Audio intro: Crowded House, “Locked Out”
Audio interstitial: Lucinda Williams, “Changed the Locks”
Audio outro: Pink Floyd, “The Show Must Go On“

Link to Manfred’s letter
Link to Tony Clark’s statement
Link to Manfred’s press conference
Link to more Manfred and Clark comments
Link to Ben Clemens on Taylor
Link to Eric Longenhagen on Renfroe/Bradley
Link to Kevin Goldstein on Iglesias
Link to Dan Szymborski on Paxton
Link to last Evan Drellich podcast appearance
Link to Evan on the most divisive issues
Link to Evan on the start of the lockout
Link to Evan on the path to the lockout
Link to Nathaniel’s CBA preview
Link to Nathaniel’s lockout preview
Link to Travis Sawchik on 1995 signings
Link to Ben on spring training for free agents
Link to Mike Axisa on work stoppage rules
Link to Nathaniel on the antitrust exemption
Link to Baseball on Trial
Link to Effectively Wild Secret Santa
Link to Travis on agents and earnings
Link to Shi Davidi on the Gausman signing
Link to Davidi on Gausman vs. Ray
Link to Stove League teaser video
Link to Stove League review
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Link to stream Stove League via Viki

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This week we attempt to react to the tidal wave of baseball news and transactions, including a focus on two teams that look like they’re ready to compete in the AL West.

• To kick things off, David Laurila welcomes Matt Hicks, a radio broadcaster for the Texas Rangers, and Shannon Drayer, an ESPN radio journalist who covers the Seattle Mariners. David asks about their respective clubs’ spending sprees, from Marcus Semien to Corey Seager to Robbie Ray. We also hear about how important Chris Young is to the Rangers, what Scott Servais means to the Mariners, the clubs’ biggest rivalries in the division and elsewhere, and what effect these moves have on the teams’ willingness to go for it in 2022. [2:42]
• In the second half, Ben Clemens and Jason Martinez take in the flurry of moves leading up to the expiration of the CBA. They discuss who a lockout is hardest for, how to encourage competition, and what expanded playoff formats could look like. We also learn about brinksmanship and what a break in transactions over the winter could look and feel like. [41:42]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hour 11 minutes play time.)

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While Bradley has had an excellent big league career, the center of this trade is Renfroe, who heads to his fourth team in four years and is coming off a 2021 in which he slashed .259/.315/.501 and cleared the 30-homer benchmark for the second time in his career. He becomes the fourth right-handed hitter acquired by Milwaukee over the last couple of weeks, after corner infielder Mike Brosseau, catcher Pedro Severino, and non-roster invite centerfielder Jonathan Davis. By wRC+, Milwaukee was 26th in baseball against left-handed pitching (96) in 2021; Renfroe is a career .263/.346/.557 hitter against southpaws and should help in this area immediately. And while there’s not a clear platoon partner for him in Milwaukee right now, perhaps Jace Peterson or Rowdy Tellez will take key late-game at-bats against righties in his stead or make the occasional start. Renfroe’s defense — especially his incredible arm, which is one of the best in pro baseball — gives him a little extra utility on days when he’s starting against a righty.

Renfroe has two years of team control remaining, as 2022 will be his second arbitration year and ’23 will be his last before hitting free agency after the season. Milwaukee has some similarly-skilled outfield prospects on the way in Joe Gray Jr. and Joey Wiemer, but unless they ascend more quickly than expected, it’s a safer bet that Renfroe wraps his pre-free agency days as a key cog in Milwaukee.

Conversely, this trade leaves Boston without a powerful, right-handed hitting outfielder on their roster. Obviously the Red Sox can continue to shape their roster after the lockout ends, but its current composition is heavy on lefty sticks in the outfield (Bradley, Jarren Duran, Alex Verdugo). The on-roster solution is for Christian Arroyo to get infield starts against lefties with Enrique Hernández moving to the outfield on those days. Another path may be for Jeter Downs (who had a terrible summer, rebounded in the Fall League, and was added to the 40-man last month) to push for at-bats in a fashion similar to Arroyo or be present depth behind him, as Arroyo gets hurt a lot. Or Triston Casas could kick down the door and claim the everyday first base job at some point, which would open up a lefty-mashing four corners role for Bobby Dalbec. There are clear, on-roster avenues for Boston’s pieces to compliment one another, though the front office probably is not done shaping the fringes of the roster.

Boston was also able to add two prospects in this trade in the speedy Hamilton and powerful Binelas. Hamilton, 24, only started seeing regular pro at-bats in 2021; he tore his Achilles during his draft year (2019) at Texas and missed his junior spring and what would have been his first pro summer, then was limited to spring training and instructional league in ’20 due to the cancellation of the minor league season. In his first affiliated at-bats last season, he hit .258/.341/.419 across High- and Double-A with 52 steals in 61 attempts, wrapping up his season with a few weeks of Arizona Fall League reps.

Hamilton’s ball/strike recognition, speed, and defensive acumen make him a high-probability role-playing infielder, and his feel to hit arguably makes him a more stable (but lower-ceiling) prospect than Downs, who will either hit enough to be an everyday second baseman or not. Look for Hamilton to be added to Boston’s 40-man roster next offseason. (This trade also creates a sort of reunion between him and Hudson Potts, who shared the left side of Texas’ Area Code infield way back in 2015.) Hamilton entered 2021 as a 40+ FV prospect — a likely 40 (light-hitting utility infielder) with some tip-of-the-iceberg upside created by all his time off. After a full season and lots of in-person looks, he’s likely to be a low-variance 40 FV on the offseason Red Sox prospect list.

Binelas’ triple slash line as a freshman at Louisville (.291/.383/.612) put him in this draft class’ first-round mix, even though he doesn’t have premium physical tools. His peripherals (a 20% strikeout rate, twice his walk rate) were not as dominant, and scouts were eager to see if he could repeat or improve upon his 2019, but a wrist injury and COVID-19 limited him to just two games in 2020. Then he struggled early in ’21 before getting hot for about a month in the middle of the college season and again during conference tournament play. Binelas is short to the ball and has big, majestic power, but his swing is fairly grooved. He struggles to contact fastballs up and away from him and has a scary strikeout-to-walk ratio for a corner infielder. He looks like a corner platoon bat who could move quickly. Boston’s recent draft/trade trends lean toward players like him, who perform on paper but fit toward the bottom of the defensive spectrum.

While it’s likely that Bradley Jr. can still play good-enough defense to have a situational role in Boston, his rough 2021 offensive statline and underlying metrics indicate the sun may be setting on his outstanding baseball career. He had career-worst strikeout and walk rates in 2021 and a career-low barrel rate, and his power output has been trending down every year since ’18. At $9.5 million this year, the Brewers had to attach prospects to Bradley to help facilitate this deal and bridge the $2 million gap between his salary and Renfroe’s projected arbitration number. Unless he bounces back in a meaningful way, his 2023 mutual option is all but certain to be turned down by the Red Sox. In the meantime, he’ll have the opportunity to add to his already long, important career narrative in the place where the pro portion of it began.

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It’s funny, then, that Chris Taylor is one of the team’s greatest success stories. Taylor came to the Dodgers as an afterthought, in exchange for Zach Lee, a minor league pitcher who made all of 14 starts in the Seattle system before the team waived him. Six years later, Taylor is again headed to Los Angeles — but this time he’s doing it as a very rich man rather than a career minor leaguer. He and the Dodgers agreed to a four-year contract worth $60 million, as Ken Rosenthal reported. The deal also contains a team option for a fifth year.

