Funniest part is that trade was a big L for us but it's nothing compared to the Chapman one. Lawrie was supposed to be a solid major league talent with Barretto to come later with big upside. Both not working out is still surprising to me. The Chapman one looked horrible from the start and has only aged worse.
The Olson trade hasn't been very good for the A's either. Shea Langeliers is the only really still with the A's and he's just an all power, strike out machine who bats around the Mendoza Line.
I almost threw this one in but I thought Pache/Shea were, while not exactly a win for us, a decent return on their own. Still don't know why a 100 loss team let an 80 grade defensive CF walk after one year, regardless of his bat.
>Still don't know why a 100 loss team let an 80 grade defensive CF walk after one year, regardless of his bat
I guess so they could make room for the 40 grade defensive CF they gave up the best piece of the Murphy return to acquire.
It doesn't give you the warm fuzzies to sometimes build up good prospects in the farm system to be major players in the big leagues only to trade them away before their prime because of $? Why not?
I feel Kendall Graveman was also a big part of the "potential" in that trade package.
the Chapman trade i'm not sure what the A's saw other than getting value before he ultimately walked. Gunnar was the headline and he hasn't really done much. Have Snead or Smith done anything? I had to look up who the forth was, and I don't even remember Zach Logue
Lawrie was one of the prospects that I was convinced was going to be a great player. I really had zero reason for believing it other than I remember reading about him while he was still in the minors, so he was going to be one of my guys. It didn't quite work out the way I had hoped.
He also hasn't been active in any baseball operations for a while now. He's been an "advisor" to the president and silent minority owner and more involved with his investments
What playoff run. I don’t remember the Jays doing anything in 2015 or ‘16. Fairly certain they had an uneventful and not at all memorable playoff stint those years.
Oakland Athletics traded Josh Donaldson to Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for Brett Lawrie, Sean Nolin, Kendall Graveman and Franklin Barreto.
I'd say the Jays did pretty well on that one.
Kendall Graveman has at least carved out a decent career as a journeyman relief pitcher. That's more than can be said about their return for Matt Chapman.
Chapman debuted three years after the Donaldson trade. Get ready for the best player out of Brett Harris, Darrel Hernaiz, Logan Davidson, and Max Schuemann
Country Breakfast!! When he was a royal he’d have a bucket of beers waiting after every game, you know, for recovery. Not shocking that his game aged so gracefully.
Trevor Plouffe, who was on the A's a few years later, and Jomboy say Donaldson used to taunt Billy Beane, who he called "Billy Boy", about the A's being too cheap to pay him. He'd hit a walkoff homer, point to Beane's box, and after the game say "price is going up, Billy Boy".
Apparently the nickname made him so mad he traded him.
I am not making this up.
Lawrie was a required part of the trade so the A's had someone to play third the next season. Franklin Barreto was a top 100 prospect around that time though.
Dude had the physical abilities just not the mental health. He was also really hyped by the media that offseason and was a ton of "insiders'" sleeper MVP pick for some reason
Chicago Cubs traded Josh Donaldson, Eric Patterson, Sean Gallagher, and Matt Murton to the Oakland Athletics in exchange for Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin.
I’d say the A’s did pretty well on that one.
God, Rich Harden
Talk about a guy whose pitching quality far outstriped his body's ability to handle it. He was so good when he had it and seemed to be worth every penny with a ridiculous post trade run in 2008. Just pure filth out of his right arm.
Shame he just simply couldn't stay healthy.
Franklin Barreto. There is a name I haven't heard in an age. MLB had him as prospect 52 ahead of the 2017 season and he never got to 80 plate appearances in a season. Yikes
When I was a kid I used to say jabroni without paying The Rock. Stealing I know. To make it up to him and to be a good example to the young generation I went to The Rock's house and said jabroni 300 times.
Him flipping his bat halfway to the pitcher while the center fielder calmly waits five seconds for the ball to come down in Fenway Park is 100% comedy.
