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.

Baseball Invokes UEC Contract Provisions

Per a report by Ken Rosenthal, Major League Baseball will invoke a force majeure provision in the Uniform Employee Contract signed by all non-player personnel on May 1. The provision allows for the suspension of contracts in extraordinary circumstances. The provision has been available to teams since the declaration of a national state of emergency on March 13, but until now hadn’t been used.

The consequences of this decision aren’t yet known. Teams could do anything from leaving everything exactly as-is to furloughing all of their non-player workers, though healthcare benefits will remain the same. Still, even if teams don’t immediately act, it’s a tough situation for workers, including front office personnel, coaches, and scouts, who must now face the prospect of reduced salary or even unemployment while planning for an uncertain season. (Non-player personnel are not unionized.)

The Braves, Giants, and Phillies have already committed to paying their employees until May 31. Other teams will surely follow suit. But it’s hard to read this move as anything other than a bargaining chip for teams. With the specter of unemployment looming over them, employees might be more amenable to changing the terms of their contracts. The Players’ Association has already reached an agreement with MLB on salary changes in the event of a shortened season, and it appears that non-player employees may soon need to do the same. Read the rest of this entry »

Starting yesterday, I began a hunt through old World Series games for strange tactical decisions. Things were weird in the early ‘90s — MVP candidates bunting, intentional walks so thick they blocked out the sun, and raft-loads of pitchers overstaying their welcome. How did things go in the next half-decade? Better. But not that much better — the event that inspired this project, Byung-Hyun Kim throwing 61 pitches and then pitching the next day, wasn’t until 2001. We’ve still got plenty of weirdness going on. With 1994 lost to the strike, we’ll jump back in in 1995.

1995

The Braves were back with a retooled roster — Chipper Jones, Fred McGriff, Ryan Klesko, and Javy Lopez headlined the new crop of hitters. Marquis Grissom manned center, put up a .317 OBP, and — you guessed it — led off. Mark Lemke (79 wRC+) batted second, and just… come on, Bobby Cox, stop messing with my mind.

Ryan Klesko hit .310/.396/.608 and batted sixth — sure wouldn’t hate getting him a few more at-bats. Even Charlie O’Brien, Greg Maddux’s personal catcher, was better with the stick this year than Grissom and Lemke — he hit seventh. Cleveland was just as bad — they had Omar Vizquel hit second while Manny Ramirez, in a season where he hit .308/.402/.558, languished in seventh. In fact, Vizquel was the worst regular hitter on the Indians, period.

Game 1 was a buttoned-up affair — there aren’t a lot of tactics to talk about when Greg Maddux throws a complete game in 95 pitches. The only real points of interest were two Cox pinch hitting decisions — he pulled Klesko for journeyman Mike Devereaux, then pulled O’Brien for light-hitting Luis Polonia. Both over-valued platoon edges relative to talent levels. The pinch hitting penalty wasn’t commonly known then, which doesn’t help. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I learned an astonishing fact while listening to Effectively Wild. In the 2001 World Series, Byung-Hyun Kim blew a save while throwing 61 pitches. The next day, Bob Brenly sent Kim right back out there, and he blew another save. I knew the back-to-back blown saves part, but 61 pitches! Imagine the uproar if that had happened last year.

This got me wondering: just how weird were baseball tactics 20 or 30 years ago? What else were teams doing that would shock a modern audience? While we wait for real baseball, I decided to find out. Starting with the 1990 World Series, I’m going to hunt for tactical decisions that would look out of place today, and see just how different baseball is.

1990

Tony LaRussa is the father of modern bullpen management, but he also had a new-looking batting order; his best four hitters in Game 1 by wRC+ batted 1-4. Lou Piniella, meanwhile, batted 92 wRC+ Billy Hatcher in the two spot. Chris Sabo, a career 110 wRC+ hitter who posted a 121 wRC+ in 1990, languished in sixth. That’s nothing too wild for the time — the second spot in the lineup was long given to “bat control” guys — but it looks antiquated next to the A’s lineup.

The first game wouldn’t look out of place in 2020. LaRussa pinch hit for ace Dave Stewart after only four innings, looking to spark a rally in a game the A’s trailed 4-0. Piniella and the Reds used only three pitchers, because ace Jose Rijo went seven strong innings, and even up 7-0, they used their top two relievers to get the last six outs. Boring! Read the rest of this entry »

For the most part, our communally managed Out of the Park Brewers are like any other baseball team — minus the fact that they don’t exist in real life. In at least one way, however, these Brewers are unlike any real major league team. Over the weekend, they lost in a fashion that no team has ever done. Eno Sarris’s Mets trampled our Brewers 26-1, a score that hasn’t happened since 1904, and likely has never happened at all in the majors. Losing 26-1 is the kind of game you have to see to believe. We can’t see this one, though, so you’ll merely have to accept my narration, because such a tremendous beatdown is worth talking about.

How could a team implode so completely? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the team came into this Saturday’s confrontation nursing some injuries. Josh Hader was battling shoulder discomfort that made him unavailable for a few days. The previous day featured an 11-inning loss to the Mets, which left several bullpen arms tired. That brings up our first recipe for disaster: a short start.