All of that stuff I said at the top about the Dodgers and stars? It’s true, but the Los Angeles roster relies on positional versatility to make everything work. Taylor is the poster boy for this style: he played at least 50 innings at second, third, short, left, center, and right last year. Corey Seager injury? Taylor can fill in. Strange lineup with Max Muncy at second and Cody Bellinger at first? Taylor can flip to center — or to third base if Justin Turner needs a breather. Seager is gone, but with Trea Turner as a one-for-one replacement, Taylor will likely continue to get near-everyday playing time without a true home in the field.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand how valuable a versatile position player can be, but I find it interesting to compare how the Dodgers use Taylor to how a lesser team might. On most teams, he’d just slot into a regular position. Most teams play bad or bad-ish players at plenty of positions. There’s not much reason to shift your guy around if he’s just the best option at multiple spots.

Because the Dodgers have so many excellent options, they don’t quite do that. If Taylor were merely an outfielder, he wouldn’t fit the team nearly as well. They’d be picking between him and AJ Pollock on many days, at least if you think Bellinger will be the team’s everyday center fielder upon Muncy’s return from injury. Taylor would be an incredible asset as a fourth outfielder, but that’s not a guy worthy of the contract he just signed.

Likewise, if he were infield-only, he’d get reps as a backup at all three positions, or perhaps form the weak part of a platoon with Gavin Lux. Again, he’d be a luxuriously great utility infielder, but he’d probably be looking at 300 or so plate appearances, not 550.

Because of his omnipresent defensive competence, though, Taylor lets the Dodgers essentially roster nine starters, with eight of them on the field nearly every day. That concept might sound weird — why have more starters on your team than positions? — but there are no Cal Ripkens in baseball these days. Between Taylor’s chameleonic talents and Bellinger’s strange first base/center field pairing, the Dodgers can juggle starter-level players between innumerable combinations while mostly keeping the guys they want on the field.

Of course, that’s not Taylor’s only use. When the team faces injury — as they will at the start of next year while Muncy rehabs from a torn UCL — the team just turns into a regular team, with Taylor and Bellinger shifting around as necessary to make a normal-looking complement of positions. Having the choice of one or the other depending on what’s best for the team is just another benefit of signing someone so versatile.

If you wanted to create a Taylor-esque impact — an above-average player who’s available on demand if any starter goes down, the best second option at each of six positions, and a guy who fills in often enough across the diamond to get starter playing time — you’d need to spread the role across two or three players. They’d all need to be good, too! That’s no trivial expense. To enact what the Dodgers have done in the past few years, you need someone like Taylor or several flexible starters across the diamond.

Could they get to it some other way? I mean, maybe! The team is blessed with several players who can handle multiple positions at least on an interim basis. Muncy has played his fair share of second base, Lux is capable of looking overwhelmed while standing in center, and Bellinger is still quite versatile. The permutations wouldn’t come easy, though; adding Taylor to the mix makes most any lineup solid defensively, whereas some of the other “multi-positional” types don’t manage that feat.

It might sound like I’m more interested in Taylor for where he stands than what he does at the plate. That’s kind of true, in that he’s more competent bat than world-beater. In the last five years, he’s compiled a 116 wRC+ for the Dodgers. In each year, he’s been between the fifth and 10-best hitter on the team. That’s enough to get paid — clearly — but he’s hardly Juan Soto with the bat.

Taylor’s big transformation upon moving to Los Angeles was adding power, and he leaned further into it this year, producing a career-high fly ball rate and 20 home runs. I’m skeptical he’ll maintain that batted ball distribution next year, but it suited him well, and more line drives and fly balls would obviously make him more valuable.

That change didn’t seem to affect his plate discipline overly much — he strikes out more than average, but only slightly so, and takes his walks in offset. I don’t expect Taylor to have a career-best season at 31, but I also don’t expect him to fall apart overnight. ZiPS roughly concurs:

If the Dodgers had a deeper crop of hitting prospects, I’d be less excited to see them re-sign Taylor. You can approximate the Taylor role by plugging in a pile of pre-arb players with complementary skillsets and spend your free agency money on another impact talent. The farm system doesn’t look ready to provide that, though, and Taylor is likely to be a better hitter and defender in any case. Plus, it’s an imperfect way of replicating Taylor’s contributions — giving interesting prospects part-time major league roles implies some wasted opportunity to give them more at-bats.

At the start of this offseason, I thought the Dodgers would want to sign Corey Seager to keep their deep-with-stars model going. I realize now, however, that having a glue guy to help turn a pile of good baseball players into a team that can run out a coherent lineup day in and day out is just as crucial to the Dodgers’ identity.

As a bonus, Taylor’s deal is quite reasonable. Both my predictions and the crowdsourced ones have been low on most contracts signed so far this offseason. Taylor’s was right on top of both my and the crowd’s estimates, which looks to me like a discount given the increased spending appetite. Is that a hometown discount? It could be, given that he reportedly told other teams money wasn’t the driving factor. The Dodgers were also the team that could use him best, though — an excellent match of player comfort and team utility.

With yesterday’s lockout, we’ve entered an extended period where most baseball news will be replete with law-speak and spin. I’m glad that Taylor and the Dodgers managed one big free agent signing to entertain fans before the fallow period. Taylor gets to surf and have a beer with the boys, just like he wants to. The Dodgers get to keep their spinning position-player machine going. Everyone’s a winner here.

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Never a bastion of durability — he’s never thrown enough innings in a major league season to qualify for the ERA title — Paxton’s had a particularly rough couple of seasons. In 2020, he underwent surgery to remove a peridiscal cyst, a type of spinal lesion, but last year’s late July start gave him enough time to be ready for the season. Unfortunately, when the season actually did get underway, he was missing about 3 mph from his fastball and suffered from significant soreness in his elbow. That soreness was diagnosed as a flexor strain, but there was no ligament damage found at the time. The New York Yankees had initially been hopeful that he’d recover to at least make a postseason appearance, but further setbacks prevented him from returning.

After signing with his old team, the Seattle Mariners, the 2021 season didn’t go any better. It only took five batters for an injury to knock Paxton out for the year, requiring Tommy John surgery. This can’t be described as anything but a brutal setback for a player who, from 2016-19, had finally settled into a pattern of being mostly healthy if used carefully.

Having had surgery in April, Paxton will not be available for innings at the start of the 2022 season, which explains the structure of his deal with Boston. The base contract is a $6 million salary for 2022, with the two-year, $26 million club option covering ’23 and ’24. If the option is declined after this season, Paxton will have to decide whether or not to exercise the conditional player option, either taking $4 million for 2023 or becoming a free agent. Those salary figures aren’t out of whack for a player who carries the risks involved here. Last offseason, Corey Kluber was coming off two injury-ruined years, but no Tommy John surgery, and got a one-year $11 million deal with the Yankees.

The ZiPS projection for Paxton is for entertainment purposes only. While we have a lot of historical information about recovery from Tommy John surgery at this point, Paxton’s health record isn’t particularly clean and tidy otherwise.

The projected 2022 performance seems consistent with the contractual terms; ZiPS doesn’t know precisely what Paxton’s recovery schedule is, and I’d take the under on the 17 starts. To get an idea of how fair two years, $26 million would be, let’s somewhat arbitrarily imagine what a successful 2022 return would look like. Let’s call it 15 starts, 75 innings, with home runs, walks, and strikeouts consistent with Paxton’s rates from 2016-19.

ZiPS still wouldn’t bank on 130 or 140 innings given his health. Assuming $7.4 million per projected WAR in 2023 and 3% growth, that comes to about two years, $22.4 million.

To get an idea of just how much injuries have affected Paxton, let’s do a quickie ZiPS Time Warp, going back to after the 2017 season. Let’s give Paxton his first ERA-qualifying season and let the chips fall from there.

That’s a healthier version of Paxton, though I’m hardly making him into Old Hoss Radbourn. If I project out the rest of his career on those terms, he still ends up around 150 wins with an ERA of 3.85 and 30.1 career WAR. Hopefully, there’s still time for his body to find a way back to that path.