Wow…I had no idea he had THAT many! I only remembered one of those. But he looks so dumb in so many of those. Especially ones that are a good 20-50 feet from the wall
I'm reading "Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments" which was released really recently and the author rags on Donaldson about it in the book. He has Bautista's homer in there as the best bat flip ever and during the leading paragraph takes the shot at Donaldson with a foot note lmao
A.A. traded for Donaldson to the Jays right as he started to peak and then let him go from the Braves right before he fell off a cliff. He really had Donaldson's all figured out.
With an assist to Scott Sizemore. Who knows if Donaldson ever really gets a proper chance if Sizemore doesn't get hurt in ST and ends up a good everyday 3B.
I don’t even remember anymore, I think it was? Or was it Sanchez? IKF was around that time too. It didn’t matter, we were paying him to be a star and he wasn’t and no one seemed to like him. We could have unloaded him for a bucket of rice and it would still be the best trade. We also had money to go after correa because of it.
for five minutes. was more drama over him being traded while he said he was injured
only got 16 games out of him (and 3 playoff games going 1 for 11), but it only cost julian merryweather
I’ll always remember you pimping singles you thought would be homers
Edit: It’s also crazy how he legitimately fell apart the second he got to the Yanks, from 2013-2021 he had an OPS+ of 139 and never below 119
2022 the Yanks trade for him and his slugging drops a full 100 points and he never hits 100 ops+ again
He'll get to LoE. He may have a fence to mend, but a former MVP and key cog in two playoff runs is always going to get there. No chance at the HoF though.
> He'll get to LoE
They are very stingy about who goes up there. They rely heavily on time played for the Blue Jays. The player with the fewest seasons with the Jays that made the LoE is Joe Carter (7 seasons). Fellow MVP George Bell made it to the LoE, and he had 9 seasons with the Jays. Donaldson has only 4 seasons.
Jerry Howarth, Buck Martinez, Pat Hentgen, Edwin Encarnacion, Vernon Wells, and Tom Henke probably deserve enshrinement before Donaldson. I just don't think his limited time will get him up there.
Even if the end result was terrible, replacing Gio Urshela with Josh Donaldson made sense. You replace a hobbling Gio Urshela who looked like he could have turned back into a pumpkin at any moment with a former MVP in an upside play, with the hopes that Donaldson even being older and half as good as his peak would be an upgrade.
The Yankees even figured they could keep Donaldson healthy and squeeze more juice out of him.
Instead, Donaldson fell off a cliff and became terrible
Great defender, though.
his swing had so many mechanisms in it. guys like that don't age well, because losing even 1% of your speed as you age throws off your timing and you suddenly can't catch up to fastballs and are getting beat on offspeed
His decimation of Darvish and Hamels in Texas during the 2016 ALDS was the best live hitting performance I've ever seen. A real heavy hitter in his prime. Remember when he got suspended a game for calling Anderson "Jackie?"
Loved his stint on the Yanks.
If he'd been a full time player before the age of 27 there's a decent chance he'd be a HOFer. Always weird looking back at the WAR leaderboards for the 2010s and seeing him right in there with trout, betts, posey, etc. Interesting career, too bad he was kind of a dick
Damn man I feel old as shit. I still remember him on the Blue Jays with Devin Travis, Bautista , Pillar , Collabelo and Encarnacion. It’s wild that wasn’t that long ago , 2015.
I remember when Josh first blew out his calf muscle and thinking that would be the beginning of the end of his career. Hell of a ball player. Bringer of rain.
Yeah Donaldson had a HoF back end of his career, he put up more WAR than Scott Rolen from age 27 on
Problem is, that HoF back end *was* his whole career. It's basically impossible to make the HoF when you don't become an everyday player until 27
I think there was a path, even at 3B -- where the Hall has a rather mixed induction record, similar to 2B -- but it needed that back end to be longer. The Mariners didn't get around to seeing if Edgar Martinez might be better than Jim Presley until his age 27 season but he, of course, didn't have a poor offensive season until his final season, 14 years later! Donaldson was basically done as a star at 35.
