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Zack Britton Isn’t A One-Pitch Pitcher Anymore

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One of the most exciting and maddening things about baseball is its unpredictability. A guy who fell to the 25th pick of his draft turns out to be the greatest player of his generation? Sure. A 36-year-old returns from a major achilles injury to have his best offensive season ever and hits the decisive home run of the World Series? Of course. One of baseball’s richest teams goes from winning the World Series to claiming it’s out of money, firing the guy who put the championship roster together, and trading away its superstar player to cut costs in the span of 18 months? That… well, we probably should have seen that coming.

Baseball is a game without sure things, which means the few precious certainties we get tend to stand out. One of those certainties, for the past five years, has been that if Zack Britton is pitching to you, he’s going to throw you a sinker. No need for guesswork, or a chess match, or an ear trained toward a nearby trash can. Since he switched from starting to relieving in 2014, 88% of the pitches Britton has thrown have been sinkers. Not a lot of pitchers can get by on just one pitch — so few, you can probably name them off the top of your head right now — but Britton’s been so successful, no one’s called it into question. That’s because the pitch every hitter knows is coming is still a 94 mph bowling ball thrown at their knees, and virtually no one can get a barrel to it. Because of that, Britton’s made 349 relief appearances, and owns a 1.81 ERA and 2.94 FIP over that span, with two All-Star selections and some MVP and Cy Young votes for his trouble. He’s one of the great relievers of his time, and it’s all because of one pitch.

That’s the Britton I know, you know, that everybody knows. Trouble is, that description might no longer be accurate. From 2014-18, Britton didn’t throw a non-sinker offering even 10% of the time over a given season. In 2019, however, he threw his breaking ball 13.6% of the time. That might sound like only a slight bump year-to-year, but this was no gradual change. This was Britton using the second half of 2019 to try something he’d never done before:

I’m being non-committal about what to call Britton’s breaking ball because there isn’t a consensus on what it is. Pitch Info calls it a curveball, while Statcast calls it a slider. You be the judge:

Whatever it is, it’s just about unhittable. In the 31 plate appearances Britton ended with the breaker in 2019, he allowed just one hit, one hit batter, and zero walks. Oh, and he got 25 strikeouts. That’s a wOBA of .051, a little better than his xwOBA of .095. That rate of success is astonishing, and it’s not out of line with what his numbers hinted at in smaller samples from previous seasons:

Britton’s Curveball Stats Since Moving To Bullpen
Year PA AVG OBP SLG K% BB% wOBA
2014 21 0.050 0.095 0.050 61.9% 0% 0.077
2015 26 0.040 0.077 0.040 80.8% 0% 0.061
2016 14 0.214 0.214 0.357 50.0% 0% 0.240
2017 7 0.143 0.143 0.143 71.4% 0% 0.125
2018 14 0.071 0.071 0.071 50.0% 0% 0.063
2019 31 0.033 0.065 0.033 80.6% 0% 0.051

By itself, a plate appearance sample from any one of these seasons shouldn’t tell you much. Stacked together, though, they begin to paint a convincing picture. Britton has had another deadly weapon at his disposal all this time, and just hasn’t used it.

What makes the breaking ball so effective? Well, one theory you may already have considered is that hitters simply aren’t expecting it. Because he’s historically thrown sinkers on about nine out of every 10 pitches, hitters are going to try to sit on that pitch, knowing a surprise change of speed will be rare. There’s probably a good bit of truth to that. The other well-known one-pitch relievers, such as the four-seam-heavy Sean Doolittle and cutter specialist Kenley Jansen, also generate very good numbers with their secondary pitches in small samples. It can be difficult to know whether a pitch works well and is underused, or works well specifically because it is underused.

But even if you didn’t know how much or how little Britton was using his other pitches, an isolated look at the breaker alone would probably make you believe it could be a strong pitch. According to Statcast, it moves 7.6 inches above average vertically, the seventh-most vertical movement of any slider in baseball. Of the six pitchers ahead of him in that category, four of them — Tyler Duffey, Luke Jackson, Trent Thornton and Brett Anderson — all utilize the slider as one of their main weapons. Throw in the fact that Britton’s pitch also has above average horizontal movement, and the breaker looks the part of a dangerous offering, whether opposing hitters are expecting it or not. And Britton knows exactly where to throw it:

The timing of Britton’s increased trust in his breaking ball likely isn’t a coincidence, either. At the conclusion of June, Britton was three months into the three-year, $39-million contract he signed with the Yankees the previous offseason. His 2.55 ERA made him look like he was back to his old dominant self, the version that existed before a forearm strain and an achilles injury cost him big chunks of two seasons. But his 4.26 FIP was more foreboding. Because of the way Britton pitches — relatively few strikeouts, and lots of groundballs — he’s naturally a candidate to not only work a somewhat unflattering FIP, but also beat it. But this seemed different. His strikeout rate was lower than ever, his walk rate higher than ever, and his peripherals pointed to a real decline in effectiveness:

Britton’s Uninspiring First Half
Year IP ERA FIP K/9 BB/9 O-Contact% SwStr%
2016 67.0 0.54 1.94 9.94 2.42 42.0% 17.2%
2017 37.1 2.89 3.40 6.99 4.34 57.1% 11.5%
2018 40.2 3.10 4.22 7.52 4.65 48.8% 12.5%
2019 (thru 6-30) 35.1 2.55 4.26 6.62 5.09 67.6% 9.0%

Obviously there are many components to pitching that aren’t included in this chart, but those don’t look like the numbers or the trajectory of someone who can be trusted to keep his ERA in the mid-2.00s. Britton and the Yankees could have just rode this out and waited for the other shoe to drop, but instead, the left-hander was proactive. In July, Britton threw the highest percentage of breaking balls of any month since September 2013, at 18.3%. In August, he surpassed that, going up to 19.9%. Then he did it again in September, going all the way up to 27.7% breaking balls. Britton was reinventing himself on the fly, and the results were stunning.

Britton’s Surging Second Half
Year IP ERA FIP K/9 BB/9 O-Contact% SwStr%
2016 67.0 0.54 1.94 9.94 2.42 42.0% 17.2%
2017 37.1 2.89 3.40 6.99 4.34 57.1% 11.5%
2018 40.2 3.10 4.22 7.52 4.65 48.8% 12.5%
2019 (thru 6-30) 35.1 2.55 4.26 6.62 5.09 67.6% 9.0%
2019 (after 6-30) 26.0 1.04 3.01 9.35 4.15 54.2% 13.4%

From the time Britton decided to increase his breaking ball usage, his numbers continuously improved until they returned to pretty close to the elite levels they once were. This is a pretty good visual of what that relationship looked like:

The more breaking balls he threw, the more effective he was. We’ve seen pitchers make adjustments like this and have success before, but Britton seems like a unique case. He wasn’t a struggling pitcher in his mid-20s who learned a new pitch and started dominating. He wasn’t a two-seam guy who got traded to a smart team that told him to throw more four-seamers up in the zone, and suddenly became a Cy Young candidate as a result. He was an overpowering reliever for several seasons, and could credit all of that success to a single pitch. Last year, that pitch stopped being enough, so at 32 years old, in the ninth year of his major league career, he pulled out a second pitch, and that turned out to be unstoppable too.

It’s still too early to see how far Britton might take this tweak in his repertoire, but if you’d like to know just how much trust he has in the breaking ball, look no further than the postseason. He stuck to the slider with 24.5% of the pitches he threw in October, and remained brilliant with it, with hitters going 0-for-6 with a sacrifice fly and four strikeouts. Here’s Nelson Cruz swinging at air:

Yordan Alvarez, helpless:

Carlos Correa, sure he’s not going to swing at this pitch that never touches the zone, and then doing it anyway:

And Alvarez again, possibly trying to foreshadow what the Astros PR department would look like in the coming weeks and months:

All of these hitters thought they knew Britton, and I bet you did, too. He’s the sinker demon, one of the best relievers of the last decade not in spite of being one-dimensional, but arguably because of it. He throws nothing but sinkers because that’s all he needs to beat you. But time marches on, and sooner or later, players usually end up needing to adjust, one way or another. Britton’s done that, and that makes him one of the most exciting relievers to pay attention to in 2020. He already once became one of the best pitchers in baseball when everyone knew what pitch was coming. What happens when they don’t?


Effectively Wild Episode 1496: The Mookie Betts Breakdown

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EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley break down the three-team Mookie Betts blockbuster, analyzing the historic strangeness of a player as good and young as Mookie being moved, what it means for the Red Sox and Dodgers competitively and financially, how Red Sox fans must feel about Betts (and David Price) being traded, why the Red Sox wanted to move Mookie and whether their reasons are sound, and what the Sox got back in Brusdar Graterol and Alex Verdugo (plus banter about the Twins’ acquisition of Kenta Maeda, the corresponding Dodgers-Angels trade involving Joc Pederson, Ross Stripling, and Luis Rengifo, the Astros hiring James Click as their new GM, and Rays execs and internet nerds taking over teams).

Audio intro: Grateful Dead, "He’s Gone"
Audio outro: Brian Eno, "Here He Comes"

Link to Ben on the Betts trade
Link to Dan’s Mookie post
Link to order The MVP Machine

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2020 ZiPS Projections: Chicago Cubs

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Chicago Cubs.

Batters

It’s hard to feel much excitement about the Cubs. They won the World Series when they were one of the best teams in baseball, so to see them in stasis as they pass through the core’s long twilight just doesn’t feel quite right.

I think of the Cubs like one of those expensive, powerful German luxury cars. It was dominating, with an engine that snarled, and looked like it would roll over the mid-size crossovers that were the rest of the NL Central. But it turned out the insurance for the car was expensive, the upkeep and maintenance fell behind, and now it isn’t any more desirable than a late-model, non-luxury brand.

It would not be a shock if this offense, led by stars like Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, and Javier Báez, was enough to get the Cubs to the top of the division in 2020. But it would no longer be a shock if it doesn’t. Chicago’s outfield is in better shape than that of their World Series rivals, the Cleveland Indians, but it’s not a plus and it’s hard to see many pathways to it becoming so this season. There was a brief moment in 2019 when Jason Heyward’s bat seemed to be coming back to life after a long hibernation, but in the end, he had another Jason Heyward Season. He’s a league-average player, sure, but not only is he not the next Willie Mays, he’s not the next Willie McCovey or Willie Davis, though there are worse things than being Willie Kirkland.

The lineup won’t be horrific anywhere and ought to be able to coast by until the team starts losing some combination of Bryant, Báez, or Rizzo. And that day is approaching; Bryant’s feelings about the organization have to be at near all-time lows, and like Báez, Rizzo, and Kyle Schwarber, he’s a free agent after the 2021 season.

The team’s depth has suffered as it has hunkered down financially, and the organization’s ability to lose one of their big three hitters (or practically anyone from the rotation) and survive the division is limited.

Pitchers

As long as everything goes well, the rotation is a decent one, even with Jon Lester on the downswing and Jose Quintana not having gotten near the ceiling that justified the Cubs swapping Eloy Jiménez for him. Lester’s fully into the crafty lefty stage of his career, but as a team’s fourth-best starting pitcher goes, he’s not likely to keep the Cubs from making the playoffs.

ZiPS is all-in on the idea that Yu Darvish is finally back, and after watching the run he had late last summer when he went a month without allowing a walk, I’m also convinced. Unlike a lot of the Cubs, Darvish kept playing well in September, finishing up his season by striking out 14, 13, and 12 batters. In Darvish’s final start, against the playoff-bound Cards, 82 of his 110 pitches were thrown for strikes.

The computer’s always been a fan of Kyle Hendricks, who has never had trouble fooling hitters with a fastball slower than Nolan Ryan’s. (I mean Nolan Ryan’s 2020 fastball.) As long as Hendricks can change speeds effectively, he’ll continue to be a productive borderline All-Star. Signed through 2023 with a mutual option for 2024, he may eventually be the team’s last key contributor from the 2016 championship squad.

The fifth starter position is a concern, one the Cubs have done little to address. Tyler Chatwood is a walking heartburn machine and Alec Mills isn’t likely to be any better. It would have been nice to keep Cole Hamels around for one last year; he played a big part in holding the rotation together early on in 2019.

ZiPS is rather optimistic about Craig Kimbrel; hopefully a healthier season without an odd stint of unemployment, will at least get him back to his Boston form. The bullpen overall projects as a bit above average, with the system liking most of the pitchers likely to get significant time. The projections are quite bullish on Big Trevor Megill, a pitcher taken in the Rule 5 Draft who the team had previously tried to acquire. It’s not the most electric bunch, the bullpen would have to try pretty hard to be less effective than most of last year’s crew.

Prospects

ZiPS has soured on Aramis Ademan thanks to his offensive struggles, but he’s still very young and playing in the low minors, so I wouldn’t be too worried about the weak projection just yet. The computer’s never been a fan of Adbert Alzolay, though his projections improve more than with the typical pitcher if he’s moved to the bullpen. I’m not sure we can really still count him as a prospect at this point, but ZiPS thinks that if Chatwood stumbles, the low-ceiling Jharel Cotton may be the team’s next-best option, preferable to Mills or Alzolay. Cory Abbott’s projection is similar to Cotton’s, though I think it is unlikely that the Cubs turn to him in an emergency without him pitching at Triple-A.

ZiPS is bullish on Miguel Amaya, though the Cubs also have Willson Contreras and Victor Caratini, a more-than-adequate combination. The projections for Nico Hoerner’s upside are rather lackluster, but of the team’s offensive talent, he has the second-best WAR projection for the 2030 season, behind only Amaya! I’m very, very sorry about Hoerner’s top comp; I swear I didn’t just choose that one to be mean.

One pedantic note for 2020: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth charts playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Batters – Standard
Player B Age PO PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS
Kris Bryant R 28 3B 634 543 98 147 32 3 30 79 71 140 5 3
Anthony Rizzo L 30 1B 613 518 82 147 30 3 27 101 70 86 6 4
Javier Báez R 27 SS 590 553 87 151 32 5 31 97 29 158 14 7
Kyle Schwarber L 27 LF 547 470 76 115 22 3 32 84 70 153 2 2
Willson Contreras R 28 C 460 402 54 102 21 2 19 65 46 111 3 3
Addison Russell R 26 2B 426 378 50 92 18 2 12 49 38 98 4 1
Jason Heyward L 30 RF 534 474 67 120 21 4 14 61 53 88 7 3
Ian Happ B 25 CF 552 478 74 117 23 2 23 72 67 168 11 3
Victor Caratini B 26 C 361 319 42 85 17 1 10 42 33 73 1 0
David Bote R 27 2B 439 387 53 94 20 2 14 53 43 115 5 2
Nico Hoerner R 23 SS 508 471 60 127 21 7 8 55 30 59 9 5
Steven Souza Jr. R 31 RF 384 338 44 79 16 2 15 51 40 117 8 3
Miguel Amaya R 21 C 440 386 49 83 20 1 14 49 43 104 1 0
Zack Short R 25 SS 436 372 48 79 18 3 10 37 56 123 7 5
Ian Miller L 28 CF 527 482 56 121 22 4 5 43 34 97 29 6
Dixon Machado R 28 SS 387 341 41 80 16 1 7 38 37 77 3 3
Robel Garcia B 27 2B 473 422 59 92 15 4 19 70 43 167 3 5
Hernán Pérez R 29 2B 402 377 45 97 18 2 12 44 21 83 14 3
Corban Joseph L 31 2B 469 435 48 114 23 1 9 49 27 57 2 1
Albert Almora Jr. R 26 CF 444 414 52 110 21 2 10 44 21 74 4 2
Jonathan Lucroy R 34 C 386 349 37 89 16 2 8 46 29 57 1 0
Trent Giambrone R 26 2B 480 437 54 97 19 1 17 51 36 133 14 6
P.J. Higgins R 27 C 434 385 42 89 16 1 6 34 38 88 3 2
Carlos Asuaje L 28 2B 434 385 45 92 17 4 6 42 39 82 2 2
Ben Zobrist B 39 2B 324 283 40 73 13 1 5 32 36 45 1 1
Donnie Dewees L 26 LF 493 450 53 108 19 6 9 49 33 88 10 5
Daniel Descalso L 33 2B 320 273 37 59 12 2 8 38 41 85 2 1
Mark Zagunis R 27 RF 390 339 43 78 18 1 9 38 43 117 6 3
Jhonny Pereda R 24 C 428 383 39 86 13 1 4 30 41 78 2 2
Tyler Payne R 27 C 317 296 29 63 13 1 8 30 16 73 0 0
Ian Rice R 26 C 318 274 35 54 11 0 9 28 38 98 0 1
Jacob Hannemann L 29 RF 346 314 36 72 15 2 7 31 23 76 16 6
David Masters R 27 SS 322 289 33 57 11 0 8 30 28 92 0 1
Carlos Gonzalez L 34 RF 400 361 49 85 19 1 12 41 34 99 2 2
Josh Phegley R 32 C 299 273 35 65 16 1 8 45 16 57 0 1
Noel Cuevas R 28 CF 362 335 38 82 13 4 7 32 21 76 5 4
Johnny Field R 28 RF 373 347 39 79 22 2 10 40 19 100 8 4
Alfonso Rivas L 23 1B 509 458 51 110 21 3 6 40 43 119 2 3
Cam Balego R 25 3B 421 370 41 74 17 0 7 33 37 99 2 5
Vance Vizcaino L 25 LF 339 310 32 66 10 2 4 24 23 102 18 9
Charcer Burks R 25 LF 484 424 49 87 17 3 6 33 49 145 11 6
Jim Adduci L 35 1B 370 347 38 84 17 2 7 39 18 95 7 3
Aramis Ademan L 21 SS 466 416 43 80 11 7 7 37 38 123 11 9
Jerrick Suiter R 27 1B 420 387 37 82 15 1 5 34 26 108 3 2
Connor Myers R 26 CF 373 345 29 64 13 4 3 23 18 140 10 6

Batters – Advanced
Player BA OBP SLG OPS+ ISO BABIP RC/27 Def WAR No. 1 Comp
Kris Bryant .271 .369 .506 125 .236 .314 6.9 -1 4.5 Tony Perez
Anthony Rizzo .284 .388 .510 131 .226 .296 7.4 4 4.3 Norm Cash
Javier Báez .273 .312 .517 110 .244 .330 6.0 4 3.8 Robin Yount
Kyle Schwarber .245 .346 .509 118 .264 .291 6.2 -1 2.5 Dan Pasqua
Willson Contreras .254 .342 .458 106 .204 .305 5.6 -3 2.4 Bruce Edwards
Addison Russell .243 .320 .397 85 .153 .299 4.6 10 2.0 Nick Green
Jason Heyward .253 .332 .403 90 .150 .285 4.9 9 1.8 Terrence Long
Ian Happ .245 .339 .446 102 .201 .328 5.5 -8 1.8 Warren Newson
Victor Caratini .266 .339 .420 96 .154 .318 5.3 -3 1.4 Jerry Grote
David Bote .243 .326 .413 91 .171 .310 4.8 0 1.4 Dale Berra
Nico Hoerner .270 .319 .395 85 .125 .295 4.6 0 1.4 Ronny Cedeno
Steven Souza Jr. .234 .321 .426 92 .192 .311 4.9 2 1.0 Terrell Lowery
Miguel Amaya .215 .302 .381 76 .166 .257 4.0 1 1.0 Henry Blanco
Zack Short .212 .322 .358 77 .145 .289 3.9 0 0.9 Rolando Pino
Ian Miller .251 .307 .344 70 .093 .305 4.2 4 0.9 Chris Roberson
Dixon Machado .235 .313 .349 73 .114 .284 3.8 3 0.8 Brian Grebeck
Robel Garcia .218 .294 .408 80 .190 .309 4.0 2 0.8 Bobby Smith
Hernán Pérez .257 .295 .411 81 .154 .301 4.6 0 0.8 Tommy Shields
Corban Joseph .262 .306 .382 78 .120 .285 4.3 0 0.6 Jack Wilson
Albert Almora Jr. .266 .300 .399 80 .133 .303 4.4 0 0.6 Quinn Mack
Jonathan Lucroy .255 .316 .381 81 .126 .285 4.4 -5 0.5 Jerry Grote
Trent Giambrone .222 .285 .387 73 .165 .279 3.9 0 0.3 Jason Moore
P.J. Higgins .231 .304 .325 64 .094 .285 3.4 0 0.3 Doug Newstrom
Carlos Asuaje .239 .313 .351 73 .112 .290 3.8 -1 0.3 Joe Inglett
Ben Zobrist .258 .340 .364 84 .106 .292 4.5 -5 0.2 Wade Boggs
Donnie Dewees .240 .296 .369 72 .129 .280 3.9 6 0.2 Phil Dauphin
Daniel Descalso .216 .320 .363 78 .147 .283 4.0 -5 0.0 Dave Matranga
Mark Zagunis .230 .324 .369 80 .139 .324 4.2 -2 0.0 Mike Colangelo
Jhonny Pereda .225 .300 .295 56 .070 .272 3.0 2 0.0 Brian Moon
Tyler Payne .213 .259 .345 55 .132 .256 3.1 1 -0.1 Mike Ryan
Ian Rice .197 .302 .336 66 .139 .269 3.3 -4 -0.1 Matt Garrick
Jacob Hannemann .229 .289 .357 67 .127 .281 3.7 2 -0.2 Phil Dauphin
David Masters .197 .274 .318 54 .121 .259 2.9 1 -0.2 Lou Benbow
Carlos Gonzalez .235 .301 .393 79 .158 .292 4.1 -2 -0.2 Shane Spencer
Josh Phegley .238 .289 .392 75 .154 .274 3.9 -7 -0.3 Chad Moeller
Noel Cuevas .245 .294 .370 71 .125 .298 3.8 -3 -0.3 Bubba Crosby
Johnny Field .228 .272 .389 69 .161 .291 3.7 1 -0.4 Todd Dunwoody
Alfonso Rivas .240 .310 .338 69 .098 .312 3.6 3 -0.5 Michael Paulk
Cam Balego .200 .290 .303 55 .103 .254 2.7 2 -0.6 Ryan Stegall
Vance Vizcaino .213 .270 .297 48 .084 .304 2.7 5 -0.8 Tony Triplett
Charcer Burks .205 .295 .302 56 .097 .297 3.0 3 -1.0 Jason Jackson
Jim Adduci .242 .279 .363 66 .121 .314 3.6 -3 -1.1 Jalal Leach
Aramis Ademan .192 .267 .303 48 .111 .255 2.5 -2 -1.2 Cleatus Davidson
Jerrick Suiter .212 .264 .295 46 .083 .281 2.6 3 -1.8 Russ Quetti
Connor Myers .186 .233 .272 31 .087 .302 2.0 -1 -2.0 Rick Christian

Pitchers – Standard
Player T Age W L ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO FIP
Kyle Hendricks R 30 12 8 3.67 29 29 169.3 162 69 22 37 143 3.96
Yu Darvish R 33 8 5 3.56 27 27 154.3 126 61 19 49 190 3.43
Jose Quintana L 31 12 10 4.27 30 29 164.3 164 78 22 52 149 4.13
Jon Lester L 36 11 9 4.38 27 27 152.0 157 74 24 51 135 4.54
Cory Abbott R 24 8 8 4.64 26 26 132.0 127 68 20 64 136 4.73
Tyler Chatwood R 30 6 6 4.50 30 14 96.0 85 48 9 60 89 4.54
Alec Mills R 28 6 6 4.88 26 21 125.3 130 68 21 43 112 4.79
Jharel Cotton R 28 6 6 4.77 21 17 100.0 98 53 17 40 95 4.81
Jeffrey Passantino R 24 5 4 4.59 25 10 86.3 91 44 15 21 79 4.51
Craig Kimbrel R 32 3 2 3.40 45 0 42.3 28 16 5 23 66 3.44
Casey Sadler R 29 3 2 4.04 44 3 69.0 68 31 10 19 58 4.47
Jeremy Jeffress R 32 4 3 3.70 55 0 58.3 55 24 5 20 51 3.73
Brad Wieck L 28 4 2 3.64 57 0 54.3 40 22 8 26 81 3.71
Duncan Robinson R 26 5 6 5.02 20 19 98.7 112 55 16 28 66 4.95
Jack Patterson L 24 5 5 4.73 25 10 70.3 70 37 8 41 61 4.84
Duane Underwood Jr. R 25 6 6 4.93 38 15 104.0 106 57 16 46 96 4.81
Erich Uelmen R 24 6 6 5.02 18 18 86.0 92 48 10 47 61 5.09
Brock Stewart R 28 5 6 5.08 21 17 90.3 95 51 15 39 75 5.11
Rowan Wick R 27 2 2 4.03 57 0 60.3 53 27 6 32 66 4.03
Brandon Morrow R 35 2 1 3.56 31 0 30.3 28 12 3 10 30 3.58
Adbert Alzolay R 25 4 5 5.10 20 18 83.0 82 47 15 42 86 5.12
Dillon Maples R 28 5 4 4.02 54 0 53.7 35 24 4 53 89 4.02
Trevor Megill R 26 2 2 4.09 36 0 55.0 50 25 9 21 67 4.13
Keegan Thompson R 25 6 7 5.28 20 20 93.7 103 55 18 31 77 5.19
Tony Barnette R 36 1 1 4.00 32 0 36.0 34 16 4 13 34 3.90
Wyatt Short L 25 5 4 4.27 45 0 59.0 56 28 6 32 56 4.38
Tyler Olson L 30 2 1 4.10 46 0 37.3 35 17 5 17 38 4.41
Kyle Ryan L 28 3 3 4.34 68 0 58.0 55 28 6 29 53 4.30
Justin Steele L 24 3 3 5.12 11 11 38.7 38 22 6 23 37 5.22
Ryan Tepera R 32 3 2 4.30 48 0 46.0 43 22 6 19 41 4.53
Oscar De La Cruz R 25 5 6 5.19 29 12 85.0 88 49 14 39 76 5.09
Tyson Miller R 24 7 9 5.43 25 25 122.7 134 74 24 49 101 5.45
Scott Effross R 26 3 3 4.57 37 1 61.0 67 31 7 22 39 4.67
Allen Webster R 30 2 2 5.08 17 6 39.0 42 22 6 19 31 5.28
Matt Swarmer R 26 8 10 5.44 25 23 132.3 149 80 28 40 109 5.35
Danny Hultzen L 30 0 0 4.40 17 1 14.3 11 7 2 10 20 4.51
James Norwood R 26 3 3 4.50 53 0 62.0 55 31 8 39 72 4.57
Rex Brothers L 32 2 2 4.68 38 1 42.3 32 22 3 43 59 4.50
Jason Adam R 28 3 3 4.72 40 1 40.0 36 21 6 23 43 5.01
Xavier Cedeño L 33 1 1 4.66 40 0 29.0 28 15 3 18 26 4.59
Dan Winkler R 30 3 3 4.65 58 0 50.3 46 26 6 29 52 4.57
Craig Brooks R 27 2 2 4.67 42 0 54.0 44 28 6 46 70 4.75
Manuel Rodriguez R 23 3 3 4.76 37 0 45.3 40 24 5 36 52 4.90
Brian Duensing L 37 1 1 4.98 37 0 34.3 37 19 4 15 23 4.75
Bailey Clark R 25 2 2 5.28 29 3 46.0 46 27 5 35 38 5.42
Donnie Dewees L 26 0 0 10.80 5 0 3.3 5 4 1 4 1 10.08
Dakota Mekkes R 25 3 3 5.00 45 0 54.0 48 30 7 40 62 4.96
Ben Hecht R 25 2 2 5.19 41 1 52.0 48 30 6 42 53 5.24
Jesus Camargo R 24 3 4 5.29 33 1 64.7 70 38 11 28 49 5.36
Colin Rea R 29 6 9 5.98 23 22 114.3 126 76 23 58 87 5.98
Trevor Clifton R 25 5 7 6.03 24 21 100.0 111 67 19 55 77 5.94
CD Pelham L 25 2 3 6.04 47 0 44.7 46 30 5 43 37 6.07
Bryan Brickhouse R 28 1 2 6.97 29 0 31.0 34 24 7 23 26 6.86

Pitchers – Advanced
Player K/9 BB/9 HR/9 BB% K% BABIP ERA+ ERA- WAR No. 1 Comp
Kyle Hendricks 7.6 2.0 1.2 5.3% 20.4% .284 118 85 3.3 Dean Chance
Yu Darvish 11.1 2.9 1.1 7.7% 29.8% .288 121 82 3.2 Bert Blyleven
Jose Quintana 8.2 2.8 1.2 7.4% 21.3% .300 101 99 2.1 Mike Cuellar
Jon Lester 8.0 3.0 1.4 7.8% 20.5% .300 99 101 1.8 Geoff Zahn
Cory Abbott 9.3 4.4 1.4 10.9% 23.2% .299 93 107 1.2 Charlie Haeger
Tyler Chatwood 8.3 5.6 0.8 14.0% 20.7% .284 96 104 0.9 Jim Brosnan
Alec Mills 8.0 3.1 1.5 7.8% 20.4% .299 88 113 0.8 Mickey Callaway
Jharel Cotton 8.6 3.6 1.5 9.2% 21.8% .290 91 110 0.8 John Stuper
Jeffrey Passantino 8.2 2.2 1.6 5.7% 21.4% .304 94 106 0.7 Carlos Silva
Craig Kimbrel 14.0 4.9 1.1 12.8% 36.9% .280 127 79 0.7 Troy Percival
Casey Sadler 7.6 2.5 1.3 6.4% 19.7% .287 107 94 0.6 Dan Quisenberry
Jeremy Jeffress 7.9 3.1 0.8 8.0% 20.5% .294 117 86 0.6 Greg Minton
Brad Wieck 13.4 4.3 1.3 11.4% 35.4% .288 119 84 0.6 Armando Almanza
Duncan Robinson 6.0 2.6 1.5 6.5% 15.2% .302 86 116 0.5 Lary Sorensen
Jack Patterson 7.8 5.2 1.0 12.8% 19.0% .300 91 110 0.5 Walt Masterson
Duane Underwood Jr. 8.3 4.0 1.4 10.0% 20.8% .301 88 114 0.4 Tim Byron
Erich Uelmen 6.4 4.9 1.0 11.9% 15.4% .301 86 116 0.4 Preston Hanna
Brock Stewart 7.5 3.9 1.5 9.7% 18.7% .297 85 118 0.4 Dennis Burtt
Rowan Wick 9.8 4.8 0.9 12.1% 24.9% .297 107 93 0.4 George Smith
Brandon Morrow 8.9 3.0 0.9 7.8% 23.4% .298 121 82 0.4 Dick Drago
Adbert Alzolay 9.3 4.6 1.6 11.3% 23.2% .299 85 118 0.3 Denny Bautista
Dillon Maples 14.9 8.9 0.7 21.1% 35.5% .307 107 93 0.3 Jim Kern
Trevor Megill 11.0 3.4 1.5 8.9% 28.5% .301 106 95 0.3 Bill Simas
Keegan Thompson 7.4 3.0 1.7 7.5% 18.6% .301 82 122 0.2 Nate Cornejo
Tony Barnette 8.5 3.3 1.0 8.5% 22.2% .297 108 93 0.2 Fred Gladding
Wyatt Short 8.5 4.9 0.9 12.1% 21.2% .299 101 99 0.2 Marcelino Lopez
Tyler Olson 9.2 4.1 1.2 10.4% 23.3% .297 105 95 0.2 Tippy Martinez
Kyle Ryan 8.2 4.5 0.9 11.3% 20.7% .295 99 101 0.2 Tippy Martinez
Justin Steele 8.6 5.4 1.4 13.1% 21.0% .296 84 118 0.2 Derek Thompson
Ryan Tepera 8.0 3.7 1.2 9.5% 20.5% .282 100 100 0.2 Eddie Watt
Oscar De La Cruz 8.0 4.1 1.5 10.2% 19.9% .300 83 120 0.1 Tim Byron
Tyson Miller 7.4 3.6 1.8 8.9% 18.4% .299 80 126 0.1 Ron Mathis
Scott Effross 5.8 3.2 1.0 8.1% 14.4% .302 94 106 0.1 Casey Cox
Allen Webster 7.2 4.4 1.4 10.7% 17.4% .303 85 117 0.1 Bennie Daniels
Matt Swarmer 7.4 2.7 1.9 6.9% 18.7% .303 79 126 0.1 Bill King
Danny Hultzen 12.6 6.3 1.3 15.6% 31.3% .290 98 102 0.1 Scott Sauerbeck
James Norwood 10.5 5.7 1.2 14.0% 25.8% .299 96 104 0.1 Clay Bryant
Rex Brothers 12.5 9.1 0.6 21.3% 29.2% .305 92 108 0.0 Marshall Bridges
Jason Adam 9.7 5.2 1.4 12.8% 23.9% .288 91 109 0.0 Mark Acre
Xavier Cedeño 8.1 5.6 0.9 13.7% 19.8% .298 93 108 0.0 Marshall Bridges
Dan Winkler 9.3 5.2 1.1 12.8% 23.0% .294 93 108 0.0 Ted Abernathy
Craig Brooks 11.7 7.7 1.0 18.3% 27.8% .299 93 108 0.0 Clay Bryant
Manuel Rodriguez 10.3 7.1 1.0 17.0% 24.5% .302 91 110 -0.1 Anthony Chavez
Brian Duensing 6.0 3.9 1.0 9.8% 15.0% .300 87 115 -0.1 Darold Knowles
Bailey Clark 7.4 6.8 1.0 16.0% 17.4% .297 82 122 -0.2 Ken Wright
Donnie Dewees 2.7 10.8 2.7 21.1% 5.3% .308 40 250 -0.2 Chad Miles
Dakota Mekkes 10.3 6.7 1.2 16.0% 24.8% .297 86 116 -0.2 Anthony Chavez
Ben Hecht 9.2 7.3 1.0 17.1% 21.6% .298 83 120 -0.3 Dave Cole
Jesus Camargo 6.8 3.9 1.5 9.6% 16.8% .296 82 122 -0.4 Bob Miller
Colin Rea 6.8 4.6 1.8 11.0% 16.6% .294 72 138 -0.6 Robert Ellis
Trevor Clifton 6.9 5.0 1.7 11.9% 16.6% .300 72 140 -0.6 Jake Joseph
CD Pelham 7.5 8.7 1.0 19.3% 16.6% .304 71 140 -0.7 Brian Adams
Bryan Brickhouse 7.5 6.7 2.0 15.3% 17.3% .293 62 161 -0.8 Brad Tweedlie

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2020 due to injury, and players who were released in 2019. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in June to form a ska-cowpunk Luxembourgian bubblegum pop-death metal band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article.

Kansas City’s Drew Saylor Talks Hitting

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The Kansas City Royals have made some significant changes in player development since the end of last season. Most-impactful might be the hiring of Drew Saylor as their new hitting coordinator. The 36-year-old Ohio native brings a progressive, technology-meets-behavior-theory mindset to the organization via the Pirates and Dodgers systems. He spent last season as Pittsburgh’s assistant minor-league hitting coordinator, a stint that followed three years of hands-on experience tutoring Los Angeles farmhands. Saylor was named Baseball America’s 2018 Minor League Manager of the Year.

In this year’s first “Talks Hitting” interview, Saylor discussed the philosophies he’s bringing to the Royals, and the developmental goals of talented-but-enigmatic outfield prospect Seuly Matias.

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David Laurila: What is your approach when working with young hitters?

Drew Saylor: “One thing I talk a lot about is being curious. The more we can get our players and staff to be curious about what is going on… for instance, what makes the player successful? What are some of his gap margins? From there we can go to, ‘OK, let’s look at this from a batted-ball data perspective. Let’s work this back to swing decisions, to movement assessment, to his training methodology.’ All of this to see how he’s able to transfer the skill to where it shows up in the game.

“That’s a big piece I like to see put into play: Working it back from the objective to the subjective, then working in tandem with the player. And not just the player. Also the other coaches, coordinators, and consultants. Maybe he has an off-season hitting guru? So, everyone who has touches with this player. Ideally the process is understood by everybody, and at the same time we’re able to go, ‘Hey, this process is leading to this product.’ If we want the product to change, we have to be able to work our way backwards from the product to the process. Then we can make more concrete, solid lines between those two areas.”

Laurila: It is often said that you can’t clone hitters.

Saylor: “Absolutely. Some of the smart people I’ve worked with talk about the individualization, the understanding of human capital — what they’re able to do, what the vision is from a physical-mental-social-emotional-spiritual perspective. Looking at your players with a more wholistic viewpoint.

“A second component is being willing to exhaust all options, and all available information, to make sure we have the most detailed definition of what your players can and can’t currently do. From there we’re able to formulate an objective measure of how we want them to grow.”

Laurila: Technology is obviously playing a big role in today’s game. Based on our earlier conversations, that’s something you’re definitely tuned into. What are you most interested in at the moment?

Saylor: “Something I’m really interested in now that TrackMan is stepping away from MLB is what Hawk-Eye can bring. I’ve gotten some information in terms of what can be gained from that. I think baseball is in a really unique phase right now. We’re at a moment where the gap between data/technology and old-school theory is starting to close. Organizations have people who are cross-pollinated in both spaces. That’s where the game is headed right now.”

Laurila: What can you tell me about Hawk-Eye?

Saylor: “Hawk-Eye is a camera-based system that so far has been used mostly in tennis. I think the hitting space is what’s really going to benefit significantly from that. We’re going to be able to have better angles, and better technology in terms of our swing paths and our body positioning. TrackMan gives us a lot of batted-ball data, but this is going to be akin to union-ing of a KinaTrax with a TrackMan, and even some of the additional bat-sensor information.

“A lot of baseball people are visual learners, and Hawk-Eye is going to help us look at the player in a more-360 component. It’s going to show us the spin of the ball, the trajectory of the pitch, and how the swing path is mirroring some of those things. The embedded bat sensors we have right now give us a lot of information, but what’s challenging is that we have to couple what the bat sensors are telling us with what TrackMan is telling us. Again, I think Hawk-Eye is going to be able to union those things together. It’s going to be more of a granularly-detailed explanation of how those things are coinciding. I think it will help close the gap between where pitching analytics and hitting analytics are right now.”

Laurila: It takes more than just good player-development tools, technology-based or otherwise, to produce a big-league quality hitter. Raw talent has to be there as well.

Saylor: “That’s true, and I think some of what we’re learning ties into that. I think it’s possible to take bigger chances now, because we can have a quantifiable plan as to what we can do with the players. I think that’s going to continue to evolve throughout the game. Hopefully, as we move forward, we can tell the scouting department, ‘Take bigger risks. We can make this system better, but we need you to give us these types of tools and weapons.’”

Laurila: Does that mean drafting more high-upside players out of high school, as opposed to college players who, while more-reliably projected, may have lower ceilings?

Saylor: “On the surface level, yes. I believe that with the right process you can have better development, and faster development, with certain types of characteristics. Because of where they went to school — or maybe it’s young Latin player — they were taught to do things a little bit differently that didn’t accentuate the talent God gave them. We can say, ‘Take a chance on that,’ because we can open that up. These markers are telling us that this guy has more in there.’”

Laurila: You’re working with a new group of hitters. What have you begun to implement?

Saylor: “After getting hired, I went out to Arizona to finish out fall instructional league, to get my eyes on some guys and start relationships with all the staff members down there. I tried to get a scope of where everybody was at, and slowly but surely help institute our skill-acquisition group. We brought in some of our hitters, using them almost as a testing ground of sorts, to see how they are going to react to using K-vest information, looking at TrackMan information, looking at their heat maps, seeing where their gap margins are.”

Laurila: Seuly Matias went into last year ranked as the top player in the Royals system, only to have a terrible year [.148/.259/.307 in High-A]. What are your early thoughts on him?

Saylor: “First, he’s a guy with incredibly-gifted skills. God blessed Seuly with the type of prodigious power you dream on. I can see him hitting a lot of home runs into the fountains at Kaufmann Stadium. That said, what we’re trying to do with Seuly is get down to the whys and hows — some of the swing and miss, some of the approach. And also just him as a person. This is a guy who is very physically gifted, but he’s also a young guy [21 years old] who has a child and is trying to learn his way there. We need to wrap our arms around him and tell him that we care about him.

“A lot of times, what we’re trying to do isn’t from a technical, tactical perspective. It’s also letting a player know that we’re there for him, and that includes off-the-field challenges like having a young family and being away from your child for such a long time. Manuals don’t come with that.”

Laurila: What about the technical aspects? Based on his strikeout rate [44.3% last year], Matias seemingly has some serious holes in his swing.

Saylor: “One of the first things is making him aware of just where those holes are — on what pitches, what counts, what types of base states. The first step in adjusting, with any issue, is getting a sense of where everything is at the current state. Is it a physical issue? Is he a guy who gets into these situations and tries too much? Are there things outside of his control that he’s trying to overcome? What’s the genesis of it. Where are the gaps? Where are the holes?

“From there, you continue to get more information from the hitter, and more information from the data and technology. Once you get down to what that root is, then you can put a plan into place.”

Laurila: Is plate discipline one of his core issues?

Saylor: “What we’ve seen from Seuly is that because of the power… you see that natural reaction when he hits a ball 500 feet. He’s a young player, so he wants to do that every single at-bat. Our job is to help him manage some of those natural thoughts and emotions. We need to gain his trust and get him to understand that you don’t need to hit a ball 500 feet. A hard-contact ball in the middle of the field is valuable. If you’re trying to put a ball over the fence and end up fouling that pitch off and getting into a [bad] count, the pitcher can nibble a little more. With Seuly’s presence in the box, guys are going to shy away from throwing the ball in a bigger part of the zone where he can do damage.

“Development isn’t a linear path for anybody. There are going to be setbacks and struggles. What we’re trying to create is an atmosphere where players can feel free and open to expressing their thoughts. Then our job, as staff members, is to welcome those pieces of information and be almost counselors. We need to help filter out the inconsistent thoughts — the ones that are going to take you away from being able to execute your plan at the plate — from the valuable thoughts.”

Laurila: How has Matias responded to the feedback?

Saylor: “He’s had a chance to go ‘Wow, that’s me. That’s my fingerprint. That’s my performance.’ For instance, when you get a chance to show someone their heat map — what they do damage on, and what they’re not doing damage on — it gives them a truer picture of where they’re at. When you talk about the power of visuals… as human beings, our first language was pictures. So, when you get a picture put in front of you, it can give credence to what you’re thinking. It can allow you to manage those thoughts a little more.

“But Seuly’s ability to hit the ball 500 feet… when you have a Ferrari, sometimes you want to drive it at 180 mph, even though you may not control it. So I think it’s him just learning how to drive the car. From there, we just need to know when to gas it up.”

Laurila: The Royals organization has been known for favoring contact over power. In a more general sense, how do you view that balance?

Saylor: “It is part of our identity as an organization. Knowing the type of ballpark we play half our games in, you need to have a plus power tool in order to hit balls out. Notwithstanding that — regardless of what your profile is — a hard line drive in the middle of the diamond works in any ballpark. Whether it’s Kaufman, Progressive Field, or Yellowstone National Park, getting guys into the mantra of hitting balls hard, and doing so with pitches that you can drive… we’re really trying to drive home that point with all of our players. And our staff. We want more than home runs. We want well-rounded hitters.”

——

Earlier “Talks Hitting” interviews can found through these links: Nolan Arenado, Aaron Bates, Cavan Biggio, Jay Bruce, Matt Chapman, Nelson Cruz, Paul DeJong, Rick Eckstein, Drew Ferguson, Joey Gallo, Mitch Haniger, Evan Longoria, Michael Lorenzen, Daniel Murphy, Fernando Tatis Jr., Justin Turner, Mark Trumbo, Luke Voit, Jesse Winker.

Aaron Bummer’s Sinker Is No Disappointment

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This season, the AL Central could feature three above-.500 teams for the first time since 2015. The Twins and Indians should remain at the top of the division, but after an active offseason, the White Sox could very well join them in a tight race. It reminds me a bit of the NL East in recent years: a lot of good teams, but none without a glaring hole somewhere.

The White Sox are hardly immune. Their rotation doesn’t project to be great, and there are still a few question marks in the lineup, like whether Yoán Moncada will regress, or Nomar Mazara will progress, and how Luis Robert will hit.

But even with those options, I would argue that Chicago’s most prominent weakness is their bullpen. By projected WAR, the White Sox relief unit ranks 26th in the majors, their worst individual ranking among any of the 12 positions we currently have listed on our Depth Chart pages. Most of their expected value comes in the form of Aaron Bummer, who flew far under the radar last season despite being among the best at one extremely important skill: inducing groundballs.

Highest Groundball Rates
Rank Name GB%
1 Zack Britton 77.2%
2 Aaron Bummer 72.1%
3 Adam Kolarek 66.3%
4 Mark Melancon 62.1%
5 Joe Kelly 61.2%
6 T.J. McFarland 61.1%
7 Luke Jackson 60.5%
8 Clay Holmes 60.3%
9 Chad Bettis 59.6%
10 Richard Bleier 59.2%
Qualified Relievers

In 2019, hitting against this lefty was quite the bummer, if you’ll forgive the pun. Batters posted a .235 wOBA in 262 plate appearances against Bummer, which is actually a few points worse than the offensive output of Austin Hedges in his 347 trips to the plate (.242 wOBA). Bummer was clearly doing something right, and much of his success can be attributed to his 72.1% groundball rate, which ranked only second to Zack Britton’s (77.2%) among qualified relievers. In fact, Bummer’s 2019 groundball rate was the ninth-highest of all 1,417 qualified reliever seasons during the 2010s. Here he finds himself on a list dominated by Britton and Brad Ziegler:

Highest Groundball Rates, 2010s
Rank Season Name GB%
1 2016 Zack Britton 80.0%
2 2015 Zack Britton 79.1%
3 2019 Zack Britton 77.2%
4 2012 Brad Ziegler 75.5%
5 2014 Zack Britton 75.3%
6 2017 Scott Alexander 73.8%
7 2015 Brad Ziegler 72.8%
8 2011 Jonny Venters 72.5%
9 2019 Aaron Bummer 72.1%
10 2018 Brad Ziegler 71.1%
Qualified Relievers

For Bummer to remain productive in 2020, he must repeat this skill. Bummer’s 3.41 FIP suggests he was quite a bit worse than his 2.13 ERA indicated (a gap that’s hardly unusual for a pitcher who relies on groundballs for outs), and that’s because his strikeout and walk numbers sat right around the league average for a reliever. That’s not to say that every reliever must have a dominant strikeout-to-walk ratio to have sustainable success. In fact, we have every reason to expect Bummer’s groundball rate to remain elite again this year — running through the data quickly, groundball rates for relievers are pretty sticky from year-to-year, with an r-value of 0.75 from 2018 to 2019:

Bummer actually experienced one of the largest absolute changes in year-to-year groundball rates from 2018 to 2019. When looking at the absolute value of the deltas, he comes out with the 11th-highest change in year-over-year groundball rate among the 141 relievers with at least 30 innings in both years. He had the seventh-highest percentage point increase in year-over-year groundball rate:

Largest Groundball Rate Increases
Rank Name 2018 GB% 2019 GB% Delta
1 Amir Garrett 38.0% 53.9% 15.9%
2 Justin Wilson 35.1% 51.0% 15.9%
3 Héctor Neris 30.8% 45.5% 14.7%
4 Tyler Clippard 19.2% 33.6% 14.4%
5 Joe Kelly 46.9% 61.2% 14.3%
6 Luke Jackson 47.8% 60.5% 12.7%
7 Aaron Bummer 61.2% 72.1% 10.9%
8 Luis Avilán 36.0% 46.8% 10.8%
9 Jace Fry 46.6% 57.0% 10.4%
10 Mark Melancon 52.0% 62.1% 10.1%
Relievers with 30+ IP in 2018 and 2019.

While Bummer was certainly well above-average at this skill in 2018, he turned in an unprecedented season of grounders in 2019. For further proof of him newfound dominance, examine his average launch angle against, which fell from +0.7 degrees to -3.4 degrees. That was the second-lowest average launch angle in baseball, among the 436 pitchers to allow at least 100 batted balls last season. Only Britton’s -8.9 degree (!) average launch angle against was lower, and only five pitchers overall held hitters to a sub-0 mark.

Bummer clearly became really good somewhere, and it’s obvious that his outstanding sinker had something to do with it. He added 2.5 mph on the pitch from 2018 to 2019, which could serve as a decent hypothesis to explain why his groundball rate shot up. A faster sinker could have been harder to square up, which, in turn, could have led to more groundballs. But there’s almost no correlation (r = .07) between a pitcher’s average sinker velocity and his sinker groundball rate alone, indicating that other factors might be at work here:

In order to evaluate Bummer’s improvement in full, I built a multiple linear regression model for pitcher’s sinkers and their respective groundball rates, accounting for three input variables using data from Baseball Savant and PITCHf/x: sinker velocity, sinker vertical movement, and the absolute value of sinker horizontal movement (because lefties and righties experience opposite x-movements on their sinkers).

Of these three inputs, vertical movement proved to be the most important, with a one-point increase of vertical drop resulting in, on average, a 3.1-percentage-point increase in sinker groundball rate. Horizontal movement also played a rather significant role, but with the opposite effect: on average, a one-point increase in horizontal movement yielded a 2.0-percentage point decrease in sinker groundball rate. Velocity, too, played a role when looked at in combination with these other variables.

Thus we can more fully understand why Bummer’s sinker became extraordinarily dominant in 2019. Not only did he add velocity, he experienced 31% more vertical drop than the average sinker at his velocity and 20% less horizontal movement than the average sinker at his velocity. While the extreme vertical movement was consistent from 2018 to 2019, the extreme lack of horizontal movement on Bummer’s sinker (for its velocity) was new:

Bummer’s Sinker Profile
Year Velocity Inches of Drop Drop Above Avg % vs. Avg Inches of Break Break Above Avg % vs. Avg
2018 93.1 28.9 7.1 33% 13.6 -1.0 -7%
2019 95.6 27.3 6.5 31% 12.1 -3.0 -20%
SOURCE: Baseball Savant

It’s tough to discern this difference from the naked eye — we are only talking about a few inches here — but for posterity’s sake, here’s a Bummer sinker from 2018:

And here’s one from 2019:

Admittedly, it’s hard to notice a difference. I’d rather have the data tell me something changed for Bummer, and indeed, that is what it indicates. The data also demonstrates the uniqueness of Bummer’s pitch: No other pitcher in baseball even came close to featuring a sinker with as much velocity, as much vertical break, and as little horizontal break as Bummer.

As long as Bummer maintains this combination of factors on his sinker, there’s no reason to think he can’t anchor the White Sox bullpen again in 2020. Perhaps worse BABIP luck is on the horizon. Even still, maybe Chicago’s bullpen won’t be so bad after all. At a minimum, they should feel confident they can trust Bummer to get valuable outs for them this year.

Ben Clemens FanGraphs Chat – 2/6/2020

Spinal Surgery Knocks James Paxton Back 3-4 Months

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The Yankees’ path to a second straight AL East title got a bit easier with Red Sox’s trade of Mookie Betts to the Dodgers, but they won’t emerge from this week unscathed. On Wednesday, the team announced that lefty James Paxton, their most effective starter in 2019, will be out of action for three to four months after undergoing surgery to alleviate a herniated lumbar disc. Even with the addition of Gerrit Cole to the fold, this is a loss that will test the Yankees’ depth.

The 31-year-old Paxton, whom the Yankees acquired from the Mariners in a four-player deal in November 2018, had an uneven first season in pinstripes. He surrendered 29 runs and 12 homers in the first innings of his 29 starts, and was cuffed for a 6.38 ERA and 5.84 FIP in June and July, shortly after he returned from a 25-day absence due to left knee inflammation. Even so, he was strong enough on either side of that two-month stretch that he still finished the season with 3.5 WAR, a 3.82 ERA, and 3.86 FIP (the last two both good for an 83 on their respective “minus” scales), all tops among the team’s starters; he was the only one to take a substantial workload (150.2 innings, third on the team) while finishing with either an ERA or a FIP under 4.28. Indeed, in a season where Luis Severino was limited to a grand total of 12 innings due to a bout of rotator cuff inflammation and then a Grade 2 strain of his latissimus dorsi, Paxton was something of a staff savior.

Paxton wobbled a bit through three postseason starts, allowing five runs in 13 innings while striking out 20. The first two were shortened, but he was at his best in Game 5 of the ALCS against the Astros. With the Yankees down three games to one, he worked around four walks and a wild pitch to turn in six innings of one-run ball while striking out nine; the team won 4-1 and sent the series back to Houston. His October work came on the heels of a bout of nerve irritation in his left glute, which forced him from his final regular season start after just one inning and led to a cortisone shot. Per the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, his surgery is connected to that issue.

Via the Yankees:

The timeline of three to four months is relative to the surgery, meaning that a best-case scenario puts Paxton back in pinstripes in early May, or June at the latest. Of course, there’s always the possibility of a setback, and Paxton isn’t exactly known for his durability. In his seven major league seasons, he has yet to reach the 162-inning threshold to qualify for the ERA title even once, and has averaged a modest 142 innings over the past four seasons. He’s made an annual thing of trips to the disabled/injured list: a strained latissimus dorsi (2014), a strained tendon in his left middle finger (’15), a left elbow contusion (’16), left forearm and pectoral strains (’17), a lower back strain (’18) and the aforementioned knee inflammation (’19). His latest trip means that he’ll extend his dubious streak in the final year before he reaches free agency.

With Paxton on the shelf for at least the season’s first month, the Yankees’ rotation depth will be put to the test. Already, the team will be without Domingo Germán for the season’s first 63 games (i.e., until June 5), continuing his hefty 81-game suspension for violating the league’s domestic violence policy. Behind Cole, Severino, and Masahiro Tanaka — who had a bone spur removed from his elbow in October — the most likely candidates to round out the rotation to start the year are lefties J.A. Happ and Jordan Montgomery:

Yankees Rotation Depth Chart
Pitcher IP K/9 BB/9 HR/9 BABIP ERA FIP WAR
Gerrit Cole 215 12.5 2.5 1.2 .303 3.26 3.17 6.4
Masahiro Tanaka 180 7.9 2.1 1.7 .309 4.54 4.65 2.5
Luis Severino 168 9.8 2.6 1.4 .305 3.98 4.05 3.6
James Paxton 130 10.5 2.9 1.4 .301 3.86 3.97 2.8
J.A. Happ 103 8.5 2.8 1.7 .304 4.65 4.78 1.3
Domingo Germán 75 9.3 3.0 1.7 .303 4.69 4.79 0.9
Jordan Montgomery 38 8.9 3.0 1.6 .305 4.55 4.69 0.5
Jonathan Loaisiga 19 10.2 3.3 1.4 .304 4.11 4.18 0.3
Deivi Garcia 18 9.4 4.4 1.8 .302 5.20 5.34 0.1
Michael King 9 7.7 2.3 1.5 .305 4.46 4.64 0.1
Total 955 9.9 2.7 1.5 .305 4.09 4.15 18.5

Prior to the announcement of the injury, the Yankees rotation topped our Depth Charts rankings with a cumulative projection for 19.2 WAR. With Paxton’s innings projection dialed down from 185 (talk about fantasy, given the history above) to 130, they’re now second behind the Nationals.

The 37-year-old Happ, who appeared to be on the trading block in December, after Cole signed his record-setting $324 million deal, is coming off his worst season since 2014, one in which he was roughed up for a 4.91 ERA and 5.22 FIP in 161.1 innings. Though his average fastball velocity declined only slightly (from 92.7 mph to 92.1) and his swinging strike rate remained just above 10%, his strikeout rate plummeted from a career-best 26.3 % to just 20.7% while his walk rate held nearly constant around 7%. Meanwhile, his home run rate soared, from 1.37 per nine innings to 1.90. According to general manager Brian Cashman, when Paxton reported discomfort upon ramping up his workouts about a month ago, the Yankees decided to hold onto Happ as insurance.

The 27-year-old Montgomery started 29 games as a rookie in 2017 and more than held his own, pitching to a 3.88 ERA and 4.07 FIP in 155.1 innings, good for 2.6 WAR. He made just six starts in 2018 before undergoing Tommy John surgery and finally made it back to the majors on September 15 last year, about 15 months later; he pitched four innings in two appearances nine days apart. While rehabbing, he worked on ironing out his mechanics, which he described as “pretty rough.”

If Happ and Montgomery can’t cut it, or the team otherwise needs to dig deeper, familiar faces Jonathan Loaisiga and Luis Cessa, and rookies Deivi Garcia and Michael King — all righties — could be in the mix. The 27-year-old Cessa, who’s otherwise ticketed for a long relief spot, is the most experienced of the bunch, with 232 career innings and 19 starts from among his 86 appearances. In 43 appearances last year, all in relief, he pitched to a 4.11 ERA and a 4.87 FIP. The 25-year-old Loaisiga, who made four starts and 11 relief appearances last year, posted a 4.55 ERA and 4.95 FIP in 31.2 innings, with a tantalizing 26.6% strikeout rate thanks to an outstanding curveball against which batters went just 4-for-40 with a double while swinging and missing 20.4% of the time.

Garcia, who doesn’t turn 21 until May 9 and lists at just 5-foot-9 and 163 pounds, is the team’s top pitching prospect and was number 61 overall in our late-season rankings on THE BOARD. Splitting time between High-A, Double-A, and Triple-A last year, he rode his high-spin combination of a 91-97 mph fastball and curve, a newish slider, and a solid changeup to a 4.28 ERA while striking out an eye-opening 33.5% of all hitters in 111.1 innings. King is a 2016 12th-round pick by the Marlins who was the return in the Garrett Cooper/Caleb Smith trade in November ’17. A command-and-control guy who gets by on a two-seam/changeup combo, he placed 29th on the team’s prospect list last February as a 40 FV prospect. The going-on-25-year-old was limited to 48 innings at four stops last year due to a stress reaction in his elbow, but he did make his major league debut with two scoreless innings on September 27 versus the Rangers.

While the injury is a significant bummer for Paxton, it rates as something closer to a modest inconvenience for the Yankees, who have their contingency plan in place. So long as Paxton is able to return within the timeframe that’s been laid out, everything should turn out all right for the pitcher and the team.

The Biggest Holes on Contending Teams, Part Three: The Outfield

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By now, you know the drill. Earlier this week, I highlighted contending teams with weak points in the infield and on the mound. We’ve still got eight teams to cover today, so there’s no time to waste. Let’s dive in!

St. Louis Cardinals

The Hole: Two years ago, the Cardinals were so overloaded with outfielders that they traded Tommy Pham to open up playing time for promising youngsters Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill. This offseason, they had enough of an outfield surplus that they traded Randy Arozarena and José Martínez, but the top-end talent the team hoped for still hasn’t materialized.

That’s not to say that the Cardinals don’t have outfielders. O’Neill and Bader are still around. Dexter Fowler is solidly in his decline phase, but will likely take up a season’s worth of plate appearances. Tommy Edman will see some time in the outfield in addition to sharing third base with Matt Carpenter.

But while they have bodies, they’re lacking in upside. Bader looks like a long-shot to ever recapture his 2018 offensive line, O’Neill’s 2019 was gruesome (35.1% strikeout rate), and Fowler is subsisting on walks at this point. They might field an entire outfield of sub-100 wRC+ batters, and only Bader can make up for that with his glove.

The Fix: This would have been a lot easier to write before the Angels acquired Joc Pederson, who would be a perfect fit for St. Louis. Pederson fits the team’s needs, and the Dodgers had an outfield surplus. With him gone, the team could turn to another former Dodger by signing Yasiel Puig to a one-year deal.

Puig is high variance, and he’s coming off his worst season with the bat. But he’s never had a wRC+ below 100 in the majors, he’s only 29, and he wouldn’t cost a draft pick. For the Cardinals, who desperately need some offense, he’s worth a shot, even if he’d make them righty-heavy.

If the team isn’t looking outside the organization, then they should at least look to the minors. Lane Thomas is an org favorite and plays sparkling outfield defense. Even if his bat is Baderesque, he’ll add value with his glove and legs. Dylan Carlson, arguably the team’s top prospect, obliterated Double-A last year, and while he’s only 21, he’s a hot start in Triple-A away from appearing in the majors. He might not be ready, but if Fowler and O’Neill are scuffling, the Cards should take a chance and let him play.

Cleveland Indians

The Hole: Coming into last year, the Indians had a gaping hole where an outfield should be. They compensated for it midseason by trading for Puig and Franmil Reyes. With Puig gone in free agency and Reyes slated for full-time DH duty, they’re back to square one.

And square one is bleak. Jake Bauers hit .226/.312/.371 last year, and he’ll probably start. Tyler Naquin rode a .345 BABIP to a league-average batting line last year. Greg Allen should be minor league depth, but we project him for 250 plate appearances. Delino DeShields will be involved, though he probably shouldn’t be.

Oscar Mercado’s 2019 had its share of highlights, he still only posted a 95 wRC+. His 2019 Triple-A line was the first time he’d showed true offensive might, and it would hardly be a surprise if he’s a glove-first fourth outfielder going forward. And the only prospect even remotely likely to arrive in 2020 is Daniel Johnson, a toolsy but raw right fielder who tore up the minors last year.

That leaves Jordan Luplow, and he’s the kind of guy you want as your third outfielder, not the headliner. He tapped into his power last year, though both ZiPS and Steamer are skeptical.

The Fix: I really want to say Puig here, but I won’t. Cleveland also should have been in on Pederson, and they should be calling the Mets everyday hoping to catch BVW in a trading mood. The Pirates might listen on Bryan Reynolds if the Indians dangled some high upside prospects, and he’s even a fit for budget-conscious Cleveland, though it’s likely that Ben Cherington holds onto Reynolds, who is only 25 and has a ton of team control remaining.

If Pittsburgh won’t listen on Reynolds, they probably would on Adam Frazier, who is a below-average hitter and would also be one of Cleveland’s top two outfielders. While we’re on the Pirates, why not consider Gregory Polanco? He’s returning from injury, but he’s at least exciting.

And if none of these pan out, they should sign Kevin Pillar. He’s not going to set the world on fire, but he’s also not going to set your house on fire, which is more than you can say for the Tribe’s current crop.

New York Mets

The Hole: While I said the Indians should be trying to pry Brandon Nimmo and Michael Conforto from the Mets, the Mets shouldn’t listen, because they have outfield issues of their own. Things aren’t as grim as they are in Cleveland, but the Mets will probably go into 2020 with J.D. Davis as an everyday outfielder, and uh, have you seen J.D. Davis play the outfield?

Davis can at least hit, unlike fourth option Jake Marisnick. When Marisnick plays, he’ll play center, pushing Davis to the bench (or to third if Robinson Canó is resting). Yoenis Céspedes is also theoretically involved, though the boars might keep him on the IL all year.

The risk here is all downside. J.D. Davis can probably hit, but if his bat falls off at all, his defense is going to sting. Marisnick can field, but if his bat declines further he’s waiver wire fodder. Céspedes might not play. If even two of these three bad outcomes happen together, left field is going to be a problem.

The Fix: In reality, the fix is just to get lucky. There are no clear upgrades on Davis and Marisnick, and no obvious trade the team can make to consolidate at the position. They can squeeze maximal value out of the platoon by using Davis when strikeout pitchers are on the mound and Marisnick when contact is on the menu, which should help, but their options are limited.

And there’s not much of a left/right platoon available. Conforto and Nimmo are good enough hitters overall that I’d rather have them than Marisnick against lefty pitchers, even inclusive of defensive value. It’ll be a challenge to get the most out of this roster, but I think that’s still the best choice. It might be a weak spot, but it’s one they should live with rather than trying to buy a quick fix.

Other Holes: Wilson Ramos isn’t getting any younger, and his framing was, to use the technical term, really-hard-to-watch-and-made-Syndergaard-call-him-out-in-public. Tomás Nido is, well, Tomás Nido. The only reason I didn’t include catcher is because the bar is pretty low behind the plate. But if the Mets are being honest with themselves, their plan is just to hope that Ramos dinks and dunks his way to something near his career 104 wRC+, which would make the defense a lot more forgivable. If the offense declines at all? Yikes.

Philadelphia Phillies

The Hole: Philly’s plan for the outfield has some high points. Bryce Harper in right — that’ll play! Andrew McCutchen in left — that’s former MVP Andrew McCutchen to you, and if his knee is healed, he’s still solidly above average.

It has some low points too, though. Adam Haseley in center? Whoops! Haseley might yet turn into the kind of prospect Philadelphia thought he was when they took him out of UVA, but he looks more likely to be a slap hitter without the plate discipline or speed to make that profile work. Ignore the power spike in Double-A; Reading’s stadium is the biggest bandbox in the minors, and our minor league stats don’t park-adjust.

Haseley is a fine major leaguer — I’d just prefer to see him as a fourth outfielder or platoon bat rather than an everyday regular. There’s no harm in having him on your roster — but in a cutthroat NL East where four teams could win the division, Philly can ill afford a weak link.

The Fix: Time travel back to two weeks ago and acquire Starling Marte.

A fix without time travel? This one is going to be a stretch, but get the Cardinals on the phone and ask for Lane Thomas. A fix won’t be airtight at the price point the Phillies would tolerate, but they need a righty to work with Haseley, someone with everyday upside. Thomas might not be that guy, but he stands a better chance of it than Haseley does, and given the logjam of mediocre outfielders, the Cards might be interested. They might have outfield problems, but theirs is a surfeit of mediocrity, not a gaping hole.

Failing that, why not sign Pillar? He’s right handed and can play center, which checks off a lot of boxes. I’d like to see them do something, though, because every little drop counts this year for the Phils.

Tampa Bay Rays

The Fix: Do the Rays have a problem at catcher? Maybe! Mike Zunino was tire-fire-esque in 2019, combining his customary lack of contact with a distressing lack of power. He did manage his usual excellent framing, which propped his overall line up above replacement level despite a 45 wRC+, but “hey he was replacement level” is hardly high praise. And backup Michael Perez is a backup catcher, soooooo.

But I don’t have to try too hard to convince myself that this combination should work. Zunino’s defense gives him a high floor, and he’s not hopeless with the bat. Plus, catcher is just hard to fill!

Meanwhile, the Rays are doing something very Rays-y in the outfield. They have two everyday outfielders in Austin Meadows and Kevin Kiermaier. Then they have a very Rays-y blend of José Martínez, Hunter Renfroe, Randy Arozarena, and whoever else they can shoehorn into left field.

I’m not convinced it won’t work. I’m half-convinced it will work. Arozarena has been a prospect crush of mine for a long time, to the point where if Tampa Bay gave him the job, I would have called catcher their weakness.

But I can’t shake the feeling that a pile of righties who can’t play center isn’t going to work out that well. If Arozarena is in the minors, does that mean Renfroe and Martínez are “platooning?” If you take Steamer’s projected batting lines and league-average platoon splits, Meadows projects better without the platoon advantage than Renfroe does with it, so it’s not clear where Renfroe fits into the picture against lefties.

And if you’re giving Kiermaier a day off against lefties, who plays center? Arozarena can, but none of the other three should, even if Meadows and Renfroe theoretically could. The whole situation feels either one center fielder or one left-handed bat short, and a few right-handed corner outfield bats too heavy.

The Fix: Give Arozarena a chance as the starter. He can spell Kiermaier in center against left-handed pitching, with Meadows and Martínez (or Renfroe) flanking him.

This isn’t really an outlandish fix; in fact, it could definitely happen. Arozarena is 24, so there’s less icky advantage to gaming his service time than there would be for a younger prospect. Renfroe might be a better play than Martínez against lefties anyway; Cafecíto has absolutely mashed lefties for his career, but over a tiny sample. If he’s really just a normal-platoon-split guy, he’s more of a DH and pinch hitter, which clears the way for Renfroe to get more run.

Quite honestly, I almost left the Rays, Dodgers, Yankees, and Astros out of this series. But I decided to poke and prod for a hole, and so here we are. This one doesn’t look all that serious, I’ll grant you that. But it’s the weird part about the 2020 Rays season in my mind, and I’m curious to see how they’ll handle it.

San Diego Padres

The Hole: Right now, we’re projecting Franchy Cordero to roughly split center field with Manuel Margot. Cordero hasn’t played much in the last two years due to injury. We’re talking quad strains suffered while rehabbing from elbow injuries, surgery to remove a bone spur from his elbow (a different elbow injury, to be clear), everything you can possibly imagine.

Of course, Margot isn’t exactly a proven commodity either. He’s been mostly healthy the past three years, but healthy and not hitting might be worse than injured — at least injured carries some intrigue. Margot’s defense has been excellent the past three years, and he and Cordero are opposite-handed, so the platoon idea makes sense — but it’s risky for a team that sees themselves as a contender to give 600 plate appearances to a mystery box. There could be anything inside — even a boat — but there could also be sawdust and cobwebs.

The Fix: Eh, I’m not convinced a fix is necessary. The Padres are contenders this year, but they’re not capital-C Contenders. There’s still a lot of young talent that needs to gel, a lot of Hosmers that… well, fine, I’m not exactly sure what the Hosmers need to do. But if the Padres spend this year figuring out what they have in Cordero and Margot, both 25 years old, that’s fine with me. There’s always 2021.

New York Yankees

The Hole: I don’t know, man. First base? Luke Voit and Miguel Andújar are both exciting, Mike Ford does nothing but crush the ball, and DJ LeMahieu will spend time there. Third base? Gio Urshela might be the real deal, and the Yankees will give him time to find out. Plus, Andújar can theoretically play there. The rotation took a hit with the news of James Paxton’s back surgery, but even there, the Yankees have depth, and Paxton is slated for a May return.

If there’s any place that could be a true disaster for the Yankees, it’s center field. Brett Gardner figures heavily into their plans there, and while he’s a great player, he’s also 36. One achy knee, one neck twisted while sleeping, and things get dicey. Mike Tauchman is the backup, but he’s also going to play a lot of left to let Giancarlo Stanton DH. Not only that, but he still doesn’t have a lot of major league track record; ZiPS loves him like Dan’s long-lost son, but Steamer is sanguine about his projection.

The Fix: Stop it. Stop it. The fix is that they have Giancarlo Stanton, the 2017 NL MVP and a plus outfielder for his career, ready to play left so that Mike Tauchman, who was worth 2.6 WAR in only 296 plate appearances last year, can slide over to center.

If that fails, they’ll trade two sticks of bubble gum and their 13th-best reliever to the Rockies for a future MVP. The Yankees don’t really have holes in their 2020 roster, at least not long-term ones.

Houston Astros

The Hole: You’re expecting comedy here. I just did it with the Yankees, after all, and the Astros might even be more well-rounded. But I’m actually worried about one thing in particular: Kyle Tucker’s development.

Houston’s in a weird spot this season. Not competitively; on the field, they’re built to win now, with team control ticking away on their best young players and the anchors of their pitching staff not getting any younger. They have good players at every position and a solid rotation and bullpen.

But with this offseason’s management turmoil, it’s not clear who’s in charge. Dusty Baker is a capable manager, and he’s been overly maligned for his handling of pitchers, but there’s a clear tension: he was brought in to optimize this major league team, now. That fits Houston’s plans, but it might not fit Tucker’s best reality.

Josh Reddick is fine. He’s a decent outfielder, a low-strikeout, empty-average type who plays the game the right way, and other generic platitudes. He’s a lefty, as is Tucker, which limits the platoon opportunities. And honestly, he’s just plain good, so it’s not crazy to use him as a starter.

But to go nova, the Astros probably need Tucker. They’re not bad at any position, but they’re average at several: at catcher, at first, and even potentially in left as Michael Brantley gets older. With Reddick, you can add right to that pile. Tucker is their chance at a standout position player in this group.

The Fix: Just play Tucker! Let him start the season playing every day. If he’s good, run with it. If he’s bad — run with it. It’s not as though there are real consequences to being wrong; even with a good A’s team, and a Rangers squad that’s trying, and newly Rendon’ed Angels, the Astros are still the heavy favorites to win the West. This is about being great, not good, and for many years, not one. I’m not sure if Tucker is that type of player, but he might be, and Reddick isn’t. The Astros should try their best to find out.

Was I wrong about your team’s position of need? Possibly! I am, after all, merely a generalist, a dude on the internet opining about a bunch of teams all at once. But it’s easy to get a little inside your own head, to convince yourself that everything’s great or everything’s terrible, when you focus on your own team all the time. Hopefully this bird’s eye view of the league’s weak spots has provided a little perspective on the broader picture, or at least a quick chuckle at your rival’s misfortunes.


Craig Edwards FanGraphs Chat – 2/6/2020

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2:03

Craig Edwards: Let’s get things rolling.

2:03

Just curious : Scott Kingery is a AAAA player?

2:04

Craig Edwards: No. Kingery is good. He put up an average line last year despite a nearly 30% K-rate. That should drop a bit and will mitigate a loss in BABIP. He can play all over the field, too.

2:05

Jacob: What underrated team do you think will be the best in five years considering current players, prospects,

2:07

Craig Edwards: Five years is a massively long time in baseball. As a reminder, the Royals were World Series champs in 2015. None of the four LCS teams that year made the playoffs in 2019. Teams like the Tigers, Giants, and Mariners should be good by then.

2:07

vin scully is my jesus: if it is found that it is graterol’s medicals that are holding up the Betts deal, isn’t it on them to pony up more in asset capital to offset potential risks for the sox? That being said, Verdugo had a pretty awful back injury last year…

2:09

Craig Edwards: I would imagine that the Dodgers would add extra in this case. nothing major, a close to non-prospect or just take a little less cash for Price. There was always reliever risk with Graterol so it’s hard to see this as a major change, though taking his chances of starter from 20% to 5% does make the trade look different from the Red Sox perspective.

2:10

vin scully is my jesus: Muncy’s extension feels incredibly light for a guy coming off 5 war, even accounting for age… thoughts?

2:13

Craig Edwards: It’s less about age and more about arbitration years. He was only going to make $4 million or so this year, so the $26 M pays a little more than what he might have made in his three arb years. The Dodgers get cost certainty and reduce his cap amount for 2022 plus one free agent season. It’s a reasonable deal but makes it less likely that Muncy ever gets a good payout in free agency.

2:13

Adam: What does the Betts/Price trade say, if anything, about the market for Bryant?

2:14

Craig Edwards: I don’t think it says a ton about since this deal included Price and his money. It does take away one potential suitor in the Dodgers and maybe two if the Angels had an outside shot at putting Bryant in the outfield. I think in terms of Verdugo plus Graterol, that’s in the ballpark of a Bryant deal with maybe a little less volatility in terms of the prospects/plaeyrs coming back.

2:15

Yo-Yo: Where do you think STL’s freed-up money goes after 2020? Molina/Wainwright/Cecil/Miller/Wieters’ contracts get cleared, which is approximately $50 million. In 2021, Carpenter/Fowler nets $35 million. Arb raises eat into that, of course. Mookie looks good in red, right?

2:18

Craig Edwards: Time to bring back the Bowling Hall of Fame, I think. Flaherty and Bader will both be up for arbitration. I doubt the Cardinals would be in on Betts because they will do just about anything to avoid free agency, but it will be interesting to see the Cardinals outfield outlook at the end of 2020. Carlson should get an opportunity this year and Bader and O’Neill will get chances to show they belong in the future conversation. Betts could be a perfect fit if the younger guys don’t advance like they want, but the rotation might need more help.

2:19

Bring Back Mookie : Craig, do you know anything about the Jessica Quiroli piece that links Verdugo to the hotel room assault that was part of the Kapler unpleasantness?

2:19

Craig Edwards: I don’t know anything more than what the article says.

2:20

Mike: Hello. I was wonerding how much do you put into a player who said he made some off season adjusmnets? Thanks Mike

2:21

Craig Edwards: It’s always good when you hear about a player working on things, but it is really hard to know how that’s going to translate. Sometimes guys try to unlock their swing for more power and it ruins everything. Some guys try to go the other way and it ruins their power. It’s great when a player can identify a weakness, but it is hard to know much until we see it in action.

2:21

CodyBellinger: Will RBI baseball exsist after MLB the Show goes to Xbox and Switch? The ratings for The Show are better than RBI, and now they don’t have the multi-platform advantage

2:21

Craig Edwards: Ask Paul Sporer. He knows way more about it.

2:22

Overbearing Padre: Seems like the contracts of Hosmer and Myers are going to continue hindering the Padres’ chances of succeeding. What should they do, or is accepting that those deals will exclude them from acquiring top tier talent in the short-term/hurting their playoff hopes all they can do?

2:24

Craig Edwards: Well, in theory the team benefited from the first three years of the Myers contract by paying him barely anything. With Hosmer, they’ve just got to let him play and hope he puts up one of his good years. For Myers, if they can unload the contract by eating a bunch of the money, they should just move on. They shouldn’t be including good prospects to get rid of these guys when they could just not play them if the team has better options.

2:25

Bob: Devils advocate: How much does the upgrade of Mookie over Verdugo help the Dodger WS odds when you take into account the offsetting loss of pitching depth and loss of the underrated Joc platoon? Is it really enough to justify the loss of a quality guy like Verdugo (cheap as he is) over the next several years, and the loss of cheap depth that Maeda and Stripling provide? There are opportunity costs here, and the money spent to fill those holes could have been spent elsewhere. Also, the Dodgers farm system value mainly seems to be tied up in guys that have already reached the majors, so internal replacements seem to be more limited than it would appear at first blush.

2:26

Craig Edwards: Jay wrote about the Dodgers staff recently https://blogs.fangraphs.com/david-price-would-offer-dodgers-more-name-…

2:29

Craig Edwards: but adding price and subtracting both maeda and stripling does take away some of that depth, but they still go eight deep in potential quality starters so I’m not sure the rotation loses anything. If they re-sign Betts, they don’t have any outfield spots open for Verdugo anyway. If they don’t, then they can find decent corner outfielders on the FA market. It’s a pretty clear win for the Dodgers, assuming this all goes through.

2:29

MLB Fan: If the Red Sox had intentions of paying down David Price contract to 3 years at 16 million a year, do you think that a few teams would have been interested in trading for him.  Sounds like a very fair contract.  I think they messed up here.

2:30

Craig Edwards: If Price were a free agent coming off a season where he didn’t finish it and offseason wrist surgery, he might get 1/15 or 2/25 as a FA. I don’t see how individually, any team would take on 3/48. He would have to prove he was healthy first.

2:30

Morbo: Do you have any information on the likelihood that that Carlos Martinez will be in the Cardinal’s rotation or bullpen the season?

2:31

Craig Edwards: He will be given every opportunity to make the rotation, where he would be of more value. It’s up to his arm staying healthy as the pitch counts go up in spring and being able to recover after throwing 60-80 pitches in mid-march.

2:32

Bart: What are the chances that the three team trade involving Betts falls apart because of Gaterol’s medical history?

2:32

Craig Edwards: I think pretty low.

2:32

Jerome: How did the big Mookie trade affect the Playoff/WS odds for the A’s and Rays?

2:33

Craig Edwards: for the playoff odds, they go way up. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Red Sox playoff odds drop 50% and teams like the Rays and A’s and Indians, White Sox, and Angels are going to benefit from that.

2:33

Blue Radley: If the Joc Pederson + Stripling deal goes through, how serious a threat are the Angels in the AL West/Wild Card?

2:34

Craig Edwards: They were a threat before this deal, maybe not the AL West, but needed things to break right with pitching. Stripling means one more thing can go wrong before the bottom falls out. They still need pitching, but they got an upgrade in the outfield plus depth at a position of need.

2:35

Mr. Metropolitan: Move to the NL, pitcher’s park half the time, but below average defense behind him.  Is Rick Porcello a solid bounce-back candidate?  Thoughts on Wacha as well?

2:36

Craig Edwards: Not a huge believer in either one. I think the effects you talk  about will help, but that’s more to make him league-average, maybe a little above. Wacha just hasn’t been healthy. I do wonder if he’d do better as a reliever full time.

2:36

Guest: A lot of people are doing this math: Betts 2020 value < Value of Verdugo & Graterol for 5/6 years. Buuuut if they’re not trying to compete in 2020 aren’t they kinda wasting all the excess value of their cheap cost controlled stars? Shouldn’t that enter the calculation?

2:37

Craig Edwards: Ben Clemens sort of did the math on that here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-red-sox-shouldnt-trade-mookie-betts/

2:38

Craig Edwards: and basically punting playoff odds in 2020 isn’t worth the slight increase in 2021-2023.

2:38

Guest: Can you link to your approximate evaluations for prospects?

2:39

Craig Edwards: Here’s the one for non-top-100 prospects: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/putting-a-dollar-value-on-prospects-out…

2:39

Craig Edwards: Also, these pieces are in the essential articles section of the prospects page. https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects

2:39

Gil: Thoughts on the Cohen, Wilpon, Mets situation? I thought we finally tossed the ring into Mount Doom…

2:40

Craig Edwards: Silly, silly commenter. I don’t know why you got your hopes up with the Wilpon’s involved. The whole five-year plan was wild from the start. You are either selling or you aren’t. I didn’t think it would blow up this soon, but I’m not surprised it’s happening.

2:40

Meg I dun do fantasy ??s Rowley: Do you do fantasy questions?

2:41

Craig Edwards: If you couch them in actual baseball questions, sure.

2:41

devin has cheeto lips: Do you see Aaron Sanchez catching on anywhere and in what role?

2:41

Craig Edwards: Maybe a reliever in the second half, but probably not much production this season.

2:42

Morbo: The Betts return feels light to me. It seems like the Red Sox somehow received less in return for Mookie than the D-Backs did for Goldschmidt. Especially since catcher is such a weak position. Tell me why I’m wrong…

2:43

Craig Edwards: You aren’t wrong. By attaching Price, they limited their suitors and tanked some of Betts’ value. The deal was probably “fair” value-wise, but if you are a rich team still in a competitive window, that this was a fair deal is all the reason not to make it.

2:43

Marko from Tropoja: Suppose the Dodgers extend Betts right now. Which tandem would you want for the next three years: Betts/Bellinger or Trout/Rendon?

2:44

Craig Edwards: I’ll take Trout and Rendon. Rendon is the most likely to decline over this time, but he’s also paired with the best player by far.

2:44

robert: Could Austin Gomber make it as a mid-rotation guy in 2-3 years?

2:44

Craig Edwards: His track record suggests otherwise.

2:44

dese qweschons: can the rockies please play their young players this year instead of running them geriatrics out on the field?

2:45

Craig Edwards: It would be nice to see what some of their former prospects could do with a full season. Now is as good a time as any.

2:45

Yankees’ Injured List: What does it say about the Dodgers that they were able to basically give the Angels their 2/3 starter and starting LF for a utility guy? I would imagine there was a better deal out there for Stripling?

2:46

Craig Edwards: I’ll be in better position to comment once we see the deal, but there probably wasn’t a great market for Pederson right now. Especially with Puig still out there.

2:46

Kretin: If Joc keeps producing at his current rate, do you think he gets a QO after the season?

2:47

Craig Edwards: If he was able to play every day, yes. Otherwise, it will be a close call.

2:47

Cito’s Mustache: Is the theory behind the Depth Charts WAR totals to approximate how many wins a team is projected to have in 2020? IE. The Blue Jays 30.9 WAR + 48 wins (a replacement level roster) = 79 wins.

2:48

Craig Edwards: That’s pretty close, yes, though out projected wins are based on simulations that are based on those projections.

2:48

Dear Craig,: Do the Angels have enough pitching to be a contender, like Trout was “promised”?  In adding Teheran and Bundy, it just seems like they have a bunch of 4th & 5th starters.  Why didn’t they go hard after Bumgarner?  The D-Bascks basically stole him for less than $20MIL a year.  Did the Angels drop the ball there, and do you think they will do anything else to bolster their rotation?

2:50

Craig Edwards: Seems like Bumgarner really wanted to go to Arizona. Not sure spending $100 million on him would have been wise. Cole made the most sense, but getting 2 of the non-Cole pitchers would have made sense as well. They still got Rendon so it isn’t like they didn’t improve, but they really need that pitching to hold up for at least half a season so they can trade for reinforcements.

2:50

devin has cheeto lips: Senzel is only 24, and his season last year was just…meh.  What do you see from him this year and can he have a Yellichesque turn around?

2:51

Craig Edwards: That’s a stretch, but Senzel is only a year removed from being a top 10ish prospect and he’s been learning a ton of new positions and trying to stay healthy. Yelich is too much to put on anybody, but I think it is reasonable to expect a lot more than what we’ve seen.

2:51

DL: if their pitching stays healthy they’re a contender. Main problem through the years has been the health of their staff

2:52

Craig Edwards: re: the Angels. I think it’s been less the health and more the quality. Plus their position player group this season should be better than it’s been in any Trout season if Simmons stays healthy (along with everybody else).

2:53

The Ghost of Wade Boggs: If the Red Sox use the money they are saving on trading away Price along with Betts in order to reinvest it in an offer to bring Betts back in free agency, would that change the outlook of the deal?

2:53

Craig Edwards: If they brought Betts back in free agency, I think a lot would be forgiven, yes. I don’t expect that to happen, though.

2:53

Guest: How much do you think the Red Sox would have sacrificed in their package if they waited til midseason to deal Betts (and see what their standing was in 2020)? They got significantly more than the Orioles got for Machado without even considering moving Price (which hurt the value)

2:55

Craig Edwards: They would have gotten a lot less at midseason, I think. Position players just don’t seem to command a ton with two months of the season left to go. The main benefit is getting that production all season long. Pitching acquisitions on almost all teams are taking the spot of a replacement level or worse player plus oversized in importance in the playoffs which leads to better returns. If the Red Sox were going to trade Betts, now was definitely the time to do it.

2:55

Big Joe Mufferaw: Happ, Montgomerry, Loasiga enough to make it to June when German and Paxton come back? Or do the yanks make a move?

2:56

Craig Edwards: I don’t see them doing anything right now. They should be good enough to weather the storm. If Paxton doesn’t come back, then they’ll need to do something.

2:56

dese qweschons: Now that the Red Sox players see how much management is committed to winning, how many of them will try fleeing beantown?

2:58

Craig Edwards: Players generally sign for the most money. It was always going to cost a lot to get Devers to sign long term. Benintendi probably hasn’t done enough to warrant a huge commitment. For free agents, the money talks more than a sense of commitment to winning. If you offer someone the most money, they will think you are committed to winning because they want you.

2:58

Bigfoot Erotica: You obviously do a good job here calling out this stuff generally, but do you think the Indians have been getting a free pass (media/even their own fans) due to their market size, because it sure seems like they are intentionally wasting their window with parsimony. Sign a damn outfielder FFS

3:01

Craig Edwards: I think attendance since they started to take things back is the biggest indicator they aren’t getting a free pass. They gambled and lost last year when Minnesota stepped up. All the Lindor talk isn’t helping. They should just offer him a massive modern, Votto-deal and see if he’ll be the face of the franchise for the next decade.

3:01

Brett: Hi Craig, who would be the most likely Cardinal to have a surprise 5+ WAR year?

3:02

Craig Edwards: Probably Harrison Bader or Matt Carpenter. Carlos Martinez with an outside shot if he pitched 180 innings.

3:02

Yo-Yo: Brock Holt to STL makes sense, right? He’d drastically improve the bench for presumably little cost and would keep Edman in the infield, where he fits better.

3:03

Craig Edwards: I don’t see enough playing time for Holt. They might not have a ton of known quality in the outfield, but they have a lot of guys they want to give playing time to.

3:04

Johnny5Alive: Couldn’t Price be good in the big parks, dry air and (relatively) weaker NL lineups?

3:04

Craig Edwards: If he’s healthy, yes. If he’s healthy, he’ll be good anywhere. He was good in half a season last year.

3:05

Guest: RE: Mookie midseason trade. Isn’t that kind of funny because LAD was basically assumed to win the division anyway? I suppose the threat of SD swooping in played a roll, but those reported packages were much worse IMO

3:06

Craig Edwards: If the Padres had gotten Betts, the Dodgers advantage would have been just a handful of games. That’s far from a sure thing. A Bellinger injury or something like that would put the Padres ahead so although the Dodgers were far ahead before the trade and are far ahead now, the Padres with Betts is a tight division.

3:07

Craig Edwards: That’s going to do it for me today. Thanks for all the question.

Giving Baseball Space to Breathe

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The human orbital bone is shaped like a pear and contains about half the juice. Your optic nerve lives at the small end and throws images to your retina in the back, which relays what you’re looking at to your brain. It’s the window through which baseball reaches us; in the blink of an eye, we go from seeing to reacting.

All eyes were on the Red Sox and Tigers at Fenway Park on August 17, 1967. During batting practice, Detroit’s Dick McAuliffe sent a line drive into the stands toward nine-year-old Mike Hughes, who threw his hands up to catch it just a hair too late.

“Right between my hands,” Hughes tells me. “I was in the hospital for five days with an orbital fracture and all that stuff.”

It would be a blood-splattered weekend for the sport in Boston. The next day at Fenway Park, Red Sox outfielder Tony Conigliaro was hit by a pitch in about the same place as Hughes. It dislocated his jaw, fractured his cheekbone, and permanently damaged his left retina. He was carried off the field on a stretcher.

A year and a half after his injury, Conigliaro was back in the majors, hitting 20 home runs. The next year, he would hit a career high 36. Today, MLB’s Comeback Player of the Year award is named after him.

But for a nine-year-old boy in a hospital bed, the injury was far more than physical. When he was well enough to get back on the field, his instincts tried to pull him off of it.

“I started stepping in a bucket,” Hughes recalls. “My average went from about .480 to about .180. I lost my, you know… I loved the game still, but I wanted to be good.”

So he left. And for 25 years, Mike Hughes didn’t play baseball.

Even when we step away from it, ignore it, or change the channel, baseball is never fully absent. It’s too ingrained to not always be present in some capacity. You step on an empty bag of sunflower seeds when you get out to pump gas. You find an old bat in your garage with no memory of whose it is. You pass a little league game walking home from the office. Your dog comes home with a filthy baseball in its mouth. Where did you even get that?

Baseball is never gone. It gets lost, it goes missing, and it slips through our hands, but it always finds a way back.

In the decades after Hughes had his eye socket cracked by a foul ball, baseball got lost a couple of times: Strikes, lock-outs, and work stoppages; Pete Rose’s gambling, Wade Boggs’ adultery, and the Pirate Parrot stuffing its beak full of cocaine made us question its status as our most sun-drenched, star-spangled Americana. Its innocence bruised, its purity was propped up by nostalgia, and the game itself transformed beyond recognition to portions of its fan base over and over again.

It happens. Our current chapter of this sordid, century-spanning serial features the Astros’ cheating scandal and the sinister tendrils reaching out of it, as well as an anticipated labor stoppage on the horizon, of which we are reminded whenever someone like Kris Bryant has their service time manipulated. Baseball, in its most classic and romanticized form, is dead. It has been pumped full of drugs and dented like a trash can. But between metropolitan areas, out in its natural habitat, it can still be stirred to life.

Hughes permanently relocated to Holland, Michigan, in 2018 after visiting the city for five days. Holland sits on the state’s lower peninsula, the settlement of Dutch immigrants who did everything they could to make their new home feel like their old one: The name; the yearly tulip festival; the prevalent Christianity; the 250-year-old windmill on its own island. But unlike thousands of tourists every year, it was not the tulips or the windmill or the Christians that brought Hughes to one of CNN’s top five places to retire (in 2006).

“I came up to visit a girlfriend from 1973,” he says.

They’d been using the time-tested romantic correspondence he calls “social media crap” for 10 years when Hughes and his high school girlfriend decided to meet back up in person. He got on a plane from Daytona Beach where he’d been living, saw her for a few days, came home, packed up, and left Florida behind. Many people are worth leaving Florida for. Only a select few are worth taking a chance, moving 1,100 miles away, and experiencing your first winter in 10 years.

“I move quickly,” says Hughes. “No moss grows on me. So I didn’t really have a chance to check out the baseball scene [in Holland]. When I got here, I started talking to a few people.”

By now, Hughes had reconnected with the sport that had broken him. He’d played in and attempted to start leagues through the Men’s Senior Baseball League/Men’s Adult Baseball League (MSBL/MABL) for years and looked to continue to do so in his new home. Expansion was not a crazy idea; MSPL/MABL started with 60 players on four teams and now has over 52,000. But in Daytona Beach especially, Hughes’ attempts to scare up a league hadn’t worked.

When people say “the local nine” in Daytona Beach, they might be referring to the Daytona Tortugas, a Florida State League affiliate of the Reds, who released a displeased statement in 2019 regarding their franchise being listed among the 42 minor league teams Rob Manfred and MLB would consider “contracting.”

Florida has a lot going on, and despite being a hotbed for pro talent, baseball isn’t always a priority. The sport has come and gone many times in the Sunshine State, and the annual attendance figures of both the Marlins and Rays, even when competitive, have served as punchlines to the sport’s questionable popularity there. Like the rest of Florida’s everyday horrors, it seems like baseball is suffered through like wet heat or a meth-gator climbing out of your toilet.

“How can you be in such great weather and not want to play baseball?” asks Hughes. “I don’t get it, you know? We had leagues in West Palm and Jacksonville, but there was nothing in between.”

The people Hughes talked to were more interested in coastal sand than infield dirt. He met a lot of them who had come there to relax, or were just passing through, or had more passive long-term agendas.

“If you know Florida at all, it’s transient,” Hughes explains. “A lot of people don’t want to take time to commit to anything. They’re committed to, you know, staying there until [they] die. my old timer friend said, he’s 75. He said, ‘Just don’t quit,’” Hughes remembers. “But I quit down there.”

Hughes still cared enough about the sport that almost killed him to try and bring it to life up north after arriving in Holland, which sits between the big cities in the northern midwest.

The road between Chicago and Detroit has a travel buddy in the St. Joseph River, bending and winding together across 270 miles, past fields and forests; a machine shop here, a vacant farmhouse there. As the drive heavies your eyelids, perhaps you veer off the road and narrowly avoid hitting a sign about a mattress sale. One house becomes a few houses, a post office, and a church. It is clear that God hasn’t forgotten this place. But maybe baseball has.

“I got on our map site for MSBL/MABL and I was like, ‘Holy shit, there’s nothing between Chicago and Detroit, and nothing above us all the way to the Canadian border,’” Hughes explains. “Lake Michigan’s right here, and I think there’s a lot of fishermen, and softball has been so big here for so long… [But with baseball], nobody’s taken a chance.”

There’s what Hughes calls “ragtag” leagues around, but they lack the structure players get from MSBL/MABL: Two certified umps. Games that start on time. Enough players. Good uniforms. People who know the rules. Don’t wipe out catchers. Don’t throw your spikes at anybody. Logistically, when a couple of people meet up to play ball, somebody can play first base with a beer in their hand and have a good time. The kind of league Hughes was looking for – as were many other ex-high school and college players, former minor leaguers and other professionals – had a bit more structure. As we’ve learned throughout baseball’s history, the integrity of the game tends to fall apart when you realize the rules are just suggestions until someone else discovers you’re not playing by them. And if the guys playing the game don’t care, why should anyone else?

Eventually, everybody has a reason to step away from baseball. We realize the competition is too stiff, our interest is too low, or our bodies aren’t built to be repeatedly stretched, strained, bruised, and smashed into the ground. Beat-up players retire after long, glorious, professional careers; fans watch their team blow an eight-run lead and see what else is on.

Josh Trevino, a rapper from Holland, left baseball in high school to pursue music, telling the Holland Sentinel it was a decision he still regrets: “I’ve missed it ever since. [Hughes and I] got to talking about baseball and neither of us want to play coed softball with people getting drunk — we miss the game of baseball.”

“Once I got on the field at 42, I just looked around and I go, ‘Oh my God, I’m playing baseball again,’” says Hughes. “To put on a uniform and feel like you’re back in the game and between the lines is just like… it was like a spiritual thing to me. And so [Trevino], he’s so pumped. I said, ‘Well, start calling your friends and former teammates and stuff.’”

Hughes knows that when you leave baseball behind, the road back is a lot longer than 90 feet.

“We’ve had a bunch of players that have come back to baseball just because they miss the game, and they’ll pay their league fees and they just play with regular guys. But there’s a lot of former college players and high school players and guys that got hit in the face with a baseball like me and stopped playing. It makes me feel alive at 64. I get to watch these guys come back, and remember the feeling I had when I got back on the field, and to see it in them… You know, for us, the millions of ball players out there that think it’s over… it’s not.”

Together with Trevino, Hughes is putting together a league in Holland. They need four teams and 60 players to become the 326th MSBL/MABL league, as well as a couple of fields to play on. But Hughes, who just met with some local umpires, thinks they can do it. There will be two divisions: one for the 18-25 year-olds to tucker each other out while the 25-and-older crowd plays separately. With one or two games a week, the season can last from May to September without becoming too taxing. Hughes has helped secure a training facility in Zeeland, the next town over.

“I am reading about the integrity of the game here, you know, and I think it’s here at this level,” says Hughes. “Why would you do anything besides be thankful for being out there, you know? You’re not gonna make $1 million more by getting 10 points more on your average, by winning the playoffs, by cheating. I can’t believe it, but it’s good. It’s good for you.”

Typically you won’t hear the phrase “the integrity of the game” in regards to Major League Baseball unless something has gone terribly wrong. It is no longer a reference to its immaculate summertime poetry; it’s the historic precedent it stands on, the rules within which it is played, and the assumption that the players on the upper most talent tier don’t have to break it to make it work. But what has repeatedly come to define the the highest level that exists with every passing generation is how good you can be at it without anyone finding out that you’re cheating.

So it takes some thankless passion to come back to a sport that punished you with a head wound at a young age, and pull a version of it out of the dirt in a place where no one was playing it. People playing baseball because they want to, because they used to, or because it feels good, don’t have a reason to cheat. But the point is not that baseball conjures ancient magic that delivers former players redemption or reminds us how the gAmE wAs MeAnT tO bE pLaYeD or reconnects fathers and sons through the mists of time. No ghosts are walking out of the tulip patch in Holland, Michigan. It’s that everyone wants to step through a gateway that takes them to a place they thought they’d never see again. And for some people, that place is baseball.

One of the players recruited for the new league is a former minor leaguer who played a lot of ball in Canada. He’s eager for the sport to reach a level of organization and stability that allows them to more closely emulate the sport at its highest level: Crowds, tournaments, hot dogs, and popcorn.

“Sure,” Hughes says. “And then, we can learn how to cheat!”

Effectively Wild Episode 1497: Season Preview Series: Padres and White Sox

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EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about probability, the baseball significance of a Super Bowl comeback, and whether win expectancy stats are more useful for fans during or after a game (featuring a cameo from Meg Rowley, who sort of settles the debate). Then Ben and Sam preview the 2020 Padres with MLB.com’s AJ Casavell (23:47), and the 2020 White Sox (58:32) with The Athletic’s James Fegan.

Audio intro: Tall Tall Trees, "Expectations"
Audio interstitial 1: The Cranberries, "Chocolate Brown"
Audio interstitial 2: Bombadil, "Goodwill Socks"
Audio outro: Super Furry Animals, "White Socks/Flip Flops"

Link to FiveThirtyEight tweet
Link to ESPN’s Super Bowl win probability graph
Link to Ben Clemens on Tatis’ defense
Link to James on the evolution of White Sox player development
Link to BP roundtable on Madrigal
Link to order The MVP Machine

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 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

The Most Important Bangs of the Astros’ Scheme

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Just when you thought every angle of the Astros sign-stealing scandal had been covered, a new wrinkle emerges. Previous attempts to discern the true impact of the banging scheme were always limited by the lack of granular data. Without going through the effort of scanning all of the available audio and video, we had very little idea how often the Astros banged on their trash can. Were they using their scheme in every plate appearance? Only in high-leverage situations? Without answers to these questions, we were using incomplete data that included a ton of noise.

Enter Tony Adams. He scanned through 58 Astros home games with available video and audio and logged every single instance of a bang using a custom application he built. He ended up logging over 8,200 pitches and over 1,100 bangs. Last Wednesday, he made his data public on his site.

With Adams’ data in hand, we have answers to some of the questions that thwarted earlier attempts at analysis. The data still isn’t comprehensive. The 23 home games with missing video are still shrouded in mist, and we can’t assume the banging scheme was in effect during plate appearances where the batter only saw fastballs. We also don’t have insight into other possible methods of communicating stolen signs, like whistling, buzzers, or the like. Still, the new data provides us with a thorough look at those 58 games, helping us draw some more definitive conclusions.

Rob Arthur of Baseball Prospectus had this to say after his initial look at Adams’ data:

“By and large, the Astros tended to get the signals right, but it was hardly perfect. They were most accurate when they whacked the can: When they did so, a non-fastball was on the way 93 percent of the time and they were wrong seven percent of the time. … Based on Adams’ data, the Astros used the trash can frequently and they were relatively accurate, moreso when banging than when silent.”

A 93% accuracy rate seems high, but when the banging misidentified pitch, it had a significant negative effect on the overall value of the scheme — at least according to Arthur’s methods:

“When the fix was in, the Astros received a substantial advantage. But when the players in the tunnel thought they had cracked the code and it turned out they hadn’t, it harmed the batters at the plate more than knowing the incoming pitch helped them. … The net effect of the banging comes astonishingly close to being zero. Nothing. Statistically, for all the work and effort that went into the cheating scheme, the grand result of it, at least as measured in this way, turned out to be no runs at all.”

Using Adams’ data, I re-ran my analysis using pitch-by-pitch run expectancy (RE288) and found that the Astros likely benefited from their scheme but to a lesser degree than I had previously estimated. I’ve scaled the run values below to standardize the values per 100 pitches.

Astros Pitch Type Run Values At Home
Fastball Breaking Ball Offspeed
Swing Runs
Banging 0.07 -1.92 -2.48
Non-Banging -1.60 -2.02 -2.85
Difference 1.67 0.10 0.36
Take Runs
Banging 3.56 1.91 2.48
Non-Banging 2.07 1.96 3.12
Difference 1.49 -0.05 -0.64

The most surprising result is in that first column. On fastballs — the pitches that were supposedly misidentified in the banging scheme — the Astros actually performed better when a bang occurred than without. (I am including cutters in my categorization of a fastball.) It’s possible the Astros considered cutters breaking balls, and when I remove them from the fastball data, the banging impact is greatly reduced. The Astros also saw a benefit when swinging at breaking balls and offspeed pitches. That tracks with my previous analysis, though the cumulative effect was much less than I thought.

But beyond trying to discern the team-wide impact of the banging scheme, Adams’ data presents us with a few new avenues of analysis. Now that we have individual bangs identified and associated with individual pitches, we can look at specific instances where the banging scheme had a significant impact on the outcome of a game. Using Adams’ raw data, I mapped the leverage index for every at-bat where a bang occurred. That helps us answer the question of whether or not the banging scheme was used more often in high-leverage situations. The answer is resoundingly no.

The average leverage index of the at-bats where a bang occurred was .99, almost exactly average. The median leverage index for those at-bats was .85. That tells us that the average was skewed a bit by the high-leverage situations, and that there were more low leverage situations where the banging scheme was on.

Astros Banging Scheme Leverage Index
Leverage At-bats % Cumulative Run Value
Low Leverage 308 49% 1.94
Medium Leverage 262 42% 1.97
High Leverage 53 9% -2.00

That’s exactly what the data shows us. Just 9% of the at-bats where the trash can was used occurred in high-leverage situations. That’s around what we’d expect based on the normal distribution of high-leverage situations throughout the season. And in those high-leverage situations, the banging scheme didn’t seem to provide much of a benefit. Our run values show that in those 53 high-leverage at-bats, the Astros cumulatively lost around two runs. It’s not much of an effect overall, but it’s still surprising to see a negative impact.

In medium- and low-leverage situations, the Astros banging scheme definitely had a positive impact. Intuitively, this makes sense. The banging scheme is optimally used against starting pitchers, as cracking their signs will have a more significant effect over many innings. And if you were wondering if the Astros continued to use their banging scheme in situations where the game was already decided, 14% of their at-bats where the trash can was used came in extremely low-leverage situations where the leverage index was less than 0.2.

So what was the most important bang of the Astros’ 2017 season? It’s fitting that it came with Carlos Beltrán at the plate. (Watch the clips below with headphones or with the volume turned up to experience the full banging effect. The videos begin at the appropriate timestamp.)

Trailing by three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Blue Jays, the Astros loaded the bases against Roberto Osuna. After seeing three straight cutters, two bangs rang out from the Astros dugout prior to the fourth pitch. Osuna threw another cutter. Beltrán swung and grounded into a fielder’s choice, dropping the Astros’ win expectancy by 10%. The next two at-bats would win the Astros the game — with the help of the banging scheme in both of them.

The highest-leverage at-bat where the banging scheme was used but the at-bat ended on a pitch with no bangs occurred on July 17.

With the game against the Mariners tied at seven in the bottom of the ninth, the Astros loaded the bases against Yovani Gallardo. Alex Bregman stepped to the plate with two outs. The first two pitches whizzed by without a bang from the dugout. On the third pitch, a slider, a single bang rang out with a few more sounding immediately after the pitch. On the next pitch, a fastball, Bregman grounded into a fielder’s choice (with some nice defense by Jean Segura to hold the game level).

Here’s a table of the five most important at-bats where the banging scheme was used, by leverage index:

Astros High Leverage Bangs
Date Play Description Leverage Index Run Expectancy Run Value Pitch Type Bang on Pitch?
7/17/2017 Alex Bregman grounds into a force out, shortstop Jean Segura to second baseman Robinson Canó. Brian McCann out at 2nd. 6.39 0.89 -0.89 2-Seam No
8/6/2017 Carlos Beltrán grounds into a force out, first baseman Justin Smoak to shortstop Ryan Goins. José Altuve scores. Yuli Gurriel to 3rd. Marwin Gonzalez out at 2nd. Carlos Beltrán to 1st. 4.95 1.68 -0.18 Cutter Yes
8/6/2017 Juan Centeno singles on a line drive to right fielder José Bautista. Alex Bregman scores. 4.63 0.26 0.74 4-Seam No
7/17/2017 Norichika Aoki reaches on a fielder’s choice out, shortstop Jean Segura to catcher Mike Zunino. Josh Reddick out at home. Yuli Gurriel to 3rd. 4.14 1.22 -0.46 Curveball Yes
7/1/2017 Marwin Gonzalez walks. 4.08 0.37 0.13 Slider Yes

The eventual game-winning hit in that game against the Blue Jays shows up as the third-most-important at-bat, though no bangs occurred on the pitch that Juan Centeno hit, a fastball. Another at-bat from that game against the Mariners shows up as well. Norichika Aoki was up earlier in the inning; he grounded into a fielder’s choice like Bregman did a few at-bats later.

We can also use this data to determine how each player on the Astros fared in different leverage situations with the help of the banging scheme. Below is a table of the cumulative run values for each player who saw more than 200 pitches in 2017, and their performance in high, medium, and low leverage situations (the columns are sortable):

Astros Run Values by Leverage
Player High Leverage Medium Leverage Low Leverage
Alex Bregman 2.36 -2.41 4.06
Brian McCann -1.72 -1.26 -0.99
Carlos Beltrán -0.58 -3.91 -1
Carlos Correa 2.44 2.91 -1.21
Derek Fisher -0.17 -1.13 0.18
Evan Gattis -1.2 -2.59 0.69
George Springer -1.66 4.83 -0.59
Jake Marisnick -0.65 0.28 1.41
José Altuve -0.87 1.15 0.24
Josh Reddick -0.24 -0.02 2.15
Marwin Gonzalez -1.15 -1.46 -3.13
Norichika Aoki 1.31 0.5 -0.37
Tyler White -0.17 0.81 2.65
Yuli Gurriel 1.47 5.45 0.88

Only a few players — Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa most notably — were able to take the information provided by the banging scheme and put it to good use in high leverage situations. Yuli Gurriel benefited from the stolen signs no matter what the situation was, but particularly in medium leverage situations. George Springer was unable to take advantage of the trash can system when the game was on the line or when the game was all but decided, but he really thrived in medium leverage situations. Marwin Gonzalez, the player who heard of the greatest number of bangs during the season, simply couldn’t put that information to good use, no matter what the situation was.

While there isn’t much more that can be gleaned from this leverage data, the fact that we know the Astros frequently used their banging scheme even when the game had already been decided answers a longstanding question hovering over this scandal. If the Astros used their sign-stealing sparingly or only in particular situations, that might color our perception of how they cheated. We now know they used it often and in all situations, from low leverage to high.

Max Muncy and the Dodgers Lock it In

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Max Muncy is a Dodgers success story. He’s compiled 10 (10!) WAR over the past two seasons, walking and homering and standing at second base in ways that would have been hard to predict two years ago. What would have been easy to predict, though, is his salary. As a pre-arb player, the Dodgers had absolute discretion over his pay (subject to the major league minimum) and chose to give him $545,000 in 2018 and $575,000 in 2019.

Muncy was scheduled to head to an arbitration hearing with his club. He asked for a $4.675 million salary for 2020, and Los Angeles countered with $4 million. We’ll never know what the outcome of that hearing will be, though, because as Ken Rosenthal reported yesterday, he signed a three-year extension worth $26 million dollars. The contract also includes a team option for a fourth year, at a salary of $13 million, with a $1.5 million buyout (the contract is actually for $24.5 million plus the buyout, which places the option year at $11.5 million net).

At first glance, this looks low. Muncy has been worth 10 WAR over the past two seasons! He’s one of the best hitters on one of the game’s best teams. Look upon his ZiPS, ye mighty, and despair:

ZiPS Projections – Max Muncy (1B)
Year BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ DR WAR
2020 .255 .374 .508 427 80 109 19 1 29 91 77 130 4 133 5 4.0
2021 .257 .375 .521 413 78 106 20 1 29 91 74 124 3 136 5 3.9
2022 .251 .368 .496 399 73 100 18 1 26 83 71 118 3 129 5 3.3

In an alternate universe where Muncy was a free agent, $26 million would be absurdly low. He’d be looking at Castellanos money, most likely: $64 million over four years, potentially with fewer opt outs as he’s older. Maybe that’s Mike Moustakas money, then, which makes some sense. He’s a younger, better Moustakas, though with less of a track record.

Of course, we don’t live in that world. The arbitration system constrains player salaries, and it’s particularly onerous for players who break into the big leagues at a relatively advanced age and then get really good, really quickly. The system, you see, is anchored low. It grows quickly — Mookie Betts got $27 million in arbitration this year, which is a discount to what he’d get on a one year deal, but not a huge one. But even Betts started out at a somewhat low figure. He received $10 million his first year in arbitration, and that was after seasons of 4.8, 8.3, and 5.3 WAR.

For players with a similar trajectory to Muncy’s, the floor is a bit lower. For a recent comp, look no further than Tommy Pham. Pham was similarly good over his last two pre-arb years; he compiled 10.3 WAR between 2017 and 2018. He’s of a similar age; he was nearly 31 when he reached his first year of arbitration, while Muncy isn’t yet 30, but both are looking at reaching free agency after their peak years.

Pham received $4.1 million in his first year of salary arbitration. He followed it up with a 3.3 WAR season that was light on defensive value, which lines up well with Muncy’s 2020 projections, and then settled with the Padres on a $7.9 million contract this year rather than go through the arbitration process again.

That’s $12 million over two years, which was a realistic path for Muncy. Sure, he could bet on himself by going year-to-year, but his median path is right around $12 million over the next two years, and there’s value, for someone with under $2 million in salary so far in his career, in locking something in.

That last season at $14 million seems about right. Muncy will be 31 by then, and while ZiPS still likes him quite a bit that year, 31-year-old bats aren’t commanding significantly more than that on the open market without some premium defensive value. Guaranteeing $26 million is awesome, as well: you can buy a lot of custom t-shirts for $26 million.

Of course, there’s value there for the Dodgers, too. Cost certainty is valuable for everyone, and with the Dodgers near the competitive balance cap, knowing the exact contours of their payroll is particularly useful. Want to go nuts and try to extend Mookie Betts? Muncy is going to hit your payroll for $8 million a year while being a useful player. Want to work out a deal with Cody Bellinger during the season? Now you know what your offseason payroll commitments will look like.

There’s value, for many teams, in keeping a player’s payout on a sliding scale. If the player tanks, he’s cheaper. If he’s a key cog, you can afford to pay him more. That’s a good way to avoid albatross contracts and dead money. That’s why extensions generally come at a monetary discount: players value cost certainty, while teams value linking performance with pay (though not at its market value, of course, due to the arbitration system). The team sacrifices that flexibility, the player gives a bit of money, and everyone’s happy.

But in this scenario, everything is roses for the Dodgers. The contract might be less of a discount than your normal arbitration-fueled extension, but it comes with a team option instead. Muncy has enough of a track record, and enough defensive value at second, that they’re unlikely to get burned too badly in any scenario. And the almighty importance of avoiding of a tiny tax, which drives great teams to distraction, is covered.

To talk about that option, we need to talk about Muncy as a player rather than merely as a contract. He’s an archetypical dingers-and-walks hitter, and his plate discipline gives him a leg up on providing value. Think of it this way: with his walk, HBP, and strikeout totals in 2019, he’s giving himself a high floor. If he replicated those numbers and produced a .354 wOBA on contact in his remaining plate appearances, he’d be a league average hitter.

A .354 wOBA on contact is anemic. That’s Kolten Wong, Kurt Suzuki, and Delino DeShields territory. The league average number last year was .384. Muncy could be 8% worse than league average on contact, in other words, and still put up an exactly league average batting line.

Max Muncy, of course, isn’t the kind of guy who creates weak contact. He had a .452 wOBA when putting the ball in play last year, a top 15% rate in baseball. That number stands at .444 for his career, and with an xwOBA of .446, it’s not like he’s subsisting on lucky hits. In fact, Muncy could have pretty bad plate discipline and still be fine. Gary Sánchez, Franmil Reyes, and Domingo Santana all perform similarly on contact, and they’re all above-average hitters despite poor non-contact numbers.

So Muncy has enough discipline that he could be a slap hitter and get by. He has enough pop that he could have a bad eye and get by. But he has neither of those; he’s just the complete package at the plate.

That’s not to say there aren’t holes in his game. He’s a low-contact hitter, and that looks unlikely to change given his swing, which means that he’s reliant on his strike zone judgment to generate walks and avoid strikeouts. He’s extremely passive early in the count, swinging at just 24% of first pitches (25th percentile), which works because pitchers stay away from him (he has a 16th percentile zone rate on 0-0). The calculus works, and it gets him in advantageous counts, but pitchers can still do more to try to crack the code.

So with that in mind (Muncy has a base that can keep him productive even if his contact skills or non-contact skills decline), let’s consider the team option. This isn’t a complex, multi-year choice for Los Angeles; it’s merely a matter of looking at how good Muncy projects to be after the 2022 season and making a decision.

Let’s start by assuming that Muncy’s central projection for 2023 is 2.8 WAR. Then, we’ll take the one-year standard deviation in projections I’ve previously calculated (0.8 WAR) and annualize it up to three years: that comes out to 1.4 WAR. You can come up with your own cutoff for how Muncy would have to perform in order for the team exercise the option: in my head, he’d need to have at least a 2 WAR projection for them to keep him.

With these rough parameters, the Dodgers would exercise the option about 75% of the time. And if they did, they’d be getting roughly a 3.3 WAR player, on average, for $11.5 million. No commitment 25% of the time, and strong surplus 75% of the time? That seems like value to me!

In fact, you could put a number on it. A 75% chance at a mean 1.3 WAR surplus is worth about 1 WAR. Depending on your valuation of WAR, that’s something like $8 million of value to the Dodgers from the contract — maybe less considering how well the team develops inexpensive average players. But even if you think it’s worth, say, $5 million in equity to the Dodgers, that’s a nice little upgrade.

Overall, this deal feels… well, fine. Muncy guaranteed himself a life-changing amount of money. The Dodgers got some cost certainty. Sadly, the general bad feeling of a solid player signing a below-market contract isn’t going to be solved by someone like Muncy.

If you dislike the arbitration system, it’s totally reasonable to dislike the Muncy deal. It’s a symptom of the team control problem; teams own players’ rights for so long, and at such a discount, that they can suppress costs relative to free agency. But this particular deal isn’t onerous; it isn’t another Ozzie Albies situation, where it’s hard to understand what’s happened. It’s market value subject to a constrained market. Max Muncy is an awesome player, and he’s going to cash some checks with a lot of zeroes on them and play for the Dodgers for three or four more years. That’s good enough for me to call this a win-win.

Wilmer Flores Joins Giants’ Crowded Infield Mix

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Until last year, Wilmer Flores had spent his entire professional career — from the time that he was signed out of Venezuela on his 16th birthday in 2007 through the ’18 season — with the Mets. After being non-tendered in November 2018, he landed with the Diamondbacks and put together the best season of his career, at least from an offensive standpoint. This week, he parlayed that success into a modest two-year, $6 million deal with the Giants, who suddenly have a rather crowded infield.

Flores, who’s still just 28 years old, hit a sizzling .317/.361/.487 for a 120 wRC+ in 2019, numbers that represent across-the-board career highs. That said, he missed nearly two months after suffering a fracture in his right foot when he was hit by a Drew Pomeranz pitch on May 19, and wound up making only 285 plate appearances, his lowest total at the major league level since 2014. When he wasn’t pinch-hitting — which he did 23 times, hitting just .190/.261/.238 — he played mostly second base, making 56 of his 60 starts and 64 of his 80 total defensive appearances there; the balance of his appearances came at first base. Even in that limited playing time, his 1.1 WAR was his highest mark since 2015.

Thirty-one of Flores’ starts at second base came against lefties — whom he hit to the tune of a 151 wRC+ — and all but a handful of those starts bumped Ketel Marte to center field. That the Diamondbacks desired to move Marte back to the infield in hopes that it would be less physically demanding likely played a big role in the team’s decision to decline Flores’ $6 million option for 2020; instead, they paid him a $500,000 buyout. Last week, Arizona acquired center fielder Starling Marte from the Pirates so as to further the Ketel-to-the-Keystone plan.

Particularly given that Flores hasn’t played third base since 2018 (and just 72 innings at that) or shortstop since ’16 — and shouldn’t, barring a life-threatening emergency, if his DRS for those positions is to be believed — it appears that his opportunities will be confined to the right side of the infield. This is where it gets a little tricky.

The righty-swinging Flores is a natural fit as a platoon partner for incumbent first baseman Brandon Belt. In addition to last year’s sizzling performance, Flores owns a career wRC+ mark of 116 against lefties. That’s just four points better than the lefty-swinging Belt’s career mark against southpaws, but Belt has managed just an 85 wRC+ in that context over the past three seasons, hitting that number exactly in 159 PA against them in 2019.

As for second base, well, Flores is no threat to win a Gold Glove. Per UZR, last year he was 3.6 runs below average in just 442.2 innings, and while his career -3.2 UZR/150 suggests he’s playable there, similarly prorating his DRS yields 13 runs below average. Beyond his defensive shortcomings at second is the presence of other options, starting with Mauricio Dubón, a 25-year-old prospect who was part of the return in the July 31 deal that sent Pomeranz to Milwaukee. A 45 Future Value prospect at the time of the trade, he hit .274/.306/.434 (95 wRC+) in 111 PA in his first taste of big league action, the bulk of which (21 out of 28 starts) came at the keystone. Also on hand is 32-year-old journeyman utilityman Donovan Solano, who after totaling just 114 PA in the majors from 2014-18 came out of nowhere to hit .330/.360/.456 for a 116 wRC+, 32 points above his career norm.

To that mix, add this week’s signing of 27-year-old switch-hitter Yolmer Sánchez to a minor league deal, reportedly after he bypassed two major league deals so that he could compete for the Giants’ starting job. Sánchez is coming off a dreadful year at the plate (.252/.318/.321, 74 wRC+), but he was worth a combined 4.0 WAR in 2017-18 while batting .253/.312/.390 (91 wRC+) over that span. He’s a worse hitter against lefties than righties (career wRC+ marks of 70 and 81, respectively) but he can flat out pick it; at second, he posted a 4.9 UZR and 11 DRS in 2019, and owns career per-150 marks of 6.3 UZR and 11 DRS, and he’s similarly strong at third base, where he spent most of 2018.

For good measure, the Giants also recently re-signed Pablo Sandoval to a minor league deal. The 33-year-old cult favorite hit .268/.313/.507 (110 wRC+) with 14 homers in just 296 PA before undergoing Tommy John surgery in September. While he could claim playing time at first base when he returns in midsummer, his career 80 wRC+ against lefties suggests he wouldn’t cut into Flores’ time there. Follow the money: Flores is the only player from among this handful who has a guaranteed major league deal, so it figures he’ll get to play.

The addition of Flores makes more sense in the context of a reimagined Giants’ infield, which probably isn’t out of the question given president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi’s commitment to rebuilding. Belt, who turns 32 on April 20, hit for just a 99 wRC+ last year, his third straight in decline, and has just two years and $32 million remaining on his five-year deal. Shortstop Brandon Crawford is 33, coming off a dreadful 2019 (74 wRC+, 0.4 WAR), also left-handed, and similarly owed $30 million over the next two seasons. It’s plausible that both Brandons get some time to restore their value before getting moved, but from this vantage, if the newcomers and lower-paid holdovers are outplaying them, then it wouldn’t be too great a surprise to see an August lineup with Dubon at shortstop — where our prospect team deemed him “passable,” an assumption worth testing amid a rebuilding effort — with Sánchez at second, and Flores at first, or a Dubon-Flores-Sandoval alignment, or Solano-Dubon-Flores. At the very least, a Dubon-Flores middle infield combo against southpaws could be a more common occurrence.

ZiPS Projection – Wilmer Flores
Year BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ DR WAR
2020 .277 .322 .434 346 39 96 21 0 11 46 21 44 0 102 -5 1.2
2021 .279 .324 .443 323 37 90 20 0 11 44 20 40 0 104 -6 1.1

Here it’s worth noting that Steamer is a bit more optimistic about Flores’ offense (.280/.331/.462, 108 wRC+) than ZiPS, though neither is particularly close to last year’s performance, which according to the player wasn’t the result of any particular breakthrough. ““No changes,” he told The Athletic’s Zach Buchanan in early September. “I don’t think I’ve made any adjustment that I hadn’t made earlier in the season. I’m just getting a good pitch to hit and putting a good swing on it.”

A quick peek at Flores’ Statcast numbers suggests that he wasn’t hitting the ball any harder or better except with respect to 2018, when he hit a very representative .267/.319/.417 (102 wRC+):

Wilmer Flores via Statcast, 2015-19
Year Barrel % Hard Hit % EV LA wOBA xwOBA
2015 2.1 25.5 86.3 13.8 .303 .280
2016 5.0 28.2 86.4 18.8 .336 .312
2017 5.9 33.7 87.5 16.8 .331 .332
2018 2.8 26.8 86.4 17.0 .316 .301
2019 5.1 30.8 87.4 16.4 .359 .329
SOURCE: Baseball Savant

What Flores did do in 2019, however, was make more frequent contact while swinging less often:

Wilmer Flores’ Plate Discipline
Season Swing% O-Contact% Z-Contact% Contact% SwStr% BB% K%
2015 48.8% 82.0% 89.8% 87.2% 6.3% 3.7% 12.4%
2016 48.7% 77.7% 87.8% 84.4% 7.6% 6.9% 14.3%
2017 51.7% 76.9% 89.8% 85.3% 7.6% 4.7% 14.9%
2018 47.6% 83.4% 90.7% 87.9% 5.7% 6.8% 9.8%
2019 45.9% 85.1% 92.7% 89.7% 4.7% 5.3% 10.9%

His newfound selectivity didn’t entirely pay off in terms of his walk and strikeout rates, but that’s still a very contact-oriented profile. Where things really appeared to come together was in two-strike counts. Where Flores hit just .231/.293/.355 (80 wRC+) in 2018 and .214/.256/.317 (56 wRC+) with a 25.4% with two strikes from ’13-18, he hit 276/.326/.388 (87 wRC+) with a 21.5% strikeout rate in ’19, well ahead of the NL averages for non-pitchers (48 wRC+, 40.9% strikeout rate).

Can Flores repeat that, or his strong 2019 showing in general? I don’t know, but I don’t see any reason to be particularly skeptical, and it won’t cost too much for the Giants to find out. Flores now has a bit of security with his multi-year deal, and even a club option (whose value hasn’t been reported yet). Particularly given the likelihood that he’s something in the vicinity of a one-win part-timer, the Giants likely have a bargain on their hands.

2020 ZiPS Projections: Miami Marlins

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Miami Marlins.

Batters

I’ll share the good news first: The Marlins won’t have a good offense, but there are fewer gaping holes now than there were in 2019, when the team was able to outscore the Detroit Tigers, but couldn’t say the same of anyone else. (The team with the third-fewest runs, the San Francisco Giants, scored nearly half a run more per game than Miami did.) A lot of the team’s worst offensive performances — Curtis Granderson and Martín Prado combined for more than 600 plate appearances for some odd reason, hitting .183/.281/.356 and .233/.265/.294, respectively — are being replaced by players the Marlins brought in this winter. In Marlins terms, adding Corey Dickerson, Jesús Aguilar , Matt Joyce, Brandon Kintzler, and Francisco Cervelli constitutes a veritable orgy of spending. Along with players like Matt Kemp and Sean Rodríguez, who are signed to minor league deals, all of these guys are veterans, known quantities with few surprises.

That’s the bad news. Miami did improve their offense, but not by enough for it to actually matter in any real way. I don’t typically encourage teams to stand pat in the face of a bad roster, but all of these “improvements” are essentially dead ends. Very few of these players, if any, will be around for more than a year or two, and even fewer of them have real upside remaining. Risk is the best friend of a rebuilding team; certainty is the currency of the contender. The Marlins needed to upgrade their offensive talent, but it ought to have been with more Nomar Mazara types. I’m skeptical Mazara will ever have that breakout, but if he does, the White Sox are in a position to score massively, as the Blue Jays did with Jose Bautista.

The worst offensive projection in the starting lineup goes to Lewis Brinson, of whom ZiPS has officially been skeptical for more than a year now. Playing him is still the right move — see what I said above about risk — but he’s got to show significant progress in some aspect of offense if he doesn’t want to get swept away by the next wave of prospects. (That prospect probably won’t be Magneuris Sierra.)

Pitchers

The Marlins didn’t show the same lust for cheap veteran additions with their pitching, likely because this is a much more interesting bunch. ZiPS doesn’t see any of the starters as an obvious candidate to breakout, but it generally likes most of them to be in that league average, 96-100 ERA+ starter range.

ZiPS still isn’t quite sure what to make of Sandy Alcantara, whose strikeout rate didn’t match his velocity, even with his command improved from what it was in the minors. His projection is more serviceable than exciting, but the Marlins will take serviceable at this point. ZiPS is more optimistic about Caleb Smith and Pablo López; both are projected to improve from their 2019 lines.

And the Marlins have a highly interesting/entertaining bullpen, even with the loss of Nick Anderson and Tayron Guerrero, a pitcher who both throws 99 and has no idea where 99% of his pitches are going. It’s a fastball/slider feast in Miami, with only the White Sox pen throwing harder than the Marlins did in 2019; no team threw more sliders. ZiPS sees Jeff Brigham as a breakout candidate and Jose Urena as thriving in a full-time relief role. Ryne Stanek is a fun and versatile arm who I hope the Marlins don’t simply typecast in an eighth-inning role.

Prospects

ZiPS is ready for Sixto, and I don’t mean Lezcano. Sixto Sanchez conquered the Southern League last summer and though he has stuff that should be ringing up more minor league batters, he’s been young for his levels. The computer likes Sanchez’s long-term upside and thinks he’d actually be fine if he pitched in the majors right now, though I’d prefer the Marlins take the long view and iron out his flaws. The prize in the J.T. Realmuto trade, there’s little chance he doesn’t get a full slate of chances.

Jazz Chisholm is a 70 name, even if he’s not a 70 prospect. Chisholm is unlikely to ever be a star given some of the holes in his game, namely the Conan the Barbarian approach at the plate. He swings hard, often, and inaccurately, but ZiPS is tantalized by his power upside to such an extent that it has his peak “true” slugging percentages in the .470 to .480 range, which is quite nice from a shortstop. Problem is, it also comes with projected batting averages in the low .200s and on-base percentages under .300. It may come down to just how his glove plays in the majors; I don’t think the tradeoffs for the power are likely to be worth it if he has to move very far down the defensive spectrum. Zac Gallen is the better player, but I think the Marlins were right to seek a riskier player with an interesting ceiling.

Braxton Garrett had a promising return from Tommy John surgery, enough to make him relevant to the projections pretty quickly. ZiPS now sees him as a fourth starter with upside. Fastball/changeup lefty Alex Vesia is a relief prospect who ZiPS is highly interested in. His fastball’s not in Stanek territory, but neither is he Kyle Hendricks, and he struck out more than 13 batters a game at multiple levels in 2019, putting him on ZiPS’s radar. The system thinks he ought to be in the bullpen right now.

One pedantic note for 2020: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth charts playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Batters – Standard
Player B Age PO PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS
Jonathan Villar B 29 3B 634 569 82 148 25 3 17 57 57 157 41 11
Brian Anderson R 27 RF 586 517 70 135 30 3 17 68 51 128 5 2
Miguel Rojas R 31 SS 505 465 50 125 23 1 7 45 28 58 7 4
Corey Dickerson L 31 LF 473 443 53 121 30 3 15 57 25 94 3 2
Jon Berti R 30 3B 362 323 46 78 12 3 7 29 30 80 22 6
Isan Díaz L 24 2B 540 481 68 114 21 3 14 63 55 136 7 3
Jesús Aguilar R 30 1B 420 368 50 91 16 0 17 63 43 97 0 0
Garrett Cooper R 29 1B 412 375 46 98 18 1 12 47 30 95 0 1
Christian Lopes R 27 2B 506 449 55 106 24 2 10 42 45 105 12 5
Matt Joyce L 35 RF 311 262 41 63 13 0 10 28 46 64 1 1
Jorge Alfaro R 27 C 451 419 42 100 16 1 14 48 20 155 3 2
Francisco Cervelli R 34 C 284 240 28 55 9 1 6 29 32 68 2 1
Eddy Alvarez B 30 3B 379 336 41 78 15 2 7 33 33 85 8 4
Ryan Lavarnway R 32 C 262 232 27 52 11 0 7 24 23 58 0 1
Chad Wallach R 28 C 200 177 20 38 8 0 5 17 18 58 0 0
Sean Rodríguez R 35 3B 198 170 25 32 5 1 7 19 22 69 1 1
Deven Marrero R 29 SS 389 355 41 74 14 1 7 31 28 103 7 2
Monte Harrison R 24 CF 451 408 50 86 14 2 12 40 33 162 22 5
Lewin Diaz L 23 1B 496 464 52 108 23 3 18 52 23 106 0 1
Jazz Chisholm L 22 SS 491 444 55 89 12 6 17 51 39 182 13 5
Martín Prado R 36 1B 288 268 27 68 13 0 2 22 17 43 1 1
Brian Navarreto R 25 C 300 279 25 55 10 0 5 20 11 64 0 0
Lewis Brinson R 26 CF 525 481 51 102 19 5 13 53 33 156 11 4
Jesus Sanchez L 22 RF 504 467 52 109 20 2 12 49 30 116 5 4
Julian Leon R 24 C 269 231 26 38 8 0 6 20 28 106 0 1
Isaac Galloway R 30 LF 300 279 34 62 11 1 9 29 15 87 13 5
Wilkin Castillo B 36 C 187 175 15 36 7 1 3 14 9 30 2 1
Nick Fortes R 23 C 298 267 25 54 10 2 3 22 22 55 1 1
Curtis Granderson L 39 LF 333 291 43 61 15 1 10 31 38 88 0 2
Adrian Nieto B 30 C 178 162 15 31 5 1 2 12 13 52 1 0
Gosuke Katoh L 25 2B 428 381 43 80 16 2 7 29 42 127 9 5
Matt Kemp R 35 LF 417 388 44 99 18 0 17 56 24 97 0 0
Matt Snyder L 30 1B 155 141 14 30 7 0 4 13 9 39 1 1
Harold Ramirez R 25 LF 552 515 59 132 25 3 10 53 25 108 5 3
Billy Fleming R 27 2B 286 260 28 58 12 1 5 23 20 71 1 1
Brian Miller L 24 LF 510 473 46 115 20 4 1 31 30 92 22 10
Jose Devers L 20 SS 330 307 28 69 8 3 0 17 16 59 8 4
Magneuris Sierra L 24 CF 583 550 55 131 17 8 4 38 26 109 25 11
Bryson Brigman R 25 SS 491 448 42 97 13 2 2 26 33 94 7 6
Demetrius Sims R 24 SS 386 343 35 63 13 2 5 25 28 133 7 9
Joe Dunand R 24 SS 531 482 47 98 20 1 8 41 31 146 1 1
Stone Garrett R 24 LF 431 410 37 87 17 3 9 38 15 139 10 5
Lazaro Alonso L 25 1B 441 389 42 78 15 0 8 34 49 149 1 1
Riley Mahan L 24 2B 478 440 40 85 17 2 7 36 26 167 3 1
Anfernee Seymour B 25 RF 396 366 34 77 13 3 2 24 21 126 16 10

Batters – Advanced
Player BA OBP SLG OPS+ ISO BABIP RC/27 Def WAR No. 1 Comp
Jonathan Villar .260 .329 .404 99 .144 .332 5.2 2 2.7 Felipe Lopez
Brian Anderson .261 .341 .429 109 .168 .317 5.4 7 2.7 Mike Lum
Miguel Rojas .269 .316 .368 86 .099 .295 4.3 7 1.9 Jack Wilson
Corey Dickerson .273 .313 .456 106 .183 .317 5.3 3 1.5 Hubie Brooks
Jon Berti .241 .319 .362 86 .121 .301 4.4 5 1.4 Trent Durrington
Isan Díaz .237 .318 .380 90 .143 .302 4.3 -1 1.3 Jose Castillo
Jesús Aguilar .247 .326 .429 104 .182 .291 5.0 2 1.2 Damon Minor
Garrett Cooper .261 .320 .411 98 .149 .321 4.8 1 0.7 Matt LeCroy
Christian Lopes .236 .312 .365 84 .129 .287 4.1 -2 0.7 Bobby Morris
Matt Joyce .240 .354 .405 107 .164 .282 5.0 -3 0.7 Chris Chambliss
Jorge Alfaro .239 .288 .382 81 .143 .344 3.9 -2 0.7 Tony Pena
Francisco Cervelli .229 .339 .350 89 .121 .295 4.2 -4 0.6 Bob Stinson
Eddy Alvarez .232 .305 .351 79 .119 .291 3.8 2 0.6 Kevin Stocker
Ryan Lavarnway .224 .303 .362 81 .138 .269 3.7 0 0.5 Keith McDonald
Chad Wallach .215 .296 .345 75 .130 .289 3.5 0 0.3 Jeff Ontiveros
Sean Rodríguez .188 .291 .353 75 .165 .266 3.4 2 0.3 Dave McKay
Deven Marrero .208 .267 .313 58 .104 .273 2.9 6 0.3 Erick Monzon
Monte Harrison .211 .282 .343 70 .132 .316 3.6 0 0.2 Damon Mashore
Lewin Diaz .233 .272 .412 83 .179 .265 3.9 5 0.1 Kevin Reimer
Jazz Chisholm .200 .271 .369 73 .169 .294 3.4 -3 0.1 Benji Gil
Martín Prado .254 .299 .325 71 .071 .296 3.5 4 -0.2 Larry Biittner
Brian Navarreto .197 .236 .287 42 .090 .238 2.3 7 -0.2 Jeff Winchester
Lewis Brinson .212 .273 .353 69 .141 .285 3.4 0 -0.2 Victor Mendez
Jesus Sanchez .233 .282 .362 74 .128 .286 3.5 4 -0.2 Chad Mottola
Julian Leon .165 .269 .277 50 .113 .269 2.3 2 -0.3 Nicholas Derba
Isaac Galloway .222 .268 .366 71 .143 .290 3.5 1 -0.3 Nate Murphy
Wilkin Castillo .206 .249 .309 51 .103 .232 2.6 1 -0.3 Tony Pena
Nick Fortes .202 .272 .288 54 .086 .244 2.6 1 -0.3 Walt McKeel
Curtis Granderson .210 .306 .371 84 .162 .264 3.7 -4 -0.4 Greg Vaughn
Adrian Nieto .191 .254 .272 44 .080 .269 2.4 0 -0.4 Chris Tremie
Gosuke Katoh .210 .291 .318 67 .108 .296 3.1 -2 -0.4 Mike Neal
Matt Kemp .255 .295 .433 95 .178 .299 4.6 -10 -0.5 Walt Dropo
Matt Snyder .213 .277 .348 69 .135 .265 3.2 -2 -0.6 Jeremy Ware
Harold Ramirez .256 .299 .375 83 .118 .307 4.1 -5 -0.6 Victor Mata
Billy Fleming .223 .283 .335 68 .112 .288 3.3 -5 -0.7 Frank Kremblas
Brian Miller .243 .291 .309 65 .066 .300 3.3 4 -0.8 Darwin Pennye
Jose Devers .225 .274 .270 50 .046 .278 2.6 -1 -0.9 Mike Gallego
Magneuris Sierra .238 .276 .320 62 .082 .291 3.2 -2 -0.9 Josh Anderson
Bryson Brigman .217 .277 .268 50 .051 .270 2.4 1 -1.0 Mike Terhune
Demetrius Sims .184 .264 .277 48 .093 .283 2.1 1 -1.0 Brandon Chaves
Joe Dunand .203 .262 .299 53 .095 .274 2.6 -1 -1.1 Sergio Santos
Stone Garrett .212 .248 .334 57 .122 .298 2.8 4 -1.1 Mark Charbonnet
Lazaro Alonso .201 .293 .301 63 .100 .302 2.9 -5 -1.8 Chris Duncan
Riley Mahan .193 .246 .289 46 .095 .293 2.4 -2 -1.9 Chris Shaddy
Anfernee Seymour .210 .256 .279 46 .068 .315 2.3 -2 -2.2 Kevin Wiggins