One thing I’m wondering — and it’s something that won’t be answered for months, for obvious reasons — is whether this might actually be it for Boston’s rotation work this offseason. The team’s 2021 largely worked out because the rotation, made up almost entirely of pitchers with long injury histories, remained incredibly healthy. It feels a bit like the Red Sox are poised to try that again next year. Chris Sale will start the season in the rotation this time, but given his recent health record, one can’t be super confident in his availability, and both Paxton and Boston’s other free agent signee, Rich Hill (whose deal Ben Clemens will address soon), have long had issues of their own. Nathan Eovaldi, Sale, Nick Pivetta, and Hill seem likely to be the front four to start 2022, with Michael Wacha and Tanner Houck competing for the final spot and Paxton occupying Sale’s 2021 role as the hopefully-conquering late-season hero. ZiPS doesn’t have a ton of confidence in Connor Seabold, but if he’s pitching well in Triple-A, I imagine he’ll be in the mix for starts at some point as well.

Even if the Red Sox do go after another free agent pitcher, though, who really moves the needle at this point? A lot of the better pitchers available have already signed, and Clayton Kershaw, who has to be considered an injury risk as well, seems more likely to end up in Texas than Boston if he doesn’t return to the Dodgers. Carlos Rodón is interesting — though likely not as safe as Kevin Gausman or Robbie Ray would have been — but there’s a big drop-off after that.

In any case, those answers will come later. For now, James Paxton has signed a deal with the Red Sox that I find to be fundamentally fair, giving him both some guaranteed cash now and an employer with a lucrative interest in him being a healthy contributor in 2023 and ’24. If the Red Sox make a big score, it also means that Paxton will hit the market after 2024 with a last chance to land a big contract and claw back the wins that his health has stolen from him. That’s an outcome worth rooting for.

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Iglesias rejected a qualifying offer from these same Angels two weeks ago, and in the end received a deal consistent with that of other elite late-inning relievers. He’s coming off his best season as a professional, combining a career-high strikeout rate with a career-low walk rate to give him a phenomenal 103-to-12 K/BB ratio over 70 innings during which he posted a 2.57 ERA and 2.83 FIP.

Iglesias’ entry into professional baseball was a difficult one. A native of Cuba, he spent his ages-20-22 seasons pitching in the Industrial League in his native country; he was able to leave Cuba in late 2013. Establishing residency can often be a struggle for Cuban players, and that was the case for Iglesias, who was ultimately forced to settle in Haiti.

While Haiti shares the island of Hispañola with the Dominican Republic, it might as well be on another planet. The two nations are separated by a mountain range, with Haiti on the west side of the Sierra de Bahoruco; the country has been ravaged by colonialism, corruption and severe natural disasters in the form of earthquakes and hurricanes. Unlike the Dominican Republic, baseball is not a big part of Haitian culture, and while Iglesias would later have a much more well-attended workout in Mexico before signing, teams’ first exposure to him was in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. There weren’t baseball fields suitable for a workout, so the Iglesias showcase took place literally at the airport, with him throwing from a makeshift mound. Team personnel flew in that morning, watched him throw, then caught a quick jump back to Santo Domingo. By June of 2014, he had agreed to a $27 million deal with Cincinnati.

Initially developed as a starter, Iglesias has blossomed in short stints due to a 94-98 mph fastball and a deeper-than-normal secondary arsenal that includes a plus-plus slider and an above-average changeup that becomes his primary off-speed weapon against left-handed hitters. Combined with control that has gone from good to elite, he’s one of the best relievers in baseball, with the only real hole in his game being a tendency to give up a few too many home runs.

Because of his background as a starter — and the fact the he often pitches like one, only for shorter stretches — Iglesias has the ability to get more than just the final three outs to preserve a victory, though he’s rarely asked to. While there is considerable discussion on how starters are used in the modern game, there has been precious little talk about extending relievers. While 22 relievers pitched in 70 or more games during the 2021 season, only two — Giovanny Gallegos and Tyler Rogers — delivered more than 80 innings. Teams seem to be ratcheting back relievers’ innings as well as starters’ and simply making up the difference by using more and more relievers, rather than having their best relief arms throw for more innings. Frankly, I’ve never seen the data to support the philosophy. With every team looking for the next competitive advantage, isn’t the good reliever who can go 100 innings a distinct one, and isn’t Iglesias a perfect candidate to be one of the pitchers who can do it?

The departure and quick return of Iglesias leaves the ninth inning — and hopefully a bit more here and there — of Angels games in the hands of one of the best relievers in the game. The Angels still have considerable work to do to put together the kind of pitching staff necessary for both a postseason push and to create more save opportunities for Iglesias. But providing manager Joe Maddon with some late-inning insurance while they try to find better options for the first five or six frames is a good start for a team that should be willing to spend.

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• Bill Dahlen and Allie Reynolds
• Lefty O'Doul
• Bud Fowler
• Grant "Home Run" Johnson

The following article is part of a series concernifng the 2022 Early Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. For an introduction to the ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Grant “Home Run” Johnson

A slugging shortstop from the pre-Negro Leagues era of Black baseball, Grant “Home Run” Johnson stands as one of the best position players of his day, and one of Black baseball’s first true superstars. In a career that spanned from 1894 to 1914 (and to at least 1932 at the semiprofessional level), he played for several of the era’s powerhouse teams while aligned with the likes of both Bud Fowler and Hall of Famer Rube Foster, and moved to second base to accommodate Hall of Famer John Henry Lloyd in the era’s superlative double play combination. According to a biography written by Dr. Layton Revel and Luis Munoz for the Center for Negro Leagues Baseball Research, Johnson was either the starting shortstop or second baseman, and often captain or manager, for 26 championship teams (including winter leagues) in a 21-year span.

While Johnson’s career is hardly fully documented from a statistical standpoint — the likely reason why he was bypassed in the 2006 Special Committee on the Negro Leagues election — the data at the Seamheads Database, and its Major League Equivalencies translations, makes a case for his being of clear Hall of Fame caliber, comparable to Luke Appling, Alan Trammell, or this ballot’s Bill Dahlen, among others. About that nickname, here’s a snippet from his entry in James A. Riley’s The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues:

A line-drive hitter, Johnson placed an emphasis on making contact rather than swinging for the fences and, playing in the deadball era, his power was comparable to that of the Athletics’ Frank Baker. And like Baker, his home runs, while not numerous, came at opportune times and reinforced the sobriquet “Home Run” for the duration of his playing career.

Johnson’s actual birthday is in doubt; via Seamheads, the date was September 23, 1872, though an obituary used September 21, 1874. Regardless, he was born in Findlay, Ohio to parents who hailed from Kentucky, and his father, Charles Johnson, served in the Union Army’s 13th Colored Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. Grant Ulysses Johnson’s full name owes more than a little to that of Union General Ulysses S. Grant.

Johnson began playing baseball in 1888 as a first baseman for a Findlay team that was believed to be integrated, and stayed with them through ’93 save for a brief stint with a Black team, the Cleveland Keystones, in ’92. While with Findlay, he hit two over-the-fence homers against the Cincinnati Reds’ Tony Mullane in an October 7, 1893 exhibition game that Findlay won; the result must have certainly chafed Mullane, who did his best to make Black catcher Fleet Walker’s life difficult when the two were paired at Toledo in 1884.

In December 1893, Johnson joined the Cuban Giants, an independent Black team that at the time included Hall of Famer Frank Grant, who had played in integrated white leagues. According to research by historians Larry Lester and Dick Clark, Johnson hit .356 and slugged .567 in 20 games before the lack of a paycheck led him to leave the team and return to Findlay. There, Johnson joined the Sluggers, an integrated independent semipro team that had already signed Fowler. While the possibility of adding another Black player caused some concern among the white players, management proceeded as planned. The team lost exhibitions against the National League’s Reds and Brooklyn Bridegrooms (eventually the Dodgers) but beat the Detroit Tigers of the Western League twice. The Sluggers reportedly won 96 of 112 games, with Johnson hitting 60 homers (though by his own report, the total was 40).