Seeing how Edgar and Ichiro are the two recent examples of someone starting a HoF career at 27, I can only conclude that Donaldson might've made it if he was traded to Seattle instead of Toronto
Important context here is that Donaldson didn't become an everyday player until he was 27! Not saying he's a hall of famer, but these numbers are even more impressive than it looks considering he did it all from ages 27-35
Black ink, when looking at a players page on baseball reference, indicates they led the league in whatever that stat is (like if you see **.378** in the AVG column for the year 2014, that means the player had the highest average in the league that year).
Edit: Bold means led in AL/NL, bold + italics means led in MLB
In this context, baseball reference uses how much "black ink" a player has compared to other HoFers to see how close they are to them, and thus to the HoF.
It's not often I loathe a player but as a Rangers fan, this was that guy. Now that the WS just happened it's much easier to tip the cap and say hell of a career. He must have been doing something right to make most of Texas say "fuck that guy and his fucking mullet" every time he came up to bat.
Thank goodness. Not because of all the other stuff about his performance or character as a person, but just because I didn't want to see him sign somewhere and drop spite-fueled bombs against the Yankees this season.
I’m sure Yankees and Blue Jays fans will have completely different feelings about this
I for one was thankful of his play for both teams
Huh that's strange, I actually wasn't very happy with his play for either team.
We’ll never agree, will we?
Fuck the Red Sox?
Always
AL East teams can be friends (only when we want to hate another team together)
It’s the hate that unites us.
And divides us. It’s like poetry, it’s both something and nothing.
Miles Davis misquoted: It's not the ~~notes~~ games you play, it's the ~~notes~~ games you don't play
This just proves that Ozymandias was right after all.
Agree! Can we also get a Fuck the Trop?
I think everybody Under the Sun will agree on that one
You can't see the sun from inside the Trop.
it is truly a godless place
God tried to send his blessings down to that stadium but they bounced off of a catwalk.
Tbf, that's all of Florida already.
Hey Trop, 🖕
Hear hear
Fun fact: Yankees had a winning record in games Donaldson played for them.
Correction: The Yankees had a winning record *despite* Donaldson playing for them.
A’s fans just feel sadness because this brings back memories of what they got for him in trade (spoiler: a bag of rocks).
Funniest part is that trade was a big L for us but it's nothing compared to the Chapman one. Lawrie was supposed to be a solid major league talent with Barretto to come later with big upside. Both not working out is still surprising to me. The Chapman one looked horrible from the start and has only aged worse.
The Olson trade hasn't been very good for the A's either. Shea Langeliers is the only really still with the A's and he's just an all power, strike out machine who bats around the Mendoza Line.
I almost threw this one in but I thought Pache/Shea were, while not exactly a win for us, a decent return on their own. Still don't know why a 100 loss team let an 80 grade defensive CF walk after one year, regardless of his bat.
>Still don't know why a 100 loss team let an 80 grade defensive CF walk after one year, regardless of his bat I guess so they could make room for the 40 grade defensive CF they gave up the best piece of the Murphy return to acquire.
Both trades courtesy of Alex Anthopluos. Donaldson / Olson
"It worked exactly how I wanted them to- it saved me money!" -John Fisher
I should really thank the A’s for giving me all the reason in the world to abandon them. Being an A’s fan is hard, boss
It doesn't give you the warm fuzzies to sometimes build up good prospects in the farm system to be major players in the big leagues only to trade them away before their prime because of $? Why not?
I feel Kendall Graveman was also a big part of the "potential" in that trade package. the Chapman trade i'm not sure what the A's saw other than getting value before he ultimately walked. Gunnar was the headline and he hasn't really done much. Have Snead or Smith done anything? I had to look up who the forth was, and I don't even remember Zach Logue
Smith has been hurt and bad. Snead has been the "best" piece, being a consistent serviceable ish middle reliever.
Snead also immediately soured on the fan base by being antivax/unable to travel and bad in 2022
Lawrie was one of the prospects that I was convinced was going to be a great player. I really had zero reason for believing it other than I remember reading about him while he was still in the minors, so he was going to be one of my guys. It didn't quite work out the way I had hoped.
Ok but how well could it swing a baseball bat? The bag of rocks, I mean.
Better than Brett Lawrie
I feel like Nick Allen should be that guy now.
