It is the end of September, and with that comes the end of another Major League Baseball season. This year, nine former members of the Virginia baseball program took the field for eight different big league clubs at nine different positions. Utility player Chris Taylor and relief pitcher Daniel Lynch IV, who each spent three years in Charlottesville in the 2010s, will look to continue their respective seasons as the Los Angeles Dodgers and Kansas City Royals make playoff pushes.
Chris Taylor — Los Angeles Dodgers
Taylor, age 34, is in year 11 with MLB and year nine with the Dodgers. He has an All-Star selection and a World Series championship in that time, and with Los Angeles holding the No. 1 seed in the National League, he will have a strong chance to add a second ring.
This season, however, Taylor has been a shadow of his former self. A career .250 hitter, the former Cavalier utilityman sat just above the .200 mark. His slugging and on-base percentage were markedly down as well.
He did, on the other hand, bring those numbers up throughout the past month. Taylor returned from a groin injury in August and finished his last 17 games hitting an impressive .300. He brings valuable postseason experience and a strong October track record as well — in addition to being named co-MVP of the 2017 National League Championship Series, Taylor boasts a .248/.352/.453 postseason slash line, indicating that the former Cavalier could still pose a threat in the playoffs.
Daniel Lynch IV — Kansas City Royals
Lynch likely knows the three-hour trek from Kansas City to Omaha, where the Royals’ AAA minor league affiliate is located, better than anyone on the team after his 2024 season. It appears, however, that his fourth stint in the majors this year has brought with it some staying power for the reliever, who played for the Cavaliers from 2016 to 2018.
In 20.2 innings since being recalled in late August, Lynch has surrendered just nine hits, six walks and zero runs, all while recording 24 strikeouts. Though he is working mostly in long-relief, low-leverage situations, those numbers are still impressive. Lynch figures to help the bullpen of a Royals team that, to the surprise of many, landed a wild-card spot after losing 106 games just a year ago.
Andrew Abbott — Cincinnati Reds
Abbott, in just his second season in the majors, built on momentum from last year to put up yet another solid campaign with the Reds, who missed out on the postseason after finishing 77-85. His 2024 ERA+ of 118 is right on par with last year’s 120, putting him just better in the earned run department than league average, which is 100. His WHIP and hits per nine innings — 1.32 and 8.2 in 2023 and 1.30 and 8.3 in 2024, respectively — are similar as well.
Though Abbott’s season ended in late August due to a shoulder injury, he put up those similar numbers in four more starts and nearly 30 more innings in 2024. Abbott would be a solid back-of-the-rotation piece with any organization, and the Reds must like what they have seen so far out of the 25 year-old.
Ernie Clement — Toronto Blue Jays
After bouncing around as a utility player with Cleveland and Oakland, Clement may have found himself an everyday home in Toronto. This was the first season the former Cavalier infielder played in more than 70 games, as Clement appeared in 139 of 162 contests for the Blue Jays in 2024. His versatility was still a plus, but the nonfunctional Toronto lineup, ranking in the bottom half of the majors in batting average, slugging and OPS, always had a spot for him.
And though a 28-year-old utility player is not going to make waves across the MLB, he quietly sat at fourth on the team in batting average, fourth in slugging and sixth in OPS among players with more than 100 plate appearances. The Blue Jays played to a measly 74-88, though, so Clement will not be featuring in October.
Zack Gelof — Oakland Athletics
Gelof, just like Abbott, is a second-year player ending his first full campaign in the majors. He put together an impressive stat line in 69 games last year, but the second baseman could not replicate that performance during a 2024 campaign in which the Athletics stumbled to a 69-93 record.
In 2024, his OPS fell 208 percentage points, he hit just three more home runs in twice as many games and he led the American League in strikeouts. Those regressions aside, Gelof, 24, is a young player on a young Athletics team, with room to develop in the years to come.
Jake McCarthy — Arizona Diamondbacks
The 2024 season marks McCarthy’s fourth in the majors and his third playing over 90 games in a season, all of which have come with the Arizona Diamondbacks. McCarthy, who was a Cavalier teammate of Lynch for three years from 2016 to 2018, finished fourth in 2022 NL Rookie of the Year Voting but underperformed last season, leaving many questioning which version they would see in 2024.
Luckily for the Diamondbacks, his numbers resemble 2022 much more than they do 2023. Though the power is not quite what it was two years ago — McCarthy’s 2024 slugging percentage is down almost 30 percentage points from 2022 — the outfielder put together a similar season in roughly 40 percent more games. His season OPS+ of 109 makes him an above-average hitter, too.
Unfortunately, Arizona missed out on a playoff spot Monday due to the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets splitting their doubleheader. As a result, both division foes are in — and the Diamondbacks are out by an ultra-thin margin.
Josh Sborz — Texas Rangers
11 months ago, Sborz was lauded amongst Virginia alumni for his seven-out save that secured the decisive Game 5 of the World Series for the Texas Rangers. But this season was much less fruitful for the former Cavalier pitcher, and his team finished 74-88 and did not make the playoffs.
Sborz dealt with shoulder issues all season, limiting him to just 17 relief appearances at the big league level. Though a season ERA under 4.00 is not bad for a reliever, especially one with Sborz’s prior numbers, it is difficult to make a conclusive judgment on the season with such a small sample size.
Pavin Smith — Arizona Diamondbacks
Smith, 28, is another former Cavalier who spent 2024 bouncing between AAA and MLB. His major league season can essentially be divided into two segments — one from mid-April through the beginning of June and one from mid-August through the season’s end.
In the former, however, he was used largely as a bench-bat, and he received more everyday playing time during the latter stint. At first glance, his numbers do not appear to warrant a demotion. In fact, he was flirting with a .300 average before he was sent down to AAA in June. Smith, however, was not meeting the standard for a pinch-hitter being plugged almost exclusively into matchup advantages. While he seemed to hit somewhat of a stride in September, it wasn’t enough to propel the Diamondbacks back to the postseason.
Matt Thaiss — Los Angeles Angels
Thaiss, a three-year letterman at Virginia from 2014 to 2016, served as the Angels’ backup catcher this year. While his .204/.323/.299 slash line is not bringing home any awards, nor are his two home runs on the season, they were more than serviceable given the duties expected of a second-string behind the plate.
Though some of these players may not have earned their keep on big league rosters this season, many of them are still below the age of 30 and have plenty of baseball left to play. The Cavaliers will look to their younger big leaguers, like Abbott and Gelof, as well as recent draft picks like Kyle Teel, Jake Gelof, Ethan Anderson, Casey Saucke and Griff O’Ferfrall, to keep the pipeline from Virginia to MLB going strong.
In the meantime, Chris Taylor and the Dodgers have secured a first round bye and will take on the winner of the San Diego Padres and the Atlanta Braves following the National League Wild Card. Lynch and the Royals landed the second American League Wild Card spot and face the Baltimore Orioles in a best-of-three series starting Tuesday.
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