Seeking to capitalize on the popularity of Johnson, Fowler attempted to form the Findlay Colored Western Giants, but couldn’t secure funding. But when he was able to get the backing of J. Wallace Page, owner of the Page Woven Wire Fence Company of Adrian, Michigan (the largest fence company in the country at the time) and the Monarch Bicycle Company of Boston, Massachusetts, the Page Fence Giants were formed, with Fowler as player/manager and Johnson as starting shortstop and captain. The team was made up of players who didn’t drink or smoke, and who were paid $100 per month, a good salary for the time, particularly considering the country was in the midst of a depression. The Giants barnstormed primarily in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, traveling in a private railroad car with sleeping quarters, a cook, and a porter so as to avoid confronting Jim Crow restrictions. Players rode Monarch bicycles through the streets of whatever town they were in to attract customers for their games.

Despite Fowler and five other players leaving in midseason, the Giants reportedly went 118-36-2 overall in 1895 and 8-7 against teams in the Michigan State League; they lost twice to the Cincinnati Reds of the National League. Johnson hit .471 that season according to research by John Holway, author of The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues. With Charlie Grant (whom John McGraw would later try to pass off as Cherokee in order to subvert the major league color line in 1901) replacing Fowler at second base, the Giants went 80-19 and laid claim to the title of “Colored World’s Champions”* by beating the Cuban X-Giants in 10 out of 15 games during a lengthy barnstorming series. They continued to dominate the competition, going 129-10 in 1897 (at one point winning 82 straight) and 107-10 in 1898, when Johnson reportedly hit 30 homers.

(Note: here and throughout this piece I am using the championship titles provided by the CNLBR, either via the aforementioned bio, “Colored Championship Series 1867-1899,” or “Colored Championship Series 1900-1919,” the last two with no author credited.)

When Page Fence could no longer afford to finance the team, Johnson, Grant, and other Giants teammates including pitcher George Wilson, catcher Pete Burns, and outfielder John Patterson left for the Chicago-based Columbia Giants (a.k.a the Columbias; here it’s worth noting that “Giants” was often used by traveling Black teams to signify their race), with Johnson as manager and starting shortstop. Via the CNLBR’s 2016 bio, in the 21 games for which box scores had been found, Johnson hit .413 and slugged .641 with five homers. After sweeping five games from the Chicago Unions to claim the title of “Western Colored Champions” — such series between two self-appointed contenders were common prior to the advent of the Negro Leagues World Series — they lost seven out of 11 games to the X-Giants.

Johnson came and went from the Columbias over the next few years, helping them to win the title “Colored Champions of the West” over the Unions in 1901 but briefly joining Lima’s Webster Giants, the rival Chicago Unions, and the Cuban X-Giants during this stretch. In 1903, he rejoined the X-Giants and paired with Grant in the middle infield. On June 17 of that year, Johnson made several great plays to help preserve Dan McClellan’s perfect game, the first in Black baseball history. On August 2, the team beat Murray Hills, a strong semipro team in New York that for the day featured Philadelphia Athletics ace Rube Waddell (pitching under the name Wilson to circumvent any contractual difficulties). Behind Foster, the X-Giants won, 6-3. At one point the team won 44 consecutive games. At the end of the season, the X-Giants beat the Philadelphia Giants in five of seven games to claim the title “Colored Championship of the World.”

After the season, Johnson played winter ball in Cuba, and then from late January until mid-March in the Florida Hotel League, where players got jobs at big resort hotels, securing room and board and playing a 14-game schedule for the entertainment of guests. He returned to an X-Giants roster that had been raided by the Philadelphia Giants, with Foster, Grant, and others switching sides. After losing to them in a three-game “Colored Championship” series in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Johnson joined the Giants for 1905, forming one of the era’s powerhouse teams under first baseman/manager Sol White. On a team that went 129-23-3 and beat at least seven minor league teams, Johnson led the team with 12 homers, despite a power outage that happened after he injured a tendon in his left leg early in the season. He stole 22 bases, and also served as a fourth starter, pitching two shutouts with a submarine-style delivery.

Johnson spent the 1906-09 seasons alternating between serving as player/manager for the Brooklyn Royal Giants — which joined the five-team National Association of Colored Baseball Clubs (of which three teams included Giants in their name even after the Cuban X-Giants folded) — and playing in the Cuban Winter League. Brooklyn wasn’t good enough to surpass Philadelphia and win the NACBC title until 1908, but they did so again in ’09 then beat the American League’s New York Highlanders in an exhibition. Returning to Cuba to captain the Habana team, Johnson hit .412 in a series in which his team won four games out of six against Ty Cobb and the AL champion Detroit Tigers.

Given Brooklyn’s success, Johnson felt he deserved a share of the team’s ownership, but owner John W. Connor refused. When Connor tried to trade Johnson to the Philadelphia Giants in exchange for Lloyd — both of whom were playing in Florida with Foster’s Chicago Leland Giants at the time — the two players jumped to the Lelands on a more permanent basis (such as these things were). Thus was born yet another legendary squad, with the 37-year-old Johnson moving to second base to accommodate the 26-year-old Lloyd; other stars on the team included center fielder Pete Hill, left fielder Frank Duncan, staff ace Frank Wickware, plus pitcher/manager Foster. The team went 123-6 and claimed the title “Colored Champions of the West.” Johnson, in 21 documented games for which box scores have been uncovered, hit .326/.368/.461.

Wanting to manage again, and following his pattern of leaving dominant teams in search of the next challenge, in 1911 Johnson returned to the Philadelphia Giants, where he had young righty Dick “Cannonball” Redding and catcher Louis Santop. The season did not go well, however; both youngsters left for the New York Lincoln Giants in July, and Johnson for the Chicago Giants. Johnson, after a torrid winter during which he led Habana to a pennant, returned to Brooklyn but when that didn’t go well, he joined the Lincoln Giants late in the year. After a brief foray to Schenectady, New York to captain the Mohawk Colored Giants, he return to the Lincoln Giants, with whom he continued through 1913 and ’14. The 1913 team, another powerhouse, featured Lloyd, Santop, Redding, left fielder Judy Gans, center fielder Spottswood Poles, and Hall of Fame righty Smoky Joe Williams. In 17 games with box scores for the 1913 season, the 40-year-old Johnson hit .439/.493/.485. The team beat Foster’s Chicago American Giants with seven wins in a 12-game series to claim the title of “Colored World’s Champions.” After the season, the Lincoln Giants played a series against major league All-Stars, and beat Hall of Famer Pete Alexander.

Though Johnson returned to the Lincoln Giants for the 1914 season, and took over as manager (Lloyd had joined the Chicago American Giants), he left the team in mid-May. From 1916-21, he played and managed the semiprofessional Pittsburgh Colored Stars of Buffalo, beginning a long second act; as late as 1932, at age 58, he was still playing semipro ball. Remaining in Buffalo, where he worked as a porter, he lived to see Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby break the color lines in the NL and AL in 1947, though he later lost his sight. He died of heart failure following surgery on September 4, 1963.

Johnson did not get consideration for the Hall of Fame until 2006, when he was one of 39 finalists on the Special Committee for the Negro Leagues ballot. While 17 players were elected, he was not among them. Voter Todd Bolton told Steven R. Greenes, author of Negro Leaguers and the Hall of Fame: The Case for Inducting 24 Overlooked Ballplayers, that he believed Johnson’s candidacy suffered because “the statistics were not as solidly documented as those of other candidates.” Johnson may have also been hurt by the fact that the committee felt it had recognized enough pre-Negro Leagues candidates, including Sol White and Frank Grant.

While it’s true that only a fraction of box scores pertaining to Johnson’s career have been uncovered, it’s just as true that his talent shines through in what’s there. The data at Seamheads, which covers the box scores for Johnson’s play against pre-Negro Leagues Black competition as well as Latin leagues and exhibitions against major leaguers, credits him with a .310/.396/.399 slash line from 1895 to 1914, missing all but 14 of his home runs (including those 40 or 60 at Findlay) but still good for a 158 OPS+ in 1,790 PA. Among players in the Seamheads database for the pre-Negro Leagues years (1886-1919) with at least 1,000 PA, that mark ranks fifth; Hall of Famers Cristobal Torriente (189) and Lloyd (165) rank first and fourth on the list, respectively, though those marks only cover parts of their careers. Limiting the data to pre-Negro Leagues Black competition raises Johnson’s mark there to 162, albeit in just 850 PA, but sill good for fifth, with Torriente (198) and Lloyd (170) first and third, respectively.

The man could hit, of that there’s no doubt, but he also could field. Seamheads, which uses Defensive Regression Analysis as its WAR fielding input, credits Johnson with 24.1 WAR, or 9.6 per 162 games against Black, Latin, and major league competition, and 12.7 WAR, or 10.7 per 162 games for the Black baseball competition. While this shouldn’t be directly equated with the WAR figures compiled during the Negro Leagues’ major league era (1920-48), it’s a figure that ranks 10th for the pre-1920 period and puts him in the company of several Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leaguers in the Hall of Fame including José Méndez, Hill, Lloyd, Williams, Torriente. No less an authority than Gary Ashwill, the founder of the Seamheads database (and, coincidentally, a voter on this year’s committee), called Johnson “the best everyday player in Black baseball from 1895 to 1909.”

Experts including Holway, Riley, and Greenes view Johnson as Hall of Fame caliber. So does Eric Chalek of the Hall of Miller and Eric website, where two self-described “baseball obsessives” have built their own alternative shrine based on their analysis and methodology, mirroring the size of the actual Hall but doing their level-headed best to get it right. Probably the most popular feature of the site is Chalek’s Major League Equivalencies for Negro Leagues players. Introduced by Bill James to make sense of minor league stats, MLEs are a staple of projection systems. Chalek uses them to place the performance of Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black players in a more familiar context using wOBA, wRC, league quality of play estimates, Defensive Regression Analysis, WAR, z-scores, playing time estimates, and more, all based only on regular season data for seasons where league-wide data is available. The big-picture explanation is here. “[W]e want to get a sense of how these guys compare to MLB players so that we can place their achievements into a context that’s more familiar to us,” wrote Chalek. “[W]hen we get done, we have an estimate of what kind of value a fellow would rack up in the big leagues. It’s not a perfect estimate, though it’s the best we currently know how to do.” The gory details of his methodology are here. Long story short, these turn out to be rather useful, and Chalek has churned out comp lists for most of the Era Committee candidates on both ballots. Here’s the one for the JAWS-approved Bill Dahlen:

Let's run value comps for MLB guys on @BaseballHall's Early Game Ballot. (*=HOF ^=active +=NeL MLE)
BILL DAHLEN
D Lundy+
J Glasscock
B Wallace*
A Trammell*
F Frisch*
J Gordon*
G Davis*
G Johnson+
L Boudreau*
L Appling*

Great list. Lundy, Glasscock, Johnson all legit HOFs.<1/2>

— Eric Chalek (@EricChalek) November 17, 2021

That’s seven Hall of Fame middle infielders among his top 10 comparables for value, plus Johnson, Negro Leagues star shortstop Dick Lundy, and 19th-century shortstop Jack Glasscock, both of whom could have easily been on this ballot given their own merits. And now, here’s Johnson:

Grant Johnson comps (*=HOFer; +=NeL translation; ^=active)
Luke Appling*
Dick Lundy+
Barry Larkin*
Alan Trammell*
Joe Cronin*
John Henry Lloyd*+
Ryne Sandberg*
Bill Dahlen (darn well ought to be a HOFer)
Joe Sewell*
Bus Clarkson+

— Eric Chalek (@EricChalek) November 16, 2021

Some of the same names pop up. That’s Dahlen plus seven Hall of Famers, and we’re not talking slouches, either; Appling ranks seventh in JAWS, Trammell 10th, Dahlen 11th, Larkin 12th, Cronin 17th, Sewell 19th, with Sandberg 11th among second basemen. Eyeballing the list, the comps lists of Dahlen and Johnson appear to be the best of the Early Baseball bunch in terms of comparisons to Hall of Famers.

Anyway, properly understood, the statistics that we have suggest Johnson is of Hall caliber. So does his penchant for turning up on championship teams (including some of the major dynamos of the day), his reputation for leadership and professionalism as a captain or manager (he won seven championships in that capacity), and his status as a star who was highly sought by the very best teams of his era. The weight of the evidence suggests he’s Hallworthy, and if I had a ballot, I’d include him, though having said the same about Fowler and Dahlen, and with half a ballot still to examine, I might be headed towards the unenviable task of ballot triage.

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Read a letter from the Commissioner: https://t.co/P4gRGSlfsu pic.twitter.com/zI40uGLTni

— MLB (@MLB) December 2, 2021

For its part, the MLBPA issued a statement in response:

Statement from the Major League Baseball Players Association: pic.twitter.com/34uIGf762W

— MLBPA Communications (@MLBPA_News) December 2, 2021

Neither Manfred’s letter, nor the MLBPA’s response, were unexpected, as both sides will be posturing to gain the moral high ground in the coming days. While the union is certainly correct that the owners weren’t legally obligated to implement a lockout, Manfred’s belief that this step increases the odds that the dispute is resolved before it disrupts too much of the regular season is a reasonable one as well. And although the union would be correct to take issue with the way the commissioner characterized the state of the negotiations to date, it is also true that the players appear to be the ones seeking the more significant modifications to the sport’s existing economic model in an attempt to arrest several escalating trends that have proven unfavorable for the MLBPA’s membership in recent years.

Again, it is important to remember that both sides are ultimately looking to maximize their bargaining leverage over one another. And in this case, the owners have determined that implementing a labor stoppage during the offseason — rather than allowing the players to elect to strike in the middle of the season — best serves their interests.

So now we wait. As I explained yesterday, while the MLBPA has a couple of potential options it could take in response to the lockout, it appears that the players have — not surprisingly — elected to continue to negotiate as a union, at least for now.

And considering how relatively few leaks there have been coming out of the negotiations to date — itself a positive sign compared to the seemingly constant media posturing the two sides engaged in back in 2020 — any substantive updates may prove to be somewhat few and far between in the coming days and weeks.

Ultimately, however, all of this is — again — very much expected. As I wrote yesterday, until we get to late-February without a deal in sight, there is not necessarily cause for concern that the lockout will endanger the start of the regular season. Deadlines tend to spur action in cases like this, and the next real deadline for the parties is the start of spring training, when the owners will start to lose actual revenue, and most of the players will really start to feel the pinch of being locked out.

Until then, the most likely outcome remains that a new deal is reached before the lockout meaningfully disrupts the 2022 season. Indeed, both sides have a lot to lose should this dispute drag on into the summer.

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Normally at FanGraphs, we try to tell you why the trade might make sense for both sides, and which way we would lean if we had to choose a winner. If we’re feeling feisty, we might throw in a joke or two, perhaps a Dick Monfort burn if Dan Szymborski is in the driver’s seat. Today, though, the two of us had wildly different views of who won this trade. So without further ado, here are Brendan’s (Marlins) and Ben’s (Rays) thoughts on which side got the best of the other in this very Floridian trade.

Brendan’s Take

Ben probably isn’t the first analyst to pan a deal where Miami sought to improve the big league club, but I can’t find much recent precedent. That the Fighting Jeters beefed up at all seems sufficient cause for celebration. MLB is at its best when teams put their top product on the field, and the Marlins often fail to clear that low threshold. But between the Avisaíl García signing, the Sandy Alcantara extension, the Jacob Stallings trade, and now the Wendle deal, the Marlins have the swagger of… well, not a contender exactly, but at least an upright major league team.