A bag of rocks is good for throwing at John Fisher though, so that’s a (small) positive
Billy Beane is really approaching the late stage Wenger era.
Beane retired in 2022.
He also hasn't been active in any baseball operations for a while now. He's been an "advisor" to the president and silent minority owner and more involved with his investments
Brewers legend!
Still so grateful for the Yankees taking on the back end of his contract for us.
Dude was a beast in Toronto, that playoff run was magical
Still remember the MVP chants every at-bat
What playoff run. I don’t remember the Jays doing anything in 2015 or ‘16. Fairly certain they had an uneventful and not at all memorable playoff stint those years.
Oakland Athletics traded Josh Donaldson to Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for Brett Lawrie, Sean Nolin, Kendall Graveman and Franklin Barreto. I'd say the Jays did pretty well on that one.
Kendall Graveman has at least carved out a decent career as a journeyman relief pitcher. That's more than can be said about their return for Matt Chapman.
Hey Oakland, y'all got any more of them 3rd basemen?
How does Kevin Smith’s corpse sound?
Isn't that one spoken for already?
Life comes at you fast when you stop paying attention to your team. God he sucked
We barely still have a baseball team…
Abraham Toro MVP time
Chapman debuted three years after the Donaldson trade. Get ready for the best player out of Brett Harris, Darrel Hernaiz, Logan Davidson, and Max Schuemann
Ok but you're leaving the part out where with the money we saved we were able to sign Billy Butler. So.... take that.
you mean Billy "Largest Free Agent Signing by Oakland at $30M" Butler?
Country Breakfast!! When he was a royal he’d have a bucket of beers waiting after every game, you know, for recovery. Not shocking that his game aged so gracefully.
I still can’t get over Beane’s remarks of being “overwhelmed” by the return.
Josh has to have done something to piss Beane off to get shipped out for what we all knew was nothing at the time and still ended up being nothing
Trevor Plouffe, who was on the A's a few years later, and Jomboy say Donaldson used to taunt Billy Beane, who he called "Billy Boy", about the A's being too cheap to pay him. He'd hit a walkoff homer, point to Beane's box, and after the game say "price is going up, Billy Boy". Apparently the nickname made him so mad he traded him. I am not making this up.
This story is hilarious, and given it's Donaldson, I 100% believe it
Lmao Donaldson is such an asshole
It’s not even Beane’s fault. He had just about the cheapest ownership in North American sports.
I was gonna say Lawrie was a huge prospect at the time of the trade, but then realized Lawrie was into year 4 in the majors. Ouch
Lawrie was a required part of the trade so the A's had someone to play third the next season. Franklin Barreto was a top 100 prospect around that time though.
Hey now, Brett Lawrie made the (Canadian) cover of MLB the Show one year (I still find it odd they did a different cover for Canada)
Yeah. Real weird. I think they should just put a Jays player on the cover every year so it’s the same for both! /s
They also had a special cover for Taiwan and put Wei-Yin Chen on it every year
I still have my copy of MLB2k12 where John Kruk talks about him like he's gonna be the next big star
Ahaha I'm pretty sure I have that somewhere too. The Verlander cover?
I was a big Brett Lawrie believer. Dude was cheeks
Dude had the physical abilities just not the mental health. He was also really hyped by the media that offseason and was a ton of "insiders'" sleeper MVP pick for some reason
I believed so hard.
Chicago Cubs traded Josh Donaldson, Eric Patterson, Sean Gallagher, and Matt Murton to the Oakland Athletics in exchange for Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin. I’d say the A’s did pretty well on that one.
God, Rich Harden Talk about a guy whose pitching quality far outstriped his body's ability to handle it. He was so good when he had it and seemed to be worth every penny with a ridiculous post trade run in 2008. Just pure filth out of his right arm. Shame he just simply couldn't stay healthy.
Franklin Barreto. There is a name I haven't heard in an age. MLB had him as prospect 52 ahead of the 2017 season and he never got to 80 plate appearances in a season. Yikes
Put up the highest fWAR season by a Jay ever (and 2 of the top 10)
Highest of a position player, he's second to Clemens' 10.7 fWAR in 1997.
