan himself; he has promised to use all his (ill-gotten) riches to make the Mets winners. And I think that, yes, at the bare minimum, owners owe the fans a full-throated effort to win games.
But for me at least, I think they owe more. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Baseball owners shouldn’t make a dime of annual profit on their teams. The PRIVILEGE of owning a baseball team is the whole point — these are billionaires, all of them, the wealthiest of the wealthy, and a Major League Baseball team (or NFL team, or soccer team, or the rest) is the shiniest bauble on the market. Billionaires don’t make annual profits on yachts. They don’t make annual profits on private jets. They don’t make annual profits on fine art.
And a baseball team comes with so many perks and benefits and joys that nothing else can provide. Cities and counties will give them all sorts of tax breaks and infrastructure perks, and anything else to make sure that they succeed. The biggest celebrities and athletes will long to be around them. Fans will know their names and love them forever if they bring home a championship. They don’t just get to be around the highest level of sport, they get to be IN THE MIDDLE of it all — they will be the first ones to hold the World Series trophy if they win one.
And when (or if) they decide to sell the team, they will make multiples of what they spent.
It is so choice, if you have the means, I highly recommend picking up a team.
As such, I have no sympathy — none whatsoever — for owners complaining that they can’t afford this, need a salary cap that, or blah blah blah.
Listen, if you can’t afford to compete, I have two pieces of advice.
1) Get richer
2) Get out.
The world’s smallest violin is still much, much, much, much too large to play the song that reflects how much sympathy I have for whining owners.
All of which brings us to that question: What do the owners owe the fans? Pete Alonso is beloved in New York. I mean, he’s the Polar Bear, the Mets’ all-time home run leader, a five-time All-Star, and a two-time Home Run Derby winner.
Don’t the Mets owe it to the fans to try and keep him?
I know that this isn’t how people in baseball talk anymore. The whole point is winning — I mean THE WHOLE point is winning — and spending that much money on Pete Alonso might not be the winning choice. I’m sure there are many Mets fans today who:
Love Pete Alonso … and
Feel like they dodged a bullet by not getting caught in that $155 million contract.
But I know there are other Mets fans who are heartbroken, because Polar Bear was theirs; he was fun, he hit long home runs, he played every game. When you went to Citi Field or turned on the television to catch a Mets game, you just knew that Alonso would be in the lineup, usually batting fourth, and he might strike out three times, and he might hit two rockets off the wall, and he became a part of a Mets fan’s life.
Now he’s gone because, why? Money.
Because one of the richest people in the world decided he wouldn’t spend the money to keep him.
Shouldn’t baseball be more than that?
I’m not going to predict whether that was the right or wrong choice for the team’s future success. But I will say that the Mets are worse today than they were yesterday and, even more, there’s a big hole in the heart of so many Mets fans.
I will keep on believing that baseball is much more than winning and losing. Baseball is bigger than spreadsheets and risk-assessments and good/bad contracts. It’s people. It’s connection. It’s love. Only one team will win the World Series each year. Only a few teams will even have a chance. But baseball matters to all of us. The Nationals should never have let Bryce Harper go. The Red Sox should never have let Mookie Betts go. The Guardians should never have let Francisco Lindor go. Not if they could have helped it.
So, yes, I think owners do owe more than this.