Pitchers – Standard
Player T Age W L ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO FIP
Sandy Alcantara R 24 9 10 4.45 33 33 194.3 188 96 23 86 152 4.62
Pablo López R 24 8 8 4.10 26 26 127.3 126 58 16 36 111 4.15
Caleb Smith L 28 9 9 4.19 27 25 135.3 119 63 19 55 147 4.16
Trevor Rogers L 22 8 8 4.31 24 24 129.3 127 62 16 51 107 4.50
Daniel Castano L 25 7 8 4.50 30 15 128.0 135 64 17 43 94 4.63
Sixto Sanchez R 21 6 7 4.40 19 19 100.3 103 49 15 27 80 4.52
Jordan Yamamoto R 24 7 9 4.64 25 25 126.0 114 65 18 59 124 4.66
Braxton Garrett L 22 6 7 4.54 22 22 105.0 101 53 14 50 98 4.65
Sterling Sharp R 25 6 7 4.57 20 20 100.3 109 51 11 36 67 4.53
Alex Vesia L 24 5 4 3.47 36 0 59.7 50 23 6 24 71 3.52
Kolton Mahoney R 28 5 6 4.58 29 12 96.3 101 49 12 36 74 4.57
Edward Cabrera R 22 6 8 4.77 21 21 94.3 91 50 13 53 92 4.90
Elieser Hernandez R 25 5 6 4.79 30 21 112.7 109 60 21 41 119 4.77
Josh A. Smith R 32 5 5 4.57 28 11 84.7 87 43 13 27 72 4.57
Ryne Stanek R 28 2 2 3.84 64 0 72.7 62 31 9 33 86 3.83
Joe Gunkel R 28 5 7 4.84 23 16 96.7 109 52 17 17 62 4.87
Robert Dugger R 24 9 12 5.04 28 28 148.3 154 83 26 57 122 5.17
Brian Moran L 31 3 3 3.86 48 1 58.3 51 25 7 27 68 4.00
Dustin Beggs R 27 6 8 4.92 23 20 108.0 118 59 17 35 78 4.92
Brandon Kintzler R 35 3 3 3.78 58 0 52.3 51 22 5 14 40 3.87
Drew Steckenrider R 29 2 2 3.80 50 0 47.3 40 20 6 21 57 3.88
Jeff Brigham R 28 3 3 3.86 51 0 56.0 50 24 6 25 57 4.04
Nick Neidert R 23 6 8 4.98 19 19 94.0 99 52 16 36 79 5.02
McKenzie Mills L 24 4 6 4.85 29 13 94.7 99 51 12 44 71 4.88
Pat Venditte S 35 4 4 3.96 36 1 50.0 44 22 6 22 53 4.12
Jose Urena R 28 3 3 4.02 64 0 65.0 62 29 8 20 54 4.23
Cody Poteet R 25 6 8 5.12 23 23 121.3 134 69 18 46 77 5.15
Dylan Lee L 25 4 4 4.07 50 0 59.7 57 27 5 29 51 4.22
Tommy Eveld R 26 5 4 3.99 44 0 47.3 43 21 5 20 48 3.92
Yimi García R 29 2 2 4.24 56 0 51.0 49 24 10 10 53 4.47
Stephen Tarpley L 27 4 4 4.62 37 5 64.3 62 33 8 35 64 4.63
Tyler Stevens R 24 4 4 4.20 45 0 64.3 61 30 9 25 63 4.35
Aaron Northcraft R 30 4 5 4.90 29 9 71.7 72 39 11 33 62 4.99
Vincenzo Aiello R 25 4 4 4.20 39 0 49.3 45 23 5 26 49 4.27
Brett Graves R 27 4 5 4.76 36 6 70.0 70 37 9 35 59 4.84
José Quijada L 24 3 3 4.26 55 0 61.3 51 29 7 40 77 4.31
Josh Roeder R 27 3 4 5.11 24 10 75.7 84 43 12 29 48 5.28
Adam Conley L 30 5 5 4.41 65 0 65.3 66 32 9 24 56 4.54
Ryan Cook R 33 1 2 4.61 30 0 27.3 26 14 3 15 27 4.50
Jordan Milbrath R 28 3 3 4.65 37 1 62.0 60 32 7 36 55 4.81
C.J. Carter R 23 3 3 4.62 36 0 50.7 48 26 5 30 47 4.56
Jarlin García L 27 3 5 4.95 53 5 72.7 74 40 12 28 56 5.07
Chad Smith R 25 3 3 4.87 36 0 40.7 38 22 4 29 40 4.85
Alejandro Mateo R 26 3 5 5.09 38 3 63.7 65 36 9 34 56 5.05
Jorge Guzman R 24 6 10 5.71 24 23 110.3 109 70 17 81 96 5.84

Pitchers – Advanced
Player K/9 BB/9 HR/9 BB% K% BABIP ERA+ ERA- WAR No. 1 Comp
Sandy Alcantara 7.0 4.0 1.1 10.1% 17.9% .284 94 107 1.9 Blue Moon Odom
Pablo López 7.8 2.5 1.1 6.6% 20.4% .296 102 98 1.7 Larry Christenson
Caleb Smith 9.8 3.7 1.3 9.5% 25.5% .286 99 101 1.6 Trevor Wilson
Trevor Rogers 7.4 3.5 1.1 9.0% 19.0% .291 97 104 1.4 Jim O’Toole
Daniel Castano 6.6 3.0 1.2 7.7% 16.8% .296 93 108 1.0 Chuck Stobbs
Sixto Sanchez 7.2 2.4 1.3 6.3% 18.6% .292 95 106 1.0 Larry Dierker
Jordan Yamamoto 8.9 4.2 1.3 10.7% 22.5% .282 90 111 0.9 Scott Holman
Braxton Garrett 8.4 4.3 1.2 10.8% 21.1% .293 92 109 0.9 Paul Maholm
Sterling Sharp 6.0 3.2 1.0 8.1% 15.1% .302 91 110 0.8 Joe Coleman
Alex Vesia 10.7 3.6 0.9 9.5% 28.1% .297 120 83 0.7 Jaime Cerda
Kolton Mahoney 6.9 3.4 1.1 8.5% 17.4% .300 91 110 0.6 Jim McDonald
Edward Cabrera 8.8 5.1 1.2 12.4% 21.5% .297 87 115 0.6 Dick Ruthven
Elieser Hernandez 9.5 3.3 1.7 8.4% 24.4% .293 87 115 0.6 Shawn Boskie
Josh A. Smith 7.7 2.9 1.4 7.4% 19.7% .296 91 110 0.5 Tim Harikkala
Ryne Stanek 10.7 4.1 1.1 10.6% 27.7% .293 108 92 0.5 Hector Carrasco
Joe Gunkel 5.8 1.6 1.6 4.1% 15.0% .295 86 116 0.5 John Doherty
Robert Dugger 7.4 3.5 1.6 8.7% 18.6% .291 83 121 0.5 Kyle Hartshorn
Brian Moran 10.5 4.2 1.1 10.7% 26.9% .299 108 93 0.5 Tippy Martinez
Dustin Beggs 6.5 2.9 1.4 7.4% 16.4% .298 85 118 0.5 Steve Finch
Brandon Kintzler 6.9 2.4 0.9 6.3% 18.1% .289 110 91 0.4 Clay Carroll
Drew Steckenrider 10.8 4.0 1.1 10.4% 28.2% .293 110 91 0.4 Ken Ryan
Jeff Brigham 9.2 4.0 1.0 10.3% 23.6% .291 108 93 0.4 John Riedling
Nick Neidert 7.6 3.4 1.5 8.7% 19.0% .297 84 120 0.3 Shawn Hill
McKenzie Mills 6.8 4.2 1.1 10.4% 16.7% .297 86 116 0.3 Chris Short
Pat Venditte 9.5 4.0 1.1 10.2% 24.5% .288 105 95 0.3 Moe Drabowsky
Jose Urena 7.5 2.8 1.1 7.2% 19.6% .284 104 96 0.3 Cecil Upshaw
Cody Poteet 5.7 3.4 1.3 8.5% 14.2% .295 81 123 0.3 Michael Macdonald
Dylan Lee 7.7 4.4 0.8 10.9% 19.2% .295 102 98 0.2 Marcelino Lopez
Tommy Eveld 9.1 3.8 1.0 9.8% 23.5% .295 104 96 0.2 Jerry Reed
Yimi García 9.4 1.8 1.8 4.7% 24.9% .287 98 102 0.1 Lance Carter
Stephen Tarpley 9.0 4.9 1.1 12.1% 22.1% .302 90 111 0.2 Todd Rizzo
Tyler Stevens 8.8 3.5 1.3 9.0% 22.7% .292 99 101 0.2 Brandon League
Aaron Northcraft 7.8 4.1 1.4 10.3% 19.4% .292 85 118 0.1 John Montague
Vincenzo Aiello 8.9 4.7 0.9 11.9% 22.4% .294 99 101 0.1 Joe Hudson
Brett Graves 7.6 4.5 1.2 11.1% 18.8% .295 88 114 0.1 Barry Hertzler
José Quijada 11.3 5.9 1.0 14.5% 28.0% .299 98 102 0.1 Grant Jackson
Josh Roeder 5.7 3.4 1.4 8.6% 14.2% .294 81 123 0.0 Bob Purkey
Adam Conley 7.7 3.3 1.2 8.4% 19.6% .297 94 106 0.0 Dave Tomlin
Ryan Cook 8.9 4.9 1.0 12.2% 22.0% .303 90 111 -0.1 Moe Burtschy
Jordan Milbrath 8.0 5.2 1.0 12.8% 19.5% .294 90 112 -0.1 Horacio Pina
C.J. Carter 8.3 5.3 0.9 13.1% 20.5% .299 90 111 -0.1 David Aardsma
Jarlin García 6.9 3.5 1.5 8.8% 17.7% .284 84 119 -0.2 Rich Folkers
Chad Smith 8.9 6.4 0.9 15.3% 21.2% .301 86 117 -0.2 Dave Cole
Alejandro Mateo 7.9 4.8 1.3 11.8% 19.4% .301 82 122 -0.3 Barry Hertzler
Jorge Guzman 7.8 6.6 1.4 15.6% 18.5% .288 73 137 -0.5 Dennis Lamp

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2020 due to injury, and players who were released in 2019. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in June to form a ska-cowpunk Luxembourgian bubblegum pop-death metal band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article.


Mookie Betts Trade Underscores NL West Imbalance

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On Tuesday night, the Los Angeles Dodgers traded for Mookie Betts and David Price. Assuming the parties involved can hammer out the details, the deal obviously makes the Dodgers a better baseball team, both in the here and now and, to a lesser extent, in the future. For Los Angeles fans tired of October flameouts and agonizing World Series defeats, this is fantastic news: Betts alone is something like a five-win upgrade and he’ll make a long lineup that much more daunting come the playoffs.

As far as simply reaching the playoffs goes though, Betts barely moves the needle. Of all the teams in baseball, it’s not like this one “needed” to get better, at least when it comes to maximizing its playoff chances. Dan Szymborski took great pains to express that the ZiPS projections he’s cooking up are still under-baked and not yet fit for public consumption; that caveat aside, he has the Dodgers projected to win the NL West by 12 games without Betts. With him in the fold, that jumps to 16. Los Angeles has already won the division seven times in a row; with a loaded roster, and a deep farm system, their streak wasn’t in any jeopardy this year and won’t be for some time yet.

Whether or not the trade looks redundant in a competitive sense for the Dodgers, it must feel like just another body blow in Phoenix, Denver, and San Diego. Through the realities of geography, vagaries of expansion, and a league-wide desire to limit travel costs, four other franchises are stuck perpetually competing with the West Coast’s foremost superpower. The Giants have the resources to remain competitive in spite of their southern rival, but the other three teams have looked comparatively hapless. The Giants and Dodgers have captured all but one division title since 2007. In that period, the Padres, Diamondbacks, and Rockies have only reached the playoffs five times combined, never escaping the NLDS. For the little three, the Dodgers are an immovable barrier blocking any real chance of sustained success. That’s a problem in a league that emphasizes postseason glory first and foremost, particularly in a sport that is primarily consumed locally.

The arbitrary unfairness of divisions isn’t a new problem. We hear about it whenever a club or two outgrows its neighborhood, most notably with the Braves at the turn of the century, or the AL East in the mid-aughts when the Yankees and Red Sox were swapping pennants while their division mates mostly failed to tread water. The point was as salient then as it is now, and the proof is in the results: Over the last 15 years, in a period where the Red Sox and Yankees each went through something like a slump by their standards, those two still managed to capture 11 division crowns and four championships.

This isn’t an easy time to mount an argument against divisions, or really do anything else to address competitive balance. In an age where too many teams are willfully uncompetitive, the reflexive answer to any club crying about the big bad bully in their division would go something like “Well, have you really tried beating them?” There’s certainly no reason to feel badly for the perennially cellar-dwelling Marlins, a glorified hedge fund that happens to employ baseball players, or even a team like the Mariners, who have sporadically shown they have the financial wherewithal to compete, even as October baseball still dangles stubbornly out of reach.

But that’s not really the case in the NL West. The Padres, at the very least, are battling. In recent years, the club has assembled arguably the top collection of minor league talent we’ve seen this century. That in and of itself isn’t a ticket to anywhere — the Friars headed a lot of 2012 prospect list rankings and got very little out of that core — but this system is already bearing fruit, in the form of stars like Fernando Tatis Jr. and Chris Paddack, with the promise of more on the way. San Diego has also been the rare bird active on the free agent market in recent years, having signed Eric Hosmer for $140 million prior to the 2018 season and Manny Machado for another $300 million the following winter. I don’t know if you could earnestly describe any major league club as financially “maxed out” or “all in.” But the Padres have been as aggressive as anyone lately, having combined big investments in free agency with a stellar crop of minor leaguers. And after all that, they’re probably stuck hoping for a spot in a Wild Card game some time in the next few years.

It’s a similar story for the Diamondbacks. Arizona’s farm system is also one of the best in baseball, even after dealing from strength to acquire Starling Marte earlier this winter. The club has deftly moved on from the Goldschmidt era without tearing everything down, or even getting appreciably worse in the interim, and they’ve also busted out the checkbook in free agency, adding players like Madison Bumgarner and Kole Calhoun. In another division, they’d be legitimate contenders for the title. In this one, not so much.

Colorado faces even greater competitive disadvantages. Rockies pitchers already have to work half of their games in the most difficult ballpark in baseball, which presents an undue burden on young pitchers acclimating to the big leagues and a significant obstacle to recruiting free agents who can help manage the load. Their hitters are also challenged by the altitude, especially on the road, when they must adjust to breaking balls dipping and spinning and dropping far more than they do at home. That they must also contend with a well-run financial behemoth like the Dodgers seems like at least one obstacle too many.

That rings especially true when you compare the divisions. The Dodgers have won an average of 101 games over the past three years, and could well top that this season. The NL Central and NL East winners, meanwhile, have averaged 93 and 94.6 wins respectively over that time, with no club hitting the 100-win mark. The Central looks like a particularly flimsy division in 2020, where none of the five teams — three of which either got worse or were mostly inactive — look like a good bet to reach 90 wins.

The fairness of a divisional system is predicated on an even distribution of talent, at least in the long run. That’s hard to achieve in any sport and it’s pretty clearly not a reality in baseball, where the biggest markets are densely concentrated on the coasts and a few huge teams can consistently squat atop the pile. Big franchises will always win disproportionately no matter the setup, and there’s only so much that can (and should) be done about that. But that doesn’t mean it’s fair for some challengers to have a taller hill to climb than others. The absurdity of the current setup from a competitive standpoint should be readily evident: It makes no sense to consistently handicap the Orioles and Diamondbacks with a tougher landscape than the Nationals and Tigers.

The fairest fix is to eliminate the divisions. Most fans have embraced the second Wild Card, and there’s no reason you’d have to eliminate the play-in game in a new format. You’d simply line up the five best teams in each circuit, and have the fourth-best host the fifth for the honor of traveling to the league champ. The benefits are clear: It’s much fairer, and it also offers a chance to enhance the prestige of the regular season by conferring a greater importance on — and subsequently appreciation for — winning the most games in the league. Best of all, if the Diamondbacks win the third most games in the league, as they did in 2017, they won’t have to worry about gutting their way through the coin-flip round.

Of course, to do this effectively you’d have to make everyone travel more, which costs time and money, something neither the players nor ownership seem likely to embrace. That’s the reality and with no shortage of pressing issues on the horizon before the next collective bargaining negotiation, divisional imbalance is not a subject likely to garner much air time. Sooner or later though, Padres fans are going to see their top farm system and big free agent outlays on one half of the division, and LA’s star-studded roster and financial might on the other, and think that there must be a better way to run things. They’ll be right about that.

Sunday Notes: MLB Executives Weigh in on the Implications of MiLB Contraction

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Almost inexplicably, the proposed contraction of 42 minor league teams has largely become second-page news. Baseball’s biggest story just a few short months ago, a potentially cataclysmic alteration of the game’s landscape has found itself overshadowed by cheating scandals, managerial mayhem, and the controversial trade of a superstar by a deep-pocketed team. In arguably one of the most-tumultuous off-seasons ever, a hugely-important issue lies almost dormant within the news cycle.

Here at FanGraphs, we’re doing our best not to let that happen. My colleague Craig Edwards is taking an in-depth look at the situation — expect those articles in the coming days — and what you’re seeing here serves as a lead-in to his efforts. My own opinions aren’t included. What follows are the thoughts of a handful of high-ranking MLB executives, the bulk of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In the opinion of one GM, lawsuits are likely, if not inevitable. Speaking on the record would thus be an invitation to trouble. Another pointed out that the ongoing discussions are at the league level, and independent of individual teams. For that reason, offering a public opinion wouldn’t be in his best interest.

With no exception, each executive expressed that his organization’s bottom line is to optimize player development, regardless of the structure of the minor leagues. An American League GM put it this way:

I don’t think [contraction] would change our operations that much in terms of what we’re focused on internally. We want to put the best resources in front of our players, and whether we have 10 minor league teams, five minor league teams, or somewhere in between, we’re going to do the same thing.

Continuity came up multiple times. Asked if all organizations would be impacted equally by contraction, one executive pointed out that some organizations have multiple DSL teams, or multiple rookie-league teams, while others don’t. As he put it, “I’m of the camp that the more consistent we are in terms of number of teams, and number of players across minor-league baseball… that’s something I’d be supportive of.”

All agreed that losing a short-season team could prove problematic in terms of promotions. For instance, what do you do if a player in the Gulf Coast League is deemed ready for the New York-Penn League, but not for the South-Atlantic League? In essence, you’d either have to leave him stagnant or double-jump him to a level potentially deleterious to his development. Again, the importance of continuity. If all organizations face the same challenges, you have a more-level playing field.

A National League GM who weighed in on the question agreed. He also rued the idea that an indeterminate number of potential overachievers would never get that chance.

There is definitely a subset of players that shouldn’t be making that double jump. With a lot of affiliates, you don’t face that challenge. The more players you have… it makes for a lot of good stories. Guys come out of nowhere. In that sense, I don’t love the idea of reducing it down.

And then there are the towns. Losing a baseball team impacts a community, not just in terms of the fan experience, but also economically. One executive in particular was thoughtful when addressing that issue:

“Philosophically, is minor-league baseball entirely for player development, or is it also a business for these towns? We have prospects here, but we also have 12 kids who were drafted in order to give those other 12 someone to play with. Are we OK that this is part development, part entertainment business? We’re spending money on kids who are drafted and developed, in order to give players to that business. This is a philosophical question that needs to be answered.”

It is widely recognized that MLB owners have the money to continue “subsidizing,” and they could afford to do so more generously. This is especially true when it comes to minor-league salaries, which are a drop in the bucket compared to other expenditures. Eliminating affiliates isn’t necessary for that to happen. Therein lies the business part of the equation, which is intertwined with the greater good of the game. One executive I spoke to freely admitted that the best interests of MLB owners and the best interests of baseball as a whole aren’t the same thing.

The timing of June’s amateur draft came up multiple times. The consensus was that the draft should be pushed back, perhaps to the All-Star break, and that’s whether contraction goes forward or not.

Which brings us to the contentious negotiations between Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball. As one of the aforementioned executives pointed out, those are taking place beyond the purview of individual teams — all he and his brethren can do is wait for a resolution, and then act according. Which doesn’t mean there aren’t things they’d like to see happen.

“I just want it to be well thought out,” expressed one of the NL execs. “I don’t want the tail to wag the dog. I think that’s the way it is now: the tail wags the dog. We have all these short-season affiliates, we have to draft 40 rounds, we’re filling out rosters. What we have now isn’t ideal. The way it’s set up could definitely be optimized.”