This is true even if Wendle is a player who divides opinion. To be sure, even after making an All-Star team and notching a 106 wRC+ and 2.6 WAR last year, there are reasons for concern. He’s 31 now and coming off of a career-worst strikeout rate. Last year’s modest power spike was driven in part by an unusual number of wall-scraping dingers hooked just inside the right field foul pole. His batted ball metrics are bland at the best of times and were meager even by his standards last year, when he posted a .284 xwOBA — more than 30 points below his actual output.

For Miami, though, Wendle doesn’t have to rack up a 110 wRC+ to provide value. In part, that’s because he’s a good infield defender. Predominantly a third baseman, he started more than a dozen games at each middle infield spot last season, and he plays each position pretty well. Even if you don’t put a ton of stock in defensive metrics, it’s still encouraging that he has consistently been rated highly by ours throughout his career.

Most importantly, his versatility offers value beyond what WAR can adequately capture, particularly to a team like Miami with question marks at several positions. The early scuttlebutt suggests that the Marlins plan to use him in a super-utility role, which gives him several paths to regular playing time. He could get a run of games at third, for instance, if Brian Anderson’s shoulder barks again, or even in the outfield given the club’s lack of depth on the grass. And if the National League adopts the DH, he’s the perfect player to shuffle around the diamond while Don Mattingly gives other regulars half of the night off.

Between the defensive versatility and the gap between his actual and expected production last year, Wendle is a tricky player to project, as his game doesn’t neatly conform to a $/WAR model. That said, he was about a 1 WAR/162 games player in an injury-plagued 2019 season (the worst of his career) and he accrued more than 2.5 WAR in 136 games last year. ZiPS projects him to accrue 1.7 WAR next season and another 1.3 in 2023 — nothing earth shattering but that’s also an estimate that gives him no credit for his versatility.

And even if you think he takes a step back in 2022, he’ll be underpaid: MLB Trade Rumors estimates he’ll earn $4 million in arbitration this winter, well below the going rate for a win on the open market.

The cost here is Misner, a divisive player in his own right. The Marlins drafted him out of Missouri with the 35th pick of the 2019 draft. An athletic 6-foot-4, 240 pounds, he’s a 60 runner who will likely stay in center; he also has plus raw power. Statistically, he’s performed well. His max exit velo is about 112 mph and he had nearly a 25% barrel rate in limited Double-A action (strangely, it was only about half of that in High-A).

In the box, though, Misner looks stiff. While his bat path isn’t long, there’s a lot of noise in his hands as he loads, and it feeds into a short, jabby looking swing. Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen also noted Misner’s short stride length, and questioned whether it will hinder his ability to drive pitches in the lower part of the zone. Between that and some swing-and-miss in his game, we have Misner projected as a platoon bat in a corner or perhaps a second-division regular in center.

Given Misner’s tools, and Miami’s long odds of contention, you could certainly argue that the Marlins would have been better off holding on to their prospect. A few years ago, I probably would have agreed with that sentiment. At a certain point, though, you have to try to start winning games, and with Garcia, Stallings, and now Wendle in the fold, Miami seems to be heading in that direction. There’s a chance they regret letting Misner walk, but there’s also considerable risk that he never matches the production Wendle can offer right now. The Fish still have plenty of work to do if they’re to truly contend, but I’ve liked their winter thus far, and I think Wendle is a solid addition to a roster that could be sneaky-good over the next couple of years.

Ben’s Take

No, the Rays don’t win every trade they make. If you think that, you’re falling victim to the availability heuristic, the mental bias that causes people to take the first examples that come to mind and generalize using them. Or maybe you’re falling victim to confirmation bias, the tendency to see events in a way that confirms your pre-existing beliefs. My behavioral economics nomenclature is a little rusty, plus I’m over-generalizing here (another no-no).

Anyway! My point is that simply trading with the Rays doesn’t make you a trade loser. But in this one, I think the Marlins got the worst of it. It’s not because I think they massively mis-valued either player in the deal — this isn’t a Chris Archer situation — but simply because the trade misunderstands how to best manage their roster over the long run.

The Marlins think they’re going to contend this year. That’s admirable, and I think they’re closer than most observers think. Adding García and Stallings didn’t come cheap, but those moves buttressed two weak points on the roster. They have an exciting — albeit untested — pitching staff. If they can get some offense going, there’s enough here to compete in a tough NL East.

For that reason, adding Wendle seems to make sense, and I buy Brendan’s argument that the Marlins could use a competent super-utility player. Their bench is thin and counts on a few guys I’m skeptical of — Jon Berti and Monte Harrison don’t inspire confidence, and Garrett Cooper is recovering from a season-ending injury. From that perspective, Wendle is an upgrade.

But I don’t know if he’ll start for them, and this is a pretty high price to pay for a bench bat. The Rays were masterful at getting the most out of Wendle. They used him all across the infield — mostly at third this year, but he can handle second and short as well. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t exclusively a platoon bat — he took a higher percentage of his trips to the plate against southpaws than the average lefty hitter — but still: a lefty middle infielder is a nice thing to have, particularly if you’re using a lot of interchangeable parts in your lineup, as the Rays always do.

The Marlins don’t really fit this mold. If Wendle is playing at third, that means Anderson isn’t. That’s assuming Miami is going to give Miguel Rojas and Jazz Chisholm Jr. everyday reps up the middle, but I think that’s a safe bet. Anderson can’t shift to the outfield easily anymore, either — García plays right field, where Anderson previously split time. Maybe they can run out a bat-heavy lineup where they put García in center, but I don’t buy that working on a daily basis.

Also, if they want a bat-heavy lineup, why is Wendle in it? Steamer projects him for a 90 wRC+ in 2022. He’s a league-average hitter in his career, and pretty much every peripheral went the wrong way in 2021. If you’re looking for bats, why not keep Anderson at third and move Cooper to right?

Essentially, I think contending teams need players that fill the Wendle role, guys who have plenty of defensive versatility, an acceptable bat, and a willingness to come off the bench or start as needed. If the Marlins get 400-450 plate appearances from Wendle in that role, that’s a perfectly nice player, but it’s the kind that most teams acquire in free agency or promote from within. This trade isn’t moving the needle on contending. If you’ll grant me the reins of the FanGraphs home improvement metaphor machine, this is more gorgeous backsplash than Viking range. If you have a nice kitchen already, Wendle will make it shine. If you’re looking to improve your kitchen, this is not where to start.

To get their backsplash, the Marlins gave up a toolsy outfielder who showed flashes of his pre-draft potential this year. Misner is a huge guy who can run. He mainly played center in the minors this year, and Eric thinks he could be a defensive fit there. Brendan already covered the ups and downs of his swing above, and the power as well — his 16% barrel rate across two levels of the minors says a lot about his power potential, though he’s more doubles than homers in games at this point.

Are the strikeouts worrisome? Most definitely. He can still play, though. Eric has him on the borderline between a 45 and 45+ FV, which means he won’t make the top 100 prospects list this year but is likely in the 101-200 range. That would place him around 10th in a still-very-good Rays system, and his is the kind of boom-bust profile that could see him move meaningfully in either direction within a year. 2021 was only his second season as a professional thanks to COVID weirdness, and capable up-the-middle defenders built like Misner don’t grow on trees.

If the Marlins signed Wendle in free agency, I’d be into it. If they lost Misner as part of a package to acquire an impact everyday starter, I’d be into it. But this trade — give up an intriguing prospect to shore up a minor weakness while major weaknesses still exist — doesn’t really do it for me. I like Wendle just fine in his role, and I think the Marlins will get what they’re expecting from him. I just don’t think it makes sense given the rest of their roster and the fact that they’ll need two or three more solid everyday regulars to compete.