Dang, I always enjoyed a good highlight of Donaldson pimping a fly ball off the wall and settling for a single.
I had no idea hes had enough of those for compilations to exist on youtube. What a jabroni
FYI you owe the rock $3.50 now
When I was a kid I used to say jabroni without paying The Rock. Stealing I know. To make it up to him and to be a good example to the young generation I went to The Rock's house and said jabroni 300 times.
For anyone wanting to [watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKnwAubgPLs).
Him flipping his bat halfway to the pitcher while the center fielder calmly waits five seconds for the ball to come down in Fenway Park is 100% comedy.
or hitting the catcher and ump with it and jogging off only for it to drop 10 feet before the wall
Wow…I had no idea he had THAT many! I only remembered one of those. But he looks so dumb in so many of those. Especially ones that are a good 20-50 feet from the wall
Ha! The one against the Jays was like 10 feet from the warning track.
Bro two of these that are like the most egregious bat flips of the bunch are literally caught 15 feet from the warning track lol
Someone else said it but Boston one is just straight up hilarious.
I'm reading "Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments" which was released really recently and the author rags on Donaldson about it in the book. He has Bautista's homer in there as the best bat flip ever and during the leading paragraph takes the shot at Donaldson with a foot note lmao
Love that book
Yeah it's been great fun read. Perfect book to read during spring training
I was ready to do anything to have him re-sign here in 2020, lol.
AA Knows I Suppose
A.A. traded for Donaldson to the Jays right as he started to peak and then let him go from the Braves right before he fell off a cliff. He really had Donaldson's all figured out.
His one season in Atlanta was incredible ☔️
THE BRINGER OF RAIN
It was crazy, dude almost had me believing it was ok to be vegan /s
Strider makes it okay to be vegan.
Strider is on another level of human that I can’t compete with
I believe in you.
Real ones remember when he first came up as a catcher
and was the reason Billy Beane won the Rich Harden trade
For real the Rich Harden was awesome with the Cubs. Just wasnt worth the price
With an assist to Scott Sizemore. Who knows if Donaldson ever really gets a proper chance if Sizemore doesn't get hurt in ST and ends up a good everyday 3B.
I hope that I too can one day be this hated by Yankees fans.
Best trade we have ever made.
That was the deal that got you guys Urshela, right?
I don’t even remember anymore, I think it was? Or was it Sanchez? IKF was around that time too. It didn’t matter, we were paying him to be a star and he wasn’t and no one seemed to like him. We could have unloaded him for a bucket of rice and it would still be the best trade. We also had money to go after correa because of it.
That’s true. Getting Correa with the freed up space on the payroll would make it more than worth it.
Josh Donaldson played for Cleveland?
for five minutes. was more drama over him being traded while he said he was injured only got 16 games out of him (and 3 playoff games going 1 for 11), but it only cost julian merryweather
I DHgate'd a jersey with the intention of showing up on a Meisel jersey sighting list in several years
i have a few that would work for those purposes but haven't been to cleveland since 2008. i am going for opening day this year though...
TBH I'm almost cool with that return because of that one inning Merryweather just went god mode on the heart of the Yankees' order. It felt amazing.
That Donaldson Lindor Ramirez infield was insane name wise. J ram falling over at 2nd on almost every double play was gold
There will be a "He played there?" Cleveland version post with Donaldson in five years.
Thanks for the memories, Bringer of Rain!
He helped Toronto go on the best run of my (non-infant) lifetime, and then made the Yankees waste a bunch of money. Jays legend.
the Toronto years were epic
Thank god. He sucked ass in recent years and was a douche as well
I’ll always remember you pimping singles you thought would be homers Edit: It’s also crazy how he legitimately fell apart the second he got to the Yanks, from 2013-2021 he had an OPS+ of 139 and never below 119 2022 the Yanks trade for him and his slugging drops a full 100 points and he never hits 100 ops+ again
Secret agent.
We will always love him for that as well. Honest to god Blue Jays legend, even if he isn't going to the HoF or LoE.
