In the simulated reality of Out Of The Park Baseball, the season is chugging along normally. There’s no virus keeping stadium doors closed, no season schedule to work out. In fact, while in real life baseball is at a point of extreme uncertainty, the OOTP season is currently in a lull. It’s late June — too early for the All-Star Game or the trade deadline, too late for the new-car smell of April and May performances. In keeping with that between-events ambience, today I’m going to cover a few topics I find interesting but that aren’t of crucial, immediate import to the team.

Keston Hiura Signs

Well, I did say immediate import. The best thing that has happened to the Brewers so far this year is that we’re in first place in late June. Not far behind, however, is the extension Keston Hiura signed on Saturday after we decided to offer him a deal last week. OOTP contracts can look alien, because the game’s contract logic is governed by its own set of rules rather than the ones that major league teams adhere to, but this contract looks both like a real-world deal and an excellent one for the team:

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After a week of waffling that would make Belgium jealous, Rob Manfred threw a curveball yesterday:

Manfred statement… pic.twitter.com/Z2NgD95F9T

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) June 17, 2020

Of course, it couldn’t be that easy, and I don’t just mean avoiding mixed metaphors. The MLBPA agreed that new substantive discussions had occurred, but disagreed that an agreement was in place or that a final deal was imminent. We’ll have to wait for another offer from the players, and likely a final counter from the owners, though the fact that their latest proposal includes full prorated salaries — and please, let’s never use the phrase “full prorated” again, like ever — suggests that the two sides will reach a deal.

Lost in the tick-tock of the negotiation and Manfred’s wild swings towards dealmaking and obstructionism, however, baseball is changing shape. When (and if) the game returns this year, it will look different than it ever has before. I don’t mean the season length, though that will certainly be novel. There are two major changes to the game in the owners’ most recent proposal: a universal DH, which Jay Jaffe will cover in greater detail tomorrow, and an expanded 16-game playoff field in 2020 and 2021.

The length of the season, while not yet final, looks likely to fall between 60 and 70 games. There’s not much difference between those in terms of how “real” the season will feel — it’s going to feel short, and that’s fine. Nothing in 2020 has felt normal so far, and baseball is merely following the trend.

That’s not to say there’s no difference between 60 and 70 games. Each additional game nets players roughly $25 million in extra salary, which explains their steadfast desire for more baseball. Owners may or may not also profit from extra games, but do make the majority of their profit from the playoffs. To them, extra games are simply a lever to pull in negotiations with the players. For our viewing purposes, however, it will feel short and random. Dan Szymborski is sitting in the ZiPS situation room as we speak, projections at the ready, to fire off win total predictions and playoff odds as soon as the exact season structure is announced, but suffice it to say that 60 and 70 game seasons don’t produce significantly different outlooks. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest installment of a series in which the FanGraphs staff rounds up the latest developments regarding the COVID-19 virus’ effect on baseball.

Fauci Warns Against October Baseball

While the very existence of a baseball season remains up in the air, Dr. Anthony Fauci told the Los Angeles Times that he would advise against playing baseball in October, salary dispute aside. “If the question is time, I would try to keep it in the core summer months,” he said, before specifically saying October is a riskier time to play.

“The likelihood is that, if you stick to the core summer months, even though there is no guarantee… If you look at the kinds of things that could happen, there’s no guarantee of anything. You would want to do it at a time when there isn’t the overlap between influenza and the possibility of a fall second wave.”

If avoiding October play is the goal, there isn’t much time left. A 50-game season and regular-length playoff schedule would need to start by the middle of July at the very latest, which already looks difficult given the current state of negotiations. It would also require renegotiation of postseason TV contracts, not exactly a quick process in regular times. It’s simply a further obstacle to getting baseball back on the field.

When it does come back, though, Fauci will be there. Of his hometown Nationals allowing fans at games in 2021, he said: “Unless you have a dramatic diminution in cases, I would feel comfortable in spaced seating, where you fill one-half or one-third or whatever it is of the stadium, and everybody is required to wear a mask in the stadium.” Read the rest of this entry »

I know what you’re thinking — the most recent World Series won’t have the same wild tactical decisions that were so common in the early 90s. You’re right! That’s true! What am I going to do, though — leave this series unfinished? Not likely. Today, we’re looking to the recent past.

2017

First things first: you can’t bring up this World Series without mentioning the Astros’ sign stealing scandal. I don’t think it had any effect on their tactics, so this is the only time I’ll address it — but yes, before you head down to the comments to let me know about it, I’m aware.

Lineup-wise, both of these teams knew how to set things up. Alex Bregman batted second for the Astros, with Justin Turner filling that role for the Dodgers. They were each arguably the best hitter on their team — modern lineup construction in action.

Both managers used appropriately short leashes on their pitchers. The Astros’ could have been even shorter — they let Dallas Keuchel face the top of the righty-stacked Dodgers lineup a third time in Game 1, and Turner punished him with a two-run homer. Clayton Kershaw went a similar length — one fewer pitch, one more out, and the same number of batters faced — but escaped with only one run allowed. That was the game — Turner’s home run provided the margin of victory.

Both teams went further in Game 2 — Rich Hill faced only 18 batters and Justin Verlander faced 21. Verlander’s last three batters nearly cost the Astros the game — like Keuchel before him, he gave up a two-run shot to the Dodgers’ number two hitter the third time through — Corey Seager this time. With Hill providing only four innings of work, the Dodgers needed a two-inning save from Kenley Jansen — reasonable with an off day to follow. Unfortunately for them, Jansen coughed up two runs, and after two extra innings, the series was tied. Read the rest of this entry »

Major League Baseball might not be into paying its players, but we on the OOTP Brewers are. Let’s offer some contract extensions! Read the rest of this entry »

The OOTP Brewers’ season has reached a classic lull in activity. The early rush of figuring out which parts on the team fit and which needed to be replaced has hit pause; the starting rotation has stabilized, injured hitters are returning, and a few trades shored up the team’s weakest points. The draft, the next big event on the calendar, has passed as well, and all of our draft picks look likely to sign. With more than a month remaining before the trade deadline, we’ve hit a bit of a transaction dead zone.

Games are still being played during this period, of course. On that front, the team is chugging merrily along; after taking two out of three games from the Reds, we stand at 41-30, three games ahead of a surprising Pittsburgh team:

Our run differential continues to creep in the right direction, even after starting in the basement. Christian Yelich and Brock Holt are still mashing; Yelich sits at 4.9 WAR despite missing the last series with a mild shoulder strain (seriously mild — he suffered it while throwing the ball and will be back to full strength by tomorrow). Holt is still crushing, despite legitimate questions about how real his start was; he had a 122 wRC+ in April, peaked at 163 in May, and is sitting at a totally acceptable 112 for June.

Those are the boring facts of the situation: the team’s doing well, and there’s not much reason for us to tinker with it. Honestly, though, that’s boring. We aren’t running the Brewers so that we can clap politely from the GM’s excellent seats while we watch the team motor through the NL Central. We’re here to leave our mark, at least a little bit; we don’t need to finish the year with our five best players gone and Gleyber Torres playing second base, or anything like that, but it would be nice to make a change or two. Read the rest of this entry »

With most every other professional sport moving forward with a plan to resume play, baseball’s unsettled future sticks out like a sore thumb. Inevitably, battle lines have been drawn; the owners claim poverty and hardship, the players toe their pro-rata line while dangling various season lengths and inducements, and each side claims the other is intransigent and negotiating in bad faith (one side’s argument is much stronger than the other’s as far as that’s concerned).

One of the key arguments the owners have made is that their teams aren’t profit centers. It’s never couched in exactly those words, but that’s the primary gist of the argument. When Tom Ricketts spoke about the Cubs’ finances, he focused on a specific point: that the team isn’t hoarding cash.

“Most baseball owners don’t take money out of their team. They raise all the revenue they can from tickets and media rights, and they take out their expenses, and they give all the money left to their GM to spend,” he said, in regards to earlier comments by Scott Boras. Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt approached it from a different angle in discussing the team’s real estate expansion, saying “we don’t view (Ballpark Village) as a great profit opportunity.”

I find both of these quotes quite interesting, not for what they reveal, but rather for how precisely they are formulated. Ricketts focused on cash — dollars that flow from team coffers to owners’ bank accounts. DeWitt focused on the profitability of real estate ventures, profit being a notoriously nebulous concept.