Bonus! Did you know that Misner played in the Arizona Fall League this year? Well he did, and Eric captured 17 minutes of video featuring Misner taking, whiffing, and mashing baseballs en route to a goofy .205/.373/.513 line. Don’t scout Fall League statlines — but do watch his swing in action:

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• Bill Dahlen and Allie Reynolds
• Lefty O'Doul
• Bud Fowler
• Grant "Home Run" Johnson

The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Early Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. For an introduction to the ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Bud Fowler

“For the next twenty-five years [after his debut in 1878], Fowler barnstormed around the country, from Massachusetts to Colorado, playing wherever Negro players were permitted. He played in crossroads farm towns and in mining camps, in the pioneer settlements of the West and in the cities of the East. These were the years of growth for the minor leagues, the foundation stones for organized baseball, and Fowler performed in several of them. He was the first of more than sixty Negroes who were in white leagues before the turn of the century, when baseball’s leaders began to think of their structure as Organized Baseball in capital letters and when the long night of total exclusion lowered for the black man.”— Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White, 1970

Bud Fowler was Black baseball’s original pioneer, its first acknowledged professional, with a career that’s believed to have spanned from 1878 to 1904. An exceptional hitter, pitcher, and fielder who could play any position (sometimes catcher, but mainly second base), the 5-foot-7, 155-pound righty was believed to be of major league star quality, and is recorded as having hit .308 in over 2,000 at-bats in 10 seasons of organized baseball. Alas, the color of his skin and the prejudice that followed prevented him from ascending to the majors. Playing on integrated teams before the color line was fully entrenched — even captaining some — he traveled a hard road, unable to stay in one place for long before the objections of teammates or opponents forced him to move on, even given his considerable talents; by his own count, he played in 22 different states plus Canada. In the latter stages of his career he became one of the game’s first significant Black promoters, involved in forming leagues and teams.

It is a painful irony that Fowler was raised in Cooperstown but has yet to be recognized with election to the Hall of Fame. Not until 2013, the centennial of his death, was he even honored in his hometown. That year, MLB official historian John Thorn said, “Bud Fowler is of extraordinary importance on a national scale. Many would argue he should be in the Hall of Fame or should have been long ago.” Last year, SABR’s Nineteenth Century Committee voted Fowler as its 2020 Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legend.

Fowler was born John W. Jackson Jr. on March 16, 1858 in Fort Plain, New York. His father was “a fugitive hop-picker” according to James A Riley’s The Biographical Encyclopedia of Negro Leagues Baseball; Cooperstown was once an epicenter of U.S. hop production. The senior Jackson was also a barber, a middle-class profession available to Black men of the day; his son picked up the trade, eventually using it to supplement his baseball income. The Jacksons moved to Cooperstown, about 30 miles away from Fort Plain, in 1860, at a time when just 28 Black people lived in the village. The young Jackson learned to play baseball on the fields of the Cooperstown Seminary. His exact reasons for assuming the name “Bud Fowler” are unknown, but presumably owed to a desire to protect or distance himself from his family, a tactic not uncommon among 19th century players.

Fowler began his career as a pitcher in 1878, when he joined an amateur independent team from Chelsea, Massachusetts. On April 24 of that year, the team beat Tommy Bond and the reigning NL champion Boston Nationals 2-1 in an exhibition game, with Fowler yielding just three hits. In May, the Lynn (Mass.) Live Oaks of the International Association (a minor league that operated in cooperation with the NL) called upon Fowler to pitch three games, making him “[T]he first African-American to integrate a team in minor league history and thus the game’s first African-American pro and the first in what would become known as Organized Baseball,” wrote Brian McKenna in Fowler’s SABR biography.

On May 17, Fowler pitched a two-hit shutout against the the London (Ontario) Tecumsehs, though that team walked off the field in the eighth inning over a disputed play and perhaps Lynn’s use of a Black player. Fowler lost his other two starts. The team soon merged with one from Worcester, Massachusetts, and Fowler once filled in for Bobby Mathews, who pitched in the majors for 15 years.

Fowler bounced around the semipro ranks, playing for integrated teams (Malden in the Eastern Massachusetts League in 1879, the Ontario-based Guelph Maple Leafs and Petrolia Imperials, in ’81); and all-Black ones (the New Orleans Pickwicks and Richmond (Virginia) Black Swans in ’82). Plans for him to play for a team called the St. Louis Black Sox in a nationwide Black league in 1883 did not pan out, and so he moved on to Youngstown, Ohio, where he played for the Niles Grays.

In 1884, Foster returned to the ranks of organized baseball with Stillwater (Minnesota) of the Northwestern League, initially catching but taking over pitching duties when the team started 0-15. He pitched well to the point of gaining the appreciation of the fans who awarded him a $10 suit, but he developed a sore arm, probably related to the rule change to allow overhanded pitching. Fowler went 7-8 with a 2.08 ERA (but 6.51 RA9), and began transitioning out of pitching. While playing all around the diamond — every position except first base — he hit .302 in 48 games and collected a league-leading 57 hits. His time in Stillwater wasn’t without tumult; he broke a bone in his big toe via a spiking injury, was knocked unconscious by a pitch in the ribs, and was suspended for two weeks (soon reduced to two games) for his unwillingness to catch pitcher M.J. Bradley, possibly due to a racially-related conflict.

The Stillwater team was forced to disband due to financial reasons in early August, but Fowler drew positive reviews in local papers and the national Sporting Life, which in 1885 proclaimed him “one of the best general players in the country… and if he had a white face he would be playing with the best of them…. Those who know, say there is no better second baseman in the country.” More, as gathered for his SABR bio:

As the Sporting Life noted, he “made quite a reputation in the Northwestern League.” He received praise throughout the league. After one game in Terre Haute, the local Evening Gazette noticed, “The crowd showed their appreciation of his work by applauding him every time he went to bat.” After Stillwater’s final game, the Milwaukee Sentinel declared, “Fowler, the colored player, made one of the finest running fly-catches ever seen on the grounds, and was compelled to doff his cap several times in response to the enthusiastic plaudits of his many admirers.”

Fowler continued to play with white minor league teams, many of them on similarly shaky financial footing. Via Riley’s exhaustive list:

Keokuk in the Western League (1885), Pueblo in the Colorado League (1885), Topeka in the Western League (1886), Binghamton in the International League (1887), Montpelier in the New England League (1887), Crawfordsville in the Central Interstate League (1888), Terre Haute in the Central Interstate League (1888), Santa Fe in the New Mexico League (1888), Greenville in the Michigan League (1889), Galesburg of the Central Interstate League (1890), Sterling of the Illinois-Iowa League (1890), Burlington of the Illinois-Iowa League (1890), Lincoln-Kearney of the Nebraska State League (1892), and the independent Findlay, Ohio, team (1891, 1893-1894, 1896-1899).

Most of those stays were short-lived, while others that never got off the ground aren’t even listed; in at least one case, a team signed him without knowing his race, then backed out of the deal upon finding out the truth. Fowler did spend the whole season with Topeka, hitting .309 and leading the league with 12 triples but missing several games due to multiple injuries, including a dislocated right shoulder, a line drive to the right eye, and another drive that hit him in the mouth. By this time, Fowler was protecting himself against further injuries by wearing wooden slats to protect his shins from spike wounds — more than 20 years ahead of catcher Roger Bresnahan’s popularizing shin guards in the majors.

In Binghamton — part of a league that featured Black players on six of its 10 teams — Fowler hit .350 and stole 30 bases in 30 games before some of the white players refused to play with him and another Black player, William Renfro. The uprising led Fowler to ask for his release, which was granted on the condition that he didn’t sign with another International League team. Two weeks later, after Cap Anson refused to let his White Stockings, the defending NL champions, play an exhibition against Newark if the latter used its battery of pitcher George Stovey and catcher Fleet Walker (who in 1884 had become the first Black player in the majors, with Toledo of the American Association), the league formally banned additional signings of Black players. Walker and Stovey were able to hang on until the end of the season with Newark, but for the first time, a professional baseball league had officially drawn the color line.

Fowler continued to make a living with integrated teams and leagues that didn’t adhere to the ban. He made a strong impression with Montpelier, where he achieved another first by captaining an integrated team. Wrote the Vermont Watchman, “The ‘colored gentleman’ in question is the present phenomenal second baseman of the Montpeliers… Considering his superiority as a base-ballist, it is reasonable to suppose that jealousy and not prejudice against color influenced the weak fellows of the Binghamton club.”