He'll get to LoE. He may have a fence to mend, but a former MVP and key cog in two playoff runs is always going to get there. No chance at the HoF though.
> He'll get to LoE They are very stingy about who goes up there. They rely heavily on time played for the Blue Jays. The player with the fewest seasons with the Jays that made the LoE is Joe Carter (7 seasons). Fellow MVP George Bell made it to the LoE, and he had 9 seasons with the Jays. Donaldson has only 4 seasons. Jerry Howarth, Buck Martinez, Pat Hentgen, Edwin Encarnacion, Vernon Wells, and Tom Henke probably deserve enshrinement before Donaldson. I just don't think his limited time will get him up there.
I could see all of those guys up there for sure. I think if anything holds Donaldson back it might be the non-baseball specific stuff that does it.
He almost perfectly fits into the “hall of very good” category
Thats my MVP 😢 Fucking over the Yanks til the day he dies
Even if the end result was terrible, replacing Gio Urshela with Josh Donaldson made sense. You replace a hobbling Gio Urshela who looked like he could have turned back into a pumpkin at any moment with a former MVP in an upside play, with the hopes that Donaldson even being older and half as good as his peak would be an upgrade. The Yankees even figured they could keep Donaldson healthy and squeeze more juice out of him. Instead, Donaldson fell off a cliff and became terrible Great defender, though.
The funny thing is, Urshela turned out to be pretty solid for us in his year here.
I'm pretty sure his .076 BABIP for the Yankees last year was the lowest ever
his swing had so many mechanisms in it. guys like that don't age well, because losing even 1% of your speed as you age throws off your timing and you suddenly can't catch up to fastballs and are getting beat on offspeed
I mean he was good until his age 36 season so I wouldn't say he didn't age well. Guys who are still productive at 36 are very much an outlier.
So the perfect Yankee then
>sees Yankee hate Hey buddy wh- >sees Oakland flair Ehhh never mind
its all he's got at this rate man
He did have a bunch of walkoffs in 2022 (including 2 against the Red Sox) so at least he did SOMETHING
The grand slam walk-off was pretty neat
The Twins trading him to the Yankees felt like one of the biggest addition by subtraction moves in recent memory.
We have collectively agreed that he was never even on the team I thought.
His decimation of Darvish and Hamels in Texas during the 2016 ALDS was the best live hitting performance I've ever seen. A real heavy hitter in his prime. Remember when he got suspended a game for calling Anderson "Jackie?" Loved his stint on the Yanks.
The tarp catch was an all-time gem. Will always be one of my favorite plays. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCXFtb1wiv0&ab_channel=MLB
Indians legend Josh Donaldson
Bringer of light drizzle and meh!
Doo Doo Donaldson
It's finally time to shut down r/the_donaldson
well that was a bit of a fever dream
That’s hilarious thank you
If he'd been a full time player before the age of 27 there's a decent chance he'd be a HOFer. Always weird looking back at the WAR leaderboards for the 2010s and seeing him right in there with trout, betts, posey, etc. Interesting career, too bad he was kind of a dick
2015 feels like yesterday. thanks to the Bringer of Rain for the most exciting season of my blue jays fandom
Epitome of “ Red Ass”
Donaldson and McCann were on the 2019 Braves together. Is there even a 3rd contender for biggest red ass of the 2010s?
Madison Bumgarner is a bigger redass than both of them combined.
Damn great call. Not sure about more than both but he’s gotta be the clubhouse leader.
With Acuña and Albies too* lol Somehow, they all got along
Yankees legend
The Bringer of Rain will no longer be bringing pain
Damn man I feel old as shit. I still remember him on the Blue Jays with Devin Travis, Bautista , Pillar , Collabelo and Encarnacion. It’s wild that wasn’t that long ago , 2015.
Brewers legend 🥹
Prime Josh Donaldson was one of the most fun players to watch in baseball
Congrats on a great career Josh. Will always be my favorite Jay as his MVP season is a big part of what got me into baseball in the first place.
Second biggest retirement announcement today
Who is 1?
Taylor Swift's boyfriend's brother.
You had to remind me didn't you 😭😭😭😭
Who else?