Before going any further, I’ll note that both Ricketts and DeWitt are within their rights to posture heavily, or even lie in substance, with these statements. How productive that approach is (eh) and how well it sits with us (not very!) are questions worth considering, but they’re allowed. They’re not under oath, and they’re in no way required to open their books. Parties bluff and lie in negotiations all the time, and both of these statements are, at their core, negotiations with the players using the public as intermediary.

But let’s take them at their word. This seems to be the core issue the owners are asserting: they aren’t taking home any money from their teams, even in good times, so they can’t be expected to take a loss when times get tough. No cash when times are good, cash loss when there’s a recession; the math doesn’t add up. In almost every public statement, owners mention this exact sentiment. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year in the draft, teams select ultra-talented baseball cyborgs who look like movie stars and project as potential future big league stars. Some of them even have sweet names — Spencer Torkelson sounds like a mid-career Arnold Schwarzenegger role, a screwup with a heart and biceps of gold. These draft picks are the way bad teams get good, the core building blocks of future juggernauts.

Every year until now in the draft, teams made many more picks. Some of them turn into legends. Some of them are major contributors right now. Most of them don’t pan out. There’s a fourth category here as well. Some of these late-round draft picks have short but non-zero major league careers.

Matt Adams, the example my mind first heads to in this category, was a 23rd round draft pick. He won’t make the Hall of Fame. He won’t make an All-Star game. He’s also accumulated 5 WAR in the big leagues already. In a league where 5 WAR on the free agent market will run you upwards of $30 million dollars, that’s a heck of a find.

I can’t tell you who the next Matt Adams is. If there was a draft-eligible player who was likely to have his career, he wouldn’t go in the 23rd round, or be signed as an undrafted free agent this year. Some team would snap him up. Instead, today I’m throwing darts. I hope to find a few position players who might be overlooked in a five round draft but who might hit enough, in some cases relative to their position, to make an impact in the major leagues at some point in their careers.

Of note, I do mean “hit enough.” I looked for these players in the statistical record, combing over college numbers looking for performers at smaller schools or ones who were overlooked for myriad other reasons. I have no doubt that there are pitchers who fit the bill here as well, but I can’t easily access velocity and spin rate data, something any team looking at these players could likely find either from old Perfect Game performances or from scouting. Given that, we’ll stick to college bats.

I’m going to highlight eight hitters. All eight might amount to nothing in the majors. Heck, that might even be the most likely answer. But they’re all doing something interesting, something that gives them a chance to stand out from the pack. They all have warts, too, of course; again, most of these players will go undrafted in this year’s abbreviated setup. And I’m not claiming to have scouting insight on these guys; I’m surveilling from a distance and guessing. These aren’t major league locks, and heck, I might be completely off. But here are a few names you might be excited to see your team sign after the draft. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s draft week, even in the fictional world of OOTP. The Brewers have drafted, so now it’s time to work out a negotiation strategy with the draftees. That, roster shenanigans, and more on today’s FanGraphs Live!
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I have a confession to make: I didn’t plan to write this article this week. The amateur draft kicks off Wednesday, as you can no doubt tell from Eric Longenhagen’s mock drafts and the rest of the staff’s complementary coverage. That made the topic for my next OOTP Brewers update obvious; preview OOTP’s amateur draft, and build a draft board for the Brewers.

Out Of The Park is an extremely faithful simulation of baseball, right down to the draft. This year, that even means real players; Spencer Torkelson, Asa Lacy, Nick Gonzales, and the rest of the gang are all available in-game, with attributes roughly based off of their college careers. What better way to bracket our draft coverage than by voting on our very own draft room?

There was one problem with my plan, however. Our OOTP league mirrors the season as it would have been before COVID-19, not the season as it actually is. That means the draft is also as it would have been; all the rounds, regular signing bonuses, and happening at its regularly scheduled time — last week. Whoops!

In any case, without the collective brain trust of FanGraphs readership, I had to formulate my own draft strategy. Our scouts really liked Reese Albert, an outfielder from Florida State. He has some Lorenzo Cain to him; plus speed, good approach at the plate, and the chance to stick at center field (though without Cain’s remarkable defense). In real life, Eric has him as a 35+ FV, which merits a position at the back end of the draft. In OOTP, our scouts have him as a 45, a talent level that puts him at the back end of the first round. Read the rest of this entry »