Alas, Montpelier folded before season’s end. Fowler formed the New York Gorhams, credited by Peterson as the first successful Black barnstorming team, in 1887. He continued to play well when given the chance with integrated teams, hitting .343 in 22 games with Santa Fe in 1888; .302 in 92 games at Greenville in ’89; .322 in 27 games for Galesburg; .314 in 36 games for Sterling and Burlington in ’90; and .273 with 45 stolen bases in 35 games for Lincoln-Kearney, where he was again captain.

In 1894, while playing for the Findlay Sluggers, an integrated independent semipro team, Fowler crossed paths with 20-year-old power-hitting shortstop Grant “Home Run” Johnson, who’s also on this year’s Early Baseball ballot. Fowler convinced Johnson to join him on a barnstorming team backed by a white man named J. Wallace Page, who sought an advertising vehicle for Page Woven Wire Fence Company, the largest fence company in the country at the time. The Page Fence Giants were born, and became a successful barnstorming team when Fowler was able to lure other strong players. The Giant traveled the country in a custom-made railroad car, and rode bicycles from the Monarch Bicycle Company of Boston (a minority investor) through the streets of whatever town they were playing to attract attention. The team went 118-36-2, with two of their losses coming against the major league Cincinnati Reds, against whom Fowler went 1-for-8 in a pair of exhibitions.

For as strong and successful as they were, Fowler, who was managing the team at the time, left in midseason along with five other Giants to return to organized baseball with the Adrian Reformers of the Michigan State League (Honus Wagner played for them earlier in the season). After a few games he joined Lansing in the same league and hit .331 in 31 games.

That turned out to be the 37-year-old Fowler’s last stop in organized baseball, as color lines limited his options; still, his 10 years would stand as a record for a Black player until Jackie Robinson came along just over half a century later. “My skin is against me,” wrote Fowler. “If I had not been quite so black, I might have caught on as a Spaniard or something of that kind. The race prejudice is so strong that my black skin barred me.”

Fowler returned to barnstorming and additionally organized the eight-team Lone Star Colored League in Texas in 1897. He played with the Cuban Giants in 1898, but that year was beaten unconscious while riding a freight train to Harlem to visit his sister. When his return to Findlay ran into problems because the team’s white players refused to play with Fowler, Johnson, and former Adrian ace George Wilson, Foster and Findlay backer W.H. Drake formed a team called the All-American Black Tourists, which after a false start got off the ground again in 1900. Wrote Peterson in his seminal 1970 book:

They traveled in their own railroad car, and every game was preceded by a street parade with the players outfitted in full-dress suits with black pants and white vests, swallow-tail coats, opera hats, and silk umbrellas. “By request of any club,” Fowler announced, “we will play the game in these suits.”

Fowler’s migrations and teams continued: the Pittsburgh-based Smoky City Giants and traveling Barnes American Giants (1901), Indianapolis-based Eastern Colored-Stars (1902, part of the Indianapolis Colored League he helped to found), All-American Black Tourists (1903, ’05, and on and off through at least ’09), Kansas City Stars (1904). Another attempt to organize a national Black professional league fell apart, with Fowler saying, “One of these days a few people with enough nerve to take the chance will form a colored league of about eight cities and pull off a barrel of money.”

By 1909, Fowler was dealing with health problems that forced his retirement to Frankfort, New York. Though rumored to be suffering from consumption, he was actually suffering from pernicious anemia, a rare red blood cell disorder that may have been related to a sliding injury suffered while at Indianapolis in 1902, when a broken rib pierced his left kidney. He had the rib surgically removed, but his health woes continued. He died in 1913, at the age of 54 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Frankfort. In 1987, the Society for American Baseball raised the money for a headstone that was dedicated during the Hall of Fame’s Induction Weekend, with Hall of Famer Monte Irvin on hand. In 2013, Cooperstown renamed the street leading to Doubleday Field as Fowler Way.

Despite such tributes, and research to map out his lengthy and important career battling bigotry and the long odds of sustained success, Fowler has never even been on a Hall of Fame ballot. He was among the 94 candidates given preliminary consideration for the 2006 Special Committee on the Negro Leagues ballot, but he didn’t even make the list of 39 finalists, let alone become one of the 17 honorees. Recently, Joe Williams, who formerly chaired the aforementioned SABR Overlooked Nineteenth Century Legends Committee that honored Fowler, said on a Building the Ballot podcast that a 2006 voter told him that the reason Fowler didn’t make the final 39 was because “he moved around too much,” which of course misses the entire nature of his career.

“I wasn’t happy with that answer,” said Williams, and quite frankly nobody should be. “I know why he moved around so much… It had to do with the color of his skin… And he didn’t just [move around], he was a great player.” To be fair, a whole lot of research over the past 15 years, particularly via SABR, has helped to flesh out what author Peter Morris in 2009 called “Bud Fowler’s Lost Years” following his exit from organized baseball.

We don’t have anything close to full statistics for Fowler’s career, but judging him solely on the merits of those numbers — which cast him as a high-average speedster and flashy fielder who must have been quite entertaining to watch — isn’t the point. By the wide consensus of experts, he was of major league star caliber, too skilled for the tastes of the less open-minded white players he encountered. He pioneered the use of shin guards, all the more necessary given the potential for opponents to attempt to injure him, and claimed numerous firsts starting with his status as the first Black professional player. His barnstorming model helped to lay the groundwork for the survival of Black baseball. Above all, he persevered throughout a three-decade quest to secure a place for Black baseball players and Black teams within the national pastime. Wrote Morris, “Despite the treatment he received, Bud Fowler never lost his passion for baseball and never gave up hope that the day would come when ballplayers would be judged on their merits rather than the color of their skin.”

As Steven R. Greenes wrote in Negro Leaguers and the Hall of Fame: The Case for Inducting 24 Overlooked Ballplayers, “Bud Fowler’s path to self-determination in creating the first African American-owned touring teams and the 1895 Page Fence Giants set the foundation for the Negro Leagues to come. His overall contribution to American baseball as a player, organizer, pioneer, and symbol of dignified resistance to the racism of his day more than warrants a Hall of Fame plaque.”

Finally, Fowler is getting his chance. The Early Baseball ballot is full of men whose candidacies have gone neglected for decades, and any evaluation of their merits rests on some amount of subjectivity, because one can’t just fire up a Baseball-Reference page and take every candidates measure by WAR, JAWS, OPS+ and ERA+. No candidate has waited longer for his due than Fowler, and the other Negro Leagues and Black baseball candidates on this ballot — and in the Hall — are there at least in part because of his pioneering work. If I had a ballot, I’d include him as one of my four choices.

It’s worth noting that the Hall of Fame announced the actual makeup of both the Early Baseball and Golden Days Era Committees on Monday. The former includes the following: Hall of Fame members Bert Blyleven, Fergie Jenkins, John Schuerholz, Ozzie Smith, and Joe Torre; major league executives Bill DeWitt, Ken Kendrick, and Tony Reagins; and veteran media members/historians Gary Ashwill, Adrian Burgos Jr., Leslie Heaphy, Jim Henneman, Justice Hill, Steve Hirdt, Rick Hummel, and John Thorn.

Without succumbing to the temptation to game out the connections of voters to candidates at this juncture (far more of an issue among the Golden Days group, which shares several members with this one), I’ll note that Ashwill (the founder and lead researcher of the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database), Burgos (a professor of history at the University of Illinois and leading authority on Latin American baseball and member of the 2006 Special Committee), and Heaphy (an associate professor at Kent State University at Start, an author and editor of multiple books about Black baseball, and another 2006 committee member) were also part of the Special Early Baseball Overview Committee that assembled this ballot, and that Thorn, who has written numerous times about Fowler, is as well. Maybe this will finally be Bud Fowler’s year.

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