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Aaron Civale doesn’t feature many four-seam fastballs. The Cleveland Indians right-hander threw the pitch just 3.2% of the time in his rookie season. And while upping that usage in 2020 isn’t necessarily a goal, having a higher-quality four-seamer is. Cognizant of the fact that he’s ”always been able to spin a baseball, but not really backspin a baseball,” Civale has been working out at Cressey Sports Performance in hopes of changing that dynamic.

As for his primary fastball, the 24-year-old Northeastern University product doesn’t throw a traditional two-seamer. He described the grip as “a little bit offset, creating almost one-seam spin; I spin at a different axis to create more of a lateral movement, versus just depth. The better I spin it —I do spin the ball well — the more it moves in the direction I want it to.”

Not surprisingly, technology is playing a role in his efforts to improve his sporadically-thrown four-seamer. The Indians sent Civale an Edgertronic to use over the offseason, and it’s helped him work on his release point.

“I’m typically on the side of the ball at release, so I tend to get a little baby cut on the ball from the spin axis,” said Civale. “The direction it’s spinning isn’t really conducive to carry. Having the Edgertronic and the Rapsodo allows me to see the immediate results of the spin axis and direction, which allows me to quantify potential small changes.”

Again, those small changes aren’t intended to remake the righty’s repertoire.

“It’s not something that’s being prioritized,” explained Civale, who logged a 2.34 ERA in his 10 starts with the Indians. “The goal isn’t necessarily for it to be a plus pitch, it’s more to help make my other pitches better. And because I do mix it in, I need to make sure it’s there when I need to go to it.”

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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Pee Wee Reese went 34 for 100 against Lew Burdette.

Joe Torre went 35 for 100 against Juan Marichal.

Irish Meusel went 37 for 100 against Jesse Haines.

Paul Waner went 40 for 100 against Pat Malone.

Joe Adcock went 42 for 100 against Johnny Klippstein.

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Tim Kurkjian told a pair of good Greg Maddux stories on Friday at a Foundation To Be Named Later benefit event in Boston. The first laid bare just how well the Hall of Fame right-hander could read the tendencies of certain hitters. According to Kurkjian, Bobby Cox had come out to the mound to remove Maddux from a postseason game in a tense situation.

“You can’t take me out against this guy,” Maddux told his manager. “I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to pop out to the third baseman on the first pitch. You can take me out after this, but don’t take me out now, because he’s going to pop up to third base on the first pitch.”

What happened? He popped up to third on the first pitch.

The ESPN analyst proceeded to share another claim that came to fruition.

“Greg Maddux walked 999 guys in his career,” recounted Kurkjian. “He had 999 with three starts to go, and he told Derek Lowe, playing golf one day, ‘I’m not walking anybody else. I’m not walking 1,000 guys in my career.’”

Maddux worked 18 innings over those last three outings. He didn’t walk anybody.

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An historical comp:

Mookie Betts’s last three seasons before being dealt from the Red Sox to the Dodgers: .299/.389/.535, 85 home runs, 140 wRC+, three Gold Gloves.

Fred Lynn’s last three seasons before being dealt from the Red Sox to the Angels in January 1981: .311/.396/.540, 73 home runs, 148 wRC+, three Gold Gloves.

Lynn was 28 years old at the time. The three players Boston acquired in the deal — Jim Dorsey, Joe Rudi, and Frank Tanana — went on to combine for 0.1 WAR while wearing Red Sox uniforms. Betts, arguably the best player in baseball not named Mike Trout, is 27 years old.

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NEWS NOTES

Sean Foreman, who founded baseball-reference.com in 2000, will be honored with the 2020 SABR Analytics Conference Lifetime Achievement Award.

Major League Baseball has promoted Chris Young to Senior Vice President. Per a press release, the former big-league right-hander will oversee MLB’s on-field operations, and umpiring, departments. Young had been serving as Vice President, On-Field Operations, Initiatives & Strategy.

Maura Sheridan has been hired as the new play-by-play voice of the Cleveland Indians’ Carolina League affiliate, the Lynchburg Hillcats. The 23-year-old Syracuse University graduate spent last season as the No. 2 broadcaster with the Fayetteville Woodpeckers.

Blaine McCormick will be joining the Richmond Squirrels broadcast team this coming season. A recent graduate of Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, McCormick called games for the Boise Hawks last summer. The Squirrels are San Francisco’s Eastern League affiliate.

Gil Coan, an outfielder for four teams from 1946-1956, died earlier this week at age 97. Coan’s best years came with the Washington Senators, for whom he batted .303 in both 1950 and 1951.

Last Sunday’s column noted that the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame would be announcing their 2020 inductees on Tuesday. They did so, and the honorees are Justin Morneau, John Olerud, Duane Ward, and Jacques Doucet.

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A random shoutout to a Kelowna, British Columbia native who had a short-but-successful big-league career that ended with an elbow injury:

Jeff Zimmermann came out of the Texas Rangers bullpen 196 times from 1999-2001, with yearly appearance totals of 65, 65, and 66. In the last of those three seasons, Zimmermann was credited with 28 saves. His path to MLB was unique.

Undrafted out Texas Christian University, Zimmermann pitched for Team Canada, and for Barracudas de Montpellier in France’s Division Élite. He then returned to this side of the pond and pitched for the Winnipeg Goldeyes in the Northern League. The Rangers purchased Zimmermann’s contract from the indie-league club in January 1998.

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Last Sunday’s column included a glimpse at the new player-development-focused class that Andy Andres is teaching at Boston University. Noted within those paragraphs was the fact that Peter Bendix, Mike DeBartolo, and Jeremy Greenhouse are among the 12 former Sabermetrics 101 students who have been hired by MLB teams. Of the nine not mentioned, here are the six who remain in noteworthy positions:

Ethan Bein, Senior Analyst R&D, Milwaukee Brewers
Joe Harrington, Coordinator Performance Sciences, Los Angeles Dodgers
Matt McGrath, Assistant Director Player Development, Los Angeles Dodgers.
Alex Merberg, Director of Baseball Operations, Cleveland Indians
Julia Prusaczyk, Analyst Baseball Development, St. Louis Cardinals
Will Vandenberg, Bio-mechanical Quantitative Analyst, Los Angeles Dodgers

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

How do baseball teams exchange medical information, and what does it mean for the Mookie Betts trade? Alex Speier explained the process at The Boston Globe.

Chris Welsh pitched in the big leagues before becoming a broadcaster with the Cincinnati Reds. Jim Leeke profiled the southpaw-turned-analyst for SABR’s BioProject.

Janie McCauley of the Associated Press wrote about how Alyssa Nakken is embracing her role as MLB’s first female coach. Nakken’s official title with the San Francisco Giants is Major League Assistant Coach.

Sticking closer to home, Stephanie Springer wrote about “The Astros, psychological safety, and MLB front office culture,” for The Hardball Times.

Over at The Tampa Bay Times, John Romano wrote about how all the Rays exes live in Texas… and in Boston and Los Angeles.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Babe Ruth hit 29 home runs in 1919, his final year with the Red Sox. Mookie Betts hit 29 home runs in 2019, [presumably] his final year with the Red Sox.

Mookie Betts has 37.2 WAR through his age-27 season. Andruw Jones had 47.1 WAR through his age-27 season.

White Sox outfielder Leury Garcia scored 47% of the time he reached base last year, the highest rate in MLB. The league average was 31%.(Per ESPN’s Sam Miller.)

Whit Merrifield has slashed .352/.382/.590 in 295 career plate appearances against the Detroit Tigers. The Kansas City Royals infielder is a combined 30 for 62 versus Matthew Boyd and Daniel Norris.

Larry Walker had 8,030 plate appearances, 383 home runs, and 230 stolen bases. Ryan Braun has 7,199 plate appearances, 344 home runs and 215 stolen bases.

Dom DiMaggio went 29 for 101, with 10 walks, against Early Wynn. Joe DiMaggio went 29 for 102, with 10 walks, against Early Wynn.

In 1929, Chicago Cubs infielder Woody English had a 72 OPS+…. and scored 131 runs.

On this date in 1946, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Preacher Roe suffered a fractured skull upon hitting the floor after being punched by a referee during a high school basketball game. Roe, who was coaching one of the teams, had disputed a call.

The Seattle Mariners traded Ken Griffey Jr. to the Cincinnati Reds on February 10, 2000 in exchange for Mike Cameron, Antonio Perez, Brett Tomko, and Jake Meyer.

Charlie Wilson, an infielder for the Boston Braves and St. Louis Cardinals in the the 1930s, was nicknamed “Swamp Baby.”

The Big Mookie Betts Deal Is Finally Happening, but the Dodgers-Angels Trade Isn’t

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On Tuesday, word got out that Mookie Betts would be traded to the Dodgers. Over the course of the week, the trade moved from a seeming certainty to something less so, as the Red Sox reportedly raised concerns about the health of prospect Brusdar Graterol. With spring training just days away, the players were stuck in limbo as the teams tried to renegotiate. Now it appears those negotiations have borne fruit, with a new deal finalized per reports from Jeff Passan, Ken Rosenthal, and Chad Jennings. And in a bit of good news after the indecision of the last four days, Alex Speier is reporting that the player medical evaluations are done, with only league approval of the money heading to Los Angeles holding up the official finalization of the trade.

The original deal was a three-team swap involving the Dodgers, Twins, and Red Sox, with a follow-up trade between the Angels and Dodgers. But Sunday’s moves involve two discrete trades between the Dodgers and Red Sox, and the Dodgers and Twins. And that Dodgers-Angels deal? It is not happening, per Ken Rosenthal.

Let’s look at the finalized version of each trade.

Trade 1: Dodgers/Red Sox

Dodgers Receive:

  • OF Mookie Betts
  • LHP David Price
  • $48 million to pay David Price’s $96 million salary over the next three years.

Red Sox Receive:

What’s new: The Red Sox were previously set to receive Minnesota pitching prospect Brusdar Graterol. With the Twins now out of the deal, the Dodgers will send along Jeter Downs and Connor Wong to complete the trade. We also now know the cash considerations for David Price.

Jay Jaffe wrote up the previous iteration of this trade on Wednesday, so let’s focus on the newer aspects of this trade. I asked our own Eric Longenhagen for his evaluation of both Downs and Wong. He had this to say about Downs:

Downs has been a polished, advanced hitter for his age dating way back to high school. He’s not a shortstop for me and his thicker lower half means his likely future home is as a shift-aided second baseman at maturity, in my opinion. He’s short back to the ball with some pop, and his swing is bottom-hand heavy, which leaves him somewhat vulnerable to velo in on his hands, but he’s selective enough to swing at pitches he can damage. Despite the patience and bat control, I think he ends up with closer to average contact ability but with fully actualized power production, a well-rounded offensive profile that cleanly profiles at second base. His average exit velo was 88 mph last year, and there’s not a lot of room on the body so that might be all. He’s a 50 FV prospect set to be around 60th overall on Wednesday’s Top 100.

As for Wong, Longenhagen said:

Wong is a multi-positional defender who can also play catcher. His is another swing the Dodgers have tweaked since college, when Wong was more contact-oriented. He has average raw power but lifts the ball. His approach is an issue and I think it’ll prevent him from being a full-time player, but his ability to catch and play on the infield will make him a cool role player who gives Boston’s big league roster defensive flexibility.

If we want to compare this deal to the one the Red Sox backed out of — and we definitely do want to compare them — Boston did slightly better in the current iteration. They grabbed a similarly ranked prospect to Graterol in Downs and got an extra player in Wong. Ultimately, the Red Sox got the financial relief they so coveted, as well as a decent, recently graduated prospect, a solid prospect, and a potential role player. In a vacuum, it’s a fair deal, with Boston getting lesser prospects for one year of one of the game’s best players because they attached a lot of David Price’s contract to the bargain. For Boston fans, the deal sucks. The Red Sox didn’t need to back off from contention and trade Mookie Betts. The deal serves principally to increase the Red Sox’s profits with a small increase in their competitive position some years down the line.

As for the Dodgers, Brendan Gawlowski wrote late last week about the unbalanced NL West. This deal keeps San Diego from potentially getting close to unseating Los Angeles; Betts in the fold will help ensure the Dodgers are huge favorites for the division in 2020, and provides the team with a better shot at a championship.

Trade 2: Dodgers/Twins

Dodgers Receive:

  • RHP Brusdar Graterol
  • OF Luke Raley
  • Minnesota’s Competitive Balance Pick in 2020 (67th overall)

Twins Receive:

  • RHP Kenta Maeda
  • $10 million to offset Maeda’s salary

What’s New: Graterol goes to Los Angeles instead of Boston. The Dodgers also receive outfielder Luke Raley and a draft pick, while the Twins receive cash to pay for Maeda’s salary. The only aspect of the deal that’s retains its original form is Maeda going to the Twins.

Jaffe’s piece covered Maeda and Graterol. With the Twins’ list already completed, here’s the scouting report on Raley, who received a 35+ FV grade:

Raley is a plus runner underway despite his size, and has big raw power that the Dodgers did well to tease out in games before trading him to Minnesota as part of the 2018 Brian Dozier deal. While explosive in some ways, Raley is stiff and unathletic, and at times an adventure on defense. He could end up as a bat-only bench outfielder, or low-end platoon option.

The draft pick heading to Los Angeles has generally been worth around $4 million, though this year’s draft does look deeper than normal. Even so, that the Twins received $10 million for Maeda’s salary indicates the Dodgers had to sweeten the deal slightly to get it done.

As for the Joc Pederson/Ross Stripling deal that fell through, the Dodgers seem to have an extra outfielder and an extra swingman available to make a few more minor moves. In the end, the Dodgers provided a little more value to Minnesota but got a good pitching prospect, while they provided a lot more value to Boston, mitigated mostly by receiving Graterol. The Dodgers sweetened the deals slightly for both trade partners. Their reward is Mookie Betts. The Twins and Red Sox are slightly better off than they were Tuesday night. The Dodgers are just a lot better off.

Effectively Wild Episode 1498: Season Preview Series: Cubs and Diamondbacks

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EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the remade Mookie Betts trade, the latest revelations about the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal (including “Codebreaker” and “the dark arts”), and the Mets’ failed sale to hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen. Then they preview the 2020 Cubs (46:13) with The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma, and the 2020 Diamondbacks (1:20:08) with The Arizona Republic’s Nick Piecoro.

Audio intro: No-Fi Soul Rebellion, "Dark Arts"
Audio interstitial 1: Of Montreal, "Doing Nothing"
Audio interstitial 2: Ultrababyfat, "Diamondback"
Audio outro: Tunng, "Code Breaker"

Link to Astros WSJ report
Link to Travis on the Cubs’ pitching development problems
Link to Sahadev on the Cubs’ player development overhaul
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Updating the 2020, 2021, and 2022 Draft Rankings

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Welcome to Prospect Week 2020, FanGraphs’ annual pre-season spotlight on our sport’s future, and my annual opportunity to experience a dissociative fugue state.

The uninitiated will first want to read this primer on how I assign an overall grade to each prospect, and if you want to familiarize yourself with my process more thoroughly, you should pre-order Future Value, the book I co-wrote with baby-faced turncoat Kiley McDaniel, now of ESPN. In the span of a long weekend Kiley got engaged, joined ESPN, saw our book go to the printer, and did a SportsCenter hit wearing someone else’s tie. Congratulations to my friend, who worked until the clock struck midnight on his FanGraphs tenure, and to me, as I now get to do what I want without having to convince Kiley that it’s a good idea.

While the NCAA baseball season starts this weekend, 2020 draft looks have already been going on for nearly a month. The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend always features several important high school showcases, and junior college baseball begins shortly after that. Meanwhile, Division-I schools have been scrimmaging in front of scouts in preparation for Friday’s openers. Dope siphoned from these events is included in my 2020, 2021 and 2022 draft rankings, all of which have been updated for today and will be updated continuously between now and the draft. And in a brand new feature courtesy of Sean Dolinar, you can now see all three draft classes mushed together here.

There’s rarely a big, sweeping update of prospect rankings at this site. Like a sourdough starter, The Board is a living, breathing thing, and I often update it with notes in real time while I’m at the field. For draft coverage, that water wheel of info begins this weekend. For pro notes, the process will begin after all of the org lists have been published.

The Depth of Draft

The prevailing industry opinion is that the 2020 draft is deep, and while I don’t think that’s true of the very top tier of players at this moment, I agree that the totality of the group is very strong. The tier of talent that often wears thin toward the back of the first round (typically the intersection of the 45 FV and 40+ FV tiers here at FanGraphs) is more robust than usual, and stretches well into the second round of this year’s draft. Notably, scouts and executives on both the pro and amateur side are aware of this class’ strong reputation, and a premium has been placed on acquirable compensatory selections in the trade discussions that the pro side participates in. Four comp picks have already changed hands since their allotment was announced in mid-December. (There are fewer of them available this year because none of the eight free agents who declined qualifying offers this offseason came from revenue sharing recipients, which means there are no comp picks immediately following the first round.)

And it isn’t just one or two of the four primary player groups (prep/college x hitters/pitchers) driving the depth, but rather an unusual confluence of all the groups. College pitching is poised to occupy a sizable chunk of the first round, including many of the top 10 to 15 picks. Of course, there have been years when that’s been true in February before ligaments tear, lat muscles strain, and stuff quality inexplicably evaporates during the season, causing guys to tumble down draft boards. C.J. Van Eyk had a forearm injury in high school, Emerson Hancock had a knee injury as a freshman and lat soreness in late-April/early-May of 2019, J.T. Ginn dealt with shoulder soreness during the 2019 postseason, Kevin Abel and Hugh Fisher have each had an arm surgery, Cade Cavalli had a stress reaction in his arm last year, Chris McMahon has had a knee surgery and dealt with a shoulder issue last year, Slade Cecconi had injury problems as a high school senior, and Carmen Mlodzinski has had a fractured foot. That’s half of the college arms on whom I currently have a 40+ FV or better. All of these players are healthy entering the year (knock on reinforced carbon fiber polymer), but there will almost certainly be some entropy.

The overall depth might push a lot of the exciting high school talent past where it’s signable at slot value. The number of teams that are both willing and able to be financially creative is always small, and it’s possible a lot of high schoolers with high price tags will end up going to school. That means three drafts from now, when that group of unsigned high schoolers is draft eligible again, we might have another very talent-rich year.

High School Outfielders

Opinions about how to line up the crowded group of high school outfielders vary. Austin Hendrick can rotate better than any hitter in this class and has the most present power among the high schoolers, but he’s also the oldest and had strikeout problems against good pitching last summer. The strikeouts he’s notched throughout showcases combined with tempting raw pop are both Jo Adell pre-draft parallels, though Adell was 18.2 when he was drafted and Hendrick will be 19. Robert Hassell is the most well-rounded of the group, which is odd because he also pitches. Dylan Crews’ hitting posture — his torso is tilted over the hitting zone, enabling his barrel to traverse the zone with natural lift — is reminiscent of Mike Trout’s. Crews is nearly as explosive as Hendrick and similarly undercooked. Pete Crow-Armstrong is the best defender but his summer was also bad, though scouts who saw him overseas with Team USA later last year thought he’d rebounded in a big way. Zac Veen, who I have atop the group right now, has the best combination of present feel to hit and power projection because of his frame, which is of the Cameron Maybin/Jayson Werth ilk.

A few players in the next tier of prep outfielders (NorCal center fielder Chase Davis, multi-sport center fielder Robby Ashford, human blur Enrique Bradfield, etc.) have a real chance to insert themselves into the above group. Physical and skill development can occur very rapidly as this age, so the way this group lines up a few months from now may look different.

Too Cavalier

What is so hypnotic about the University of Virginia that it’s causing young players to cede one of their (maybe) two chances to be paid well before they reach the majors? For years, highly-regarded high school prospects have, in essence, made themselves unavailable for selection after their senior season, either by withdrawing from draft eligibility or by pricing themselves out of selection with a bonus ask teams aren’t willing to meet, in order to be Cavaliers.

Many of these prospects have been pitchers, two high-profile examples of which have come in the last two years in right hander Mike Vasil, now a sophomore, and lefty Nate Savino, who graduated from high school early to enroll at Virginia last month. Savino had a shot to go in the first round this June, or could have been someone’s over-slot pick later than that, like Matthew Allan was for the Mets last year; if neither scenario materialized, he could have then matriculated to Charlottesville. Now he doesn’t have that option.

It’s possible that Savino will be a top 10 pick in three years. Teams’ past behavior has indicated they’re more confident picking college arms than they are high schoolers. But it’s not as if the University of Virginia is good at developing pitchers. Nathan Kirby, Nick Howard, Connor Jones, Danny Hultzen, and Branden Kline have all either gotten worse or had injury issues or stuff fluctuation, or some combination of the three. Only current Royals lefty Daniel Lynch, who was famously resistant to the coaches during his breakout junior year, got better during his time in college. Now former top 2021 high school prospect Nick Bitsko, a Pennsylvania righty and UVA commit, has reclassified as a 2020 with an eye on going to college a year early. While I can’t climb inside the mind of elite teenage athlete or his family, and while I acknowledge many things to be much more important than money — Virginia is a fine academic institution, Charlottesville has a cute downtown with lots of exposed brick, the Paramount Theater is gorgeous — I’m perplexed by the seemingly annual decision for one of them to punt on their senior season draft opportunity, let alone to do so to go to a school that is famously bad at developing pitchers.

Blaze Jordan in Context

Another player who reclassified as a 2020 prospect is Blaze Jordan, who has been famous since the fall of 2016 when he hit several balls way, way out of Globe Life Park. He will be the youngest player available in this year’s draft (a model-friendly trait), and he made lots of contact during the summer and does have big power, but I anticipate being lower on him than other reputable, public-facing draft rankings. I’m skeptical of amateur players whose bodies mature well before their peers’ and righty hitting first basemen, and Jordan is both. Hitters with his profile are not uncommon at the lowest levels of pro ball, and I don’t see much difference between someone like Jordan and prospects like Neyfy Castillo or Jhonkensy Noel, who most of you have never heard of.

Big Potential Hauls

Here are the teams with several early picks as the draft order currently stands:

Detroit (1, 38, 63, 75)
Baltimore (2, 30, 39, 76)
Miami (3, 40, 62, 77)
Kansas City (4, 32, 41, 78)
Seattle (6, 43, 65, 80)
Pittsburgh (7, 31, 44, 81)
San Diego (8, 34, 45, 82)
Colorado (9, 35, 46, 83)
Cincinnati (12, 48, 66, 86)
San Francisco (13, 49, 68, 69, 87)
New York Mets (19, 53, 70, 93)
St. Louis (21, 55, 64, 71, 95)
Washington (22, 56, 72, 96)
Cleveland (23, 36, 57, 97)
Tampa Bay (24, 37, 58, 98)

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