Freddy Peralta didn’t have it on Saturday. He started off with a walk, and by the time Brandon Nimmo had finished his elaborate sprinting-and-pointing walk celebration, Pete Alonso launched a first-pitch home run. Peralta managed to escape the inning without allowing any further runs, but not convincingly so; his five first pitches resulted in three balls and two balls in play (there was a double play).

The game still looked normal in the bottom of the first. Avisaíl García drew a walk and Keston Hiura added a single, though the team couldn’t capitalize. Still, this isn’t how 26-1 games look after one inning. Heck, Steven Matz threw more pitches than Peralta in the first frame. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, two competing plans for an alternate-site baseball season were leaked. The first was the so-called Arizona Plan: Send all 30 teams to Arizona, rotate games between the available fields, and play an abbreviated major league season with no in-person audience. That plan has its logistical pitfalls, but one of the few things the plan doesn’t alter is the existing divisional structure of baseball. Aside from a shorter season and its attendant complications, baseball would mostly work the way it always has: the Red Sox, Rays, and Yankees would attempt to club each other into submission, the AL Central would be full of rebuilding teams, and so on.

The second plan, the so-called Arizona-Florida plan, would be something else entirely. Instead of recreating the exact structure of the league in one city, this plan would place each team at their spring training facility. Many of the logistical issues from before would still need to be answered. Assuming those can be handled, however, there’s still one major twist: instead of existing divisions, the teams would be grouped by geographic proximity — and, of course, given that the existing setup isn’t 15 AL teams in one location and 15 NL teams in the other, the leagues would be scrambled.

Per Bob Nightengale, the divisions would look like this:

That’s quite the scramble. Dan Szymborski is running the new divisions through ZiPS to get an idea of what it does to teams’ playoff odds, but I thought I’d consider the mechanics of playing with 15-team leagues, as well as highlight some interesting matchups, to give you some sizzle to go with your steak, as it were. Read the rest of this entry »

With another week in the books, our digital Brewers aren’t any easier to figure out. In fact, it’s been much the opposite. Today, we’ll take a deep dive into the pitching staff, which has already seen a good deal of turnover 12 games into the season, and see if we can settle on roles for a mixed and largely interchangeable group.

First, there’s the Injured List contingent:

Knebel was the only pitcher to start the season on the shelf, but he’s got company now. Brett Anderson is ready to return, having missed only a single turn in the rotation, but the prognosis on the other two is decidedly worse. Lindblom will be back sometime in July at the earliest. And Claudio won’t be back — his rotator cuff injury is a season ender.

Anderson’s imminent return creates an interesting decision. The starting rotation is full of question marks and maybes. The top two feels relatively set; Brandon Woodruff and Adrian Houser are both staying in the rotation unless they get hurt. After that, we have some decisions to make. Read the rest of this entry »

In case you’ve been living under a rock — and if so, good for you, great distancing, take a bow — there’s been one major development in baseball in the past few days: per Jeff Passan, the league is reportedly in the early stages of formulating a plan that would see games played in empty stadiums in Arizona as soon as May or June. (MLB has said it is not committed to any specific plan at this time, and will prioritize public health and safety in its decision-making.)

This is a bold plan, one that feels very out of line with how other sporting events are reacting to COVID-19. Wimbledon, which takes place in July, has already been canceled. The Olympics, scheduled for August, have been delayed a year. A plan to start up a major sports undertaking months before those dates will be fraught with hurdles. Let’s cover some of those, along with the potential workarounds, while keeping in mind that the entire plan is subject to forces well beyond MLB’s control.

How Many Personnel Would Be Isolated?
The first sticking point in the plan is the sheer number of people the league would need to isolate. In his piece on the plan, Ken Rosenthal reported that league and MLBPA officials are discussing rosters in the 50-player range to allow for the injury- and performance-related promotions and substitutions that teams normally make. That’s 1,500 people in isolation right there, and that’s only players.

Would players with families be allowed to bring their loved ones with them? It’s hard to imagine union approval if families aren’t allowed into whatever housing facility the league uses. The alternative — leaving spouses, partners, and children completely cut off from players — sounds terrible right away, but it’s even more unthinkable given the strained state of national resources. Read the rest of this entry »

On September 4, 2019, Ian Miller made his major league debut. With his Twins down 6-0 with only two innings left to play, he replaced Max Kepler to give Kepler a break in the field. Miller’s spot came up eighth in the batting order; he wasn’t guaranteed his first major league plate appearance, but the odds looked good.

But a funny thing happened on the way to his batting debut. Nelson Cruz led off the top of the eighth with a single. Eddie Rosario followed with a home run. The Red Sox went through two pitchers and frittered away a third of their lead — a 6-2 deficit felt less than insurmountable against a shaky Boston team now deep into its bullpen.

So when Miller’s turn to bat came up, with one out and the bases empty in the top of the ninth, Rocco Baldelli made, by some criteria, the best pinch hitting decision of 2019. Rather than have the left-handed Miller face southpaw Darwinzon Hernandez, he brought in Mitch Garver. In addition to being right-handed, Garver was one of the best hitters in baseball last year, full stop. The decision worked: Garver walked, though it didn’t end up mattering — Brandon Workman eventually induced a double play to escape a bases-loaded jam. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »