On Monday, we projected what the Cactus/Grapefruit standings could look like given baseball’s radical proposal to base the 2020 season in team’s Arizona and Florida spring training complexes.

In my first piece, I went with division-less leagues, since I am the ZiPS Dictator — faber est suae quisque fortunae. With travel distances relatively limited compared to a normal season and many of the traditional divisional rivalries gone topsy-turvy, I felt there wasn’t any real need to have divisions. No divisions doesn’t mean that fewer teams make the playoffs, after all.

But being the ZiPS Dictator doesn’t make one the MLB Dictator, and there’s a very good chance that any Arizona/Florida league will have makeshift divisions. First, let’s re-project our temporary leagues using the divisions that Bob Nightengale laid out in his piece initially reporting the paln. For the number of games, I’m going with the proposed 108, consisting of 12 games against each team’s division rivals and six games against each of the non-division teams. We’ll start with the Florida teams:

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While we don’t yet know for sure whether there will be a 2020 baseball season, any resumption of baseball will likely involve a year that looks like nothing that has come before. Among the many proposals out there, ranging from the tinkering to the radical, is one to eliminate the traditional AL/NL league structure for this year in the so-called Arizona-Florida plan. Teams would play at their Cactus and Grapefruit League spring training facilities (along with Chase Field, Tropicana Field, and Marlins Park), facing off against the teams in that state. Basing teams in the spring training leagues has the benefit of working with existing team facilities, and, as Ben Clemens wrote for the site earlier today, addresses some of the broadcast and climate difficulties, though of course it is as dependent on the widespread availability of testing as the Arizona plan.

Assuming that we go with the highly unusual Cactus/Grapefruit season, the races will naturally look very different than we’re accustomed to. The spring training league assignments adhere more generally to an east/west alignment than an AL/NL one, so many of the traditional rivalries would take on a very different character in 2020.

With a little bit of work, I was able to realign ZiPS to project the outcome of these new league races. Naturally, there’s a little bit of speculation required to formalize this strange new 2020 MLB. I’ve engaged in such speculation because, well, that’s my job!

For the new 2020, I’m assuming that both leagues use the designated hitter, as Bob reported. While the DH/Pitcher hitting battle still rages among baseball fans, in such an unusual season, when pitchers are already having a very odd training schedule, there’s a lot to recommend a universal DH rule, at least temporarily. Without pre-existing divisions, I’m also going to assume that we’d be seeing division-less leagues in 2020. Also, no interleague play, given that the whole idea of spring training leagues is to avoid lots of travel. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to Virtual Opening Day 2.0! April 9 represents what would have been Opening Day after MLB’s initial delay to the start of the season.

By popular vote, today’s game, streamed live at 2 PM ET by Paul Sporer, Ben Clemens, and Dan Szymborski, will feature the Los Angeles Dodgers heading to St. Louis to take on Carlos Martínez and the Cardinals.

The Cardinals (7-5) are hoping to avoid a three-game sweep at the hands of the Dodgers. After today’s game, the Red Birds start a nine-game road trip against the Cubs, Dodgers, and Rockies. In the NL Central’s early going, the Cincinnati Reds (10-1) are at the top of the division thanks to a nine-game winning streak. Carlos Martínez had a rough outing against the Reds in his season debut, but earned a no-decision after a quality start against the Orioles last week. C-Mart has yet to walk a batter this season.

The Dodgers (8-4) stand tied at the top of the NL West with the Colorado Rockies, who have gone on a five-game winning streak since benching Ian Desmond. Reigning National League MVP Cody Bellinger’s cold start continues and after 12 games, his line still stands at a rough .187/.264/.229 with no homers and -0.4 WAR. Corey Seager, on the other hand, is off to the hottest start of his career and currently ranks third in the National League in WAR among position players.

12:01

Dan Szymborski: Dan is too! We can have a club.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Eh, I’m nto sure they’re hte same.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Longoria had more glove

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Last month, in more normal times, we tested the Yankees to see how injury-resistant the 2020 roster actually was in light of the then-recent news that Luis Severino would miss 2020 with Tommy John surgery. While this year’s Yankees roster wasn’t quite as deep as 2019’s, it took a lot of key injuries to seriously affect the team’s 2020 chances. But even as they remained the favorites to win the East, losing James Paxton until at least May, Aaron Judge‘s broken rib, and Giancarlo Stanton’s sore calf muscle increased the team’s downside risk.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported late Monday night that MLB and the MLBPA were discussing the particulars of a plan that would see workouts resume in May with the season beginning soon after. Passan is as dependable as they come, and I have little doubt about the story, but the chances of the season starting that quickly strike me as fairly small. As Ben Clemens wrote for FanGraphs earlier today, the logistical lift involved with such a plan is enormous. From what I’ve heard doing the rounds — and I’ve yet to have a colleague form a drastically different impression — MLB’s more realistic targets involve June workouts and a start sometime in early-to-mid July.

Obviously, teams would rather be playing right now, regardless of their roster’s injury status. Reality is terrible! But with reality’s timeline in mind, instead of injuring all of the Yankees, what if we healed them? It’s not quite as preposterous as it sounds thanks to the delayed start to the season. Severino wouldn’t return no matter how late Opening Day ends up being, so my headline is a bit of a cruel lie. But a midseason start to the 2020 season leaves a very real chance that the Yankees kick things off with Paxton, Judge, and Stanton all on the active roster; Stanton was likely to return in April, but the outlook for Paxton and Judge was a bit foggier. Read the rest of this entry »

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

IHME Projections Continue Positive Trend

The daily projections for COVID-19’s impact in the U.S. have continued to trend in a positive direction, whic is good news in a world currently starved for it. In its latest model run, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington again projects the peak stress on the American health system as less than in the previous day. From nearly 90,000 projected fatalities in the United States last week, the latest run knocks almost a third off that number.

There’s a lot of hardship and heartbreak still ahead of us, and all of this dependent on continued aggressive social distancing. But if the virus truly peaks on April 11 as projected, we could start to see more detailed road maps for the slow transition out of quarantine mode. It likely won’t happen as quickly as MLB’s ill-received plan to return as early as May would require, but this kind of planning will necessarily accelerate once we appear to be on the right side of the curve. For more on the challenges attendant with baseball’s reported Arizona Plan, check out Ben Clemens’ piece for FanGraphs from earlier today. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2020 season will be unlike any other we’ve seen before. Indeed, there may not even be a season. The COVID-19 pandemic has already altered baseball to an even greater degree than the World Wars did. While finding a way to resume play has become a rare point of common interest for MLB and the MLBPA, a contagious illness that spreads easily and is more dangerous than the seasonal flu presents a whole host of problems that need to be solved before a new Opening Day can be announced. Do you quarantine players? How long do you play without fans? What happens if a player tests positive in mid-August?

But let’s assume for a moment that the IHME model is on target. The model predicts that if we can keep up our current social distancing efforts (and the straggler states join in), the worst effects of the virus will be behind us by early-to-mid June. The return of baseball would be a welcome symbol of normalcy, and a baseball season that starts in July could largely be played without too many compromises other than the number of games. But I think it would be a mistake for baseball to just go back to the regular structure. The game will be returning against the backdrop of an international tragedy. In this dark time, baseball should focus on the enjoyable parts of the sport, even if things get a little…weird. 2021 can return to normal business, but let’s make 2020 fun.

United we stand, divided we Fall…Classic

Divisions have been a part of baseball for a half-century — even longer if you consider leagues to be de facto divisions. They’re a convenient way to group teams engaged in competition for playoff spots and to create additional meaningful races beyond simple seeding. But one of the problems with divisions is they just don’t make all that much sense in a severely shortened season. Whether the season is 80 or 100 or 120 games, it will provide less of an opportunity for teams to prove themselves superior to their division rivals. And the shorter the season, the less likely it is that a team will run away with a one-division league and make things boring. Read the rest of this entry »

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

IHME Roadmap

One of the most detailed COVID-19 projections out there is produced by the The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, a research instituted founded in 2007. The IHME model endeavors to project how long until states reach peak resource use, including hospital and ICU beds, as well as ventilators. That the model breaks things down state by state is crucial because given the size of the United States, it seems likely that we’ll face two months of individual hot spots that peak at different times rather than one uniform disaster. It’s important to note that the IHME model assumes both that current social distancing measures will remain in place and that the remaining straggler states will enact similar measures as well.

This kind of modeling isn’t just important for policymakers and citizens, but for businesses like Major League Baseball that are attempting to map out their return to normalcy. If these projections turn out to be accurate, it could provide baseball with a lot of useful information as to which places will be safer to hold games sooner (fanless or otherwise), and which dates to look to for an apex to the virus’ trajectory. If states start missing their projected peaks, it will tell everyone that the road ahead will be harder than previously expected, and plans can be made (or adjusted) accordingly. Again, all of this is predicated on the assumption that we continue to practice social distancing. So for the sake of your family and neighbors (and to hasten baseball’s return), please stay home as much as possible. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball, like the world around it, has been flooded with bad news for the last couple of weeks. Normally, losing one of the game’s most exciting 20-something pitchers to Tommy John would create a splash on the level of Dan-doing-a-cannonball-into-a-kiddie-pool. But in these times, the ripples created by the news of Noah Syndergaard’s surgery (along with Chris Sale’s) were relatively minor. What are UCLs compared to the concerns of COVID-19?

But it is bad news. Bad for the Mets and bad for Syndergaard himself. How bad? For a change of pace, let’s start off with the long-term projection rather than finish with it. The projection is notable in this case as there’s a key difference in the model. With no actual game-related news to distract me, I’ve been able to complete work on one of my ongoing data projects: better long-term playing time projections for players with injuries, especially serious ones that cause entire seasons to be missed.

While ZiPS has had a generalized model for injuries — both specific and, well, general — for some time, the focus was mainly on projecting how well the player would play upon returning and the long-term qualitative impact on their play. So long-term, pitchers with bum shoulders would fare worse than those taking a trip to Dr. Andrews’ Magic Elbow Factory, and speedy infielders with leg problems would see their aging curves accelerate. Less of the focus had been the long-term effect on playing time itself, something I’ve been able to work on a lot recently. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Dan Szymborski: And it has begun.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: I went through all my pictures to find the weariest looking one.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Now this is the most frightening one.

12:03

Dan Szymborski:

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