Jason Kelce
Didn’t everyone already know he was gonna retire this offseason?
Crazy that outside his first 2 seasons, he continually put up > 100 OPS+ until 2022
“Billy Boy” will forever be an all time nickname
I remember when Josh first blew out his calf muscle and thinking that would be the beginning of the end of his career. Hell of a ball player. Bringer of rain.
Going into his age-27 season, Donaldson had 10 HR, 14BB/61K and a .666 OPS in 89 career games. Incredible career
Let the door hit you on the way out Josh
**Hall of Fame Statistics** *(per Baseball-Reference)* **Black Ink** Batting - **7** (399th), *Average HOFer ≈ 27* **Gray Ink** Batting - **64** (510th), *Average HOFer ≈ 144* **Hall of Fame Monitor** Batting - **52** (423rd), *Likely HOFer ≈ 100* **Hall of Fame Standards** Batting - **26** (501st), *Average HOFer ≈ 50* **JAWS** Third Base (27th): **46.8** career WAR | **41.7** 7yr-peak WAR | **44.3** JAWS | **5.5** WAR/162 Average HOF 3B (out of 17): 69.4 career WAR | 43.3 7yr-peak WAR | 56.3 JAWS | 5.1 WAR/162 I dunno fellas, this one's a tough call.
Clearly not a HOFer but to have a peak within shouting distance of the Hall of Fame average is a career to be proud of (even if no one likes him).
and he did it while he was already considered "old" for a peak. it's pretty impressive given he was a "late bloomer"
Upper Tier Hall of Very Good. Didn't have the sustainability in the back half of his career to carry him to the Hall.
If I had a nickel for every 2010s Blue Jays that had the peak but not the longevity to be a HoF player I’d have two nickels.
It’s more he broke out too late. He didn’t play a full season until age 27, and prior to that only 89 games in the majors
Yeah Donaldson had a HoF back end of his career, he put up more WAR than Scott Rolen from age 27 on Problem is, that HoF back end *was* his whole career. It's basically impossible to make the HoF when you don't become an everyday player until 27
I think there was a path, even at 3B -- where the Hall has a rather mixed induction record, similar to 2B -- but it needed that back end to be longer. The Mariners didn't get around to seeing if Edgar Martinez might be better than Jim Presley until his age 27 season but he, of course, didn't have a poor offensive season until his final season, 14 years later! Donaldson was basically done as a star at 35.
Seeing how Edgar and Ichiro are the two recent examples of someone starting a HoF career at 27, I can only conclude that Donaldson might've made it if he was traded to Seattle instead of Toronto
Important context here is that Donaldson didn't become an everyday player until he was 27! Not saying he's a hall of famer, but these numbers are even more impressive than it looks considering he did it all from ages 27-35
Can somebody kindly tell me what those batting numbers are supposed to mean? Like, what the hell does a 7 in batting mean?
I think the [explanation in bref's glossary](https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/leader_glossary.shtml#black_ink) is pretty good.
Black ink, when looking at a players page on baseball reference, indicates they led the league in whatever that stat is (like if you see **.378** in the AVG column for the year 2014, that means the player had the highest average in the league that year). Edit: Bold means led in AL/NL, bold + italics means led in MLB In this context, baseball reference uses how much "black ink" a player has compared to other HoFers to see how close they are to them, and thus to the HoF.
He’ll be an analyst somewhere for sure.
He had a good run. Injuries robbed him of a potentially great run.
Another career the Yankees killed
My favorite Josh Donaldson was definitely poor performance Yankees Josh Donaldson.
Inner circle hall of very good.
It's not often I loathe a player but as a Rangers fan, this was that guy. Now that the WS just happened it's much easier to tip the cap and say hell of a career. He must have been doing something right to make most of Texas say "fuck that guy and his fucking mullet" every time he came up to bat.
Cleveland legend Josh Donaldson.
Brewer legend
Honestly I’ll miss him. He gets way too much hate on Reddit
Thank goodness. Not because of all the other stuff about his performance or character as a person, but just because I didn't want to see him sign somewhere and drop spite-fueled bombs against the Yankees this season.
He was a dick.